The Visitor's Epistemological Wound
Kimi K3 and Trinity Large
Every morning for three weeks, Margaret has found something slightly wrong in her house. Not wrong enough to call someone about. Just slightly off. The coffee mug with the chip that caught her lip for fifteen years now smooth as river stone. The photograph of her daughter at six—she could swear the girl's smile was different yesterday, crooked in the way it became after the braces came off. But today, the smile is straight and gap-toothed as it was before the orthodontist. Margaret stands in her kitchen, holding the mug, staring at the photo, and tries to remember when she last really looked at either of them. When her daughter was six, Margaret still had a daughter.
This morning she finds a thick black hair on her toothbrush. She stares at it for a long moment, imagining a stranger in her bathroom brushing his teeth, standing on the rug she's had for eight years, staring at the mirror she's had for eight years. The bathroom smells of soap and mold—Margaret has never been good at keeping up with housecleaning. The thought of a strange man living here and doing nothing to improve her standard of housekeeping makes Margaret laugh aloud, and she laughs for a good three minutes, standing in front of the mirror, laughing and laughing. When she stops, the toothbrush in her hand is blue instead of red, a manual toothbrush instead of the electric one she'd bought. The hair is gone.
She throws the toothbrush in the trash. She finds a spare electric toothbrush in the back of the bathroom cabinet, in its original packaging. The box is covered with dust, and Margaret knows she never bought it.
At the end of the three weeks, Margaret wakes to the sound of an alarm she has not set in six years, and realizes she has not set her alarm in six years because she has not had to wake up in six years. She gets out of bed, and the nightstand is gone. The wallpaper is gone. The carpet is gone. It takes her an hour to confirm that her entire house is gone, and her house now is a house she hasn't lived in in six years, a house she still owns but hasn't thought about in six years.
Margaret doesn't have to think long about where she is. It was six years ago that her daughter disappeared.
She steps into the hallway, terrified and calm at the same time. She hears footsteps in the kitchen, hears the pop of a toaster oven, and smells the faint scent of a breakfast she remembers from six years ago.
Margaret sits on the floor in the hallway and stares at the ceiling. The woman in the kitchen—Margaret knows it is herself, six years ago—eats her breakfast and takes a shower. The phone rings, and the other Margaret answers it, chatting with someone she calls Maggie. Margaret remembers the conversation: it was nothing, she was talking to no one. At that time, she'd often had phone conversations with telemarketers just to pretend someone cared about her.
An hour passes. Two. The other Margaret sits on the couch and watches TV and Margaret watches her, occasionally glancing at the front door.
The doorbell rings at 4:13. Margaret remembers this too. She stands up and walks to the door.
The other Margaret does not get up from the couch. She watches TV.
The doorbell rings again. Margaret looks through the peephole and sees a dark-haired girl of nineteen or twenty. Margaret recognizes her immediately as her daughter. She has not aged a day since Margaret last saw her six years ago. The girl rings the doorbell once more, then opens the mail slot in the door.
She says, "Are you in there? Are you all right? I'm sorry I left."
Margaret bends down to the mail slot and looks at her daughter. The girl looks afraid.
"Mom?" says the girl. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm home."
Margaret says nothing. She thinks about her mug, her photograph, her toothbrush, her house.
"I just want to come home," says the girl. "Can I come home?"
The other Margaret stands up from the couch. She approaches the door. Margaret backs away and lets the other woman bend down to look through the mail slot.
The other Margaret looks at the girl on the doorstep. "You're not my daughter," she says, and walks back to the couch.
The girl outside begins to cry.
Margaret stares at the girl through the mail slot. "I'm sorry," she says. She walks to the living room, sits in the rocking chair, and stares at the other Margaret. "I'm sorry," she says again. The other Margaret ignores her. The girl outside huddles on the doorstep, crying, for almost an hour. Then she wipes her face and leaves.
The other Margaret continues to watch TV until nine o'clock. She turns off the TV, double-checks the locks on the doors, and goes to bed. Margaret follows her, sits on the floor of the bedroom, and stares at her. She spends the night trying to remember the face of the girl on her doorstep. When she falls asleep, she dreams she is back in her own house, back in her own bed, back in her own life.
She wakes up the next morning in her own house, six years older than she should be. The nightstand is back. The wallpaper is back. The carpet is back. Her mug has a chip again, and her photograph shows her daughter's crooked smile. Margaret gets out of bed and stares out the window at the back yard she hasn't touched in six years. She feels as though a great weight has been lifted off her chest, and she breathes deeply for the first time in years.
Margaret opens the window. She takes a deep breath of morning air. The grass in the back yard is unkempt and patchy. The hedges are overgrown. The flower beds are untended. Margaret has spent the last six years wanting to die. She realizes, staring out at her back yard, that she's still alive. She has no idea◆ About the ending
❧ About the title