The Haunted House by Rebecca Brown

Author:Rebecca Brown
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: City Lights Publishers
Published: 2021-05-15T00:00:00+00:00

She touts me as a famous architect. I don’t correct her. She tells them I’ve done projects all around the world: in Turkey and in Thailand, and in France, Bombay, New Zealand. In places I have never heard of. Italy.

“Tell us about Italy, Robin,” my mother says. She spreads her fine arms in a wide, inclusive gesture. “I’ve never been to Italy.” This lie’s for them. She smiles as if she really is as innocent as they want her to be. She knows that I won’t challenge her in front of them.

And though I’m already tired of my ragged slides, my suggestive, half-completed stories of the other, richer life I led, my travel anecdotes, I want her to be proud of me. I let her bring me out and plug me in.

I show for her, her followers, the slides of all my journeys. I show them little gems, quaint homes and restaurants, white dusty villas, tiny inns still undiscovered by the average tourist. I tell tales about the people that I met on trains, in small hotels. They know I make friends easily with strangers.

“That’s her, that’s Robin,” Momma says. She points to me, my image on the wall, where I stand by famous buildings, sit beneath striped umbrellas with a drink. I wave and smile from miles and years away. I wear the sleek Italian jacket that I thought I’d only dreamt about. “That’s her,” my mother tells them. “She’s on tour.” I think she’s trying to show she’s proud of me, the faraway exciting life I led. But she never talks to me direct.

Night after night, I stand in the back of her giant movie room filled with her hordes of fans, and keep my thumb pressed on the slide machine. I watch my mother’s outline in the silver dark, the glitter of her rings when she catches a shaft of light. Sometimes I’ll see her arm raised up in front of the image I project. And truly, I must admit, I like the way I look on screen.

My face is tan. I smile with confidence. I almost wouldn’t recognize me. What was I thinking when they took this photograph? Perhaps I was genuinely happy. But perhaps I was looking forward to happiness, was looking, even then, when this was shot, into the camera lens for her, to telling her my stories when I came back.

But each new time I tell it, it gets dull. Soon I stand unnoticed in the dark. The me she sees is on the screen. The me that stands here, finger on the slide box, could be anyone. I stumble through my stories, my voice shaky and scared, not anything like the voice you’d expect from the brisk confident traveler I project. In fact, I feel I could be telling someone else’s travels. And anybody could be reading this script.

So later, in my room when I’m alone, my mother comes to me. She startles me in the middle of the night. I hear

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.