In the Dream House: A Memoir by Carmen Maria Machado

Author:Carmen Maria Machado
Language: eng
Format: azw3
ISBN: 9781644450383
Publisher: Graywolf Press
Published: 2020-12-01T04:00:00+00:00

Dream House as Soap Opera

—

She doesn’t remember, she tells you before you go to sleep. She remembers being at the bar, and then crouching over you naked. Everything in between is darkness.

Dream House as Comedy of Errors

—

The next day, you wake up next to her. You pack, and try to convince her to get moving, because she has the car and you have a flight to catch. She is sullen, angry, snaps at you when you remind her that the airport is over an hour away. She takes her time. Puts on her makeup. Drives, for the first time in her life, very slowly.

When you get to the airport, the security line is long, and the TSA agent confiscates your metal water bottle, which you have forgotten to empty. As you pull your heavy suitcase through the airport, you start to cry because of the water bottle, except it’s really not the water bottle, and a kindly employee with crimped hair—in 2012!—stops to ask if you’re all right. You feel terrible about thinking that thing about her hair; also you sort of want to hug her. And you want to cry and explain that the TSA agent stole your favorite water bottle because he wouldn’t let you drink its contents, because perhaps he believed that the bottle contained the liquid from a bomb and by drinking it you would turn into that same bomb, or probably he was just on a power trip because his face didn’t change when you begged him to let you keep what you already owned, and also you’re afraid you’re going to miss your flight because your girlfriend spent her time this morning putting on her face, an expression you’ve always found sort of funny and vaguely sexist but that now just strikes you as horrifyingly ominous, because it suggests that she has one face and needs to put on another, and you saw underneath it last night, when you were so afraid and cowering, and she was screaming, and you were hiding from her, hiding from the woman who once told you she loved you and wanted to have children with you and called you the most beautiful and sexy and brilliant woman she’d ever met, you had to hide from her in a bathroom with a lock on the door, and if your family found out they’d probably think it proved every idea they’ve ever had about lesbians, and you wish she was a man because then at least it could reinforce ideas people had about men, and how she probably wouldn’t understand but the last thing queer women need is bad fucking PR, and then you feel bad because for all you know this airline employee could be queer, she could understand.

You collapse into your airplane seat with minutes to spare, the last person to board the plane. You are sweaty from running, and you are crying, and you keep sucking snot back up into your nose. Your seatmate is a businessman

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