If Walls Could Wail
The willow tapped against the window like it always did. I was ten, sitting on the floor while Mom read one of her poems, her voice breaking with every line. She’d say, “A poem a day, Pete, it keeps the sickness at bay.” I believed her. I wanted to.
Years later, flicking the turn signal, I look both ways as if I’m not the only truck in sight and turn off the county road onto the tree-lined driveway. “Yikes,” I mutter under my breath, taken aback by the chaos of nature reclaiming what was once my home. The township's representative is already parked and making his rounds with a clipboard in hand. The house sags with neglect. Maples sprout in the mud-caked eavestrough that pulls away from the rotted-out porch.
“Good morning Mr. Moulin! You don’t mind if I call ya Pete, do ya?” He nearly shouts towards my truck before I have time to close the door behind me.
“That’d be just fine,” I respond with a nod.
He looks me in the eye with a stupid grin and says, “I’m Steve,” as I finally shake his eager hand. My attention dances through the details of decay that now colour my childhood memories in a dark reminiscence. It flares up the ache in my heart I’ve learned to push down. Moulin men weren’t taught about emotions, only shown how not to feel them.
​
“Ha! You Moulins never could keep up a porch, could you? My dad used to say your house looked ready to keel over even back then.” He belts it out, and I force an awkward chuckle in response.
​
Then, softening his voice, he adds, “Thank you for coming down here today, Pete. I know it’s been awhile since you’ve been to Talbot County. What happened to your folks… well, it’s a real shame.”
​
He speaks with enthusiasm and familiarity, but I know the pity in his eyes. Everyone around here who remembers me, remembers me in light of the sickness.
​
Indeed, it's my first time here since I packed a bag and left. When she died, I was the only one. Eighteen and trying to carve out a living for myself, I ended up in Toronto before long. I knew 201 Fuller Line was my birthright but left without a will nor a word of guidance, I'd be hard-pressed to prove it. Moulins weren't the planning type. It only occurred to me to visit when the county tracked me down to threaten demolition.
“I guess the house has become a popular spot for the younglings looking for a haunted thrill, but it just ain’t safe anymore.” says Steve.
He makes his way toward the side entrance and opens the door with a turn of the knob. I suppose the doors I locked behind me unravelled with years of decay and teenage exploration.
I watch Steve, busy at work amidst the ruin. Where I was born, where she died.
These walls once pulsed with life. Yet, as our family tried to grow, it only shrank. The living room was designated for the living and the dying; it witnessed the moments that defined our family for generations. The wails of giving birth and mourning those lost. Wails of first breaths and of those reaching their last. Today the walls are cracked with water damage, and only witness the wails of teens pranking one another in the setting of a horror movie far removed from the lives that once lived here.
“You really gotta make a decision, Pete. Demolition isn't cheap, y’know."
I don’t know. I don’t even know what I’m doing here.
“Yepp," I say with that sociable smile on my face.
Steve continues to snoop around, checking off boxes on his clipboard, but I’m too full of memories to pay him any mind. I make my way up the dusty stairwell toward her bedroom. The door is closed and allows me to brace myself before entering.
Three generations of Moulins once lived in this house. We were cursed with sickness, and everyone talked about it. At her funeral, I heard mumblings that there must be something in our water, whispers that we had the devil in us. They may have been right. As I grew, I watched my family wilt and wither, and I often wonder how I managed to keep on living.
I push open the door, and its rusted hinges let out a sigh after years without use. The light pours in and falls across her desk. I sit where she once wrote and glance out the window, the willow is still there, tapping softly like it did when she read her poems aloud. She used to call it her ‘spirit tree.’ A drawer sticks, then loosens, and inside lies a leather-bound journal atop a pile of yellowed papers. In the dim light, her poetry book waits for me.
“Well I think I’m all set here Pete,” Steve suddenly interjects, jolting me from my remembrance. I instinctively grab the book and draw a smile.
“Whatcha got there!" He asks, pointing to the memory of my mother.
"Oh, nothing, just an old book," I say.
“Well I’m gonna give you my card, and you can follow up with the county of what action you plan to take following my report.” Says Steve as he jabs his card into my right bicep.
I slide it into the leather-bound book and follow him out the door. I shake his hand goodbye, with the relief of wiping the fake smile from my face. I get in my truck and start the engine, following Steve out of the driveway onto Fuller Line. I came all this way and couldn't bring myself to stick around to face the walls alone without the mask of my smile. Her poetry book sits in the passenger seat, and I head to Ray's with the sensation of driving her for a coffee like I once did on Saturday morning when she was too sick to go herself. Following this instinct, I find myself in the Diner's unchanged parking lot. Just mom and I, greeted by new faces but the same bell attached to the door.
"Welcome to Ray's." Says the server. She’s no older than I was when I poured coffee here to save up for college.
We sit in our usual booth, the one warmed by morning light. I ordered a black coffee for Mom and the “Ray’s Sunshine Plate” for myself. The leather-bound book across from me feels lighter than it looks, as if grief has thinned the pages. Only a handful remain. I wrap my hands around the mug and let the steam carry me back.
​
Those final days were cold. She’d sit by the hearth with her toes to the fire and call me to her side when I came home from work. “A poem a day,” she’d whisper, and read until her voice frayed. Then she’d tear the page free and feed it to the flames.
​
I knew what she was doing. With every page burned, she withdrew a little further. With every flame, the sickness claimed a little more. And I, knowing the pattern, said nothing.
“Pete, Pete Moulin, is that you?” I hear from behind the counter.
The voice belongs to Robert Palmer, an old classmate who now sits across from me, pushing her book into the corner with his behind as he slides into the booth.
“It’s been years man! You just disappeared on us, how’ve you been?”
I draw my smile once again and listen. People love to talk when you let them, and I let Rob talk. He tells me how he stuck around and eventually bought the place from the old couple I once worked for. But my eyes drift to the book while he talks, anxious to ensure it stays in sight. He doesn't pry, doesn't ask and won't take my money to settle the tab.
"It's on the house," he whispers with a pat on the shoulder and the usual pity in his eye.
"Come back before the next decade is up. I'll be here!" He hollers with a chuckle.
I'm sure he will be.
I buckle up, imagining Mom in the passenger seat and instinctively drive home to 201 Fuller Line. The ache burns in me as I find myself finally alone. I stop trying to push it down and walk with her book in hand through the side door, up the steps, directly to the hearth. I open the clasp, and a dozen pages are left, all blank but one. She left a few words in the shaking handwriting of her sickness, the last poem to be burned.
“It started as a rumble,
a single vibration
that kept me alive.
​
It grew to a grumble,
an ache behind the eyes,
the mark of those who died.
​
I turn these pages,
tear and burn,
to bargain with time.
​
My life, an oblation,
the loving kind.
​
May I stay with him?
Perhaps,
a breath at his side.
​
To bear his ache,
to be his guide”
The words pour out of me in the passion with which she once read until my throat tightens. Without stopping to reread, I tear the page from the book and fish the lighter from my pocket. I set the page aflame and toss it towards the hearth in remembrance of her, in honour of the Moulins. I let the flame lick the dusty chair and watch it grow until the smoke drives me out of the house and back to my truck.
My phone vibrates in my pocket, and Jane's picture pops up on the display. Eyes fixed on the house, I slide to answer "Hello," with an unfamiliar formality.
Daddy, daddy, daddy, I hear in the background, "Shhhhh, Mommy’s on the phone. Babe, hey! Where are you?” Jane asks.
"I'm just getting in the car and headed home, should be there in a couple hours," I say, putting on my smile as if it might guise the ache in my voice.
"Ok, I'll have dinner ready when you're home. Drive safe."
"I love you," I say before hanging up.
I turn the key, and the engine growls to life. Smoke pours from the windows, curling into the night sky. As I drive away, the fire hisses and cracks, a chorus of grief breaking free at last — the walls wailing their final wail of 201 Fuller Line. In the rearview mirror, the smoke twists upward, dark and endless. I wonder if it will rise forever, or if it will follow me home.