Little Girl in Big House, ca 1968
11. I have a reputation for being a real fraidy cat. I won't go into all the reasons that may or may not be an accurate label, although my brother would probably put on a convincing case if he were allowed to testify. However, we could talk about hallways for a moment.
I'll readily admit that a long empty hallway does have a tendency to spook me. I think it's probably a result of growing up in a house with longer-than-average hallways that, under the right darkish circumstances could be termed genuinely unnerving.
The one in the basement had George, our enormously loud, ancient boiler capable of exhibiting enough personality to have earned a name, thumping along in his spidery lair at the other end. And when I say spidery, I mean black widows. Wolf spiders with actual hair. It was an enormous old house with the impressive cast of spiders to match. And the basement hall was a subterranean tunnel armed with pipes for a ceiling. Even painted a sunny yellow, those pipes gave you the feeling that you were crawling deep into the underside of something big.
The hallway on the main floor was an echoing stretch of dark wood perfect for running and sliding in stocking feet with your friends on a sunny afternoon--long enough to have iron gates at each end! But at night, the arched entrance to the grand living room on the far side breathed a black yawn of prickles on the back of my neck as I sprinted upstairs. I remember the first time I took the tube in London, the thick round blackness of the holes called up those same prickles.
There are just some things I don't like to turn my back on.
So I'm going to admit that one of the hardest things for me about our current remodeling project has been the plastic at the end of the hall. It's a small house, with the type of hall you'd expect. But when it comes to eeriness, I've learned size isn't everything. As they demolished the rooms on that side of the house, they kindly strung up a large sheet of plastic to try to contain as much dust as possible. And when I came home from running errands and caught my first glimpse the day it appeared there, I had a sinking, prickly feeling right in the middle of the afternoon.
Nighttime was going to come, and I was going to be sleeping in the house with the Plastic Curtain at the End of the Hall.
First of all, it breathes.
It really does. It moves. It sways, rustling at even the slightest movement of air. I'm pretty sure it's alive. I think if you were here, you'd agree that's a fair assessment.
It's clear enough that you can imagine you see things behind it (like the moment in that awful Luther episode where you see the killer hiding behind the plastic in the attic??!) but not clear enough to actually see them. Add to that the fact that there's a lot of upheaval going on in general as a result of half our house being blasted down to the studs while I'm hunkered down in a corner of the guestroom and you've got a prescription for...well, since I believe in calling things by their best names: a fraidy cat.
But now...NOW! Sweet vindication!
We had a couple of smart kids visit over the weekend. Admittedly we're talking about the pre-K variety, but I'm not going to let that make me feel any less good about the fact that they were terrified by the plastic. They insisted that it was a GHOST! The little girl took one look and stammered, "It...it...moves!" They would not be convinced otherwise, even after an exploratory expedition led by their brave and trusty dad. They kept going to peek at it around the corner (going in a pair, of course...much too scary to look at it alone...don't you think I know that?) and then running back to safety.
All I'm saying is that even a 5 year old is smart enough to know when something is genuinely scary.
Anyway, I've got additional validation. Because Russ is home for the week and he's said, more than once, "You know? There's something quite spooky about that plastic at the end of the hall." Part of me wants to kiss him, but part of me also wants to quiz him further. As in, "I know, right? So you think I really should be afraid? It's the Luther episode, isn't it? Are you saying that could actually happen? If we hear a cat meow, we're not going in after it...wait, did you hear something?"
Let's just say I'm feeling pretty proud of myself for having survived as well as I have, even closing both eyes to sleep (now and then). At any rate, I can report that so far, it seems growing up continues to be just as hard and scary at 51 as it was at 5.