Total pages in book: 72
Estimated words: 69895 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 349(@200wpm)___ 280(@250wpm)___ 233(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 69895 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 349(@200wpm)___ 280(@250wpm)___ 233(@300wpm)
“Would you like to come in?”
Mrs. Lundy stepped into the light.
If it had been a horror movie, she would have been a beautiful siren, intent on luring them inside to their doom (horror movies were often disappointingly heterosexual). Or a meek-looking old woman with murder in her eyes.
But this was not a horror movie, and Mrs. Lundy just looked kind of like Bea Arthur. She wore neatly pressed blue slacks and a green button-down shirt that hung loose at the shoulders and was rolled up to her elbows. She had half-moon glasses on a cord around her neck, and her white hair was cut into the nondescript short style that so many women over the age of sixty-five eventually got.
Her eyes were not murderous. But they were notable. A bright, piercing blue, they were so intense that Zachary felt like she could see through his clothes, his skin, to the very beating heart of him.
Though god knew why she would want to.
“Well?” she said, and Zachary realized they’d both stood there staring at her for the better part of thirty seconds. Which, it turned out, was quite long in the realm of amounts-of-time-it’s-not-awkward-to-stare-at-strangers.
“Yes, please,” Bram said. “Should I leave Hemlock out here?”
Zachary could practically see the joke on the tip of Mrs. Lundy’s tongue and the moment she swallowed it, likely remembering how well the last one had gone over.
“No, that’s fine. I enjoy dogs.”
They trooped inside and Zachary blinked. He was standing in a structure he recognized. Could it really be?
A stunned sound made its way out of his throat and Bram put a hand on his shoulder as if he were choking.
“Is this... Is this a McTeague?”
Mrs. Lundy’s eyes sparked.
“Well done. It is.”
Norris McTeague’s houses were the architectural version of the shot in Blue Velvet where the camera descended beneath a perfectly manicured suburban front lawn to show the writhe of insects underneath. Walls that would usually create privacy were just wood framing covered with acrylic sheeting—transparent but unable to be passed through. In other places where there were solid walls, the material was sandwiched between more acrylic sheeting, suggesting you should be able to see through it but could not.
“Holy bananas,” Zachary muttered, something his mother used to say when she didn’t want to swear around children. He didn’t know where it came from, only that it was accompanied by an unfamiliar pang of longing for his mother, whom he hadn’t seen in over two years. They spoke every now and then on the phone, but only briefly.
“Are you an admirer of McTeague’s, or a detractor?” Mrs. Lundy asked.
Admirers said his houses were a play of opacity and transparency, privacy and exposure. The acrylic walls had no way to hang art or mirrors, turning the views of or through them into art or entertainment. By placing someone else in another room that you could see into, they became unreachable but also watchable, like a character in a painting or film. They were a meditation on what parts of the home were valued, were public, were private, and they upended the hierarchy of a house that was finished over one that was being built or falling apart, making us question what finished even meant.
Detractors said his constructions were abominations, turning the home, where one should feel comfortable and in control, into bizarre aquaria in which family members gawked at one another. They were alienating, dehumanizing, and borderline terrifying. Zachary always thought of McTeague when he watched haunted house movies. They too turned the home into a site of fear and uncertainty rather than comfort.
“Oh, an admirer. That is, I admire all the things he experimented with, but I don’t like his work, aesthetically. Uh, no offense intended,” he added, realizing he’d essentially insulted her home.
“None received. Can I offer you something?” Mrs. Lundy said politely. “While you tell me why you were lingering outside my house.”
“Oh, no thank you,” Bram said, at the same time Zachary said, “We wanted to know what the deal is with the sticks and stones.”
Mrs. Lundy raised an eyebrow at him as if he’d confirmed her suspicions, and gestured them to follow her.
In the living room, Zachary marveled at the design typical of a McTeague. Half the wall into the kitchen was just framing and acrylic sheeting, so you’d be able to watch someone appear as if they were entering a stage from the wings. The other half showed the exposed framing and insulation of the wall. The ceiling was hammered tin panels, except for a cutout in the center that created a window to the second floor. The effect was truly unique.
“What do you think of them?” she asked, sitting on an armchair. Zachary and Bram sat on the love seat, the only other place to sit in the room, and immediately fell into each other as their weight sagged them both to the middle of the cushion.