It’s 3 p.m…in the Largest House I’ve Ever Seen
Welcome to “It’s 3 p.m. at…” a column here at Very Famous Inc. where we report on that late afternoon hour when the day has been determined in one way or another. It’s sort of the opposite of the witching hour, a hazy limbo where you just want to sit and stare somewhere. We’re doing just that — sitting and staring somewhere.
It was a Saturday at the golden crest of summertime, and my aunt had invited us to spend the weekend at the home her husband helped renovate. This was one of his side gigs, renovating large and beautiful houses. The family was diluted to a few photographs on the wall. The family was foreign. The family didn’t matter to us. Just one of the many bodies who’d punctured the hymen of the front door; one of many specters. No one owned the house, not really. The house was a mirage, so vast and so splendid that no one could ever claim it, as nobody can ever claim God. It was a massive house. Am I making that clear? Seven bedrooms, miles and miles of wallpaper and Persian carpets and marble countertops and simplistic sinks and expansive windows for seeing. God, if I had this house, my mother repeated like a cuckoo clock at noon. But I was horrified. It was too much. “How does anyone live like this?” I wondered aloud as I helped pile our suitcases from the back of the van to the foyer. My brother knocked on the wall of the bedroom he’d chosen to see if I could hear it. I couldn’t. That afternoon we ate a large lunch in the living room while watching an awful reality show. It felt like a gimmick. A family enters a mansion and turns on the television. I went to stand out on the porch. This was Arizona, cactus country. Land of the flame. Outside, mosquitoes lingered and the bushes whispered and the trees were long. Even the sky had appeared to change from a moody milk white to a now hyper-present pink, given weight, expansive as a tablecloth. What did they do? I wondered again, drinking from my can of Diet Coke which now felt rendered useless. Another gimmick. What exactly does one do with a house the size of Heaven? A singular car drove down the road passing the house. A red truck with the windows rolled down. The man in the front seat looked over at me as he passed. In an instant, I unbuttoned the top button of my shirt and flashed the driver. From inside, the television said: “The butterfly contours herself within the parameters of the cocoon.”
Jasmine Ledesma lives in Brooklyn. Her work has appeared or is set to appear in places like Borderlands, Vice, Rattle and [PANK] among others. Her work was also nominated for both Best of The Net and the Pushcart Prize in 2020. She was recently awarded a fellowship with Brooklyn Poets.
(Photo from Reddit)
