Dream House by Catherine Armsden

senses drugged. She felt her purposefulness drop away, leaving her helpless to rise from the chair.
    When she was a teenager, her mother had sat in this spot, perhaps even in this very chaise, and often said, “Sitting here, who could have a care in the world?” To Gina, the declaration had sounded hollow, even cruel, given that, in this house, her mother had created all the cares in the world.
    For more than two hours, Gina gazed out across the landscape, her back warmed by heat reflecting off the house’s white clapboards.Finally closing her eyes, she was visited by another memory: when she was three or four, on summer afternoons, her mother would sometimes let her take a nap curled up next to her on a chaise. Now, she could hear her mother’s heart beat beneath the breathing pillow of her breast, feel the tickle of wind on her bare arms, the sun that would leave her upturned cheek pink. Gradually, her limbs lightened and seemed to float away; she succumbed to a peacefulness so profound, she thought she might be sleeping.
    A neighbor’s lawnmower startled her awake at five o’clock. She stood and picked up her suitcase. The cove was richly colored and velvety. A tranquil sea, fading light, goodbye. Her suitcase held a few treasures, it was true. But of everything the house possessed, this view was what she wished she could take with her.
    As she crossed the front yard toward the driveway, the house seemed to stir. She looked up just as something crashed to the ground, hitting the brick walkway with a clatter. A window shutter, she discovered, the one Cassie had climbed up to fix. Its fasteners were worn through. She glanced again at the house’s façade, feeling unsettled by the asymmetry caused by the missing shutter. “You’ll be okay,” she heard herself say.
    It was time to go! She fetched the garbage can from behind the house, tossed the splintered shutter into it, replaced the can, and got into the car.
    She couldn’t turn to look back up the driveway as she drove out, didn’t feel her usual relief as she crossed the bridge out of Whit’s Point. This time, she experienced a release too big, like a fish being spewed into open water. A sickening turbulence and its disorientation, a freedom thrusting her forward, the kind of rushing freedom one could drown in.

We are searching for some kind of harmony between two intangibles: a form which we have not yet designed and a context which we cannot properly describe.
    Christopher Alexander
    Chapter 4
    Insomnia! From the bedside table, the numbers on the clock taunted Gina—two, three, four o’clock. San Francisco’s windy, clear days of April and May had blown by, and June found her six pounds lighter—proof that lying awake was a grueling workout. In those wee hours, she plunged into a black chasm teeming with shapeless sorrows. She longed to cry out loud. “They expect you to be sad,” Paul had told her. “You have feelings, too.”
    But she would never let her grief drift like a miasma into the rooms of her sleeping children, making them choose vigilance over sleep.
    The numbers in the clock flashed seven, and Ben’s rosy-cheeked face appeared in the doorway. He waited, as always, for Gina’s smile to invite him in and then climbed into bed beside her. She strained to follow his whispered stream of chatter that began with a Byzantine description of a computer game and ended with, “But you have to have special software for that.”
    â€œThat sounds really neat,” Gina absentmindedly cooed, pushing her nose into his soft blonde curls. She mourned: tomorrow was Ben’s last day of kindergarten; how much longer would he come in for a snuggle? “I’m such a lucky Mom.”
    â€œWhat? Mom, are you listening? We don’t have the right software!”
    â€œYou’re right! I’m sorry. Well, maybe we’ll see if we can get it. Hey, kiddo, time for us