Neighborly Advice (1947) by Leonora Carrington

We moved in with my mom right before Hurricane Helene arrived. We had a week of rain and then more rain and then, as the hurricane came closer, a tornado warning that sent us into my mom’s very interesting basement, where most of her roommates live.

Water started coming in under the basement door, but my mom and her roommates didn’t seem the least bit concerned about it.

“There’s a drain in the middle of the floor,” my mom said dispassionately. “That’s what it’s for.”

“Yeah,” a smallish American house spider squeaked at me. “Why the fuck did you think the drain was there? Are you stupid?”

“You look pretty stupid,” a Daddy Long Legs spider added in a baritone voice.

I had to agree. I was wearing sweaty leggings, still wet from my run through the neighborhood just before the line of storms hit. There’s a very good four-mile route that takes you up and down several steep but short hills and over at least a mile of reasonably smooth sidewalk. But right now the sidewalk is wet and slippery in places, thanks to the fact that it’s been raining since we moved in.

You have to watch your step on that run, but not as much as you did back in 1988, which was the last year I lived in this house with my mother. Back then, the sidewalks were bumpy and jagged, pushed into perfect peaks and ideal tripping and stubbing formations by the roots of the massive oak trees that line a long stretch of shady urban boulevard near our house. When I was ten years old, I had a bicycle that was the perfect shade of blue — not that grayish, washed-out Carolina Blue and not a royal, ultra Duke Blue, but something in between and a million times better. It was that shade of blue sky that almost pulsates with light on a cloudless, not-too-humid, not-too-hot early summer day. I named my bicycle BLUE SKY (we all named our bikes back then, they were almost like pets or best friends, we took them everywhere, we were allowed to go anywhere), and I would ride down the bumpy sidewalks of the steepest hills in the neighborhood with my feet up on the handle bars, flying over the bumps and laughing all the way down.

That sounds like idealization but I really do remember laughing a lot. My friend Tammy and I would go down this one rollercoaster hill over and over again — that is, when we weren’t making Ken and Barbie go on boring dates that ended in humping, genital-free plastic bashing against genital-free plastic the way God intended. Tammy knew a few things that I didn’t know, thanks to her six older sisters and brothers. That’s how most Catholics grow into pervs: too many rules and too many teenage siblings breaking the rules in plain sight.

Similarly, my mom’s very interesting basement made me want to break the rules of tornado warnings. “I think we’ll be fine if we go upstairs now,” I said. “The warning ends in ten minutes.”

“Why would we go up before it’s actually over?” my younger daughter asked.

“On my weather app, the worst of the storm is past us,” I said.

“You can’t always tell where tornados will pop up based on where the rain is,” the smaller spider squeaked.

“Yeah,” the Daddy Long Legs said. “Literally everyone knows that.”

My mom said nothing. She had been indulging us by going down to the basement in the first place. Now she was using a broom to guide the water coming in under the door into the drain in the middle of the floor. Apparently this happens every time it rains. Normally she doesn’t bother with the broom.

My mom has been very cheerful about our incursion on her living space. We’re going to be staying here for at least nine months, so we should probably make any changes to the household we want as soon as possible, while she still has a good attitude about us being here.

There’s one small change I’d like to make immediately. It’s nothing too dramatic, but I’d sort of like to murder 1,000-5,000 or so of her roommates as soon as possible. There are tiny roommates in all of the corners of every room. But right after you kill… er, gently guide them elsewhere, more tiny roommates arrive. There are also bigger roommates, in the bathroom and behind the radiators.

I showed Bill one of the biggest roommates one morning before he left for work.

“That’s a Daddy Long Legs,” he said, as if I’d never seen one before, as if I hadn’t been raised in a house filled with them, as if I didn’t know them as well as I know my own siblings.

“Yes,” I said, in a flat tone that implied many words without having to speak a single one.

“They eat other spiders,” he said. Talking to Bill is like being forced to repeat kindergarten.

“Yes,” I said, flattening my tone to a low growl and lowering my eyes to tiny slits and forming my mouth into a straight line across my face like an emoji with horizontal lines for features.

“I don’t know why you’d want to kill a spider that gets rid of other spiders and pests and things you don’t like,” he said. “It’s a very helpful spider.”

“I don’t care what any spider does with its free time,” I said. “I have no investment in its excellent positive attitude. I just want it out of my face.”

Bill didn’t reply. Neither did the spider. But it must’ve taken issue with my remarks, because it was gone the next time I looked for it.

***

Now you’re worried. Are we near the horrible flooding? Was there a tornado? Why in the world would we move in with my mom? Did Bill lose his job?

No, everything is fine. We’re four hours East of Asheville. My mom’s house is surrounded by tall, threatening trees but… so far so good. Bill has a job. My younger daughter is adjusting to the new circumstances pretty well, and my older daughter, who wouldn’t be nearly as relaxed about this arrangement, is living her best life in college now.

We moved in with my mom because we’re finally renovating the house we bought over Facetime from LA three years ago — a very dark house with tiny windows, beige plastic window panes, and outdated everything. We can barely afford to renovate it and we can’t afford to rent somewhere else to live. We would’ve just sold it but it’s in the middle of a three-acre garden, and as you know by now, I like choosing the hardest of several options and then fucking it up in as many ways as possible.

My mom’s house is also outdated, but in a charming way because it was built in 1930 instead of 1970. 1970 is the Year of the Dog, loyal and reliable, hard-working and sincere, an excellent year for humans but not houses. 1930 is the Year of the Horse: Independent and moody, impatient and hot-blooded, a good year for an old house to be built and then stew in its own juices for over 94 years, unburdened by central air and heat, unbothered by modern conveniences, gracefully decomposing into a soggy pile of mildew and black mold before your eyes. But it’s still beautiful, with big old metal windows and tall ceilings and wood floors. Even though it’s pretty cramped with four people living here, it’s much more romantic than our old house.

I also think it’s good for me to live with my mom. I know that sounds insane, but that’s my honest feeling about it. My mom is 82 years old. Meeting for dinner regularly isn’t enough. I need to be sharing a fridge with her. I need to be attempting to dry clothes on racks in the middle of her kitchen because she doesn’t own a dryer. I need to be sweating around the clock in her swampy habitat because there is no air-conditioning here, even now, in the midst of a climate catastrophe, in the year of our Lord 2024. My mom doesn’t like air-conditioning. She likes to smell the outdoor air. She likes to hear the thunderstorms roll in. She likes to dry her clothes on the line outside. She likes her 5,000 roommates. They are just like her.

Stubborn as a horse.

***

When I was moving some boxes in a few weeks ago, I started to worry that my mother was going to hate having us here. I mentioned this to my mom, but she just looked around excitedly and said, “This is great. Now I’ll be forced to get rid of a bunch of stuff I don’t want. Like this chair. I hate this chair! Should we put it on the curb?”

I said sure. We carried the chair out to the curb.

“Are you sure someone will take this?” I asked.

“Oh yeah, they take everything,” she said. “What else can we bring out here?”  

We brought out another chair and a large pillow and some plastic dog skeleton toys leftover from Halloween. Later, Bill and my brother came over and lugged out two file cabinets and another chair and a dresser. Everything sat on the curb in an unsightly heap. I worried that no one would take any of it.

A few days later, everything was gone except for one empty wine bottle. Why would anyone want an empty wine bottle? Why not just recycle it?

The next day, the empty wine bottle was gone, too.

***

Everything I do now feels like taking a time machine into the past. I reflect on everything that’s gone for good, and it makes me feel like everything else will soon disappear. Yesterday I sorted through my dad’s old books, which have been sitting in boxes in my mom’s attic since 1995, the year he died. I can’t believe it took me almost thirty years to sort them. “DADDY’S BOOKS – SAVE FOR HEATHER” it says on all five of the boxes.

These are very important books. But do I really need an old copy of Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackery? Can it possibly justify itself, taking up space in my mom’s attic for three decades? Is it imperative that I read Spiritual Economics: The Prosperity Process by Eric Butterworth? (“No matter what your job or your chosen career, your true business is the business of releasing your imprisoned splendor.”)

Do I need to force myself to read these books or should I just give them away? Does everything I experience and encounter in this house have meaning, or is it all just mundane clutter that will roll down the drain or be swept away with the flood waters sooner than I think?

Should I really be living with my mother at my age?

“Definitely not,” a squeaky voice says. “You should definitely, definitely not be here.”

I guess I like to form my life into perfect peaks, the ideal tripping and stubbing formations, hazard upon hazard, small calamities followed by bigger calamities. You are home again but you aren’t really home, you are something in between and a million times better. But you can’t predict when the tornado will hit. No amount of warnings will keep you safe. You are stupid, very stupid.

You are stupid, but you should definitely be here. You are definitely, definitely in the right place.

Thanks for reading Ask Molly! You should definitely be here, too.

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