E L a HO // STORY Amanda Juliano
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omething had to be done about the gash in the wall. That much was obvious. It was, Quinton knew, throughly improper to keep it framed and treasured as the last remaining mold of June Olhouser’s head. He’d agree to listing that as an issue if it were actually the case. But as it stood, “treasuring”, he maintained, was “quite untrue.” Quinton had much earlier accepted the responsibility of fixing the hole that his wife’s death had made in the drywall of their daughter’s nursery, but between the funeral planning, the cutting off ties with family, with friends, the worried phone calls, the subsequent avoidance and sometimes unplugging of the phone; the degeneration of the kitchen, personal hygiene, social life, energy, etc. From the unique ticks of becoming more or less obsessed with the futility of the Pringle shape, to the rest of the more typical isolation rituals that came with grief, Quinton just hadn’t found the time in the last five years or so to fix the June Hole that haunted his daughter’s room. It became a permanent fixture of the third door to the right, and the most solid proof that Quinton and his little Doreen had that June had actually been there. As a matter of fact, the irregularly shaped hole was, for some time, the only consistent element of Doreen’s short though ongoing life sentence. While her father jumped from quirk to quirk, she spent a large portion of her time imagining her mother with a fun, lopsided head that fit the break perfectly. Still protected from the concept of mortality so long as she was under five, Doreen had a love affair with her only real parent: the hole. Her father MIA, she tried to identify with its shape as best she could, and was quite disappointed when her head didn’t exactly fit like a puzzle piece into the wall. In her youngest years, she could grasp the morbidity of her actions almost as well as she could
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little kids.” grasp June throughout her entire life. Her mother always June always went to bed far easier than he did. She rolled remained elusive and fuzzy; a vacuum, or a vague sensation to her side and snuggled her pillow frequently. “Nothing of absence. Doreen possessed the odd honor of a feeling of is coming through the walls, Quinn,” she had murmured. loss with no real familiarity; she could only hold onto more “Stop asking the neighbors if someone died here.” material things: her mother’s possessions, and a great big “The Goblins steal kids,” he continued. “They might hole in the wall. She liked to imagine, sometimes, that if her come through those walls and snatch ours.” mother could say something about the hole, it might be: When Doreen was born, the comment was more “Death? Heart attack? Goodness no. I made a hole when centered: “Doreen will get stolen by the walls, June.” I fell, Dorey. Why in the world would I make a hole without There seemed to be, to Quinton, a pressing need to any intention of going through it? I’m just on the other fix the hole after he caught his daughter trying to climb side.” through it. His despondent tendencies, while plenty, weren’t At six years old, Doreen was devastated to find that strong enough to deter him from protecting their child from not only could she not reach the hole but there was also goblins of some sort. He knew what to do from his brother, no way she, nor June, her father stated, could ever have fit who was in some sort of house renovation business or some through it. The charm of Doreen’s portal fantasy was lost on kind–something rather. He bought the drywall, he bought Quinton. He thought very little of her affection towards the the plaster, he already owned the tools. He measured, he cut, hollow, and passed her room daily to not notice her staring he spackled, sanded it down, waited a day, took a hammer at the hole in the wall where her mother should be. Instead, and then smashed the hole in again. he thought that when June left you high and dry she really This became the new pattern. It was much more left you high and dry. He also thought: “It wouldn’t be hard satisfying than the Pringle to plaster that by myself,” dilemma or other obsessions. and continued to think There was something that very thought several Quinton had been avoiding the wrong every time Quinton times before he actually walls even before June’s death. attempted to fix June’s blow. did it. He himself had torn many holes Something terribly off. He Quinton had, of sanded it down as smooth course, been avoiding the before June had torn her last. as he could but perfection walls even before June’s was unobtainable, and he death. They had unnerved continually smashed the hole in again. Doreen learned to him when they bought the house; they unnerved him now. sleep with the sound of her father working. Her affections Physically, they were always structurally poor; he himself were not wasted by his new project, but rather magnified had torn many holes before June had torn her last. But there later on when he began smashing in other parts of the house was something, he felt, eerily supernatural about the fragile for practice. A sort of Goblin whack-a-mole, Quinton took walls. his hammer and whammed the walls randomly with “take “Trolls maybe,” he had told June while laying in bed one that,” and “hah,” and “fifty points you dirty trolls,” “steal night. “Little Orphan Annie. The Goblins will get’cha if you my wife, why don’t you?” The kind letters from daughter to don’t watch out.” He lolled his head back and forth a little mother that Doreen had been writing in third period, or the and looked at her. “They’ll come through those walls. Snatch
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