[Author's Note: Unsure about the ending. Will most likely revise it in the near future. Appreciate any comments/suggestions. Enjoy.]


In a small town somewhere, any one you like, there is a house on a pleasant street, one with shady trees along both sides. This house is home to the Smith family. The Smiths are The American Family, and you'll find a million more just like them wherever you might roam in this wide and modern nation of ours. The Smiths have everything they might need. Electricity flows to their house through wires, and water through pipes. Both parents work, and they have a dog. A golden retriever, even.

In the Smith family there is Mother, Father, Brother, and Sister. Mother reads bad romance novels, and Father watches sports on the weekend. Brother listens to rap music, and Sister sends text messages to her friends. Mother and father do not share any interests. They don't talk much. Brother and sister do not get along, and avoid each other to minimize any unpleasantness.

Life runs along a set path, and the gears, chains, and pulleys that drag the Smiths through the day are well-oiled and cared-for. Visitors and holidays roll in like the tide and throw them into a phony, smiling chaos, disrupting schedules and making them dance the happy dance with each other. But soon the tide recedes, and everything goes back to normal. The Smiths are always very grateful for these low tide times.

Father works during the week, mows the lawn on Saturday morning, and rests on Sunday. Like a weed growing through cement, the knowledge that he knows nothing about his children, or, for that matter, his wife, forces its way to the surface of his mind from time to time. Were he a smarter man, he might recognize the meaning of this vague, unsettling sensation. As it is, he generally dismisses it as heartburn. Mostly Father plays with the dog, whose name is Kelly. He takes Kelly on long walks, sometimes for two or three hours.

He always walks slower on the way back.

Mother hates her job. She thinks that the people she works with don't care about anything, and she becomes very frustrated with them. She often sits in terrible traffic on her way home. When she arrives, she silently ascends the stairs and lies on her bed for a half hour. Then she gets back up, installs herself in the kitchen, and begins to make dinner for Father, Brother, and Sister. Mother makes the same things for dinner every week. If she tries a new recipe that she read in a book or magazine, everyone seems to complain and become terribly unhappy, so she has largely stopped trying.

After dinner she reads her novels intently, and the rest of the Smiths, without ever having been told, realize that Mother is best left alone for the rest of the evening.

Brother gets mediocre grades, and smokes pot with his friends on the weekends, sometimes even on weekdays after school. He has a girlfriend, but he doesn't like her very much. She annoys him when she talks, which seems to happen more frequently than he would like. To distract himself when she does this, he plays a little game in his mind where he tries to translate her words into Spanish as rapidly as possible.

He is almost certain that he is gay, but he doesn't think it would be wise tell anyone.

Sister rarely attends her classes. She prefers to gossip endlessly with her friends at the coffee shop down the street. Sometimes, when poring over yet another fashion magazine, Sister starts to get very dizzy, and feels as though she might be sick. Her friends' excited voices become shrill and hysterical-sounding, and her heart beats very fast. The room tilts wildly. And then as suddenly as it came, the feeling is gone.

Sister thinks that this probably happens because she goes for days at a time without consuming any solid foods.

When the neighbors look at the Smith house, they see the bright, bubbly colors of the façade, and the two clean cars glistening in the driveway. They see Kelly smiling and panting at them through the picket fence with a tennis ball in his mouth. The grass is always a handsome green hue, and immaculately trimmed and edged. Everyone admires this house greatly, and they often smile as they pass it, this golden beacon of suburbia, this little City Upon a Hill shimmering like a mirage in their side-view mirrors. These neighbors don't ever think about the inside of the Smith house ' if they did, they would assume that it simply couldn't fail to be just as perfectly perfect as the yard and the cars and the dog with the ball.

And indeed, the pile carpets *are* a very nice off-white, and there is a truly unique old chandelier in the dining room. Tasteful, ignorable art hangs from many of the walls, and there are no cobwebs to be found. Yet, if you were to wander through this house when the Smiths were all home, engaged in their various activities, you might notice something strange. It wouldn't be anything you could see, or hear, or taste, or smell. It might be something you could feel, though. It would probably make you very uneasy if you didn't expect it, this odd sensation. You might just feel that this house is empty. You might stand between the kitchen and the living room, and you might hear Mother busy in the kitchen, and look directly at Father sitting on the couch watching the basketball game, and feel that the house is completely and utterly deserted, condemned. Sister and Brother could be churning out the most terrible cacophony of rap and chatter from upstairs, and it might not matter at all. The heat could be at an absolutely pleasant setting, and the warmth of dinner could be wafting to you from the kitchen, and yet you might feel a terrible cold draft, like all the doors and windows were wide open.

But, maybe not. Maybe you would sit down to dinner, and thank your unbearably gracious hosts, and ignore the tasteful art. You may, just as likely, go back home and sit down in a chair and think:

"My God, what happy and pleasant people those Smiths are."

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