My husband’s family has a cabin deep in the woods of Northern Michigan. So deep in the woods that the first time he took me and turned from a dirt road into a random, unmarked clump of trees and up a hill I thought, “Well, here it is. Here’s how my life becomes a Lifetime Movie of the Week with an understated subtext of ‘this is what happens when you wait until you’re 30s to get married, that nice-seeming professor is actually a serial killer.'” I was hoping they would solve the case quickly enough that Martha Plimpton could play me. When we were teenagers I auditioned for a movie role that went to her (River Rat), and so I’ve always thought that she would be the perfect actor to play me in a movie. Next time you see Beautiful Girls or Goonies, you’ll see, we look alike. Not so much by the time she was in Parenthood, or today, but definitely when we were teenagers.

Eventually, the cabin came into view, and I have never again wondered if my husband might actually be a serial killer, although I have had related thoughts about the cabin. There was the time I was husking corn on the front porch (because that’s one of the things you do in a cabin in the woods) and a man on a white horse came riding up to the steps. No one has ever found this cabin accidentally, frequently you can’t find it when you’re trying, but there he was, somewhere between the ages of 50-150, weathered, pony tail riding a white horse with no saddle. I went inside and eavesdropped while he told my husband about living off the grid and roadkill stew.

Once, my then 12-year-old daughter went for a walk in the woods, and 45 minutes later I realized she was probably lost and my husband and I set off in different directions to find her and I thought “What the hell will I do if I find her, call my husband and say, she’s here, but the 253rd pine tree, you know, the one that’s 1/2 foot shorter than the others?”

I don’t sleep well at the cabin, not just because I’m overly concerned about serial killers, but also because the entire house is dusty and musty and while at first sleeping on sheets with cartoon versions of Laurel and Hardy was quirky and charming, now it’s just itchy and threadbare. I also think it’s possible that the 10 years worth of Isaac Asimov Sci Fi Magazines and equal number of Archie Comics may be giving off a toxic mold (although I hate to think that because really, the Archie Comics are one of the highlights of the place, especially now that my daughter and I watch Riverdale). But the other night, on our third night at the cabin I was sleeping. I was having a dream that took place in a train station bank and over an intercom came a metallic voice “FIVE” “FIVE” “FIVE.” I was trying to figure out if it was about money or a train when I realized that it was not in fact part of the dream, it was outside the cabin. Maybe. Hopefully.

My husband also heard it and thought it was me breathing. He did not hear the voice saying five, he heard breathing, or maybe barking and I thought, “THIS is it. This is the moment when it all starts to unravel.” I could not NOT hear the noise, and I could not NOT hear it saying “FIVE in a sharply metallic voice.” I lay awake and tried to figure out which movie I was in. Was this Stranger Things, a government experiment deep in the woods?  Had aliens landed? Nuclear war?

Or was it a deep-think horror movie about the existential crisis of motherhood? Because for a few minutes I considered holding the pillow over my husband’s face until I could figure out if in fact it was him breathing. Once I did that, I would of course have to go into each of the kid’s rooms and do the same and then the audience would never know if I had been driven crazy by a combination of a lack of sleep and toxic Archie Comics mold, or if the cabin was haunted or if I was evil and the whole thing was a set up so I could run away with my much-younger lover. I think that maybe over the credits you would see a non-specific shadow that you could interpret according to how you feel about mothers today. I still hope Martha Plimpton plays me.

The next morning neither kid reported hearing the sound and my husband still swore it was a dog, or maybe a coyote. The noise did not reappear the next day and so once again, I have narrowly avoided a grisly end in the woods of Michigan, and Martha Plimpton has once again missed out on a great role.