This very small house

As the father of teenagers, I like that we live in a house modest enough that I can hear them sneaking out of the bedroom window at night. That way I can get up and lock the window behind them as they leave, in case they change their sneaky little minds.

“What are you doing, Dad?” they often ask.

“Have a nice night,” I say through the dual-pane Andersen window.

Truth is, no one leaves our Alcatraz for very long. They complain often and passionately, and there is the occasional riot over curfews and food. But the inmates seem content enough here.

It’s certainly better than those mean suburban streets. And the $2,000 refrigerator is often filled with food. (Don’t gasp. These days, a good refrigerator goes for about 2,000 clams. Blame GE, the same folks who gave you “Joey.”)

Which brings us, finally, to today’s topic: How much house do we really need?

As noted earlier, I prefer a smaller domain, one where you can hear a floorboard squeak from the other end of the house, so that you can tell when they are coming or going.

I like to be able to tell who’s sneaking the last slice of Kraft American from the cheese drawer at 1 in the morning. Or which jokes make them laugh on “King of the Hill.”

In a small house, a dad is privy to such nuances.

If it were up to me alone, I’d raise them in a log cabin. No walls. No doors. No secrets.

Of course, the luminous and thoughtful people I live with have other ideas. They crave Graceland. Stables. Several kitchens. Bathrooms with bidets. I don’t know what they’d exactly do with a bidet. My guess? Probably wash their hair in it.

If it were up to the kids, they would live in big bedrooms on the far end of a sprawling Colonial where, when Mom approached, there’d be enough time to close their buddy lists so she wouldn’t see that they’re corresponding with some 55-year-old trucker with a screen name like Kittengirl. That’s the kind of bedroom they’d like. What they get is a sadder, entirely different story.

“All I want is a house with real closets,” my wife tells me with a grim, Faye Dunaway stare. “I just need more closets.”

That’s all she wants -- closets? Amazing how a spouse’s dreams can change. My wife, who once saw in me the potential for a glamorous Georgian mansion, now falls asleep fantasizing mostly of hanger space for her sweaters. If I dwell on this too long, I will probably cry; for I write to you each week -- send out these sonnets of angst and joy, heartache and happiness -- from a desk facing the wall of a tiny three-bedroom ranch that was, like me, built in the ‘50s.

Better writers, those who pen romantic novels or exercise books, look up from their keyboards to views of the Pacific or thickets of New England maple. Me, I see three feet of latex-coated drywall. Talk about an Alcatraz.

“Can I squeeze by?” my wife says every time she needs to enter the bedroom.

“Sure,” I say, then inhale sharply, crush my belly into the desk and allow her to squeeze between my chair and the foot of the bed. It is a peculiar maneuver, not unlike having your colon retracted during surgery. But I never complain. Some days, it is the only physical contact I get.

Funny -- I think that’s the word -- how you start out seeking only a good, physical relationship, one based on mutual lust, and wind up with so much more: a 20-year marriage, a 30-year mortgage and 40 years of car payments.

I think that’s the word. But I digress. Again.

Fact is, most of us buy the biggest house we can, then make the best of it, trying to ignore what similar payments would buy us in smaller markets and telling ourselves that, all told, this is the life we prefer.

So I write to you each week not from some oak-lined office but from the cramped desk facing the bedroom wall, with a dog nesting on my feet, and some wild child at my elbow, making demands.

“Dad, can you fix this?” they will ask.

“No,” I’ll say.

“Here,” they’ll say, then plop a busted baseball glove on my shoulder.

Then they will go off to watch TV, in their own little room down the hall, where I can hear almost every word of what Hilary Duff is saying, even though no grown man should have to hear such things.

I do and I’m oddly relieved by that. In my tiny castle on the hill, where every footstep matters.

Chris Erskine can be reached at chris.erskine@latimes.com.