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For my family, my home
I walked past a house where I lived once: a man and a woman are still together in the whispers there.
—YEHUDA AMICHAI
The house of childhood sold,
or razed—
not lost but
softened, distended:
diaphanous linked chambers springing from
a lightshaft or a varnish smell,
the way a floorboard aches,
a scrap of wallpaper
tunnels the heart.
—BY DON BOGEN
Prologue
Ann had never been to Wellfleet in February. Each fall her parents emptied the water heater, shut down the well pump, flushed antifreeze down the toilets, threw some sheets over the furniture, pulled down all the shades, and closed the house. Cape Cod felt like a hazy dream the rest of the year, a place suspended forever in beach days filled with sunshine and warmth.
But there she was, alone and cold in a house that felt both familiar and now strange because it was the off-season, and because her parents were gone, although she could feel them there. It was as if they were sitting behind mirrored glass during a focus group like the ones Ann participated in at work, watching and listening to everything Ann did and said. Even now, half a year after they’d died, she kept waiting for some magical door to swing open, and for her parents to walk out from the other side of the glass to tell her they’d been watching her this whole time.
She felt her parents’ radiant energy in everything she saw as she paced the house to stay warm: in the chipped wineglass left in the sink, the sloppily folded beach towels and stained pillowcases, her mother’s cookbooks, her father’s telescope, even in the bulb digger where they’d always hidden the heavy iron key that unlocked the back door. Their possessions seemed ready to be put to use again and again, and made the house feel like it was less a place they’d left behind than a place they’d planned to return to.
Ann shivered and took a sip of her now-cold Starbucks coffee. She checked her phone to see if Carol, the Realtor, had tried to contact her to say she’d be late, but she had weak cell reception out here on the Outer Cape. Maybe she’d gotten lost. You couldn’t see the house from Route 6, and the mouth of the long driveway, tucked in a thicket of brush and oak trees, was easy to miss.
Ann didn’t want Carol to think she was someone who could be talked into a low asking price, so she’d dressed for their meeting in her most serious work suit, a chocolate-colored alligator jacquard jacket and matching pencil skirt. Not wanting to diminish the impact of her outfit, she left her wool coat in her car, but the house wasn’t heated and she was freezing. It was better this way, she thought. She’d need the sharpness of the cold to get through this.
A strong breeze blew so hard that the house seemed to moan and the door flew open. Ann jumped, as though the ghosts of her parents had breezed in and scolded her for what she was doing. She rushed over to the door and shut it firmly. She needed to list the house before she lost her resolve, and before summer arrived along with all the tourists and their naïve dreams of owning a place on the Cape. She already hated the buyers (whoever they were) who would love the house differently than her family did, free of their complicated history and conflicting personalities, unburdened by all the stuff they’d accumulated across three generations. It felt oddly intimate and wrong to imagine strangers living there, like she was letting them wear her own skin.
She tried to focus on logistics. She and her younger sister, Poppy, would split the proceeds. If they got a good price, Ann could use her share to put some money in Noah’s college fund and move into a bigger apartment in Boston than the cramped two-bedroom they shared in the South End. She was tired of living paycheck-to-paycheck; it would be nice to put some cartilage between the bones, especially since her job was now on the line. Noah had pleaded with her not to sell. She tried to explain to him that it made no sense to hold on to a house for sentimental reasons, although that was an argument that was easier to make from a distance.
Ann opened the door to the “blue room,” the bedroom she’d always shared with Poppy. The twin beds, covered in the ancient crochet bedcovers, stuck out from the wall like piano keys. The room had once been a parlor. When they were kids and they’d finally arrived for the summer, Poppy would bolt out of the station wagon, run inside, and throw herself on her creaky old spring mattress, clinging to it like a life raft. “We’re back!” Ann’s great-grandmother had died in this room the same day she was born, which was how she had escaped being named after a flower herself.
She could glimpse Drummer Cove through the wavy lead glass in the window. After the railroad dike was built in the late 1800s, the cove began to fill in with silt deposited with every high tide. When the tide emptied out, it left a mudflat with the consistency of quicksand. Real quicksand, the stuff of fairy tales and nightmares. The cove was a place where boats had been marooned, deer got stuck, and dolphins were stranded. Dead horseshoe crabs littered the edges. Ann hardly ever visited the cove now that she was an adult. The tall beach grass was thick with ticks, and the damp hay path was always squishy from the last high tide. She wouldn’t dare swim in that muck. Still, Ann thought the cove was pretty to look at. It smelled like rotten eggs at low tide, but that was a smell she loved in the same primal way that she’d loved the smell of Noah’s sweet bald head when he was a baby. She’d roll down her car windows as soon as she got to Blackfish Creek and wait for the odor to hit her. When it did, every molecule in her body seemed to change. That’s when she knew she was really there, on the “real” part of the Cape.
She walked back into the living room and pulled down the writing desk of her late grandmother’s beloved antique secretary. She rummaged through the contents of the delicate little drawers, finding only yellowed cash register receipts, nail clippers, and kite string. She lifted the piles of paperwork in the larger cubbies—just old New Yorkers, bills from the plumber that could have been thrown away years ago, and there, on the bottom, some old crayon drawings Noah had made when he was little, the words “I love you Nana” in his sweet, sloppy capital letters. It amazed her, all the fresh new ways her heart could break.
She stuffed the papers back where she’d found them and, more gently this time, closed the desk back up, remembering how her grandmother would scold her if she was rough with the furniture. She looked around the room with a scavenger’s eye. Surely there must be a will—how could her father, who’d spent hours preparing detailed notes for substitutes in his classroom—not have one?
An old framed family photograph on the mantel caught her eye, perhaps because it was strangely free of the veil of dust that gently shrouded everything else in the still house. The photo was almost too painful to look at. After everything that had happened with Michael, she was surprised her parents had kept it on display—how had she never noticed it before? That was his first summer with them, when she and Michael
were sophomores and best friends. He hadn’t been adopted yet. Michael stood between Ann and Poppy, all of them about the same age, still about the same height before Michael’s growth spurt the next year. Ann’s hair was pulled back, but Poppy’s whipped wildly around her face. Michael was smiling like he’d just won the lottery.
They all looked so happy, so innocent.
Pilgrim Monument loomed behind them. Ann and Poppy always had to beg their parents to take them to P-town. They complained that the traffic at the tip of the Cape was terrible and there was nowhere to park. They didn’t want to be mistaken as tourists with their fudge-stained lips and boxes of saltwater taffy stuffed under their arms, gawking at the friendly drag queens who stood outside bars in giant wigs, stuffing postcards for drag shows into the hands of passersby. Her parents had only agreed to that excursion because it was Michael’s first summer on the Cape. The next summer, Ann would miss the trip to Provincetown, because she’d spend all her days babysitting for the Shaws.
Oh God, the Shaws. She couldn’t think about them without hearing an explosion echo in her ears.
Ann was holding the photo when a car crunched toward the house on the broken oyster shells her father scattered on the driveway.
The Realtor.
Suddenly the picture burned in her hands. She furtively stuffed it under the old Popeye-themed sheet that covered the couch, grateful she’d hidden the evidence before Carol arrived. Michael looked nothing like Ann or Poppy. He could be any random kid, a cousin or friend. Even if the Realtor saw the photo, why would she suspect he was their adopted brother, an heir?
* * *
CAROL MADE ANN FEEL EMBARRASSED about the house. She touched every surface, ran her fingers along the window casings, setting free so much dust that it flew loose in a cloudy puff. “Needs a good scrub-down,” she said. She wiped her hand on her vest, leaving a gray smear. “I’ll give you a list of cleaners. They do an excellent job.”
“I can take care of it,” Ann said.
“I’m sure you can.”
Carol was younger than Ann thought she’d be, maybe thirty-five, about Ann’s own age, and she was ruggedly attractive. She was cool, even for someone who chose to live on the lonely outermost Cape year-round, a coolness that Ann thought was wasted here. It would serve her better someplace more hip and urban, like Boston or New York. Ann thought Carol’s beauty was wasted here, too, with so few people to appreciate it. She had big, watchful eyes and a heap of curly blond hair piled on top of her head. She wore an artsy purple A-line skirt made out of thick sailcloth material that looked heavy and uncomfortable and swished when she walked. Unlike Carol’s thick wool tights, Ann’s hose were sheer, and her frozen toes were stuffed into black, pointy pumps with straps around the ankles. Ann followed Carol from room to room, the sound of her stupid heels like pickaxes digging into ice when they clicked against the hardwood plank floors. It was an odd sound in a place where everyone had always gone barefoot.
“So, what do you think?”
“About the price?” Carol paused to lean into the fireplace to look up into the flue. “Well, it’s hard to say. Houses like this don’t usually come on the market.”
“It’s one of the oldest on the Cape,” Ann said, feeling a tingle of pride combined with sadness. “It’s one of a kind.”
Carol said, “Actually, there are plenty of antique saltboxes in Wellfleet.”
“They say the house was made from the wood of a merchant boat that was stranded in the cove. It’s old. Really old.” Ann looked around at the historic putty-colored oil trim that was thankfully untouched, just like the flinty woodblock-print wallpaper sagging against the walls. Until that afternoon, seeing the house through Carol’s eyes, she hadn’t noticed how stained and worn it looked, as though it had been exposed to a fire. She was so familiar with the house that she didn’t even see it anymore, the way she could listen to an old song she’d heard a thousand times on the radio and not really hear it.
“Oh, I’m not disputing that the house has an interesting history,” Carol said. “I’m sure your buyer will want to learn everything you know about it. What’s unique is that it’s coming on the market in the first place. Out here, old houses usually stay in the family.” The way Carol said it made Ann feel like she was being judged, like her whole family had failed. And they had.
“So, tell me,” Carol said. “Why are you selling this treasure?”
“Treasure” sounded good, or maybe Carol was mocking her? Ann couldn’t tell. This bothered her, because she liked to think she usually could tell these things. “My sister and I think selling makes the most sense.”
If only Poppy could hear Ann speaking as if they were a united front. We. They hadn’t talked about what to do with this house, not yet. Poppy said she wanted to spend her summer here, and who knew, she might want to keep it, but she didn’t have a practical bone in her body. Besides, Poppy couldn’t afford to buy Ann out, not with the money she made teaching yoga and waiting tables in Puerto Rico, South Africa, wherever. She flitted from beach to beach, chasing STDs and waves. She didn’t even check her email regularly, which was why she didn’t hear about their parents’ accident until two weeks after it had happened—the loneliest two weeks of Ann’s life.
“Does your sister also live in Boston?”
Ann shook her head. “She’s a bit of an itinerant. She lives all over.”
Carol nodded as though this was perfectly normal. Wellfleet was filled with artists and outsiders like Ann’s parents.
“She’s back home now,” Ann said, thinking about how strange the word “home” sounded. What was home anymore? She tried to clarify: “At my parents’ house. In Wisconsin.” Ann pointed at the Green Bay Packers potholder hanging from a hook near the oven as if she needed supporting evidence.
“Wisconsin?” Carol said “Wisconsin” the way most people out East said it, like they’d just heard the name of a high school classmate they’d long forgotten.
“That’s where we, where they, lived most of the year. We have to sell that house, too. My parents were in the middle of a remodel when it happened.”
Carol didn’t seem particularly interested in what “it” was, and Ann was grateful. She didn’t think she had the strength to talk about the semi driver who had crossed lanes and hit her parents’ car head-on while they were headed back home from the Cape last August. Talking about the accident here, in this sacred space, would only make it real again.
“My sister and I, we aren’t any good at houses and now, suddenly, we have two to sell, and they both need work.”
“Divide and conquer.”
“That’s my plan,” Ann said. “My sister is getting the Milwaukee house ready to sell, and I’m taking care of this one. We’ll both be in real estate hell.”
“It’s like childbirth,” Carol said, although Ann suspected Carol was childless. “You’ll forget how awful it is as soon as you get the check at closing.”
“Closing”: Ann suddenly appreciated what a nice word that was. Ann wanted closure.
“It’s good that you and your sister are in agreement about selling,” Carol said. “Houses, even houses that aren’t special like this one, well, they often make people sentimental.” She talked about sentiment with anthropological distance. “The ones that are hardest to let go of are places that are passed down generation to generation.”
Ann’s great-grandfather had initially come from Ireland to the Cape to work for the Pacific Guano Company in Woods Hole, a business that imported bat shit for fertilizer. When the company went bankrupt, he moved farther up the Cape to Wellfleet and tried to start a farm here. Her father, an only child, eventually inherited the house and wouldn’t think of selling, even though he lived halfway across the country. They could have sunk the money into a much cheaper cottage in Door County or Waupaca—it seemed everyone had a lake place in Wisconsin—but her parents loved it here. They let the Cape house dictate their lives. Her parents never earned high salaries; they were tea
chers because they adored kids, but mostly because their jobs allowed them to spend their summers in Wellfleet.
Carol said, “In my experience, the deeper the roots, the harder the sale.”
“We’re fine.” This was a lie. Ann didn’t feel at all fine. She was racked with guilt, because she knew, even with a missing will, that her parents would have wanted her to make whatever sacrifice was necessary to pass their beloved family home down to Noah. And then there was Poppy, who had already turned her entire life into one long summer vacation. And Michael—no, no. She didn’t want to think about Michael. She couldn’t.
Carol sat down at the Formica kitchen table and gestured for Ann to join her. “This might be hard to hear, but I wouldn’t be doing my job if I didn’t level with you. A house like this, as charming as it is, can be hard to move. Old homes require special owners.” Carol talked about the house like she was a doctor talking with parents about a child with a tragic congenital defect whose future would not be bright.
“Your home is wonderful. It’s in relatively good shape, for its age, and the lot is nice. But you’re right on Route 6, so there’s road noise.”
“But you can hardly hear it.”
“True. The problem is the address. Some of my clients, they won’t even look at a house on the state highway. And I should tell you that the first thing a buyer will see is what I saw when I first got here: the shingles aren’t in great shape and the roof needs to be replaced. The problem is that your home looks old instead of historic. You’ve only got one small bathroom, and any buyer will want another one upstairs. The fixtures are dated. The oil boiler—you know that will scare people. And the kitchen…” She looked around. Ann had to agree: the kitchen was a nightmare, complete with sticky-looking cupboards, and the funky pink and brown mushroom wallpaper her mother had put up in the seventies. “Kitchens sell houses.”
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