Remind Me Again Why I Married You

by Rita Ciresi

  “Problems?” Cynthia asked.

  “What with?” I asked.

  “Your seat belt.”

  “Not at all.” The buckle gave off a decisive click. As Cynthia backed out of the driveway and took the long road out of our condominium complex, I gazed at the rubber lids the sanitation workers had thrown aside like dirty Frisbees and the emptied trash cans already threatening to roll into the street from the force of the strong March wind. The clouds looked angry. The dull gray cast on the remaining snow—as if it were four o’clock instead of before two—indicated we were due to get dumped on again.

  “Where’s Danny today?” Cynthia asked.

  “A birthday party.”

  “He’s really a sweet boy.”

  “You might not say that,” I said, “if you had seen him in action this morning.”

  “I thought Lisa sounded at wit’s end this morning when I called to confirm,” Cynthia said. “She wanted to know if this house had outbuildings.”

  “Does it?”

  “I’m sorry to disappoint you—no—but it has five very large bedrooms.”

  I looked out at the snowcapped guardrails whizzing by. “Where are you taking me?”

  “Not too far from here,” said Cynthia. “This house is on a larger lot—two acres—which gives you the privacy you both seem to want, but since it’s wooded, you won’t have to worry about landscaping except to take care of the flower garden out back.”

  “We don’t know anything at all about gardening,” I said.

  “I can give you the name of a good landscaping service. And a pest-control outfit. For future reference. Since any garden in the country is prone to natural invaders.”

  To my surprise, Cynthia went on—and on!—about various methods of pest extermination: the traps, the gases, the poisons, the baits used to either wipe out the offending rabbits or lure the solo possum or raccoon into a cage so they then could be “relocated” by wildlife experts. I already knew, from viewing three or four houses with her, that Cynthia was a font of knowledge about houses and gardens and the way they worked. She could name—on sight—Windsor chairs and buckboard benches and fainting couches and tables ambulantes. She knew how to plug the failing grout in bathroom tiles and where to buy bird feeders that stung squirrels.

  Still—when she began to debate the effectiveness of sonic systems to keep moles from burrowing tunnels in the garden—I had to interrupt. “How do you know all this stuff?”

  She blushed. “I’ve been selling houses for a long time now.”

  “You have an interesting job,” I said.

  “It has its moments.”

  “And I’m sure,” I said, “that over the years you’ve met some interesting characters.”

  “I’ve certainly observed all kinds of interesting behavior.”

  “How so?” I asked.

  “Oh, house-hunting brings out the best—and the worst—in people. One or two marriages have fallen apart in the backseat of my car. But then—in my office—they’ve been solidified too. A closing is a little like a wedding ceremony. I always feel like crying when the officer from the title company hands over the keys.”

  Unlike Lisa, who routinely ran through a dozen Kleenexes whenever we witnessed vows being exchanged, I didn’t make a habit of weeping at weddings. But surely I had knotted my tie too tightly that morning in May when I married Lisa; something had strangled my voice when I said, “I do,” and the justice of the peace had gently corrected me: “I will.” Just to think of it almost made my voice catch again.

  “Most realtors,” I said, “just want to make the sale.”

  “Oh, I don’t mind making the sale, Eben.”

  “But you seem to really get into the whole household thing. You have training, don’t you, beyond your license? You seem so knowledgeable about architecture. And decoration. And even basic home repairs.”

  “I did my undergrad in design at Cooper Union. My ex-husband taught me about the inner workings of a house. And architecture . . . well, I can’t resist going into any house that bears a plaque from the National Historic Trust. I’ve always loved visiting old homes.”

  “Lisa and I do too,” I said, remembering some of our first outings together as a married couple—to Hyde Park and Lyndhurst and Olana. We had toured the Newport mansions and the painted ladies at Cape May. Once we had braved the heat and the crowds (and Lisa’s morning sickness) to take the ferry to Martha’s Vineyard, where we had strolled hand in hand around the Methodist campgrounds and marveled at the miniature gingerbread cottages in Oak Bluffs.

  But then we had Danny. And then we stayed home. And then our home grew crowded with the kind of cheap equipment you never saw on a tour of a really grand house: a crib and a bassinet and a playpen, a walker, a stroller, a swing, and a potty chair (now all waiting in the garage for their next cheerful occupant). Danny definitely had brought clutter into our lives. But, then, Lisa and I were just as guilty of contributing to the mess. Lisa owned three funnels (why did she need even one?) and subscribed to a dozen magazines. I held on to tons of baggage from the past—from the seventy-five-cent editions of Marcus Aurelius I’d studied in college to the dusty records of Donovan and Joni Mitchell I could neither bear to listen to nor part with.

  “Cynthia,” I asked impulsively, “have you ever heard of something—I don’t know how to pronounce the Chinese—called feng shooey?”

  “Fung shway,” Cynthia told me. “We studied it briefly at school.”

  “Do you take stock in it?”

  Cynthia lifted one finger off the steering wheel. “Here’s our street,” she said, and I looked out the window, annoyed at myself for not paying attention.

  “Darling Lane?” I asked.

  “Yes, isn’t that too darling?”

  “Too,” I agreed.

  We passed four driveways before Cynthia pointed to a mailbox marked 27. “This is the beginning of the property . . . the driveway’s right here . . . I’m sure there’s some truth in feng shui, the less superstitious parts of it. Do you believe in it?”

  “Of course not. It’s totally irrational. Here’s Lisa now.”

  At the bottom of the driveway, Lisa’s Camry was parked in front of a large evergreen. As soon as she saw us in her rearview mirror, Lisa cut the engine, got out of the car, and waved hello. Her neck was swaddled in my old Burberry wool scarf, and her body, which ordinarily looked longer and leaner, seemed boxy in her down coat. She looked like Danny—like a little boy!—bundled up against the snow. My ire against her softened when I realized that no one, by just looking at her, could guess she wrote for Playboy—especially since her Isotoner driving gloves were the only dead giveaway she was past voting age.

  “It’s a freezer out here!” Lisa said, giving Cynthia an impulsive hug before she planted on my cheek a chilly-lipped kiss. Her warm breath fogged up my glasses. I took them off and wiped them with my handkerchief, and as I did, I saw—however blindly—that Lisa was looking into my eyes, trying to figure out what, if anything, I now knew about her novel. I refused—at least in front of Cynthia—to let any emotion show on my face.

  “Did you have trouble finding the house?” Cynthia asked Lisa.

  “If it weren’t for the mailbox,” Lisa said, “you’d never guess anyone lived back here.”

  “I thought you’d like the privacy,” Cynthia said. “And just look at this house.”

  I put my glasses back on, and looked. With admiration. And dismay. Although the clean and simple lines of the colonial house pleased me, I wasn’t thrilled to waste my Saturday touring exactly the kind of home we had told Cynthia we had no intention of buying. Nothing historic, we’d told her. No fixer-uppers!

  “This house looks old,” I said.

  “You’re looking at Colonial Revival,” Cynthia said. “A replica. All the charm of the old without the Neanderthal plumbing. This home was built in 1931.”

  “Who had money to build during the Depression?” I asked.

  “A doct
or.”

  “Ah,” Lisa and I both said.

  “He and his family lived here until fairly recently,” Cynthia said. “The second owners completely renovated the inside. New bathrooms, new kitchen. They rewired and replaced all the worn pipes. They also just put on a new roof.”

  Lisa tromped back a few steps on the gravel to take a long view of the house. “There’s a weathervane up there,” she said.

  I looked up. Although it was overcast, an inexplicable glare came off the roof. As I shielded my eyes with my hand, Lisa blurted out the obvious: “It’s in the shape of a pig!”

  As I watched the glinting outstretched hooves and perky ears of the copper pig sway back and forth, I thought the owners—who obviously didn’t keep kosher—were fond of something that lately had been lacking in my own life: whimsy. This pig was silly enough to make me smile; at the same time it warned me that the wind was brisk and getting stiffer by the second.

  “Let’s go in,” I said.

  The front walk, neatly shoveled in a wide path, was lined with tidy piles of smooth, snow-covered rocks. The wooden porch—no bigger than a pulpit—looked made to order for a big dog to sit on the welcome mat. The door was painted a shade that reminded me of the twenty-dollar bill in Monopoly.

  “I love the color of this door,” Lisa said.

  “That’s called federal green,” Cynthia said.

  I thought it was called ugly. But I kept my opinion to myself, vowing that if we ended up buying this house I’d cover that color right away with a more suitable shade of paint.

  Lisa touched a contraption of dried flowers and hemp that hung on the door knocker. “What do you call these things again?” she asked Cynthia.

  “Swedish love knots.”

  Lisa turned over a tiny heart-shaped plaque hanging off the knot and read aloud, “In every home where I am found, love and happiness shall abound.”

  Cynthia’s pale cheeks flushed pink. She pulled a large, clattering ring of keys from her tote bag, grasped the doorknob tightly, and inserted one of the keys. When she twisted the knob and gently let the door swing back, I had the crazy urge to scoop up a woman in my arms and carry her, like a bride, over the threshold. The trouble was, I stood there with two women—and one of them already was my wife.

  I scraped my soles on the welcome mat. In other houses that we had looked at, Lisa and I had been careful not to leave our muddy tracks behind. But we never had gone so far as to take off our shoes. I knew we both felt something different for this house the moment Lisa stepped on the varnished floorboards in the hall and asked, “Anybody mind if I take off my boots?”

  “I’ll do the same,” I said.

  Cynthia declined to join us. “Cold feet,” she explained.

  Lisa parked herself on a long spindled bench in the hall to divest herself of her lace-up boots. As I stepped out of my loafers, I saw Cynthia—whose trim, chilled ankles were clad only in stockings—look at Lisa’s socks, worn thin at the toes and heels, and then look away.

  “This is your parlor,” Cynthia said.

  I followed her into the first room on the right and watched as she positioned herself—as if she were being sold along with all the trappings of the house—in front of the clean white mantel. She loosened the belt of her trench coat. As I tossed my coat over a wing chair, I saw Cynthia gaze down, with either amusement or approval, at my own brown Gold Toe socks. My feet had curled into the coils of the blue braided rug, all ten of my toes staking a claim to territory that seemed to belong to descendants of the Mayflower only.

  This house looked like something out of Yankee. Not that I subscribed. But I had picked up the thick magazine in the waiting room of my dentist. The serene cover artwork, which showed autumn foliage and covered bridges and summer cottages by the lake, always filled me with a longing I didn’t know I had until it struck me, without warning, like heartburn. Although I used to frown upon men who opted for early retirement—casting off their leather furniture and moving to Maine, where they acquired rough-hewn log beds and the durable household items hawked in the black-and-white Vermont Country Store catalog—I now knew I belonged to the same sad category. This saltbox house made me long to ditch SB! raise goats or sheep! read The Old Farmer’s Almanac by beeswax candlelight! and wash my hands with Dr. Bronner’s old-fashioned almond soap!—all clichéd desires I had hoped to stave off at least until I turned fifty.

  Lisa and I moved separately around the parlor, examining the paned windows and pine-paneled floor and high ceilings. Whoever had positioned the Shaker tables and the ladder-back chairs had done it just right. The proportions were even and the room seemed snug and fit. The ch’i, I thought, had been realized.

  I looked at Lisa. She nodded her approval.

  Cynthia leaned her hand on the swinging door. “Step into your kitchen.”

  “Ooh,” Lisa said as she went through the door.

  “Nice,” I said. The all-white kitchen had a black-and-white checkerboard floor. The window over the double sink gave out onto the backyard, where the stark trees were hung with birdhouses in the shape of a chapel, a schoolhouse, and a barn.

  Cynthia acted first as a plumbing expert (pointing out the top-of-the-line faucets and the whisper-quiet Swedish dishwasher) and then as a master electrician (demonstrating the attention the owners had paid to ambient, task, and atmospheric lighting, and flicking on a switch to show how the white cabinets with glass fronts could be illuminated from within). The owners possessed at least two full sets of fine china—one plain gold-rimmed and the other studded with tiny blue roses—and their pantry was stocked with items I associated with the olden days of my childhood: Fleischmann’s yeast, Crisco shortening, and Brer Rabbit molasses. The shelves also held several items that seemed to induce in Lisa a visible party-anxiety attack: a large percolator, several stacks of cocktail napkins, and half a dozen packets of paper plates.

  After Cynthia delivered the grand tour of the laundry room and the mudroom, she put her tote bag down on the table and pointed to the white phone hanging on the wall next to the pantry. “I have a few calls I need to make, so I’ll let the two of you view the rest of the house on your own.”

  “Oh, come!” Lisa said.

  “Sure,” I said. “Join us.”

  Cynthia shook her head. “This house sells itself.”

  She was right. As I followed Lisa back into the entryway, I thought, I like this place. It seems homey. Although I thought the owners had taken the country-living theme too far (I for one could have done without all the dried rose petals curling up in hand-thrown bowls on the end tables, and the maple-syrup jugs and canned jams lining the shelves in the tavernlike dining room), the house had something that attracted me. There was no other word for it but heart. I felt it in every corner.

  Lisa wandered off to investigate the half-bath tucked beneath the stairs. I stopped in front of a tiny writing desk in the back alcove. On top of the desk sat a huge dictionary; excitability/excuse headed the left side of the page; execrable/exemption ruled the right.

  From the door just beyond, I heard Cynthia say, “. . . a new listing down in Dobbs Ferry . . .” I pressed my finger into the indentation marked C and idly flipped the thin pages of the dictionary until I reached:

  Cynthia. 1. meaning of the moon 2. the surname of Artemis, Greek goddess of hunting and childbirth, originally a Cretan goddess of fertility, who eventually was regarded as a virgin and who required chastity of her female attendants and even her male followers.

  Inside the bathroom, Lisa flushed the toilet.

  I quickly flipped the pages forward, abandoning them on epidote/episiotomy. Since the last thing I wanted to deal with was plumbing problems, I was grateful that Lisa always remembered to flush the toilets and run the taps in every house we visited. Still, the gurgling coming from the half-bath seemed indelicate.

  Lisa came out of the bathroom, put her hand on the banister, and climbed about halfway up the steep wooden staircase. “The upstairs sounds empty.�
�

  “What do you mean?”

  “I hear an echo.”

  When I joined her upstairs, I saw she was right. In each of the first four bedrooms, the hardwood floors were completely bare beneath our stockinged feet.

  “There’s stuff in the master bath,” I called out, as I entered it from the hallway. Jumbo-size white towels still hung on the rack, and a collection of lotions cluttered the counter. The room jutted out onto the lawn, and as I approached the window next to the shower stall I saw—now far below me—the whimsical birdhouses hanging on the trees. The schoolhouse had a bell, and the barn roof advertised chewing tobacco.

  I put the lid down and sat on the toilet. Lisa came in and sat down on the side of the Roman tub. After inspecting the faucets and jets, she told me, “It’s a Jacuzzi.”

  “Nice.”

  “You would like this, Ebb, after a long day of bullshit at SB.”

  I pictured me—and Lisa—soaking in a vat of hot, churning water, our bodies open to the moon and the stars that shone in on the skylight. Then I reminded her, “Hot tubs are on Dr. Goode’s forbidden list.”

  She flicked her hair off her face. “Oh, everything good is on Dr. Goode’s forbidden list.”

  “That’s not true,” I said. “You don’t think that’s true, do you?”