We Are Not Ourselves

by Matthew Thomas

  The area was promising. It was a mixture of old and new homes, but the road was curvy and lined with enormous oaks, and between the wooded plots, she caught glimpses of stucco Tudors with carriage houses, and even what may have been a tennis court. They turned onto a wider street and the road flattened and the houses were all easy to spot but majestically elevated above the road. They stopped in front of a gray colonial with overgrown hedges and columns that linked the porch on the first level to one on top. Stone pillars flanked the driveway, and next to the front walk was a jockey holding a lantern. His red coat had been chipped and bleached to pink in the sun. The house looked as if it had been built sometime in the first half of the century, but built well, and it was twice as large as the houses she’d seen the week before. She was hopeful.

  Gloria led them up the driveway to a staircase at the back entrance. A patio of moss-covered brick, framed by a stone wall and a terrific amount of growth, resembled an English garden gone to seed. It opened up onto the craggy slope, which contained an enormous stone blanketed by ivy. Atop the hill were houses accessed by another street.

  The kitchen looked like it had been despoiled by squatters. Cabinet doors didn’t close right, the wallpaper bubbled, and the brick floor was coated in a thick, dingy skin of polyurethane. Everything on the rear side of the house—the kitchen, the den, the dining room—was dark as a catacomb, but she could tell that light would penetrate its depths on a good day, particularly if she trimmed some of the bushes, and while the dining room had a matted rug and a rickety-looking chandelier, she could envision the grand meals she’d serve there, and the living room was practically bleached by light. Next to it was the brick-floored foyer and the entrance proper, and a flight of banistered stairs leading to the second floor. Off the landing at the bottom of the stairs was a little flight down into what could be a reading room, next to what would be Ed’s study, with a bay window and built-in bookshelves.

  Gloria went to the two front doors and threw them open with a flourish. Light flooded in. Looking left from the front porch, which was fringed by a rotting wooden fence, Eileen could see where the road curved and headed down to Palmer Road, the main artery into the town that lent this house its respectable mailing address.

  Eileen stood on the porch, imagining people opening the big metal gate at the bottom and making their way up the gently winding path. The thought of their approach thrilled her, the moments of anticipation, the embraces, the handing off of wine bottles, cakes, presents. And then she turned and saw Connell looking out the window in the living room, an ethereal light flooding against him, so that he resembled a figure in one of those portrait paintings of the children of nobility from centuries past. These days and years would act as a crucible in which his fate was distilled. The closing down of possibilities had begun, almost imperceptibly. She had to act quickly to preserve her image of the life she imagined, in which Ed toiled happily in his study, turning over ideas until they yielded fresh hypotheses, and she was a grand hostess and the matriarch of a respected clan. This house would be the backdrop to the second act of their lives together. It was Connell’s contemplative gaze that gave her that assurance.

  “What do you think?” Gloria asked rhetorically as she drifted into the room. She was a maestro of timing: there was no need to respond. She led them up the stairs like a groom guiding his bride to the bower.

  “I’ll show you the other bedrooms first,” she said, “and then the master suite.”

  She led them to a room so massive it could have swallowed Connell’s current bedroom whole, along with the spare, with room left over.

  “This could be your bedroom,” Eileen said.

  “Sweet!” He darted into the room and walked its perimeter like a cat marking its territory. He opened and closed the closet doors and then lay in the center of the room and stretched his arms and legs as far as he could. She laughed out loud at his exuberance.

  “Come on,” she said. “Get up now.”

  “It’s okay,” Gloria said. “He can be excited.”

  “You could land a plane in here,” he said.

  “Maybe a helicopter,” Gloria allowed.

  “There’s no doubt it’s a big enough house,” Eileen said cautiously. How “slightly” out of her price range was this house? This might be another tease, only this time she wouldn’t have done it to herself.

  “You haven’t even seen the master bedroom.”

  “I’m a little worried about the price.”

  “You’re prepared to spend four hundred thousand,” Gloria said. “Five at the most.”

  “The uppermost,” Eileen said.

  They were in the hallway now, their voices low.

  “This house is five sixty.”

  “That’s a big difference.” Eileen tried to hide the panic and disappointment that had already set in.

  “Not when you think about the fact that when it’s fixed up, it’s a three-quarter-of-a-million-dollar house. Minimum. Minimum.” Gloria spoke coolly, a little impatiently, as if they were discussing an artwork she didn’t want to sully with considerations of money. “There are some catches, though.”

  “Catches,” Eileen said.

  “Not necessarily deal breakers. How handy is your husband?”

  She thought of Ed at home in the garage, tools strewn around him in a blast-radius circle, trying to make the house presentable enough to entice her to stay in it. Everything he knew about home improvement he’d learned from how-to books. Whenever he made a study of something, though, he could do it at least passably well. “If I can earn a PhD,” he’d said when they’d had a short in the hallway light, “I can figure out how to fix some faulty wiring.” And he had. The handiness came at the expense of great effort. Doing a big project around the house always left him exhausted.

  “He’s pretty handy,” she said. “Why?”

  “This house was on the market for over a year, then taken off and relisted. They just dropped the price.”

  “What’s wrong with it?”

  “It’s suffered some water damage. It’s a twofold problem. It’s at the bottom of a hill, so there’s always runoff. And it’s built on a rock, with a rock behind it, so everything just flows into it. On top of that, the pipes burst this winter. There’s a lot of damage in the basement. A lot of it needs to be ripped out and rebuilt. Plus there’s no guarantee the water won’t come back. You’re going to need a new roof in a couple of years. It’s an expensive proposition to fix this place, but it’s a steal if you can do any of the work yourself.”

  “My husband can do it,” she said.

  It would be good for him. He could sweat this thing out through manual labor. She could see him drinking a beer in jeans and a T-shirt, wiping his brow and holding a baseball cap at his hip.

  “Let’s make our way to your room,” Gloria said. They left Connell and stopped briefly at each of two average-sized bedrooms and a bathroom with matching sinks below bulb-lighted mirrors like those in dressing rooms. A toilet hid demurely behind French doors.

  The master bedroom suite contained a closet as large as her current guest bedroom. She pictured a sitting area in the corner of the bedroom proper. The same light poured in as below but unencumbered by tree cover. It would be impossible to dwell on sad things in that light.

  In recent years, a tentative mood had obtained in their bedroom. They fumbled over each other’s bodies. It was as if they’d entered a new phase of life and had to get reacquainted. She needed light for play, discovery. Something could be gained if they saw each other naked in the bright light of day.

  The wallpaper was all seams and bubbles, and something would have to be done about the stain on the ceiling in the corner of the room. There would be time and money to worry about such particulars in the proper order.

  She made her way to the window. She’d heard all about suburban ennui, but she couldn’t imagine feeling it in a house like this. If the abundant space and light failed for a moment to confirm for her how far
she’d gotten from what she’d left behind, and a shadow of uncertainty drifted over her, she needed only to throw open the curtains on this window, gaze out onto the empty street, and wait for a car to drive down the block, and then another. In the substantial interval between them, she would feel a calm settling in: there was no reason to be there unless you had someone to see; there was no way to stay there long unless you had a reason to stay.

  “I think you like it,” Gloria said.

  “I do,” she said quietly. “I like it a lot. I’m trying to figure out how I can afford it.”

  She was in the middle of the sort of reverie that invented the future by imagining it. The spell would be broken in a moment, but she lingered in it, telling herself to remember the details.

  They wouldn’t be able to put as big a percentage down. They’d have a much higher monthly payment. They might not be able to immediately do all the renovations she had in mind. They’d have to work in stages. They’d have to live lean, not go to restaurants or shows.

  “What about you?” Gloria asked Connell.

  “Can we put a hoop in the driveway?”

  What a simple thing, Eileen thought. What a different set of concerns he has.

  “I don’t see why not.”

  “Yes!” He pumped his fist.

  “Someone’s excited,” Gloria said.

  “I’m excited too,” she said, “but the person we need to convince is his father. Provided the structure is sound and the repairs are possible and the finances are in order, I think this might just be the perfect house for us.”

  Gloria clapped her hands. “That’s the spirit,” she said. “You wouldn’t get this house at this price except under some very specific circumstances. Now, having said that, why don’t we go take a look at those circumstances.”

  They headed downstairs. Gloria pointed out some flood marks that Eileen hadn’t seen earlier, and then she took them into the house’s bowels. Eileen passed her eyes over everything Gloria pointed to, but she did her best not to register it. Connell poked at a section of rot. When he pulled a piece off, she barely mustered enough indignation to scold him. She heard, as though from underwater, the litany of troubles the house had endured. She nodded when she needed to nod and pulled long faces to demonstrate concern. She even heard herself sigh when Gloria showed her a section of foundational wall in the garage that had been soaked through and was threatening to collapse. She was determined to let these subterranean details remain subterranean. They could be handled in due time. The issue now was preserving her vision. The base of the house might be rotting, but the visible portion was commanding enough to chase any qualms away.

  “It’s not an inconsiderable amount of work,” Gloria said.

  “We could make it work.” Eileen turned to Connell. “You and Daddy could take this on, don’t you think?”

  “No way.”

  “He just doesn’t want to have to do anything around the house,” she said to Gloria. “But they could handle it. I’m confident.”

  “If you say so, Mom.”

  “Maybe we’ll pay you like a contractor. Maybe it’s time you earned your allowance.”

  “There are things he can’t do. There’s the roof, as I said. You’ve got a little time on that. The electrical wiring is old. You might not have enough amp service. You might blow some fuses. Some of the outlets don’t work. Am I scaring you yet?”

  “I’m just listening.”

  “There’s asbestos around the plumbing and ductwork. That could make it hard to resell. So could the underground oil tank.”

  “I’m not worried about selling it. I’m worried about buying it.”

  “Water gathers in the fireplace. Some of these are expensive jobs. Thankfully there’s no mold from the flooding. That we know of.”

  “It sounds like we need a plumber. And a roofer.”

  “And a general contractor,” Gloria said. “And an electrician. And a willing husband.”

  “I can live without a few outlets for a while. I don’t know if I can live without this house.”

  • • •

  They stopped for gas on the way home. When she went in to pay, she bought a couple of scratch-off tickets, something she’d thought she’d never do, and scarfed a pair of Twinkies while she rubbed a quarter on the tickets. She didn’t win, and she bought five more. Then she got two more with the free tickets she’d won, and those were losers too. She bought five to take home with her and another package of Twinkies to split with Connell and headed out to the car, where the boy sat oblivious of the turmoil she was in.

  She drove with an anxious feeling in the pit of her stomach, fidgeting with the button for the electric window. When they pulled in, she saw one of her good sheets strewn like a makeshift tarp over whatever tools Ed had left in the driveway. Cinderblocks held the sheet down at the corners, and the garage door was closed. The stark whiteness of the sheet put a chill in her.

  Ed was sitting at his desk. The vestibule abutted his office, a glass-paneled door between them. He had a pleasant habit of wheeling around in his chair whenever he heard her come home, but he didn’t turn this time. “We’re home,” she said. When he didn’t respond, she went over and stood behind him. He was calculating his semester grades. His desk was cluttered with tests and lab reports; little piles of them abounded. He jotted notes on a legal pad as he did his calculations. She’d never seen him do his grades with such elaborate exactitude. He had written the last name of each student, along with the roman numerals from the test sections, in a long row. She watched him meticulously check each number against those he’d written on the exams. It was double work, and moreover it was the kind of task he usually dispatched in his head.

  When she placed a hand on his shoulder, he almost leaped out of his seat. He didn’t turn around to her.

  “What’s the matter with you?” he exclaimed.

  “I didn’t mean to frighten you.”

  “Don’t bother me when I’m doing my grades.”

  “Since when?”

  “I want to get these right. It’s a big class, and I’ve graded a lot of assignments in the last few days, so I feel a little fuzzy, as you can imagine. I don’t want to make any mistakes in my calculations. When I look at this stuff long enough, I feel like I’m seeing double.”

  “What’s up with the sheet?”

  He took off his glasses, the way he sometimes did when he was going to give thoughtful consideration to a question, but then he just dropped his shoulders.

  “Sheet?”

  “Outside,” she said. “The bed sheet.”

  “I wanted to leave things there.”

  “Why did you use a good sheet?”

  “Good sheet?”

  “There were other sheets you could have used.”

  He slammed his pencil down. “What’s the difference?”

  “You used one of the sheets I put on the bed. There are about ten old sets in that linen closet that you could have used.”

  He spun around in his chair. She backed away from him instinctively. His face was red and his mouth contorted. “I took the first sheet I could find!” He was on his feet now. “I didn’t have time to work out which sheet was which. I just grabbed a sheet!” He had begun to shout. “I took the first sheet!” He had his hand in front of his face, as if to strike her or bite it. “People walk by the house all day long, peeking back there. I needed to cover everything up!”

  She had intended to let it go, but now she had to ask. “Why did you leave it out in the first place?”

  “I didn’t want to have to set it up again,” he said. “Is that okay with you? God damn it! God damn it!”

  She was quiet. She wondered whether Connell could hear.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “There’s a lot of pressure on me to get these grades right. Dealing with these kids has upset me. This younger generation has no respect. It’s disgraceful.”

  “What do you mean? What’s happened?”

  “What’s
happened,” Ed said, “is that with everything going on lately, I’ve been distracted.”

  She wanted to know what he meant, because it seemed at times as if nothing was going on, hence the big pile of ungraded papers, but she held back.

  “In my distraction, I’ve made a few calculation errors. And they’ve raised a stink about it. That’s all. These kids today feel entitled to everything instantly. You say you’ll review the grade, and they say they can’t wait until the next class. They go berserk! I like to take my time with things, give them an honest going-over. That’s impossible with a crowd of people at your desk. Especially when they speak in such a fresh and disrespectful way.”

  So much of what he was saying was odd. He was one of the most popular professors in the department, a status made all the more remarkable by the fact that he was no pushover in the grading arena. They wanted to work for him, to impress him. His belief in them made them want to believe in themselves. It also made her want to kill him sometimes, because she didn’t believe they deserved it.

  • • •

  After taking an old sheet from the linen closet, she went out to the driveway and picked up one of the cinderblocks holding down the good sheet. Beneath the sheet lay two-by-fours that had been sawn in an irregular fashion. Ed had been attempting to construct something. She couldn’t tell if it was supposed to be ornamental or structural. What it resembled more than anything was a pile for a bonfire. There were none of the heavy tools she’d imagined Ed hadn’t wanted to move several times, only this inert, enigmatic heap. She folded the good sheet up and replaced it with the old one in a way that would discourage his noticing she had done so. When she had finished, she hurried away as she sometimes did when she got spooked in the basement and felt something closing in on her.