I’m sorry, How. I lost track of you today.
Time marches on, Miss Glenn.
It was that house and all the time it was taking up. It was being back with people again. No one mentioned him anymore. For reasons of delicacy or because he was gone; she wasn’t sure why, but there was a loss in there somewhere, as though he was being forgotten by default, forgotten in favor of her.
Her tummy nudged her. There had been a little ache there all day, which she had attributed to having not eaten. She had assumed that the sandwich and tea would take care of it. It didn’t. In fact, she felt a little nauseous with it. It was a little burn that sat just under her diaphragm, not unlike heartburn, except that it hadn’t really gone away. She rubbed it. There were Tums in the cupboard. She found them and chewed two, the cherry flavor oversweet, making her cheeks pinch in.
The rest of her sandwich went uneaten and sleep was long in coming.
The Belisle house added a mechanical problem to its list of irritations. Several weeks into the listing, the faucet of the tub—the tub itself had not been as big an attraction as Glenn had supposed it would be; in fact a number of people had commented on the feet of the thing as being “a little scary”—began to drip. Being in and out of the house all the time, it wasn’t very obvious. Glenn would only notice when they went into the bathroom, and on some occasions the shower curtain was drawn. Or not. It looked much better drawn, and whenever she showed the house, she made a point of drawing the plain white curtain around its maw.
The dripping tap left a little puddle in the bottom of the tub, giving the appearance that the water did not properly drain. Which was true: it didn’t. Although most houses have a lurch or two in their floors, this one had proven difficult enough to unload without the added issue of mechanical breakdown.
She spoke to Mr. Cassevetes at the insurance company about having a couple of little things taken care of. It was an assortment of small items that needed attention that in the rush of the buyer’s season, somehow, Glenn had simply not gotten around to asking for.
“In a week or so it may become necessary to discuss another reduction,” Glenn added, in the last seconds of the conversation.
“A reduction? What?” She had never met Mr. Cassevetes, but he always sounded like he had something in his mouth—a cigar or a sandwich. She pictured him large.
“In the asking price, Mr. Cassevetes. It doesn’t seem to be moving. We’d not had so much as an offer.”
He grunted and it sounded as though he might have swallowed. The pause on the other end became so long that Glenn was tempted to ask if he was still there. She waited patiently.
“I’ll think about that. We’re not in the charity business, Mrs. Darnley,” was his patient answer. He agreed to a handyman for one day.
Glenn met the handyman at the house in the morning, using a fellow she had used at her own home, Mr. Gretner. She pointed out the pillar-cum-cairn at the foot of the sidewalk and asked that it be removed and the hole covered as well as possible. She explained about the tap in the upper bath and added that she believed a washer was all it would need. She asked him to measure the Murphy bed frame in the small room off the kitchen downstairs.
“I’d like to be able to tell people what they need,” she explained. “I’m not going to buy a mattress.” There was the problem of the back screen door opening and swinging in the wind. “I can imagine the damage to the spring,” she said, by way of explanation. She also asked that he install a lock and latch on the attic hatch, lock it and give her the key.
“How long do you suppose, Mr. Gretner?”
Tom Gretner walked around the pillar in the front and Glenn followed him around to the back of the house where he took a look at the screen door, well latched and firmly closed at the moment. He glanced at her questioningly. “Well, it’s latched now, but it seems to be at its own whim. I arrived here yesterday and found it banging against the side of the house.”
Tom opened and closed it cleanly a couple of times, peered meaningfully into its workings and closed it again. “Can’t see what the problem would be,” he said.
Glenn popped two Tums into her mouth from her pocket. “Look over there, Mr. Gretner,” she said, pointing to the wall on the outside of the house where the screen door had already left a mark. “It’s banging against the paint,” she said defensively. “Just tighten something on it. The wind may be catching it.” Tom opened and closed the door again, and the two of them ran their eyes around the edges of the door. It fitted smoothly, no place for wind to catch.
“Okay, Mrs. Darnley, will do,” he said.
“And you suppose it will take how long?”
“Lock and that’s going to take an hour—I’ll have to run to the hardware for that. Pick up a washer while I’m there…wouldn’t mind a look at the tap before I go. Washer won’t take long if that’s the need of it, and then the pillar out front—” He licked his lips, staring off into space. He checked his watch. It was after nine.
“Could be packed up and out of here by two or three. Does that suit you?”
Glenn smiled. “That will be lovely,” she said. And left him to it.
After leaving the Belisle Headache, as she had come to think of it, Glenn showed a little two-bedroom on a pricey street to a young nurse straight from the country. The nurse loved it and put in a respectable offer on the $75,000 place right away.
Now why couldn’t that happen with the Belisle place?
Around one-thirty Glenn dropped by the Belisle house. Mr. Gretner’s patchwork truck was still parked outside. The pillar was gone. She walked up the stone path, hardly glancing to see the earth filled in, and went inside. She could hear the terrible whine of a power tool. She waited for it to stop or subside. When it did she called up. “Mr. Gretner! How goes the lonely battle?”
Tom came to the top of the stairs and walked down two or three steps to see her better. He looked odd without his cap. He was quite bald-headed and looked chubby and babylike with the sun streaming down on the top of his pink skull from the window on the stairwell. “Just putting your lock on for you, now,” he said. “That post outside took a little longer than I thought it would. She was dug in deep. I put it out back in the yard by the trees till someone comes to claim her. Put a new washer in the bath tap. Should be all right for you now,” he said. “Be another half hour or so. Two’s what I said, right?”
“Oh, yes. Don’t mind me. I was in the area, is all. I’ll leave you to it. I’d like to show it today at three if I can. I have a couple interested,” she said casually. Mr. Gretner would have no idea (or interest) in the epic Selling of the Belisle House.
She turned to go and he called back to her: “I—um—tightened your screen door for you,” he said.
She could hear the smile on his face without turning around to see it. “I’m very pleased,” she said, hoping he could hear hers.
The Armstrongs met Glenn outside 362 Belisle at three on the nose. Mr. Gretner’s truck was gone. She had hoped they would be late so that she could just walk through the house and see that everything was tidy.
They pulled up in a green, late-model Volvo station wagon, thankfully without their apparent children. The Armstrongs were Cal and Effie, a dentist and his hygienist wife. Effie explained right away that they had to practically “run through” the house, as they had to pick up the children in a half hour.
“Traffic will be terrible,” she said, tilting her head and looking over the place. They waited for Glenn’s lead.
“Shall we, then?” And she led them up the walk, with Cal pulling up the back.
They passed by the place where the pillar had been removed without remark. Glenn glanced down at it, the black earth turned up like a grave, recently filled.
Breezily she said, “The hedge goes all the way around the house. Caragana, you know. It will bloom, come summer.” They went inside.
They did, indeed, run through the house. They did the upstairs first. “We’re practically there anywa
y!” Effie said. The tap did not drip. They liked the little blue bedroom. They had two children, Effie said. “Earl’s nine and Katie’s thirteen. She wouldn’t mind the yellow room. You’re sure that smell will come out?”
Glenn assured them it would. They nodded agreeably to everything Glenn told them.
The back door stayed shut when the three of them went through to look at the backyard.
“It’s a lovely, large backyard. Perfect for youngsters,” Glenn said.
“It looks a little like a cemetery,” Cal snickered. Glenn turned with a smile, about to explain the style of the English garden, when she saw what they were referring to.
Perched against the back fence, almost but not quite buried behind the trees and tangles, was the pillar, boldly white against the black and gray of the hibernating perennials. Spectral.
“Is that where they’re buried?” Cal laughed. “Waverley, is it?” he read, tilting his head sideways. Glenn glanced over at Effie, who had a hand to her throat.
A breeze came up and blew dead, year-old leaves around the yard.
“They’re picking it up tonight,” she said.
The Armstrongs admitted they hadn’t given the time necessary to really look at the house. They admitted it was most of the things they were looking for. They asked Glenn if she would mind if they slept on it and gave her call in a couple of days. That was most often the code for “no, thank you.”
Glenn thanked them and gave them another issue of her card and told them that there were a number of houses on the market in their price range. “None are as lovely as this,” she added.
“Not as convenient either,” Cal said. “This one’ll take you from cradle to grave.” He laughed and winked at Glenn. She smiled gamely and let him have a little chuckle, but the joke was wearing thin.
They didn’t make an offer.
After they drove away, she walked through the house, checking to see if all was at rights. She thought briefly of propping the window in the sickroom open again; she couldn’t help but think of it as that, and decided it was a bad idea. She also didn’t want to go in there. She left the door open. The attic hatch was locked. The keys were on the counter in the kitchen, along with the carefully printed measurements for the Murphy bed frame. She found herself walking slowly and thoughtfully through the rooms once more, the light starting to fade outside, the house looking sleepier in the dull light.
She went down the stairs in the same way, eyes roaming up and down walls, as though trying to discern something that she couldn’t openly see.
Her footsteps spoke on the bare wood floors through the living room and dining room. She checked the back screen door. It was latched and behaving like a child warned enough times.
On the way back through she stopped in the living room. She stared into the clean, untried fireplace. Up the walls. Through the window.
Eyes upward.
“You’re going to have to do better than this,” she told the house. “I’m going to wash my hands of you.
“I mean it.” She stuck her hands into the pockets of her raincoat and flapped it open and shut a few times as though in supplication.
She looked sternly around the room once more. She locked up before leaving.
She did so tenderly, as though to make up.
The house sold the following Monday.
The couple, Dan and Rebecca Mason, were in their mid-thirties, childless, but wanting a larger home. They were a very attractive couple, although he was on the softer side of masculine and that wasn’t necessarily Glenn’s type, but she could see how very lovely his face and form were. She was tall and slender and dark and very self-assured. They both were. Glenn actually found them rather bold at first, when they separated from her (and from each other) and wandered around the house unaided. She respected confidence, of course.
For once, the whole house behaved. The back door had decided to stay put since Mr. Gretner fastened or tightened or bewitched it, the tap did not leak and, as predicted, the earth in the hole where the pillar had been had blown over, or whatever it had done, and looked less craven and conspicuous. The Waverley cairn had been picked up. By whom she did not know. She had simply put in a call to the insurers and they had had it removed.
She decided she liked them when she heard Mr. Mason scream from the room with the Murphy bed, “Ilove it! Becca, come and see!” The two women joined him in there and couldn’t help but catch his enthusiasm. The Murphy bed was pulled down and took up much of the doorway space.
“It’s so funky,” he said. Becca touched it delicately with a long, manicured finger. She was a director of some sort at a medical administrative place or something downtown. She did not say it so much as elocuted it, and Glenn wondered if it was a new promotion. Something about a health professional with long nails bothered Glenn, but she, of course, kept her poker face. Dan was a graphic artist at Clayton and Marks. The agency had used them once, Glenn had mentioned. She believed they did the Shelter logo.
“It’s my studio! Totally!” Becca looked dubious as far as Glenn could see, but she could, for the first time, smell something good in the house.
“I knew I would find someone who would appreciate that particular little gem if I waited,” Glenn said, smiling. “I have the dimensions for the mattress, if you’re interested.”
“It’s beautiful,” Becca said. The couple met eyes.
And Glenn took her cue. “If you don’t mind, I’ll leave you two for a moment. Please enjoy the house, I’ve got a call to make. Do you mind?” She was bluffing, giving them a chance to get onto the same page.
She disappeared onto the front step. She called the office and chatted briefly with Elsie. She wanted to say she had a nibble, but would not for the world jinx it. She would give them ten minutes. She called her dry cleaner. Her skirts were ready. They had not been able to get a spot out of her jacket. She chewed a couple of Tums.
After ten minutes had passed, she went back inside, glad of it, the spring air crisp that morning, although the sun was warm. Already summer seemed a possibility. “Well, I’m done with my calls,” she said casually. “What can I show you?”
“How about the deed?” Mr. Mason said, grinning broadly, his arm wrapped around his wife’s waist. She smiled at her husband and laughed, a tinkly laugh.
And that was that. Howard would have been pleased.
Company You Keep
One
Rebecca Mason dipped the cloth into the bucket and rinsed it in the warm water. Carefully she squeezed out the excess, and as she did, the scent of pine filled her nose. It was a good smell. Clean. She liked things to smell clean. She folded the cloth in half, and then in half again, forming a neat, hand-sized square. Then she ran it over the baseboard from the corner, an arm’s length from her, to the end of her other shoulder, precisely; in this way she kept track of where she had washed, and what was yet to be done. She repeated this, moving the bucket an equal distance each time, so that it stayed just four inches to her left. Her eyes followed the motion of the cloth, and she moved gracefully, but her thoughts were not in the yellow room at the end of the upstairs hall at all.
In her head, a cocktail party was in full swing.
Ice tinkled gently in glasses. Laughter was discreet and elegant. Conversations were quiet and thoughtful, murmurs really, in a large room, its high ceilings molded with ivy leaves intricately woven and forming an enormous circle around a giant chandelier. Crystals hung suspended in light, casting stars on the four walls surrounding it. Sometimes, instead of a chandelier, the room was lit with hundreds of tiny white lights strung on cord so fine it was invisible. Becca spent a lot of time constructing that room.
It was an old fantasy.
How do you do? I’m Rebecca Mason.She usually wore black Armani, cocktail-length, of course, and carried a small, discreet Prada bag. Her hair differed each time, concurrent with the time of day. If it was an early-evening affair, she wore it loose. If it was later, her hair was pulled back and held f
ast with a clip covered in black velvet; only rarely did she wear it completely up. Her jewelry was minimal and well chosen. It also varied, tastefully.
What do you do?
If there was music, it was strictly in the background. The music in Becca’s fantasy cocktail parties was the low rumble of important voices, from the mouths of important people. Who they were in reality was less important to her than who she was in their midst. At these affairs, Becca was an equal among giants. She was a success.
How do you do? I’m Rebecca Mason. I’m the Director of Patient Services at the Center for Improved Health. We were featured in theAtlanticlast year.
The cloth swept efficiently across the south wall, and Becca swiveled around on her bottom and repeated the process with barely a missed motion. She was nearly done. The floor had been washed, rinsed, and rinsed a second time already, early that morning. The walls had been rinsed the night before. They were clean, bright and without streaks.
It was midafternoon, and they had been in the house a week. The previous weekend had been entirely taken up with the steady and constant movement of boxes, endless boxes, more boxes than she was sure she had packed, and she had mentioned to her husband that she believed they were breeding. It had been a joke, of course, but a joke was rare enough from her that he had looked twice before laughing.
Under his breath, not more than a beat later, she had been sure she’d heard him say,I’m glad someone’s getting it around here, but when she asked him to repeat himself, he said, “Nothing.”
You’re very young to be a director.
Yes.
The Dwelling Page 4