A Place I've Never Been (14 page)

The house I loved best, however, the house where, in those mad months, I imagined I might actually live with Ted, was the sort that most brokers shrink from—pretty enough, but drab, undistinguished. No dishwasher, no cathedral ceilings. It would sell, if it sold at all, to a young couple short on cash, or a retiring widow. So don't ask me why I loved this house. My passion for it was inexplicable, yet intense. Somehow I was utterly convinced that this, much more than the sleek suburban one-story Susan and I shared, with its Garland stove and Sub-Zero fridge—this was the house of love.

The day I told Susan I was leaving her, she threw the Cuisinart at me. It bounced against the wall with a thud, and that vicious little blade, dislodged, rolled along the floor like a revolving saw, until it gouged the wall. I stared at it, held fast and suspended above the ground. “How can you just come home from work and tell me this?” Susan screamed. “No preparation, no warning—”

“I thought you'd be relieved,” I said.

“Relieved!”

She threw the blender next. It hit me in the chest, then fell on my foot. Instantly I dove to the floor, buried my head in my knees, and was weeping as hoarsely and furiously as a child.

“Stop throwing things!” I shouted weakly.

“I can't believe you,” Susan said. “You tell me you're leaving me for a man and then you want me to mother you, take care of you? Is that all I've ever been to you? Fuck that! You're not a baby!”

I heard footsteps next, a car starting, Charlotte barking. I opened my eyes. Broken glass, destroyed machinery all over the tiles.

I got in my car and followed her. All the way to the beach. “Leave me alone!” she shouted, pulling off her shoes and running out onto the sand. “Leave me the fuck alone!” Charlotte romped after her, barking.

“Susan!” I screamed. “Susan!” I chased her. She picked up a big piece of driftwood and hit me with it. I stopped, dropped once again to my knees. Susan kept running. Eventually she stopped. I saw her a few hundred feet up the beach, staring at the waves.

Charlotte kept running between us, licking our faces, in a panic of barks and wails.

Susan started walking back toward me. I saw her getting larger and larger as she strode down the beach. She strode right past me.

“Charlotte!” Susan called from the parking lot. “Charlotte!” But Charlotte stayed.

Susan got back in her car and drove away.

At first I stayed at Ted's house. But Susan—we were seeing each other again, taking walks on the beach, negotiating—said that was too much, so I moved into the Dutch Boy Motel. Still, every day, I went to see the house, either to eat my lunch or just stand in the yard, feeling the sun come down through the branches of the trees there. I was learning a lot about the house. It had been built in 1934 by Josiah Applegate, a local contractor, as a wedding present for his daughter, Julia, and her husband, Spencer Bledsoe. The Bledsoes
occupied the house for six years before the birth of their fourth child forced them to move, at which point it was sold to another couple, Mr. and Mrs. Hubert White. They, in turn, sold the house to Mr. and Mrs. Salvatore Rinaldi, who sold it to Mrs. Barbara Adams, a widow, who died. The estate of Mrs. Adams then sold the house to Arthur and Penelope Hilliard, who lived in it until their deaths just last year at the ages of eighty-six and eighty-two. Mrs. Hilliard was the first to go, in her sleep; according to her niece, Mr. Hilliard then wasted away, eventually having to be transferred to Shady Manor Nursing Home, where a few months later a heart attack took him. They had no children. Mr. Hilliard was a retired postman. Mrs. Hilliard did not work, but was an active member of the Ladies' Village Improvement Society. She was famous for her apple cakes, which she sold every year at bake sales. Apparently she went through periods when she would write letters to the local paper every week, long diatribes about the insensitivity of the new houses and new people. I never met her. She had a reputation for being crotchety, but maternal. Her husband was regarded as docile and wicked at poker.

The house had three bedrooms—one pitifully small—and two and a half baths. The kitchen cabinets were made of knotty, dark wood which had grown sticky from fifty years of grease, and the ancient yellow Formica countertops were scarred with burns and knife scratches. The wallpaper was red roses in the kitchen, leafy green leaves in the living room, and was yellowing and peeling at the edges. The yard contained a dogwood, a cherry tree, and a clump of gladiolas. Overgrown privet hedges fenced the front door, which was white with a beaten brass knocker. In the living room was a dusty pair of sofas, and dark wood shelves lined with Reader's Digest Condensed Books, and a big television from the early seventies. The shag carpeting—coffee brown—appeared to be a
recent addition.

The quilts on the beds, the Hilliards' niece told me, were handmade, and might be for sale. They were old-fashioned patchwork quilts, no doubt stitched together over several winters in front of the television. “Of course,” the niece said, “if the price was right, we might throw the quilts in—you know, as an extra.”

I was a man with the keys to fifty houses in my pockets. Just that morning I had toured the ten bathrooms of the $10.5 million oceanfront. And I was smiling. I was smiling like someone in love.

I took Ted to see the house about a week after I left Susan. It was a strange time for both of us. I was promising him my undying love, but I was also waking up in the middle of every night crying for Susan and Charlotte. We walked from room to room, just as I'd imagined, and just as I'd planned, in the doorway to the master bedroom, I turned him around to face me, bent his head down (he was considerably taller than me), and kissed him. It was meant to be a moment of sealing, of confirmation, a moment that would make radiantly, abundantly clear the extent to which this house was meant for us, and we for it. But instead the kiss felt rehearsed, dispassionate. And Ted looked nervous. “It's a cute house, Paul,” he said. “But God knows I don't have any money. And you already own a house. How can we just
buy
it?”

“As soon as the divorce is settled, I'll get my equity.”

“You haven't even filed for divorce yet. And once you do, it could take years.”

“Probably not
years
.”

“So when
are
you filing for divorce?”

He had his hands in his pockets. He was leaning against a window draped with white
flounces of cotton and powderpuffs.

“I need to take things slow,” I said. “This is all new for me.”

“It seems to me,” Ted said, “that you need to take things slow and take things fast at the same time.”

“Oh, Ted!” I said. “Why do you have to complicate everything? I just love this house, that's all. I feel like this is where I—where we—where we're meant to live. Our dream house, Ted. Our love nest. Our cottage.”

Ted was looking at his feet. “Do you really think you'll be able to leave Susan? For good?”

“Well, of course, I— Of course.”

“I don't believe you. Soon enough she's going to make an ultimatum. Come back, give up Ted, or that's it. And you know what you're going to do? You're going to go back to her.”

“I'm not,” I said. “I wouldn't.”

“Mark my words,” Ted said.

I lunged toward him, trying to pull him down on the sofa, but he pushed me away.

“I love you,” I said.

“And Susan?”

I faltered. “Of course, I love Susan too.”

“You can't love two people, Paul. It doesn't work that way.”

“Susan said the same thing, last week.”

“She's right.”

“Why?”

“Because it isn't fair.”

I considered this. I considered Ted, considered Susan. I had known Susan since Mrs. Polanski's homeroom in fourth grade. We played
Star Trek
on the playground together, and roamed the back streets of Bayside. We were children in love, and we sought out every movie or book we could find about children in love.

Ted I'd known only a few months, but we'd made love with a passion I'd never imagined possible, and the sight of him unbuttoning his shirt made my heart race.

It was at that moment that I realized that while it is possible to love two people at the same time, in different ways, in the heart, it is not possible to do so in the world.

I had to choose, so of course, I chose Susan.

That day—the day of Ed and Grace-Anne, the day that threatened to end with the loss of my beloved house—Susan did not call me at work. The morning progressed slowly. I was waiting for Ed and Grace-Anne to reappear at the window and walk in the office doors, and sure enough, around eleven-thirty, they did. The receptionist led them to my desk.

“I'm Ed Cavallaro,” Ed said across my desk, as I stood to shake his hand. “This is my wife.”

“How do you do?” Grace-Anne said. She smelled of some sort of fruity perfume or lipstick, the kind teenaged girls wear. We sat down.

“Well, I'll tell you, Mr. Hoover,” Ed said, “we've been summering around here for years, and I've just retired—I worked over at Grumman, upisland?”

“Congratulations,” I said.

“Ed was there thirty-seven years,” Grace-Anne said. “They gave him a party like you
wouldn't believe.”

“So, you enjoying retired life?”

“Just between you and me, I'm climbing the walls.”

“We're active people,” Grace-Anne said.

“Anyway, we've always dreamed about having a house near the beach.”

“Ed, let
me
tell about the dream.”

“I didn't mean
that
dream.”

“I had a dream,” Grace-Anne said. “I saw the house we were meant to retire in, clear as day. And then, just this morning, walking down the street, we look in your window, and what do we see? The very same house! The house from my dream!”

“How amazing,” I said. “Which house was it?”

“That cute little one for one sixty-five,” Grace-Anne said. “You know, with the cedar shingles?”

“I'm not sure.”

“Oh, I'll show you.”

We stood up and walked outside, to the window. “Oh, that house!” I said. “Sure, sure. Been on the market almost a year now. Not much interest in it, I'm afraid.”

“Now why is that?” Ed asked, and I shrugged.

“It's a pleasant enough house. But it does have some problems. It'll require a lot of TLC.”

“TLC we've got plenty of,” Grace-Anne said.

“Grace-Anne, I told you,” Ed said, “the last thing I want to do is waste my retirement fixing up.”

“But it's my dream house!” Grace-Anne fingered the buttons of her blouse. “Anyway, what harm can it do to look at it?”

“I have a number of other houses in roughly the same price range which you might want to look at—”

“Fine, fine, but first, couldn't we look at that house? I'd be so grateful if you could arrange it.”

I shrugged my shoulders. “It's not occupied. Why not?”

And Grace-Anne smiled.

Even though the house was only a few hundred feet away, we drove. One of the rules of real estate is; Drive the clients everywhere. This means your car has to be both commodious and spotlessly clean. I spent a lot—too much—of my life cleaning my car—especially difficult, considering Charlotte.

And so we piled in—Grace-Anne and I in front, Ed in back—and drove the block or so to Maple Street. I hadn't been by the house for a few weeks, and I was happy to see that the spring seemed to have treated it well. The rich greens of the grass and the big maple trees framed it, I thought, rather lushly.

I unlocked the door, and we headed into that musty interior odor which, I think, may well be the very essence of stagnation, cryogenics, and bliss.

“Just like I dreamed,” Grace-Anne said, and I could understand why. Probably the Hilliards had been very much like the Cavallaros.

“The kitchen's in bad shape,” Ed said. “How's the boiler?”

“Old, but functional.” We headed down into the spidery basement. Ed kicked things.

Grace-Anne was rapturously fingering the quilts. “Ed, I love this house,” she said. “I love it.”

Ed sighed laboriously.

“Now, there are several other nice homes you might want to see—”

“None of them was in my dream.”

But Ed sounded hopeful. “Grace-Anne, it can't hurt to look. You said it yourself.”

“But what if someone else snatches it from under us?” Grace-Anne asked, suddenly horrified.

“I tend to doubt that's going to happen,” I said in as comforting a tone as I could muster. “As I mentioned earlier, the house has been on the market for over a year.”

“All right,” Grace-Anne said reluctantly, “I suppose we could look—
look
—at a few others.”

“I'm sure you won't regret it.”

“Yes, well.”

I turned from them, breathing evenly.

Of course she had no idea I would sooner make sure the house burned down than see a contract for its purchase signed with her husband's name.

I fingered some matches in my pocket. I felt terrified. Terrified and powerful.

When I got home from work that afternoon, Susan's car was in the driveway and Charlotte, from her usual position of territorial inspection on the front stoop, was smiling up at me in her doggy way. I patted her head and went inside, but when I got there, there was a palpable silence which was far from ordinary, and soon enough I saw that its source was Susan, leaning over the kitchen counter in her sleek lawyer's suit, one leg
tucked under, like a flamingo.

“Hi,” I said.

I tried to kiss her, and she turned away.

“This isn't going to work, Paul,” she said.

I was quiet a moment. “Why?” I asked.

“You sound relieved, grateful. You do. I knew you would.”