Cottage for Sale, Must Be Moved (31 page)

I tucked her in, for even on that August day she was cold, and needing two woolen blankets. I resisted the urge to kiss her on the forehead. I knew Barbara wasn’t big on physical affection. Instead, I squeezed her hand and said good-bye.*

*
I THINK OF BARBARA NOW,
as I watch the cardinals moving between the spruce and the green feeder, its roof white with snow. I have grown used to the beauty of this sight, red on evergreen, a dusting of white. One morning after a big snow, I counted sixteen cardinals around my feeders. When guests spy a single cardinal through the living-room window, they tend to interrupt themselves mid-sentence—“Oh look! A cardinal!” I always oblige with a look, because the cardinals are always beautiful, and always worth the momentary interruption. Sometimes I tell my bird-spotting guests how many cardinals I have that year, the mating pairs, their babies, who, when they are old enough, are brought to the feeder and instructed by example how it works.

It’s fun to watch the teenage cardinals, still reddish-orange and more fluffy than feathered, their sex determined but not entirely obvious at first glance. They stare as one of their parents—usually the male—flies to the feeder and settles down for a snack. The female stands guard, signaling for danger or departure if needed. This is part of the teaching, too: one sentinel; one eater at a time. They exchange places; the female, glamorous, orange-gold with her lipsticked beak, eats some seed. The teenagers, nearby, beg their parents to feed them. They squeak and squawk and flap their wings, baby birds in the nest. But their parents ignore them, keep eating. On the first visit, the parents eventually give in to the kids. The father bird carries some seed to feed the youngsters. The movement of seed, beak-to-beak, is a beautiful and delicate operation, which I love watching in springtime when the male feeds his mate in a ritual of courtship.

This first round of family feeding is designed, I believe, to teach the kids that the feeder is a genuine food source. They will make another trip to the feeder as a family—probably the next day. This time, the parents will repeat the process of feeding themselves, one by one at the feeder, but they will not give in when the young birds make their flapping, noisy demands to be fed. Instead, the adults will urge them, by example, to the feeder. Perhaps the braver of the two will make the flight, and land on the green roof. There, he or she will squawk and flap and beg, as if to say, haven’t I been brave enough? After a few moments, one parent will reward the little one with a seed or two, moving from the birdhouse ledge to the roof, back and forth.

After a few visits with their parents, the youngsters will make it to the feeder on their own. Their first efforts are clumsy, and they are a little frightened by the mechanism that closes the feeder up tight if a heavyweight lands on the feeding bar. The siblings urge each other along, one watching, the other flying to the roof, squawking, flapping. When no papa bird arrives to feed the brave baby, she makes her hesitant way to the landing area. Once there, she radiates uncertainty, looking to her watchful sibling for encouragement as she clings to the wooden bar. Sometimes the feeder closes at this point, mistaking her lopsided, flappy weight for that of a larger bird or robber squirrel. Or sometimes a chickadee or finch appears, startling the young cardinal up and off the feeder. But eventually, the bird—or her braver sibling—will settle long enough, calmly enough, to get some of the black-oil sunflower seed; after two or three trips to the feeder, she will be a pro. And her parents are freed from feeding duties. Free to court and breed again, to repeat the process that begins with the bird calls of spring, the flapping of wings, the sunflower seed passed so gently from male to female, beak to beak.

Last summer’s babies are well grown now, and all the birds look a little scruffy in their winter coats. Already it is hard to tell which is the older generation. By spring, it will be nearly impossible. My little camera is unequipped to capture the birds on film without disturbing their morning, so I restrict myself to shots of the house. Looking for the right angle for the calendar photo, I shoot up from the driveway and down from the path that leads to Barbara’s house. I move to the walkway deck and photograph the bog, which is white and magical, a forest of bare, glistening limbs. I take a shot of my insulators capped in snow and sitting on the bench by the front door. I am burning film now, wanting to develop the roll for the sake of the calendar effort.

I make my way back to the side of the house and I surprise John at the saw. When I snap his picture, he is looking up from his work for a moment, and there is the blur of snowfall between us. You can see his strong bare arms, and you can see a snowflake or two, not yet melted in his short black hair. “A document to your macho nature,” I say, as I steal the shot.*

*
HAVING JOHN AROUND
the house, without Peter or any of his crew, feels different from having Howard here. Aside from the sound of the nail gun, John works quietly, and he moves lightly. More than once I am startled when he comes to the doorway of the office to ask me a question. Finally I realize that he is in stocking feet, that his heavy boots are stashed by the door. But there’s something else. It takes me two whole days to figure it out: he is working without a tool belt. There is no clanking of tools when he moves, no sound to give him away when he approaches the opening to the cottage. In this quiet between us, I feel a strange sort of intimacy. He is unarmored, working in my home. I wonder what it is like to be Margaret, his wife, or to be one of his kids, used to the fact of their dad fixing things at home, working on projects, tool-belted or not, bare-armed or stocking-footed. It isn’t a fantasy, exactly, but a desire to understand what it would feel like to have such a capable man around the house.

The cobbler’s kids go shoeless, I know, but I suspect that John does not neglect the projects at home. He sent me to his house to see the stone he’d used there, to see if I liked it for my cellar wall. He has been talking about building an addition, and just this week he referenced the prefinished flooring he installed at home. Somehow, between his all-night shifts at the firehouse and his day-long building projects for his many clients, John finds time to work at home, too. He has his father for a role model. Ed keeps his home in perfect repair, never shies from a project. Susan jokes that she “married her handyman.” I don’t know the whole story, but I do know that Ed’s wife died young, and he and Susan met when she needed some work done. Since they have married, they have expanded Susan’s summer cottage into a two-story home with a beautiful deck, a hot tub, a tidy little shed out back. Their project list is ongoing, it appears, and the house is well loved by Ed’s skillful hands.

I feel a little envious of Margaret and Susan, and I wonder about the assortment of wives to all these men who hammer and saw and climb on roofs, paint shutters, glaze windows, and mix mortar. I wonder if the women appreciate their men, or whether they take it for granted that their husbands can build a deck in a weekend. More than that—do they appreciate that they are married to men who are willing to give up their weekend to build that deck? Or do they think nothing of it; have they simply married men who do what they expect men to do? I wonder what the women do in turn, whether they are locked into gender typecasting in their marriages, and at least for a minute, I wonder if that would be so bad. Maybe I need to look for a man with a contractor’s license—or at least a man who knows how to use a Sawzall.

On the other hand, if I had a man like that, I would not have John in my hallway right now. John, in his wooly stocking feet.

I would be quite content to have John and his father work on my house forever.*

*
JOHN FINISHES THE HALLWAY
late on Friday. It’s dark, and he doesn’t have time to clean up. “I’ll come back tomorrow morning,” he says. I protest. I don’t want to intrude on his holiday weekend, but he does not want me to live with wood scraps and sawdust and his equipment littering my new deck on Christmas Day.

Saturday morning, John arrives with his daughters, Katelin and Nicole. They go straight for the fishing game, a little mechanical pool of fish with mouths that open and shut to reveal shiny metal inside. Wind up the pool, watch the fish swim around, and try to catch as many as you can with the little fishing rods with magnets on the ends of their lines. Katelin and Nicole fish for awhile in the living room before we adjourn to the little yellow room. They are drawn to this room with the bright-colored walls, the low futon, and all the children’s books. They pick out a story for me to read:
The Twelve Days of Christmas.
We begin by reading the words and looking at the illustrations, before I discover the girls do not know the song. So I teach it to them. Singing is not something I usually do in front of anyone except Egypt, who generally leaves the room when I begin to so much as hum a few notes. I’m not sure what has gotten into me, but here I am singing the one Christmas carol that rivals the national anthem in unsingability. Maybe it is the room, the yellow that is so bold, or maybe it is the company—accepting, and not surprised that I would sing for them.

We read the words and examine Jan Brett’s wondrous artwork to learn the gift of each day; then we sing the next verse of the song: “Five golden rings, four calling birds, three French hens, two turtle doves, and a partridge in a pear tree.” Nicole, only three, struggles with some of the words, but she’s getting the hang of it, and for the first time, I understand the beauty of this song. It isn’t meant for grown-ups, I realize, but for little kids. The repetition is a form of learning, even if the gifts, archaic, are a bit beyond a child’s grasp.

We are on the eleventh day when John comes back inside. He’s packed up his table saw and has finished sweeping the deck, clearing off as much of the frozen sawdust as he can. When he comes to the doorway of the yellow room, we don’t hear him approach. He’s in stocking feet, and we are singing.*

*
THAT AFTERNOON,
I am in the yellow room again, this time with my friend Cindy’s kids: Drew and Brooke. Cindy and I have been best friends since high school. We live several states apart, but we maintain a habit of long phone visits that we began as teenagers. Our phone calls shortened for a while, when her kids were really young. I remember Cindy calling once when I wasn’t home. “I had this awful thought,” she told my machine. “Just when my kids are old enough to leave me alone when we’re on the phone, you’ll be having babies. I just know it.”

Not quite two years ago, Cindy lost her husband, Bob, to pancreatic cancer. It is an old man’s disease, but Bob was only forty when he died. The pain began just two months after the huge surprise birthday party Cindy had organized for her husband. Bob was unable to work, barely able to speak. Cindy suspected the worst from the start, even as I urged her to be more optimistic. She dragged him from doctor to doctor, and there was no diagnosis. He was hospitalized, but still no clear diagnosis. One doctor suggested a psychiatric evaluation. Another suggested prayer. Furious, Cindy took matters into her own hands, yanked Bob’s records, sent them to a specialist at another hospital. Within hours, they had the beginning of the horrible, unlikely, deadly diagnosis.

Bob and Cindy fought hard; his illness became a full-time job for both of them. They blended conventional and alternative treatments; they sought out cancer research doctors and clinical trials, followed every lead. Bob outlived his prognosis by almost six months, but he died on Memorial Day, 1999.

Cindy is a strong and powerful woman, and she remains powerfully angry that she has lost Bob. They had a beautiful relationship, a partnership of equals who never fell out of love. They were the couple you would mention if someone brought up the impossibility of true love, of long-lasting marriage. They were the role model you hoped you could imitate. And not because they had it easy, either. Their son, Drew, is saddled with the unfortunate combination of a slew of learning disabilities and a high IQ. He lives his life at an elevated level of frustration, and this only fuels an already-fierce sibling rivalry with his younger sister, Brooke. Another couple might have divorced over their mutual focus on an inability to “fix” Drew and the tension that his condition bred in the family, but Cindy and Bob simply shared responsibilities, divided up the duties, and reminded themselves how much they loved each other every day.

My friend resents the fact that she is alone now, and I don’t blame her. I could never live her life, a life that starts at quarter of six in the morning, moves through breakfast quarrels to the bus stop, then to work. There, she spends her day—frenetic with customer requests and employee questions, interrupted by phone calls from school, visits to doctors, counselors, tutors. Then the after-school activities begin. Basketball, soccer, cornet lessons, vision therapy, ski club, more doctors, 4-H. Supper is often late, and it is not uncommon for Cindy to feed several members of Bob’s family on any given evening. I’m not sure when Cindy cares for the growing menagerie of animals. A few weeks ago, she called me, disappointed that she’d missed out on buying a goat that was advertised in the paper. “I called too late,” she said.

“I’d say you called right on time.” I am always trying to get her to slow down, to relax for a few minutes, to let go of one or another activity. She laughed at me, admitted a goat would have been some work, but soon enough she was waxing rhapsodic about the type of goat that was offered, and how hard it would be to find another. I have no doubt she’ll locate another one, and sooner than she needs it. “I need a nap after just listening to your schedule,” I have said more than once. “I don’t know how you do it.”*

*
TODAY IS THE FIRST TIME
Cindy and the kids have seen my revised home. Cindy has kept the project a secret from Drew and Brooke, wanting to see their reactions. “Wow,” Drew says. “What did you do?” We walk around the house, and I remind Cindy and the kids where the walls and doors and windows used to be. They shake their heads and ask an occasional question.