Cottage for Sale, Must Be Moved (4 page)

“I’m calling about the cottages—” I begin.

“Yes, you’ll need to speak to Tom Howes.” Tom wasn’t in at the moment; could he call me back? She is efficient, too, handles me so smoothly that I am barely aware she has taken my number and gone on to the next call. I am still holding the receiver to my ear, but the voice has disappeared.*

*
WHEN TOM HOWES
returns my call, his voice is businesslike, agreeable, an easy tenor. I realize as we speak that I am already invested in that little cottage; I want it, and he has it. Tom is polite and helpful, able to put me in touch with a house-mover, willing to estimate for me what I might pay to have the house moved. “Around $2,500,” he says, “depending on your location.”

My location, I think, my lovely location may cause a string of problems. I push those thoughts aside and continue with my information gathering. The owner would like the houses moved as soon as possible, Tom Howes informs me. Within a couple of weeks, by the end of January at the latest.

I explain I want to attach the cottage to my existing house, that I will have to figure it out, get permits, clear the land before I can move the cottage. I cannot get everything done within that time frame.

“Do you have any place on your property you can put the cottage for the time being?” he asks me.

He is obviously assuming that my “property” is more substantial—and flatter—than it actually is. I wonder if I will have to give up the cottage, simply because of bad timing and the fact that I am surrounded by hills and trees. I change the subject. “Have you had many calls?”

“Yes and no. Lots of people dreaming, nobody who is really serious yet.”

“Well, I am really serious.”

“I can tell,” he says, and he promises not to give away the last little cottage until I report back to him with the results of my investigation.

I hang up from Tom Howes and make the call to Bob Hayden, owner of Hayden Building Movers. A deep voice rattles out of an old answering machine. “You have reached Hayden Building Movers.” The voice does not apologize for missing my call, but tells me instead that I can reach a live person between 7:30 and 8 in the morning or 5:30 and 6 in the evening. This is the voice of a man who does not believe in receptionists—or office hours, for that matter. Can he possibly spend all his time between 8
A.M.
and 5:30
P.M
. moving houses? Are there that many houses to move on Cape Cod? The ragged voice of Hayden Building Movers, whom I suspect is Bob Hayden himself, offers a return call if I leave a message. An innocent, I leave one.*

*
NEXT, I CALL ED’S HOUSE
, where his wife, Susan, answers. “You saw them?” she says. “Let me get Eddy. He’s dying to know.” I hear her hollering for Ed before she asks me to hang on. “I think he’s running the saw. I have to go get him.”

“They look good,” I say, after Ed says hello.

I tell him about the cottage I like best and what I have learned from Tom Howes. We talk about ways we can attach the cottage to the house. Harry and I have been conferring, and we are thinking that the cottage needs to nestle in next to the house, where the patio is now. It’s the only place where I can imagine a crane could deposit a cottage safely. As I speak, I can almost hear Ed trying to recall the lay of the land. He hasn’t been here in a few years. “Just outside the kitchen, there’s a patio, remember? It runs the length of the house, and it’s about twelve feet wide. Then the land slopes down to the bog. I’m thinking the crane could lift it in from my neighbor’s driveway.”

“That does sound like the easiest place to put it,” Ed agrees.

But not easy with the Conservation Commission, I know. A few years ago, I hired an architect to help me come up with a plan for an addition. She urged me to expand into the far hillside, on the side of the house that was farthest from the bog. But I had two problems with those far-side plans. One: We were adding a room with a full concrete wall that backed into the damp earth only to get the second-floor room with the light I wanted. Two: The woodchuck would be displaced. As would the wrens and the quail who nest in the thick undergrowth. She assured me the animals would find new homes, but I was unconvinced. We are eating up so much of the Cape Cod landscape. How many creatures can we relocate before there are no homes for them at all?

I suggested we look at the other side of the house, where the southern exposure meant the rooms would get more light. It would be more accessible, and only the ants that build their hills between the stones on my patio would have to move out. “On that side,” she said, “we’d have to deal with conservation permits.” No one wants to deal with conservation permits on Cape Cod, I learned. It takes longer, it costs more, and there is no guarantee you’ll get your way. She continued: “It isn’t even worth your paying me to draw a plan until you hire an engineer and find out exactly how far you are from that bog.”

I didn’t hire the engineer. By that point, I was too discouraged and too broke to consider pursuing this fantasy any further.

“The bog could be a problem,” I say to Ed. I fill him in on what I know already. “I guess I need an engineer.”*

*
JUST BEFORE CHRISTMAS
, I sent out invitations for a millennium bash. The invitations have a color picture of a funky Y2K wand-wielding fairy, and guests are instructed to come prepared to be a Wish Angel. My concept is this: Upon arrival, each guest will select another’s name from a basket. During the course of the evening, the wishers must divine their wishees’ deepest desires, and they must do this without arousing suspicion. At midnight, we will exchange wishes.

I have invented the Wish Angels as party glue. It will be an excuse for a conversation with someone you don’t know, or don’t know well. I figure that in order to keep your angel identity hidden, you will want to circulate. But the idea has met with some resistance among my invitees. My friend Erika feels too shy to be a Wish Angel, she tells me on Tuesday, on our way over to see the cottage. “I’m not sure I could just strike up a conversation with someone I don’t know,” she says. And then, after a moment, “Would we have to wish our wishes out loud?”

I decide immediately that we do not. As we drive along Route 28, we devise the plan for the evening. All wishes will be anonymous. The slips of paper with the names on them will also serve as the slips of paper for the wishing. For selection purposes, the names will be folded inward, blank sides showing. After the Wish Angel writes the wish, he or she will return it, folded name outward, to the basket. I am pleased with Erika’s attention to the folding details. Until she went to Columbia to get her doctorate in education, Erika taught first grade. I am pretty sure she would approve of Wish Angels if she were asking her six-year-olds to make wishes for each other.

Erika is just the person you’d want to teach your first-grader. She is young and lovely, energetic, sweet, and calm, and she loves kids. When she first thought of applying to the doctoral program at Teacher’s College, Erika considered instead making a request to follow her kids for their first three years in school, teaching them first, second, and third grades. She wanted to stay with them, provide continuity, and make sure the slower learners got the attention they needed, especially the kids who were having trouble reading. Blonde, soft-spoken Erika is passionate about teaching children to read. She loves to lead them to words, to open up their worlds. She thrills at the steady progress of her classroom, and approaches her role with a certain reverence. “In one school year,” she told me once, “most kids learn to read. When you think about it, that is an amazing amount of learning in ten months’ time.” I didn’t point out that it is an amazing amount of teaching, too.

When we finally get to the cottage colony, I take her right to the last one. “It’s perfect,” she says. “And you’re right, it does match your house!” The knotty pine paneling, the deep colors on the walls, the many windows. And they are both about the same age. It is my thought that house and cottage were separated at birth. It is my fantasy that both were built by Barbara Dowe’s father. But I doubt this is true. In a Cape Codder’s mind, any one town is very far away from the next. There is a joke that in summertime, Falmouth and Hyannis are twenty-four miles and twenty-four hours apart. We’ve traveled almost twenty-nine miles to reach the cottage colony. Light years, in the geographical lexicon of Cape Cod.

“I called your dad,” I mention as we visit another cottage. Erika’s father is a surveyor and civil engineer.

“He’s off this week.”

I have met Erika’s father only in passing. I know he is the tall, blond, and silent type. Erika thinks the world of him, and I know I can trust him completely. I got his machine when I called. His disembodied voice was assured, quietly authoritative. I hope he can take me on. In my message, I tried to strike a balance between urgent need and downright desperation for his services.

“He’s swamped. I’m amazed he took this week off, but I’m glad he did. He works too hard.”

“He may be too busy, then?”

“He’s always too busy. But I mentioned your cottage idea to him at supper last night. I’m sure he’ll call you back.”*

*
IT ISN’T AS COLD TODAY,
but still we crank the heat when we get back into the car. In another fifteen minutes, we pull into Eastward Companies. I enter the office with a sense of anticipation. Sure enough, the voice is at the front desk: I recognize her as she speaks into her headset. She is an attractive blonde, fiftyish, and dressed at the exact midpoint between pink bunny sweatsuit and black-with-gold-buttons Coco Chanel original. She smiles an acknowledgment while she finishes up with her caller.

My $300 check is already written. She has papers for me, and a map that shows all the little cottages and their square footage. They are labeled. Mine is H1. She asks me if I have decided which one I want and I point to that one just as Tom Howes comes through the door. When she introduces us, he asks me if I looked at H5. Tom is pushing this other cottage because someone else wants mine.

“I called first,” I told him this morning, when he informed me of this development. He conceded that this was true.

“But he wants two of them,” he explained. In other words, I am being run over by a cottage-moving high roller.

“What does he want to do with them?” I asked. “Are you sure it matters which ones he takes? The one I want matches my house. Can’t you ask him to take another?” Tom agreed to ask, but urged me to look at the other cottage on my way over today.

“I looked at it,” I tell him now, “But I still like the one in the back better.”

“H5 is bigger,” he reminds me, “and there is already a gas heater in the living room.”

“Have you asked that guy if he cares which one he takes?” Not yet, but he promises that he will.
Do you have a deposit from him?
I want to ask. But I don’t. Instead, I say it was nice to meet him, and I promise to take one more look at H5 on our way home.

Erika and I make our way back. Route 28 in late December is another landscape entirely. I love this stretch of road in the wintertime almost as much as I hate it in the summer. The traffic is light; most locals use the back roads year-round out of habit. The T-shirt shacks are all sealed up, and you can’t get any saltwater taffy till next spring. The miniature-golf courses look like small abandoned kingdoms, their moats drained and their most dazzling structures shrink-wrapped in brown Hefty bags. The motels claim “No Vacancy,” and by this the owners mean to say, “No Heat, No Business, and We’re in Florida, Anyway.” Fried clam joints and ice cream parlors and seafood restaurants have signs out front. “See you next season!” If it weren’t for these upbeat declarations of future possibility, you would think the place abandoned, left behind. In the clear winter light, the tackiness and 1950s style of these roadside attractions is evident. It seems entirely possible that you have entered a time warp.

Across from the Dairy Queen, we take a right into the cottage colony and get out of the car. H5 is at the very front of the colony, facing the street. It is larger, and it is in fine shape. It has a closet in the living room, which is a bonus feature, and there is an extra window. The layout is slightly different. This cottage has a back door off the kitchen, instead of a side door out the living room, and the orientation of the rooms is the reverse of H1. There is no reason not to like it, but there is also, for me, no reason to love it.

We head back to my cottage for one last look, and I hear their voices before I see them—a man and a woman, the kids circling around. He has a clipboard. They are standing in the screened porch of my cottage. I can barely hear their conversation, even as I intentionally, guiltlessly eavesdrop, but I make out enough to realize he is a realtor! Showing her my cottage!
Don’t bother writing a check!
I want to tell her.
I just put a deposit on this one. Have a look at H5, why don’t you? It’s bigger, too!

On the way home, Erika and I speculate about the woman and the children, about the man who wants to buy two cottages. We consider how much it matters what cottage I move. Do I want to move a cottage, any cottage, or do I want to move the last little cottage in the row, that cottage only? The answer is not clear to me. I suppose I am willing to move any cottage that fits, but I want the cottage with the crooked Mexican tiles in the kitchen, the funny purple bedroom with the tiny round hole in the wall where someone connected a hose to the water heater—to provide water for the aquarium that must have rested on the rough built-in table. I know I’ll take down the tiles, pull out the table, and patch the hole in the wall. But the sense of life and caring in that cottage still appeals. If I’m going to move a cottage, I want to move a cottage with personality, with history, a cottage that has been loved.

With no traffic, it takes less than light years to get home from Harwich, and in that time I resolve to hold fast to my quirky cottage. To guard it jealously, to defend it, to tell Tom Howes to find another cottage for that greedy man who wants two.*