Cottage for Sale, Must Be Moved (6 page)

At midnight, or possibly a minute late, we stand in a circle and lift our glasses. I bought twenty crystal flutes for this party. A dollar a stem at Ocean State Job Lot, and well worth the price to hear the clink of our glasses as we toast. We drink. We make our private wishes. (Three wishes for the new century, I’d said on the invitation—one for yourself, one for the world, and one for the person whose name you select.) For the world, I wish for more peace, less hunger, more love, less anger. It’s an easy, predictable wish, if compound. For myself, I am torn. I’ve been working on a novel for at least five years, and I’d love to finish it this year. I wouldn’t mind a change in my relationship status either—from unequivocally single to say, single, but happily involved. I also want to move a house. In some way, the other wishes come with the cottage: a place to write, the space for a man to share. As I wish for a successful cottage-moving, I am aware I am wishing for much more.

There is Middle Eastern music on the stereo now. I study Egyptian dance with my friend Katrina, and I’d organized the CDs to segue from quiet jazz to music that makes you want to move. I was hoping that Katrina and her sweetheart, Ruben, might arrive late, but she has two dance engagements this evening; their appearance is unlikely now.

“This is dancing music,” Tony says, and I nod. “Show us some moves.” As we stand in the circle, I do. Some basic hips, some shoulder shimmies for the men, and we move together, smiling, holding our glasses, a circle of friends. I cannot imagine being luckier than this.

We pull our wish-slips from the basket. And as if it is choreographed, everyone returns to their seats to read their wishes. “Let’s read them out loud,” someone suggests.

“If you want to, but you can keep your wish to yourself, too, if you like.” I am thinking of the conversation with Erika. She and Bill didn’t make it after all, but I know there is more than one shy person in this crowd. Bruce takes the silent wishing option, but everyone else chooses to read their wish aloud. I am impressed by the wishes, by the details that each person has found for their wish-ward. Someone has wished Tony a 1990 Volvo station wagon, in excellent condition, low mileage and cheap. Tina is wished that she will be able to sleep late in the morning, that she will not be called by American Airlines at 4
A.M.
Harry? I wonder. Anna gets good wishes in her new job, and Harry’s wish from Tina is the best of all. It is long and complicated, but at the center is the wish for “the creativity to keep writing great songs like ‘When We All Get Finished, We Can All Get Happy.’” Harry is convinced the wish is from me. I deny it, emphatically, laughing. “But who else would know about that song?” He wrote it when we were opening the BU Bookstore, claiming it was a song about my management style, assuring me it was a compliment. I’ve never been 100 percent sure. He turns to Tony, who shakes his head; then to Bruce, who echoes Tony’s denial.

“It’s a secret!” I say. “Your Wish Angel is a secret!”

Of course the figuring out of Wish Angels is the perfect complement to the figuring out of wishes by those very angels. This is not unpredictable. What is funny, though, is the fact that almost everybody is convinced I am their Wish Angel. And when I say, truthfully, that I am not, each guest is entirely baffled. “Who else would know to wish me this?” A shrug, a smile from me. “Wish Angels,” I say in my best guru voice, “have special Ways of Knowing.”

ON THE FIRST WEDNESDAY
of the new millennium, I have an 8
A.M.
appointment with the chief building inspector. “Get him involved from the start,” Ed told me. “You’ll have a better chance with the town if you do.”

“Ralph Crossen,” he says, standing to greet me. I climb the single stair that separates his office from the rest of the Building Department, and shake his hand. I introduce myself and take the seat he indicates. Then I tell Mr. Crossen what I want to do, and lay my plans on his desk.

While he examines my plans, I contemplate the last week and a half. In the days since that first look at the cottage, I have been attached to the telephone, with an occasional break for some computer-aided design. I’ve managed to defend my cottage from the cottage-grabbing man, and I have hired an engineer—Erika’s dad—and secured the services of Ed and his son John as my builders. I have not yet met with the house-mover, but on Monday, he finally returned my many calls. It appears that what I want to do is possible—not without complications—but possible.

Ralph Crossen, conspicuously more awake than I am, fires questions at me. Why do I want to go to the trouble of moving a house? Am I certain the cottage is structurally sound? Am I sure moving a building would be less expensive than adding on?

Because I make a chunk of my living designing bookstores, I know enough construction jargon to answer Ralph Crossen with confidence. I speak of cost per square foot, comparing the cost of building from scratch to the cost of moving a ready-made structure, requiring only minor cosmetic work.

The cottage itself looks to be in good shape, Ed has told me. He has visited it twice, taken some measurements, given my choice his seal of approval. “We might have to blow in some insulation to meet code. It probably isn’t insulated. And you’ll need storm windows.” I made careful notes on the back of an envelope. We estimated costs for the foundation, the move, building the connecting passage, and the required electrical and plumbing work. When we added everything up, it came to $15,000, plus the cost of the cottage move. “Say $18,000 when you’re done,” Ed said.

“Say $20,000,” I replied, thinking of my hillside. I suspect I’ll spend more. Even so, I know it will be cheaper than starting from scratch. Except for the house-moving, all the other costs would come with any addition. And we’d have to build it besides.

Ralph Crossen takes to his calculator, jots down some numbers, and eventually declares I may be right about the savings. At this point, he becomes more interested in the story. How did I find it? Where is it now? Who will move it for me?

“Hayden?” he asks, and I nod.

Finally, I get to ask some questions. I’m concerned about some new regulations that specify how many bedrooms can exist on how much acreage. Will my office be considered a bedroom? I don’t want to use up my bedroom allotment in case I want to add one later. But if I call my working space an “office,” the town could assume that I have a parade of clients, that I need zoning approval, parking permits, handicapped access, who knows what else.

I juggle bookstore projects with writing work; clients rarely come to me, and I hope to do more writing than consulting in the coming years. In the spirit of hopefulness and with some guile, I have called my office “a writing studio” on the floor plan in front of Mr. Crossen. He approves of the terminology, and tells me to leave at least a five-foot opening into the space, no door. A door that closes makes a bedroom.

“I don’t see any issues from a Building perspective,” he says at last. “We’re not your problem. And I think you’ll probably be okay with Health. It’s Conservation you need to worry about. This wetland,” he says, pointing to my site map. “That’s your problem. You’ll need special permits, maybe even a variance. If I were you, I’d go right next door and talk to them while you’re here. Find out where you stand.”

He gathers the plans into a stack and hands them back to me. The interview is over. He stands, shakes my hand, looks me in the eye. “You are an enterprising young lady.” He says it approvingly; he smiles for the first time since we have met. I decide to let the young lady part go by. “It’s an original idea, sounds like it will work. But,” he says, pausing, holding onto the hard
t,
“first you’ll have to get it past Conservation.” He breathes extra emphasis into the last word in the sentence, slowing on the third syllable.
Con-sahh-vayy-shun.
I notice his smile has vanished and that when he wishes me good luck, he says it in a way that suggests I will need it.*

*
DARCY IN CONSERVATION
is pleasant and helpful. She looks at my site map, takes out her ruler, and measures the distance from my house to the bog. “All depends on where the edge of the wetlands actually is,” she says as she lays her ruler on the counter between us. “It could go either way. If you go sixteen feet out from your existing dwelling—”

“Twenty with the hallway. I need a hallway to connect the two buildings.”

“Twenty,” she repeats. “At twenty, you’ll probably land in the buffer zone.” She explains to me that building in the first fifty feet from any certified wetland is prohibited by town ordinance. “You’ll have to make a full filing and go before the Commission to request a variance for the part of the structure that will be in the no-disturb zone.”

This is not surprising news. Erika’s engineering father, Dave, has already told me that locating the exact edge of the wetland is essential. That how much or how little of the buffer zone we would disturb could make or break the project.

“I can’t shrink the building,” I say. “It already exists. And there isn’t another spot to put it on the property. It’s all hills and trees. Doing it this way makes much less disturbance than building from scratch. Will they take that into consideration?”

“Possibly. But that’s up to our commissioners. I can’t speak for them. Do you have an engineer?” I mention Dave’s name, and she nods in what seems like pleasant recognition. “Good. He’ll represent you at the hearing.”

Represent me? At a hearing?
“Can’t I represent myself?” I ask Darcy, trying to keep the panic out of my voice.

“Well, generally, the engineer represents the homeowner.” She says this kindly but firmly. I sense I have made a
faux pas
, a municipal mistake that she is willing, because I am a beginner, to overlook. Darcy continues. “You’ll need a survey and a plan drawn up. Dave will locate the edge of the wetland and make the filing.” She hands me a thick packet of forms. “Then, we’ll schedule a hearing. You’re in luck now. At this time of year, it only takes four or five weeks to get on the calendar.”

Four or five weeks!
“Can I put my name in now?”

“Not unless you can complete your paperwork within the next five days. We won’t schedule a hearing until your application is ready to be submitted. As part of your filing, you’ll have to notify abutters within three hundred feet. They need a minimum of ten days’ notice before the hearing date, and a notice has to go into the paper. And before you submit your application, you have to post and stake the property, so the commissioners can visit the site. The Commission meets every other Thursday.” She pauses; perhaps she notices I am having some trouble taking all this in.

I begin to understand the sense of foreboding I’d heard in Ralph Crossen’s elongation of
Conservation.
It isn’t that I don’t appreciate the need for conservation, even with a capital C, Conservation. I do care about the environment. I don’t drive an SUV. I reuse tin foil, and I don’t buy zip-lock bags. I recycle, even though that means I have to pay Macomber’s Sanitary Refuse an extra four dollars every time they pick up my carefully rinsed and sorted glass, tin, plastic, and paper. I belong to Co-op America. I truly consider the impact of my actions, my purchases, my footsteps on the earth. I try to tread lightly. Moving a cottage appeals to me in part because it is a form of recycling, a way to conserve resources.

As I stand on the other side of the counter, I feel caught in a web of bureaucratic requirements, even while I appreciate the value of having rules to preserve our diminishing wetland resources. According to Darcy’s rough measurements on my imperfect and outdated site map, my cottage will stretch four or five feet into that fifty-foot buffer zone.
This isn’t a shopping center.
I think of the hay bales protecting the pond behind the Cape Cod Mall when they expanded the parking lot to its very edge. I am not a developer with deep pockets and money to hire a sly attorney to get around the rules. I am someone who will struggle to pay the engineer, someone who isn’t even certain yet she’ll qualify for the home equity loan she’ll need, assuming the project is approved. I am someone who thinks about quail and groundhogs and turtles and foxes. I have no intention of disturbing any of them. I know my property; I know the bog. I know I can do this without hurting the land or its inhabitants. But the fact of my knowledge, my well-meaning, good-hearted awareness of my small ecosystem means nothing in the face of regulations. Regulations I recognize as critical, regulations I support, regulations I would happily enforce—on someone else.

“I guess I was hoping to get some indication from you,” I begin. “I mean—if there’s no chance the town will allow this, I don’t necessarily want to hire an engineer and begin this whole expensive process.”

“It all rests with the commissioners,” she says. “And a lot will depend on exactly where the wetland ends. Maybe there is a way you can attach the addition without infringing on the no-disturbance zone?”

“Maybe,” I say. I thank her for her time, take my wad of papers with instructions, and make my way downstairs to the Health Department.

Now that I understand the timing with Conservation, I realize I will probably have to purchase the cottage before I know for sure that I can move it—or use it. It looks like another one of those situations where bold action and deep faith will be required. The boldness that I mustered to buy my house almost thirteen years ago, even knowing that my job might disappear. The faith that I summoned to start my own business a year later, with a week’s vacation pay and just one client lined up. I remember the books I read about going freelance, advising me to save six or twelve months’ worth of salary before going out on my own. It is what I would have done, if I’d had the luxury of time and a habitable interim workplace. In an unlikely twist that signaled his imminent departure from the book business, the entrepreneur-owner of the company where I worked had moved the bookstore offices to his concrete plant. My asthma was kicking up every day on the job. I couldn’t afford to breathe in any more of that white dust that covered my desk or the diesel fumes that wafted into our space from the adjacent truck garage.