Dream House (36 page)

Gina laughed—it was a line her mother had always used to make her young daughters feel safe in the ocean. Here—where the waters were dark and your body dangled into a crude world of crustaceans and barnacle-covered rocks, beer bottle shards and strands of seaweed that would wind spookily around your limbs—swimming required a special trust.

Paul sidled up to Gina and put his hand around her waist. “I missed you,” he said, “and I've missed this.”

“Me too. I'm so glad you came. Thank you. It was just the right thing.” She kissed his salty lips.

When Ben and Esther were tired, Paul swam with them back to shore. The three of them hauled themselves out on the dock and stood in the dark waiting for Gina.

“Go on in—I'll be up in a minute,” she called.

She swam away from the dock without looking back. When she reached the middle of the cove, she stopped to gaze at the soft house lights that dotted the hill. Each bright window illuminated the life within; a TV in one revealed a life within a life. Her parents' house was a fading shroud—its interior made irrelevant, as though Christo himself had thrown a huge white sheet over it. For a moment, the
clouds parted; the full moon floated like a porcelain plate on the high tide. She waited. Finally, when the darting glow of her family's light brought the house alive again, she dove.

Underwater again, she felt the thrill of unaccountability, of disappearing from the earth. Underwater—where the daily insistence of concerns and negotiations was short-circuited by the happy propulsion of arms and legs defending her buoyancy, where only a single question, the one that pressed against her chest, mattered: how much air remained?
Swimming
—like making love.

It was late by the time Ben and Esther fell asleep on top of their sleeping bags. Gina and Paul couldn't wait until morning to look more closely at the letters. They sat side by side taking turns holding the flashlight, reading, becoming more used to the graceful but difficult script the more they read. The letters were brief and surprisingly to the point—no Watergate Tapes, but Jefferson and Washington sparred like the politicians they were.

When they'd finished reading, they folded up the letters and lay on their backs, silently enjoying the occasional breeze sweeping their damp skin. The sky rumbled.

“I can't believe those two great presidents,” Paul said. “How lovely their handwriting was, and how scathing their language. I can see where it would've been bad news for Jefferson, had the letters been published—I mean, he called Washington's administration ‘aristocratic and monarchical.' And I loved, ‘Your military prefers the calm of despotism to the boisterous sea of liberty!' Them's fightin' words!”

Gina looked at Paul, admiring his handsome profile in the dark. She remembered the feeling of freedom she'd had in the cove. “I
prefer the ‘boisterous sea of liberty' myself; don't you?” she said.

When Paul turned to her, his expression filled with warmth and knowing, she rolled over and pressed her body against his, sticky with salt. He stroked the hollow between her hipbones, and she shivered. Her every cell had been awakened by her discovery, the cove water, the sounds of a summer night outside the window. They made love slowly and silently, attending carefully to each familiar touch.

When they were finished, they put space between them to let their skin cool. Gina reached for Paul's hand. “I've made it so hard for all of you lately,” she said.

“Shhh . . . it's okay.”

“It's not entirely okay,” she said firmly but gently. “We need to talk about what's been happening with me—not tonight, but soon.”

“Good. I've been wanting to talk about it, too.”

They lay quiet for a while. Gina had begun to drift off when Paul said, “Gina, about Marin.”

“Tomorrow,” she said sleepily.

“I need to get this off my chest.”

She was fully alert now, eyes wide open.

“While you were gone,” Paul went on, “I really thought about why it's taking us so long to build a house there. I mean, don't you think it's because it's not really right for us?”

She hadn't seen this coming. Paul had always been so enthusiastic about the property; did he honestly have second thoughts or was this merely a tactic to draw out her feelings?

Paul pulled back to look at her. “Gina? Am I all wrong about this?”

“No,” she said. “I thought it was just me.”

“If you had doubts, why didn't you say something?”

“I wasn't sure. I thought I had a . . . a design block, or a flaw because I couldn't fall in love with the property. I mean, everyone keeps telling us how beautiful it is. And it
is
beautiful . . .”

“Yes. Yet, somehow, after two years, it hasn't won your heart. If I'd been paying attention, I'd have realized sooner that this was also true for me. I've been so focused on the idea of . . . honestly? . . . of getting out of my family's house and having a place that's really
ours,
that I overlooked the most important thing: it's not what we really want.”

A tear slid down Gina's cheek, the dissolution of the dream she and Paul had believed they shared. “It's missing something.”

“Yes,” Paul said.

More thunder, closer now. Gina got up and went to the window, as she had thousands of times in this house. Tonight, she registered this movement to be as profound as it was familiar and ordinary. It was this power they'd been missing at the Marin property, the inducement that can draw one away—even from the person to whom you've just made love—to the window, again and again.

If I were asked to name the chief benefit of the house, I should say: the house shelters daydreaming, the house protects the dreamer, the house allows one to dream in peace.

Gaston Bachelard,
The Poetics of Space

Chapter 15

Gina shot up in her sleeping bag, struggling to sort out the signals that had aroused her from her barely-sleep.

She turned to find Esther kneeling next to her. “There's a tapping noise,” she whispered. “I can't sleep.”

The trapped bird, Gina thought. But she wouldn't say, because Esther, the nature lover, would worry, and it was too late to do anything about it. “Let's snuggle.”

Esther stretched out next to her for the first time in a year, since she'd stopped appearing at her parents' bedroom door every morning. Now, Gina appreciated the soft skin of her daughter's arms, the sweet-salty smell of her hair, her pepperminty breath.

All at once, rain came down in torrents outside; thunder roared.

“Thunderstorms are exciting,” Esther said. “I wish we had them more in San Francisco. Were you afraid of them when you were little?”

“Just once,” Gina said. “When I was about your age. Cassie and I were on a sailing trip with Gran and Grandpa. We were headed down east on a borrowed boat for a week, and one very foggy day, we were trying to enter a harbor, and Gran couldn't see the buoys that marked the channel. Out of nowhere the wind came up, and it started to rain and thunder. We were flying into the harbor, and suddenly we could
hear waves crashing, way too close. Then we saw the huge rocks of the shore right in front of us. We were soaring toward them!”

“Were you scared?”

“Gran gave us all orders, and we were scurrying around trimming lines and slipping all over the deck. Gran kept yelling, ‘We've got it—don't worry! Hang on!' As soon as she'd come about and we were out of danger, I remember she said, ‘That was quite an adventure!'”

“She wasn't scared?”

“If she was, she wasn't showing it. And you know what? Because she seemed so sure of herself, we never believed we weren't safe.” Again, Gina thought:
casa senza donna, barca senza timone.

The storm still raged, but the intervals between the lightning and thunder were lengthening. Gina and Esther were silent for a few moments.

“Estie?” Gina finally said.

“Hmm?”

“I just want you to know that I'm fine and my coming here had nothing to do with you or Ben or Dad. At school that day I—”

“I know,” Esther interrupted. “Daddy told me. He said you were so sad about Gran and Grandpa that it made you scared when we couldn't find Ben. Do you think we could paint my room a different color when we get home?” Gina smiled to herself, realizing that in the wide gap between Esther's two thoughts lay her trust, assurance, and forgiveness. Gina had some explaining to do still, but for now, as far as Esther was concerned, the case was closed.

“Yes, a new color!” Gina agreed. “It's time for something new!”

They awoke to sunshine, though thunderclouds still mushroomed on the horizon.

“So what will you do with the letters?” They were Paul's first
words when he opened his eyes. Gina had hardly slept, wondering the same thing. “Will you call Cassie? How about Sid?”

She groaned, thinking about the mess she'd made in Cassie's room and the inevitable conversation she'd have to have with Sid. It was like having a hangover after an especially adventurous night. But, she had the letters! “I'm thinking about it,” she said.

In daylight, the dirty, dilapidated house lost any alluring mystery it had had the night before. Paul wanted to help Gina clean up Cassie's room, but Gina wished to spare Esther and Ben another scene should someone discover them there. They packed up the camping gear and tumbled outside, glad to be in the fresh air. There were now three debris boxes sitting in the driveway, Gina noted.

“Goodbye, house,” Ben said almost cheerfully.

Esther, if not Ben, seemed to feel the gravity of his words. She turned tentatively to glance at the house, then committed to a brisk jaunt to the car. After discussing the logistics of their rendezvous in Portland, Paul and Gina shared a long embrace and reluctantly said goodbye.

In the garage, Gina grabbed the shovel and an empty cardboard box and carried them into the house. Remembering she still needed the dimensions of the wall cavity for her drawings, she grabbed her bag that held the measuring tape and the Washington letters and headed upstairs to Cassie's room. Reaching inside the hole she'd made, she measured in all directions and recorded her findings.

Hands on her hips, she contemplated the chunks of sheet rock and dust littering the floor. What was the point of cleaning it up? she thought; there'd still be a huge hole in the wall! She shoveled the rubble into the box and used her hands to sweep up the smaller bits of debris. Her knees stung from kneeling in the plaster, and she could feel the grit of it in her teeth.

Downstairs, the front door banged open.

“Hello?” A man's wary voice.

Her heart galloped. Who could it be? She hadn't heard a car come in the driveway. Fear gripped her, shutting down all reason. She picked up the poker and silently slipped it inside the opening in the wall. As if hiding it would disguise what had happened here!

Once again she was trapped in Cassie's room, listening beyond her body's anxious grinding, needing to leave or be caught at the scene of her crime.
Was
it a crime? Covered in dust and sweat, she stood motionless in the airless room.

“Anyone here?” Heavy footsteps. Whoever it was seemed to be moving into the living room. She wondered if she could sneak down the stairs and escape out the door.

From the kitchen, a cell phone's boisterous ring. Gina put the Washington letters in her bag, slung it over her shoulder and crept to the top of the stairs, legs shaking.

“Hello? Yes. I'm at the house now,” a voice said. “Yes, have you got the ladder? Okay. Pick me up then.”

She was halfway downstairs when she heard the cell phone snap shut. Feet clunked through the living room. Her heart banged.

“Who the hell are you?” An older, bloated version of Sid stood at the bottom of the stair peering up at her, sweat trickling down his cheek. “Oh,” he said, “you're a Gilbert, aren't you. So maybe you know how to get a bird out of the attic. It's two-hundred degrees up there!”

“I'm Gina . . . Ginny,” she said. “Sorry if I startled you. I hope it's okay . . . yeah, I heard the bird, but the ladder's gone and . . .” She was babbling. He was a total stranger—no, more like a character she would know from TV.

Sid's laugh, sharp like glass. “What brings you here? You look like you crawled through a war zone.” His hands settled on his hips, making him even wider.

It's my house! she wanted to shout. “I just came to . . . I'm leaving, actually.”

“Whoa,” Sid said. “I don't mean to sound like the Inquisition. Let's see. Are you looking for something? There's not a thing here but a very confused bird. I'm waiting for a ladder to get it out.”

With some effort, Sid bent to pick up a nail on the floor. Gina wiped her brow and steadied herself. “I'm making some drawings,” she said. “Of the house.”

“Really! That's great—a drawing to remember it by?”