In my forty years of life, my mom has never before called a family meeting. Not even when Nina was born. But by now, we all know what it’s about. For months our mom has been talking about turning the top two floors of the MacDougal Street house into an apartment, but the cost of construction is too high. She’s been dropping hints about wanting to downsize, maybe rent the house for a while, and I’m terrified this is the first step toward selling it. The last thing I want is to sit in my childhood home being told that after all her promises, our future is being sold. That’s why I’m late. I’m stuffing my bag full of things I don’t need when there’s a knock on my door; someone whisper-calls my name. Through the peephole I see my downstairs neighbor Haruko, her face blotched with dirty tears.
“Amanda. Amanda. Amanda. Amanda. Amanda.”
I open the door and before I can register what’s happening, she steps into my arms and presses her face into my neck. “I need a hug. Please give me a hug,” she says, hugging me. I reach forward awkwardly and reluctantly place my arms around her. She feels smaller than she looks; her neck smells like beer and attempted suicide. Tiny beads of hostility string themselves on my lip. I resent this forced intimacy.
“What’s going on?”
“I need a hug,” she says.
“We’re hugging,” I tell her, trying not to sound impatient. “Are you okay?”
When she lets go, she starts sobbing and walks into my living room. How do I politely tell her that I need to be somewhere?
“I’ve done something terrible.” She lies facedown on my living room rug. Probably she’s killed her boyfriend. “What did you do?”
“I did something to Connery.” Fuck, I was right. “Is Connery alive?”
“Yes,” she says.
“Thank God. Listen, Haruko, I’m really late for something. I have to go. Can we talk about this later?”
“I have nowhere to go!” she says. “Can I stay here?”
“Why can’t you stay in your apartment?”
“Connery had me committed last night. I got drunk and we got into a terrible fight, and I ended up telling him he should kill himself, just like his sister. I think I even said that his sister killed herself because of him. Then I threw a bottle at his face, so he called the police. I got out this morning, but Connery won’t let me back into my apartment, so I have nowhere to stay. I’m totally homeless. Please, Amanda, please, let me just stay here.”
“Fine, stay here, but I have to go. I really do. I’m sorry. Just stay put and we’ll talk about this later, okay?”
She nods. “Thank you.”
Eddie and Nina are already at the house when I get there, sitting in the living room with Kara on speakerphone. I sit next to Nina. I don’t take off my coat. Daniel, David, and Holly are not there, and I assume my mom will call them with whatever terrible news she’s going to tell us.
“Because of the housing crisis, the mortgage on the house has gone up astronomically, and because of that, I’m unable to refinance the house in order to pay the mortgage, so I need to rent the house for a little while.”
“You’re going to sell it!” I yell out, unable to stop myself.
“I’m not.”
“You are!”
“The housing crisis is not Mom’s fault,” Eddie says. It’s so annoying when he’s reasonable. I lean back on the couch next to Nina and start to cry.
“Where will you live?” Kara asks through the speakerphone.
“I’m going to rent a place in Sag Harbor and live out there,” she tells us.
“You’re moving out of the city?” I toss Nina a “Can you believe this shit?” look. Nina’s crying now, too. On top of the sickening homesickness I already have for the house, now I have to miss Mom, too?
“I think it’s going to be good for Mom,” Kara says.
“I agree,” Eddie says.
Now I’m sobbing. Where’s their house loyalty, their sense of justice and outrage? They know as well as I do that renting is the gateway drug to selling.
“You’re overreacting,” Eddie says to me.
“I’m not!” Now I’m practically hyperventilating. “You don’t understand anything.”
“What don’t I understand?” he asks, getting mad.
“You and Kara, you have families. Nina and I don’t. This house is our family; it’s all we have, and now it’s being taken away from us.”
“It’s not ours,” Eddie says. “So it can’t be taken away from us.”
I glare at him, but I don’t say what I want, which is “But it was supposed to be.”
“Things change,” Kara says through the phone.
Together, my mother and the house contain my roots, the proof of my existence, and without them, I’m extinct. This house was supposed to be ours! How can they pretend not to remember that? All our lives we were told that we didn’t need to worry about being homeless because we’d always have a home, and the security I’ve attached to that knowledge is now being shattered. My mother is taking the house from us, giving it to someone else, only to disappear into some uncultivated ecosystem of tangled vegetation where I’ll never be able to find her. Everyone is spinning away from me.
“I’ll rent the house for a year or two and then I’ll move back in.”
I need this house to remain ours, always. My past, present, and future selves are all rooted here. I’m desperately sad and also furious. Not only do Kara and Eddie have their own families, they have their own homes; and even if Eddie doesn’t own his, he can afford to buy the things he needs, whereas I still come to my mom’s house to eat leftover party food and steal toilet paper. I come to watch cable, take naps, ask for money, hang out in the garden, “borrow” queen-sized bedsheets, fancy towels, and, sometimes, just to make phone calls. Occasionally, I even come to see my mom, but the house itself has its own identity, a personality all its own, and I feel safe in its arms.
This house is where everything bad and good happened; it is our whole lives. But we all react in our own predictable ways, and, of course, I’m the most emotional and everyone is annoyed at how many feelings I possess.
“We have three weeks to pack up thirty-eight years of stuff. I’ll need each of you to go through all your things in the basement and take what you want and throw out the rest,” my mom says.
Once you pack up and move out, you don’t move back in. Kara hangs up, Eddie leaves, and Mom and Nina go down to the basement. Crying, I make my way upstairs to my old room, lie on my bed, and stare out the window through the peeling rainbow decal. If I ever have children, they’ll never see this house, play in the garden, know the life I once had. Outside the window, I can hear the people at the Dante and the baseball game on the Houston Street playground. I sit up and lean forward, but the lady on the corner isn’t there. All my fears are the same as they were when I was a child, and sitting here now, looking for the lady on the corner, my worries about being homeless are coming true.
I’ve been afraid, ever since I was little, that I’d never amount to anything. I don’t have anything steady or stable in my life. I am still waiting for something, it seems, but I’m not sure what. I’ve become the lady on the corner. Then it hits me that even the lady on the corner had something I don’t have: a routine, sameness. She was there every single day, but I can’t even do that; sameness is deadness to me. I can’t bear it.
At least I have Calvin, I think as I head back home. He feels more like family than a roommate, but the good kind of family who doesn’t take your home away from you. There’s a note from Haruko on the counter. I’d forgotten all about her. “Thanks, love! I’m back home now—Haruko.” Calvin’s doing the dishes.
“My mom is selling MacDougal Street! Can you believe this shit? My childhood home, gone!” I say as I walk into the kitchen. In the four and a half years we’ve lived together, I’ve never seen the expression on his face. I don’t like it.
“What? What’s that face?”
“We have to have a conversation,” he says.
“I don’t like this,” I say. “Whatever it is, I already don’t like it.”
“So, remember a while back when I said it might be time for me to live on my own, but then I stayed?” I nod mutely. “I wasn’t looking for a new place at all, but I accidentally found something that I love and that I can afford, and I’m going to take it.”
I sit down. “What are you talking about?”
“I’m too old to have a roommate. I’m forty-four. It’s weird, don’t you think?”
“Well, yes, but it’s New York City, so it’s less weird. If we lived in Minnesota or something, yeah, but New York, not so much. Plus, I’m not much younger!”
“I’m sorry. I really love living with you, but I need my own space. I need to have a home that’s just for me,” he says, which makes me realize that I don’t. I want someone around, even if they’re down the hall with their door shut. Just to know someone’s nearby.
I shake my head. I can’t believe all of this is happening on the same day.
“Fine,” I say, mainly to stop myself from bursting into tears. “When are you moving?”
“In three weeks. I’ll help you find a replacement.”
“Fine.”
“You want to talk about this now or later?” he asks.
“Later,” I say. My lips tremble; my voice is clogged and damp. I leave the kitchen and go lie on my bed to cry. I’m losing everything; I’m losing everyone. I am a failure at life.