“I bought a house,” George said, casually, one April night over dinner. He spoke in the same nonchalant tone he had just used when he’d said, Pass the potatoes.
Mare had been staring at the mashed potatoes on her plate, picking at them with her fork. She was here at dinner, but not really here, the way she had been in the months, no, over a year, since she’d come home from the hospital. Time hadn’t softened the blow of Max’s death. If anything, the pictures Bess sent of her growing daughter only made it worse. The girl had her father’s blue eyes. It was clear, even in the Polaroids Bess enclosed with her letters.
“Well,” George prodded. “Don’t you want to know more about it?”
“A house?” She made tracks through the potatoes with her fork, and again, she thought about Max. About the letter that had come in the mail from his law firm last year. She dragged her fork back and forth through the potatoes now, and she wondered, was it possible George found out about Max’s house? Is that why he was talking about a house now? She had hidden the letter and she hadn’t yet decided what she would do with the house. And she supposed, sitting empty all this time, the house might’ve already fallen into a state of disrepair. Was it too late now to sell it, rent it, run away to live there amongst Max’s things and pretend he was still alive...?
From across the table Will suddenly laughed, and Mare looked up. He’d started copying her potato motions with his fork, and now he made inroads. “Don’t play with your food,” she said flatly. But he didn’t stop, and she didn’t admonish him again.
“About twenty minutes from here,” George continued, ignoring Will altogether. “Bit more out in the burbs, in Glen Coves. On a huge lot. There’s a garden for you in the backyard.”
Mare had never gardened in her life. In fact, she was certain that any plant she tried to grow would die on the vine. Just like everything else she had done in her life. Leaving home. College. Max. “Garden,” she huffed. “You know I practically have a black thumb.” It felt easier to argue with George about the garden than about the fact that he had bought a goddamn house without asking her first.
“Four bedrooms,” George was saying now. He leaned in and lowered his voice. “Maybe we can even try for a little brother or sister. We’ll have room now. You’d like that, Will, wouldn’t you?”
Will stopped running tracks in his potatoes, his eyes suddenly wide with concern. His father had spoken directly to him. It rarely happened, and now Will stared back at George saying nothing at all, looking a little pale.
“George,” Mare said, sternly. “I like our town house.” She didn’t really like the town house. It was small and nothing special. But moving felt like so much effort, and she barely had it in her to get out of bed and limp through their small place these days.
“I already signed the papers,” George said, as if with one easy sentence he could remind her that married to him she had no true autonomy. She was his wife and he was the boss. And now she had nothing else. No plan. No Max. No college degree. No career. Only a house that had been willed to her two thousand miles away from here sitting empty. “We’ll move in in thirty days,” George said.
Thirty days? She put her head down on the table, suddenly exhausted.
George got up, walked across the kitchen and grabbed a can of Budweiser from the fridge. He popped it open and took a long swig before sitting back down. “At least try and look happy, Mare. I’m doing this for you. I do everything for you.” He spoke calmly but coldly. The same old excuse he always used. Every time he complained he hated his job. It was all for her.
“I am happy,” she lied, not even bothering to pick her head up off the table. “Why wouldn’t I be happy?”
The new house was large, and Mare found it to be obnoxiously gaudy.
The previous owners had wallpapered nearly every room in different visions of gold. Gold flowers. Gold leaves. Gold monkeys in the master bathroom for heaven’s sakes.
“Do you like all this...gold?” she said to George. He had signed the papers, gotten the keys and left early from work to drive her and Will out to see it for the first time. Will ran through the downstairs now, and she walked slowly through each one of the gaudy rooms, still not totally efficient with her cane. Would she ever be?
George laughed and then kissed the top of her head. “I knew you’d hate the wallpaper. But, it’ll give you some projects.”
“But my...leg,” she stammered. She was suddenly tired again, and she wanted to sit down but there wasn’t even any furniture here yet. Instead she leaned against the golden pineapples on the wall by the large kitchen window and sighed.
“The doctor said your leg is as healed as it’ll ever be,” George said, somewhat sternly.
It was true. Dr. Graham had said that at her last visit. But she still needed a cane to walk; she would probably always need a cane to walk. And in her head, she had gone from a person who had done whatever she wanted, to being a person who needed to hold on to something, or someone, just to barely get by.
“I can hire someone to help you do the grunt work,” George said. “But the house is your oyster. Make it whatever you want it to be. Make it yours. Make it ours,” he added softly.
He suddenly sounded so kind, that she felt a burst of something unexpected for him. Not love exactly, but gratefulness.