When I arrived at my office that morning—the morning after Susan took me back—an old man and woman wearing wide-brimmed hats and sweatpants were peering at the little snapshots of houses pinned up in the window, discussing their prices in loud voices. There was nothing surprising in this, except that it was still spring, and the costume and demeanor of the couple emphatically suggested summer vacations. It was very early in the day as well as the season—not yet eight and not yet April. They had the look of people who never slept, people who propelled themselves through life on sheer adrenaline, and they also had the look of kindness and good intention gone awry which so often seems to motivate people like that.
I lingered for a few moments outside the office door before going in, so that I could hear their conversation. I had taken a lot of the snapshots myself, and written the descriptive tags underneath them, and I was curious which houses would pique their interest. At first, of course, they looked at the mansions—one of them, oceanfront with ten bathrooms and two pools, was listed for $10.5 million. “Can you imagine?” the wife said. “Mostly it’s corporations that buy those,” the husband answered. Then their attentions shifted to some more moderately priced, but still expensive, contemporaries. “I don’t know, it’s like living on the starship Enterprise, if you ask me,” the wife said. “Personally, I never would get used to a house like that.” The husband chuckled. Then the wife’s mouth opened and she said, “Will you look at this, Ed? Just look!” and pointed to a snapshot of a small, cedar-shingled house which I happened to know stood not five hundred feet from the office—$165,000, price negotiable. “It’s adorable!” the wife said. “It’s just like the house in my dream!”
I wanted to tell her it was my dream house too, my dream house first, to beg her not to buy it. But I held back. I reminded myself I already had a house. I reminded myself I had a wife, a dog.
Ed took off his glasses and peered skeptically at the picture. “It doesn’t look too bad,” he said. “Still, something must be wrong with it. The price is just too low.”
“It’s the house in my dream, Ed! The one I dreamed about! I swear it is!”
“I told you, Grace-Anne, the last thing I need is a handyman’s special. These are my retirement years.”
“But how can you know it needs work? We haven’t even seen it! Can’t we just look at it? Please?”
“Let’s have breakfast and talk it over.”
“O.K., O.K. No point in getting overeager, right?” They headed toward the coffee shop across the street, and I leaned back against the window.
It was just an ordinary house, the plainest of houses. And yet, as I unlocked the office door to let myself in, I found myself swearing I’d burn it down before I’d let that couple take possession of it. Love can push you to all sorts of unlikely threats.
What had happened was this: The night before, I had gone back to my wife after three months of living with a man. I was thirty-two years old, and more than anything in the world, I wanted things to slow, slow down.
It was a quiet morning. We live year-round in a resort town, and except for the summer months, not a whole lot goes on here. Next week things would start gearing up for the Memorial Day closings—my wife Susan’s law firm was already frantic with work—but for the moment I was in a lull. It was still early—not even the receptionist had come in yet—so I sat at my desk, and looked at the one picture I kept there, of Susan running on the beach with our golden retriever, Charlotte. Susan held out a tennis ball in the picture, toward which Charlotte, barely out of puppyhood, was inclining her head. And of course I remembered that even now Susan didn’t know the extent to which Charlotte was wound up in all of it.
Around nine forty-five I called Ted at the Elegant Canine. I was halfway through dialing before I realized that it was probably improper for me to be doing this, now that I’d officially gone back to Susan, that Susan, if she knew I was calling him, would more than likely have sent me packing—our reconciliation was that fragile. One of her conditions for taking me back was that I not see, not even speak to, Ted, and in my shame I’d agreed. Nonetheless, here I was, listening as the phone rang. His boss, Patricia, answered. In the background was the usual cacophony of yelps and barks.
“I don’t have much time,” Ted said, when he picked up a few seconds later. “I have Mrs. Morrison’s poodle to blow-dry.”
“I didn’t mean to bother you,” I said. “I just wondered how you were doing.”
“Fine,” Ted said. “How are you doing?”
“Oh, O.K.”
“How did things go with Susan last night?”
“O.K.”
“Just O.K.?”
“Well—it felt so good to be home again—in my own bed, with Susan and Charlotte—” I closed my eyes and pressed the bridge of my nose with my fingers. “Anyway,” I said, “it’s not fair of me to impose all of this on you. Not fair at all. I mean, here I am, back with Susan, leaving you—”
“Don’t worry about it.”
“I do worry about it. I do.”
There was a barely muffled canine scream in the background, and then I could hear Patricia calling for Ted.
“I have to go, Paul—”
“I guess I just wanted to say I miss you. There, I’ve said it. There’s nothing to do about it, but I wanted to say it, because it’s what I feel.”
“I miss you too, Paul, but listen, I have to go—”
“Wait, wait. There’s something I have to tell you.”
“What?”
“There was a couple today. Outside the office. They were looking at our house.”
“Paul—”
“I don’t know what I’d do if they bought it.”
“Paul,” Ted said, “it’s not our house. It never was.”
“No, I guess it wasn’t.” Again I squeezed the bridge of my nose. I could hear the barking in the background grow louder, but this time Ted didn’t tell me he had to go.
“Ted?”
“What?”
“Would you mind if I called you tomorrow?”
“You can call me whenever you want.”
“Thanks,” I said, and then he said a quick good-bye, and all the dogs were gone.
Three months before, things had been simpler. There was Susan, and me, and Charlotte. Charlotte was starting to smell, and the monthly ordeal of bathing her was getting to be too much for both of us, and anyway, Susan reasoned, now that she’d finally paid off the last of her law school loans, we really did have the right to hire someone to bathe our dog. (We were both raised in penny-pinching families; even in relative affluence, we had no cleaning woman, no gardener. I mowed our lawn.) And so, on a drab Wednesday morning before work, I bundled Charlotte into the car and drove her over to the Elegant Canine. There, among the fake emerald collars, the squeaky toys in the shape of mice and hamburgers, the rawhide bones and shoes and pizzas, was Ted. He had wheat-colored hair and green eyes, and he smiled at me in a frank and unwavering way I found difficult to turn away from. I smiled back, left Charlotte in his capable-seeming hands and headed off to work. The morning proceeded lazily. At noon I drove back to fetch Charlotte, and found her looking golden and glorious, leashed to a small post in a waiting area just to the side of the main desk. Through the door behind the desk I saw a very wet Pekingese being shampooed in a tub and a West Highland white terrier sitting alertly on a metal table, a chain around its neck. I rang a bell, and Ted emerged, waving to me with an arm around which a large bloody bandage had been carefully wrapped.
“My God,” I said. “Was it—”
“I’m afraid so,” Ted said. “You say she’s never been to a groomer’s?”
“I assure you, never in her entire life—we’ve left her alone with small children—our friends joke that she could be a babysitter—” I turned to Charlotte, who looked up at me, panting in that retriever way. “What got into you?” I said, rather hesitantly. And even more hesitantly: “Bad, bad dog—”
“Don’t worry about it,” Ted said, laughing. “It’s happened before and it’ll happen again.”
“I am so sorry. I am just so—sorry. I had no idea, really.”
“Look, it’s an occupational hazard. Anyway we’re great at first aid around here.”
He smiled again, and, calmed for the moment, I smiled back. “I just can’t imagine what got into her. She’s supposed to go to the vet next week, so I’ll ask him what he thinks.”
“Well, Charlotte’s a sweetheart,” Ted said. “After our initial hostilities, we got to be great friends, right, Charlotte?” He ruffled the top of her head, and she looked up at him adoringly. We were both looking at Charlotte. Then we were looking at each other. Ted raised his eyebrows. I flushed. The look went on just a beat too long, before I turned away, and he was totaling the bill.
Afterwards, at home, I told Susan about it, and she got into a state. “What if he sues?” she said, running her left hand nervously through her hair. She had taken her shoes off; the heels of her panty hose were black with the dye from her shoes.
“Susan, he’s not going to sue. He’s a very nice kid, very friendly.”
I put my arms around her, but she pushed me away. “Was he the boss?” she said. “You said someone else was the boss.”
“Yes, a woman.”
“Oh, great. Women are much more vicious than men, Paul, believe me. Especially professional women. He’s perfectly friendly and wants to forget it, but for all we know she’s been dreaming about going on People’s Court her whole life.” She hit the palm of her hand against her forehead.
“Susan,” I said, “I really don’t think—”
“Did you give him anything?”
“Give him anything?”
“You know, a tip. Something.”
“No.”
“Jesus, hasn’t being married to a lawyer all these years taught you anything?” She sat down and stood up again. “All right, all right, here’s what we’re going to do. I want you to have a bottle of champagne sent over to the guy. With an apology, a note. Marcia Grossman did that after she hit that tree, and it worked wonders.” She blew out breath. “I don’t see what else we can do at this point, except wait, and hope—”
“Susan, I really think you’re making too much of all this. This isn’t New York City, after all, and really, he didn’t seem to mind at all—”
“Paul, honey, please trust me. You’ve always been very naive about these things. Just send the champagne, all right?”
Her voice had reached an unendurable pitch of annoyance. I stood up. She looked at me guardedly. It was the beginning of a familiar fight between us—in her anxiety, she’d say something to imply, not so subtly, how much more she understood about the world than I did, and in response I would stalk off, insulted and pouty. But this time I did not stalk off—I just stood there—and Susan, closing her eyes in a manner which suggested profound regret at having acted rashly, said in a very soft voice, “I don’t mean to yell. It’s just that you know how insecure I get about things like this, and really, it’ll make me feel so much better to know we’ve done something. So send the champagne for my sake, O.K.?” Suddenly she was small and vulnerable, a little girl victimized by her own anxieties. It was a transformation she made easily, and often used to explain her entire life.
“O.K.,” I said, as I always said, and that was the end of it.
The next day I sent the champagne. The note read (according to Susan’s instructions): “Dear Ted: Please accept this little gift as a token of thanks for your professionalism and good humor. Sincerely, Paul Hoover and Charlotte.” I should add that at this point I believed I was leaving Susan’s name off only because she hadn’t been there.
The phone at my office rang the next morning at nine-thirty. “Listen,” Ted said, “thanks for the champagne! That was so thoughtful of you.”
“Oh, it was nothing.”
“No, but it means a lot that you cared enough to send it.” He was quiet for a moment. “So few clients do, you know. Care.”
“Oh, well,” I said. “My pleasure.”
Then Ted asked me if I wanted to have dinner with him sometime during the week.
“Dinner? Um—well—”
“I know, you’re probably thinking this is sudden and rash of me, but—Well, you seemed like such a nice guy, and—I don’t know—I don’t meet many people I can really even stand to be around—men, that is—so what’s the point of pussyfooting around?”
“No, no, I understand,” I said. “That sounds great. Dinner, that is—sounds great.”
Ted made noises of relief. “Terrific, terrific. What night would be good for you?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Thursday?” Thursday Susan was going to New York to sell her mother’s apartment.
“Thursday’s terrific,” Ted said. “Do you like Dunes?”
“Sure.” Dunes was a gay bar and restaurant I’d never been to.
“So I’ll make a reservation. Eight o’clock? We’ll meet there?”
“That’s fine.”
“I’m so glad,” Ted said. “I’m really looking forward to it.”
It may be hard to believe, but even then I still told myself I was doing it to make sure he didn’t sue us.
Now, I should point out that not all of this was a new experience for me. It’s true I’d never been to Dunes, but in my town, late at night, there is a beach, and not too far down the highway, a parking area. Those nights Susan and I fought, it was usually at one of these places that I ended up.
Still, nothing I’d done in the dark prepared me for Dunes, when I got there Thursday night. Not that it was so different from any other restaurant I’d gone to—it was your basic scrubbed-oak, piano-bar sort of place. Only everyone was a man. The maître d’, white-bearded and red-cheeked, a displaced Santa Claus, smiled at me and said, “Meeting someone?”
“Yes, in fact.” I scanned the row of young and youngish men sitting at the bar, looking for Ted. “He doesn’t seem to be here yet.”
“Ted Potter, right?”
I didn’t know Ted’s last name. “Yes, I think so.”
“The dog groomer?”
The maître d’, I thought, smirked. “Well, I can seat you now, or you can wait at the bar.”
“Oh, I think I’ll just wait here, thanks, if that’s O.K.”
“Whatever you want,” the maître d’ said. He drifted off toward a large, familial-looking group of young men who’d just walked in the door. Guardedly I surveyed the restaurant for a familiar face which, thankfully, never materialized. I had two or three co-workers who I suspected ate here regularly.
I had to go to the bathroom, which was across the room. As far as I could tell there was no ladies’ room at all. As for the men’s room, it was small and cramped, with a long trough reminiscent of junior high school summer camp instead of urinals. Above the trough a mirror had been strategically tilted at a downward angle.
By the time I’d finished, and emerged once again into the restaurant, Ted had arrived. He looked breathless and a little worried and was consulting busily with the maître d’. I waved; he waved back with his bandaged hand, said a few more words to the maître d’, and strode up briskly to greet me. “Hello,” he said, clasping my hand with his unbandaged one. It was a large hand, cool and powdery. “Gosh, I’m sorry I’m late. I have to say, when I got here, and didn’t see you, I was worried you might have left. Joey—that’s the owner—said you’d been standing there one minute and the next you were gone.”
“I was just in the bathroom.”
“I’m glad you didn’t leave.” He exhaled what seemed an enormous quantity of breath. “Wow, it’s great to see you! You look great!”
“Thanks,” I said. “So do you.” He did. He was wearing a white oxford shirt with the first couple of buttons unbuttoned, and a blazer the color of the beach.
“There you are,” said Joey—the maître d’. “We were wondering where you’d run off to. Well, your table’s ready.” He escorted us to the middle of the hubbub. “Let’s order some wine,” Ted said as we sat down. “What kind do you like?”
I wasn’t a big wine expert—Susan had always done the ordering for us—so I deferred to Ted, who, after conferring for a few moments with Joey, mentioned something that sounded Italian. Then he leaned back and cracked his knuckles, bewildered, apparently, to be suddenly without tasks.
“So,” he said.
“So,” I said.
“I’m glad to see you.”
“I’m glad to see you too.”
We both blushed. “You’re a real estate broker, right? At least, that’s what I figured from your business card.”
“That’s right.”
“How long have you been doing that?”
I dug back. “Oh, eight years or so.”
“That’s great. Have you been out here the whole time?”
“No, no, we moved out here six years ago.”
“We?”
“Uh—Charlotte and I.”
“Oh.” Again Ted smiled. “So do you like it, living year-round in a resort town?”
“I ended up out here by accident and just sort of stayed. A lot of people I’ve met have the same story. They’d like to leave, but you know—the climate is nice, life’s not too difficult. It’s hard to pull yourself away.”
I nodded nervously.
“Is that your story too?”
“Oh—well, sort of,” I said. “I was born in Queens, and then—I was living in Manhattan for a while—and then we decided to move out here—Charlotte and I—because I’d always loved the beach, and wanted to have a house, and here you could sell real estate and live all year round.” I looked at Ted: Had I caught myself up in a lie or a contradiction? What I was telling him, essentially, was my history, but without Susan—and that was ridiculous, since my history was bound up with Susan’s every step of the way. We’d started dating in high school, gone to the same college. The truth was I’d lived in Manhattan only while she was in law school, and had started selling real estate to help pay her tuition. No wonder the story sounded so strangely motiveless as I told it. I’d left out the reasons for everything. Susan was the reason for everything.
A waiter—a youngish blond man with a mustache so pale you could barely see it—gave us menus. He was wearing a white T-shirt and had a corkscrew outlined in the pocket of his jeans.
“Hello, Teddy,” he said to Ted. Then he looked at me and said very fast, as if it were one sentence, “I’m Bobby and I’ll be your waiter for the evening would you like something from the bar?”
“We’ve already ordered some wine,” Ted said. “You want anything else, Paul?”
“O.K., would you like to hear the specials now?”
We both nodded, and Bobby rattled off a list of complex-sounding dishes. It was hard for me to separate one from the other. I had no appetite. He handed us our menus and moved on to another table.
I opened the menu. Everything I read sounded like it would make me sick.
“So do you like selling houses?” Ted asked.
“Oh yes, I love it—I love houses.” I looked up, suddenly nervous that I was talking too much about myself. Shouldn’t I ask him something about himself? I hadn’t been on a date for fifteen years, after all, and even then the only girl I dated was Susan, whom I’d known forever. What was the etiquette in a situation like this? Probably I should ask Ted something about his life, but what kind of question would be appropriate?
Another waiter arrived with our bottle of wine, which Ted poured.
“How long have you been a dog groomer?” I asked rather tentatively.
“A couple of years. Of course I never intended to be a professional dog groomer. It was just something I did to make money. What I really wanted to be, just like about a million and a half other people, was an actor. Then I took a job out here for the summer, and like I said, I just stayed. I actually love the work. I love animals. When I was growing up my mom kept saying I should have been a veterinarian. She still says that to me sometimes, tells me it’s not too late. I don’t know. Frankly, I don’t think I have what it takes to be a vet, and anyway, I don’t want to be one. It’s important work, but let’s face it, I’m not for it and it’s not for me. So I’m content to be a dog groomer.” He picked up his wineglass and shook it, so that the wine lapped the rim in little waves.
“I know what you mean,” I said, and I did. For years Susan had been complaining that I should have been an architect, insisting that I would have been happier, when the truth was she was just the tiniest bit ashamed of being married to a real estate broker. In her fantasies, “My husband is an architect” sounded so much better.
“My mother always wanted me to be an architect,” I said now. “But it was just so she could tell her friends. For some reason people think real estate is a slightly shameful profession, like prostitution or something. They just assume on some level you make your living ripping people off. There’s no way around it. An occupational hazard, I guess.”
“Like dog bites,” said Ted. He poured more wine.
“Oh, about that—” But Bobby was back to take our orders. He was pulling a green pad from the pocket on the back of his apron when another waiter came up to him from behind and whispered something in his ear. Suddenly they were both giggling wildly.
“You going to fill us in?” Ted asked, after the second waiter had left.
“I’m really sorry about this,” Bobby said, still giggling. “It’s just—” He bent down close to us, and in a confiding voice said, “Jill over at the bar brought in some like really good Vanna, just before work, and like, everything seems really hysterical to me? You know, like it’s five years ago and I’m this boy from Emporia, Kansas?” He cast his eyes to the ceiling. “God, I’m like a complete retard tonight. Anyway, what did you say you wanted?”
Ted ordered grilled paillard of chicken with shiitake mushrooms in a papaya vinaigrette; I ordered a cheeseburger.
“Who’s Jill?” I asked after Bobby had left.
“Everyone’s Jill,” Ted said. “They’re all Jill.”
“And Vanna?”
“Vanna White. It’s what they call cocaine here.” He leaned closer. “I’ll bet you’re thinking this place is really ridiculous, and you’re right. The truth is, I kind of hate it. Only can you name me someplace else where two men can go on a date? I like the fact that you can act datish here, if you know what I mean.” He smiled. Under the table our hands interlocked. We were acting very datish indeed.
It was all very unreal. I thought of Susan, in Queens, with her mother. She’d probably called the house two or three times already, was worrying where I was. It occurred to me, dimly and distantly, like something in another life, that Ted knew nothing about Susan. I wondered if I should tell him.
But I did not tell him. We finished dinner, and went to Ted’s apartment. He lived in the attic of a rambling old house near the center of town.
We never drank more than a sip or two each of the cups of tea he made for us.
It was funny—when we began making love that first time, Ted and I, what I was thinking was that, like most sex between men, this was really a matter of exorcism, the expulsion of bedeviling lusts. Or exercise, if you will. Or horniness—a word that always makes me think of demons. So why was it, when we finished, there were tears in my eyes, and I was turning, putting my mouth against his hair, preparing to whisper something—who knows what?
Ted looked upset. “What’s wrong?” he asked. “Did I hurt you?”
“No,” I said. “No. You didn’t hurt me.”
“Then what is it?”
“I guess I’m just not used to—I didn’t expect—I never expected—” Again I was crying.
“It’s O.K.,” he said. “I feel it too.”
“I have a wife,” I said.
At first he didn’t answer.
I’ve always loved houses. Most people I know in real estate don’t love houses; they love making money, or making deals, or making sales pitches. But Susan and I, from when we first knew each other, from when we were very young, we loved houses better than anything else. Perhaps this was because we’d both been raised by divorced parents in stuffy apartments in Queens—I can’t be sure. All I know is that as early as senior year in high school we shared a desire to get as far out of that city we’d grown up in as we could; we wanted a green lawn, and a mailbox, and a garage. And that passion, as it turned out, was so strong in us that it determined everything. I needn’t say more about myself, and as for Susan—well, name me one other first-in-her-class in law school who’s chosen—chosen—basically to do house closings for a living.
Susan wishes I were an architect. It is her not-so-secret dream to be married to an architect. Truthfully, she wanted me to have a profession she wouldn’t have to think was below her own. But the fact is, I never could have been a decent architect because I have no patience for the engineering, the inner workings, the slow layering of concrete slab and wood and Sheetrock. Real estate is a business of surfaces, of first impressions; you have to brush past the water stain in the bathroom, put a Kleenex box over the gouge in the Formica, stretch the life expectancy of the heater from three to six years. Tear off the tile and the paint, the crumbly wallboard and the crackly blanket of insulation, and you’ll see what flimsy scarecrows our houses really are, stripped down to their bare beams. I hate the sight of houses in the midst of renovation, naked and exposed like that. But give me a finished house, a polished floor, a sunny day; then I will show you what I’m made of.
The house I loved best, however, the house where, in those mad months, I imagined I might actually live with Ted, was the sort that most brokers shrink from—pretty enough, but drab, undistinguished. No dishwasher, no cathedral ceilings. It would sell, if it sold at all, to a young couple short on cash, or a retiring widow. So don’t ask me why I loved this house. My passion for it was inexplicable, yet intense. Somehow I was utterly convinced that this, much more than the sleek suburban one-story Susan and I shared, with its Garland stove and Sub-Zero fridge—this was the house of love.
The day I told Susan I was leaving her, she threw the Cuisinart at me. It bounced against the wall with a thud, and that vicious little blade, dislodged, rolled along the floor like a revolving saw, until it gouged the wall. I stared at it, held fast and suspended above the ground. “How can you just come home from work and tell me this?” Susan screamed. “No preparation, no warning—”
“I thought you’d be relieved,” I said.
“Relieved!”
She threw the blender next. It hit me in the chest, then fell on my foot. Instantly I dove to the floor, buried my head in my knees, and was weeping as hoarsely and furiously as a child.
“Stop throwing things!” I shouted weakly.
“I can’t believe you,” Susan said. “You tell me you’re leaving me for a man and then you want me to mother you, take care of you? Is that all I’ve ever been to you? Fuck that! You’re not a baby!”
I heard footsteps next, a car starting, Charlotte barking. I opened my eyes. Broken glass, destroyed machinery all over the tiles.
I got in my car and followed her. All the way to the beach. “Leave me alone!” she shouted, pulling off her shoes and running out onto the sand. “Leave me the fuck alone!” Charlotte romped after her, barking.
“Susan!” I screamed. “Susan!” I chased her. She picked up a big piece of driftwood and hit me with it. I stopped, dropped once again to my knees. Susan kept running. Eventually she stopped. I saw her a few hundred feet up the beach, staring at the waves.
Charlotte kept running between us, licking our faces, in a panic of barks and wails.
Susan started walking back toward me. I saw her getting larger and larger as she strode down the beach. She strode right past me.
“Charlotte!” Susan called from the parking lot. “Charlotte!” But Charlotte stayed.
Susan got back in her car and drove away.
At first I stayed at Ted’s house. But Susan—we were seeing each other again, taking walks on the beach, negotiating—said that was too much, so I moved into the Dutch Boy Motel. Still, every day, I went to see the house, either to eat my lunch or just stand in the yard, feeling the sun come down through the branches of the trees there. I was learning a lot about the house. It had been built in 1934 by Josiah Applegate, a local contractor, as a wedding present for his daughter, Julia, and her husband, Spencer Bledsoe. The Bledsoes occupied the house for six years before the birth of their fourth child forced them to move, at which point it was sold to another couple, Mr. and Mrs. Hubert White. They, in turn, sold the house to Mr. and Mrs. Salvatore Rinaldi, who sold it to Mrs. Barbara Adams, a widow, who died. The estate of Mrs. Adams then sold the house to Arthur and Penelope Hilliard, who lived in it until their deaths just last year at the ages of eighty-six and eighty-two. Mrs. Hilliard was the first to go, in her sleep; according to her niece, Mr. Hilliard then wasted away, eventually having to be transferred to Shady Manor Nursing Home, where a few months later a heart attack took him. They had no children. Mr. Hilliard was a retired postman. Mrs. Hilliard did not work, but was an active member of the Ladies’ Village Improvement Society. She was famous for her apple cakes, which she sold every year at bake sales. Apparently she went through periods when she would write letters to the local paper every week, long diatribes about the insensitivity of the new houses and new people. I never met her. She had a reputation for being crotchety, but maternal. Her husband was regarded as docile and wicked at poker.
The house had three bedrooms—one pitifully small—and two and a half baths. The kitchen cabinets were made of knotty, dark wood which had grown sticky from fifty years of grease, and the ancient yellow Formica countertops were scarred with burns and knife scratches. The wallpaper was red roses in the kitchen, leafy green leaves in the living room, and was yellowing and peeling at the edges. The yard contained a dogwood, a cherry tree, and a clump of gladiolas. Overgrown privet hedges fenced the front door, which was white with a beaten brass knocker. In the living room was a dusty pair of sofas, and dark wood shelves lined with Reader’s Digest Condensed Books, and a big television from the early seventies. The shag carpeting—coffee brown—appeared to be a recent addition.
The quilts on the beds, the Hilliards’ niece told me, were handmade, and might be for sale. They were old-fashioned patchwork quilts, no doubt stitched together over several winters in front of the television. “Of course,” the niece said, “if the price was right, we might throw the quilts in—you know, as an extra.”
I was a man with the keys to fifty houses in my pockets. Just that morning I had toured the ten bathrooms of the $10.5 million oceanfront. And I was smiling. I was smiling like someone in love.
I took Ted to see the house about a week after I left Susan. It was a strange time for both of us. I was promising him my undying love, but I was also waking up in the middle of every night crying for Susan and Charlotte. We walked from room to room, just as I’d imagined, and just as I’d planned, in the doorway to the master bedroom, I turned him around to face me, bent his head down (he was considerably taller than me), and kissed him. It was meant to be a moment of sealing, of confirmation, a moment that would make radiantly, abundantly clear the extent to which this house was meant for us, and we for it. But instead the kiss felt rehearsed, dispassionate. And Ted looked nervous. “It’s a cute house, Paul,” he said. “But God knows I don’t have any money. And you already own a house. How can we just buy it?”
“As soon as the divorce is settled, I’ll get my equity.”
“You haven’t even filed for divorce yet. And once you do, it could take years.”
“Probably not years.”
“So when are you filing for divorce?”
He had his hands in his pockets. He was leaning against a window draped with white flounces of cotton and powderpuffs.
“I need to take things slow,” I said. “This is all new for me.”
“It seems to me,” Ted said, “that you need to take things slow and take things fast at the same time.”
“Oh, Ted!” I said. “Why do you have to complicate everything? I just love this house, that’s all. I feel like this is where I—where we—where we’re meant to live. Our dream house, Ted. Our love nest. Our cottage.”
Ted was looking at his feet. “Do you really think you’ll be able to leave Susan? For good?”
“Well, of course, I— Of course.”
“I don’t believe you. Soon enough she’s going to make an ultimatum. Come back, give up Ted, or that’s it. And you know what you’re going to do? You’re going to go back to her.”
“I’m not,” I said. “I wouldn’t.”
“Mark my words,” Ted said.
I lunged toward him, trying to pull him down on the sofa, but he pushed me away.
“I love you,” I said.
“And Susan?”
I faltered. “Of course, I love Susan too.”
“You can’t love two people, Paul. It doesn’t work that way.”
“Susan said the same thing, last week.”
“She’s right.”
“Why?”
I considered this. I considered Ted, considered Susan. I had known Susan since Mrs. Polanski’s homeroom in fourth grade. We played Star Trek on the playground together, and roamed the back streets of Bayside. We were children in love, and we sought out every movie or book we could find about children in love.
Ted I’d known only a few months, but we’d made love with a passion I’d never imagined possible, and the sight of him unbuttoning his shirt made my heart race.
It was at that moment that I realized that while it is possible to love two people at the same time, in different ways, in the heart, it is not possible to do so in the world.
I had to choose, so of course, I chose Susan.
That day—the day of Ed and Grace-Anne, the day that threatened to end with the loss of my beloved house—Susan did not call me at work. The morning progressed slowly. I was waiting for Ed and Grace-Anne to reappear at the window and walk in the office doors, and sure enough, around eleven-thirty, they did. The receptionist led them to my desk.
“I’m Ed Cavallaro,” Ed said across my desk, as I stood to shake his hand. “This is my wife.”
“How do you do?” Grace-Anne said. She smelled of some sort of fruity perfume or lipstick, the kind teenaged girls wear. We sat down.
“Well, I’ll tell you, Mr. Hoover,” Ed said, “we’ve been summering around here for years, and I’ve just retired—I worked over at Grumman, upisland?”
“Congratulations,” I said.
“Ed was there thirty-seven years,” Grace-Anne said. “They gave him a party like you wouldn’t believe.”
“So, you enjoying retired life?”
“Just between you and me, I’m climbing the walls.”
“We’re active people,” Grace-Anne said.
“Anyway, we’ve always dreamed about having a house near the beach.”
“Ed, let me tell about the dream.”
“I didn’t mean that dream.”
“I had a dream,” Grace-Anne said. “I saw the house we were meant to retire in, clear as day. And then, just this morning, walking down the street, we look in your window, and what do we see? The very same house! The house from my dream!”
“How amazing,” I said. “Which house was it?”
“That cute little one for one sixty-five,” Grace-Anne said. “You know, with the cedar shingles?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Oh, I’ll show you.”
We stood up and walked outside, to the window. “Oh, that house!” I said. “Sure, sure. Been on the market almost a year now. Not much interest in it, I’m afraid.”
“Now why is that?” Ed asked, and I shrugged.
“It’s a pleasant enough house. But it does have some problems. It’ll require a lot of TLC.”
“TLC we’ve got plenty of,” Grace-Anne said.
“Grace-Anne, I told you,” Ed said, “the last thing I want to do is waste my retirement fixing up.”
“But it’s my dream house!” Grace-Anne fingered the buttons of her blouse. “Anyway, what harm can it do to look at it?”
“I have a number of other houses in roughly the same price range which you might want to look at—”
“Fine, fine, but first, couldn’t we look at that house? I’d be so grateful if you could arrange it.”
I shrugged my shoulders. “It’s not occupied. Why not?”
And Grace-Anne smiled.
Even though the house was only a few hundred feet away, we drove. One of the rules of real estate is; Drive the clients everywhere. This means your car has to be both commodious and spotlessly clean. I spent a lot—too much—of my life cleaning my car—especially difficult, considering Charlotte.
And so we piled in—Grace-Anne and I in front, Ed in back—and drove the block or so to Maple Street. I hadn’t been by the house for a few weeks, and I was happy to see that the spring seemed to have treated it well. The rich greens of the grass and the big maple trees framed it, I thought, rather lushly.
I unlocked the door, and we headed into that musty interior odor which, I think, may well be the very essence of stagnation, cryogenics, and bliss.
“Just like I dreamed,” Grace-Anne said, and I could understand why. Probably the Hilliards had been very much like the Cavallaros.
“The kitchen’s in bad shape,” Ed said. “How’s the boiler?”
“Old, but functional.” We headed down into the spidery basement. Ed kicked things.
Grace-Anne was rapturously fingering the quilts. “Ed, I love this house,” she said. “I love it.”
“Now, there are several other nice homes you might want to see—”
“None of them was in my dream.”
But Ed sounded hopeful. “Grace-Anne, it can’t hurt to look. You said it yourself.”
“But what if someone else snatches it from under us?” Grace-Anne asked, suddenly horrified.
“I tend to doubt that’s going to happen,” I said in as comforting a tone as I could muster. “As I mentioned earlier, the house has been on the market for over a year.”
“All right,” Grace-Anne said reluctantly, “I suppose we could look—look—at a few others.”
“I’m sure you won’t regret it.”
“Yes, well.”
I turned from them, breathing evenly.
Of course she had no idea I would sooner make sure the house burned down than see a contract for its purchase signed with her husband’s name.
I fingered some matches in my pocket. I felt terrified. Terrified and powerful.
When I got home from work that afternoon, Susan’s car was in the driveway and Charlotte, from her usual position of territorial inspection on the front stoop, was smiling up at me in her doggy way. I patted her head and went inside, but when I got there, there was a palpable silence which was far from ordinary, and soon enough I saw that its source was Susan, leaning over the kitchen counter in her sleek lawyer’s suit, one leg tucked under, like a flamingo.
“Hi,” I said.
I tried to kiss her, and she turned away.
“This isn’t going to work, Paul,” she said.
I was quiet a moment. “Why?” I asked.
“You sound relieved, grateful. You do. I knew you would.”
“I’m neither of those things. Just tell me why you’ve changed your mind since last night.”
“You tell me you’re in love with a man, you up and leave for three months, then out of the blue you come back. I just don’t know what you expect—do you want me to jump for joy and welcome you back like nothing’s happened?”
“Susan, yesterday you said—”
“Yesterday,” Susan said, “I hadn’t thought about it enough. Yesterday I was confused, and grateful, and— God, I was so relieved. But now—now I just don’t know. I mean, what the hell has this been for you, anyway?”
“Susan, honey,” I said, “I love you. I’ve loved you my whole life. Remember what your mother used to say, when we were kids, and we’d come back from playing on Saturdays? ‘You two are joined at the hip,’ she’d say. And we still are.”
“Have you ever loved me sexually?” Susan asked, suddenly turning to face me.
“Susan,” I said.
“Have you?”
“Of course.”
“I don’t believe you. I think it’s all been cuddling and hugging. Kid stuff. I think the sex only mattered to me. How do I know you weren’t thinking about men all those times?”
“Susan, of course not—”
“What a mistake,” Susan said. “If only I’d known back then, when I was a kid—”
“Doesn’t it matter to you that I’m back?”
“It’s not like you never left, for Christ’s sake!” She put her hands on my cheeks. “You left,” she said quietly. “For three months you left. And I don’t know, maybe love can be killed.”
She let go. I didn’t say anything.
“I think you should leave for a while,” Susan said. “I think I need some time alone—some time alone knowing you’re alone too.”
I looked at the floor. “Okay,” I said. And I suppose I said it too eagerly, because Susan said, “If you go back to Ted, that’s it. We’re finished for good.”
“I won’t go back to Ted,” I said.
We were both quiet for a few seconds.
“Should I go now?”
Susan nodded.
“Well, then, good-bye,” I said. And I went.
This brings me to where I am now, which is, precisely, nowhere. I waited three hours in front of Ted’s house that night, but when, at twelve-thirty, his car finally pulled into the driveway, someone else got out with him. It has been two weeks since that night. Each day I sit at my desk, and wait for one of them, or a lawyer, to call. I suppose I am homeless, although I think it is probably inaccurate to say that a man with fifty keys in his pocket is ever homeless. Say, then, that I am a man with no home, but many houses.
Of course I am careful. I never spend the night in the same house twice. I bring my own sheets, and in the morning I always remake the bed I’ve slept in as impeccably as I can. The fact that I’m an early riser helps as well—that way, if another broker arrives, or a cleaning woman, I can say I’m just checking the place out. And if the owners are coming back, I’m always the first one to be notified.
The other night I slept at the $10.5 million oceanfront. I used all the bathrooms; I swam in both the pools.
As for the Hilliards’ house—well, so far I’ve allowed myself to stay there only once a week. Not because it’s inconvenient—God knows, no one ever shows the place—but because to sleep there more frequently would bring me closer to a dream of unbearable pleasure than I feel I can safely go.
The Cavallaros, by the way, ended up buying a contemporary in the woods for a hundred and seventy-five, the superb kitchen of which turned out to be more persuasive than Grace-Anne’s dream. The Hilliards’ house remains empty, unsold. Their niece just lowered the price to one fifty—quilts included.
Funny: Even with all my other luxurious possibilities, I look forward to those nights I spend at the Hilliards’ with greater anticipation than anything else in my life. When the key clicks, and the door opens onto that living room with its rows of Reader’s Digest Condensed Books, a rare sense of relief runs through me. I feel as if I’ve come home.
One thing about the Hilliards’ house is that the lighting is terrible. It seems there isn’t a bulb in the house over twenty-five watts. And perhaps this isn’t surprising—they were old people, after all, by no means readers. They spent their lives in front of the television. So when I arrive at night, I have to go around the house, turning on light after light, like ancient oil lamps. Not much to read by, but dim light, I’ve noticed, has a kind of warmth which bright light lacks. It casts a glow against the woodwork which is exactly, just exactly, like the reflection of raging fire.