THE YELLOW HOUSE

I tote our one-year-old boy over my shoulder as Peter, our realtor, leads our small family down the short hallway of the little yellow house. Peter’s from England, though his accent has softened from years in the States, and until recently he’s been as cheery and tactful and deferential as one often pictures the British. With our finances, most of the houses we qualified for were dumps, and Peter discouraged us from many of them: “Wouldn’t feel quite right letting you buy this one . . . not really the right thing for you . . . not right for the baby . . .”

But at last he’s found a nice, if modest, house we can just afford. He’s brought us back for a second visit; my wife’s already convinced, but he’s developed a metallic edge in his voice because I won’t make up my mind.

He pauses in the hallway to rap on the wall. “Sturdy,” he says proudly. “I know how you feel about sturdy walls, Frank.” (Not my real name, but he has been mistakenly calling me Frank for so many weeks now that I have come to enjoy being called this.)

He knocks again and I think I detect a fragile sound in the woodwork. My thoughts again drift to Mexico; our hard-earned dollars would stretch far if we lived in a palapa on the Pacific coast.

“This is your man, Frank. I say go for it.”

I jiggle the baby in my arms. “What do you think, Tolstoy?” (Not his real name, but he has come to enjoy being called this.) “Do you think you’d be happy here?”

“Bah.” He widens his blue eyes and lets drool seep over his lip onto the lapel of my windbreaker.

“I appreciate your candor, Tolstoy. Stick to renting. Let someone else fix the furnace.”

“Oh knock it off,” my wife says, chuckling from behind us. “You know you like the house.”

My wife is a husky blonde with a kind, oval face. She is also a black belt in Tae Kwon Do, and while I trust she would never dislocate my kneecap with a front snap kick, break my ribs, or cause me any other harm, she makes me uneasy when her left shoulder dips and stiffens as it does now. She’s had it with the cramped apartments we’ve lived in for years, tired of moving from city to city, state to state. Now that we have the baby it’s time to stop our drifting, time to settle down. I know she’s right, but my spirits sag in this pleasant enough neighborhood of small ranch homes and faded lawns. I can’t help yearning to run with the bulls in Mexico one last time, one last time to run free.

Ellen smiles as we enter the bedroom that will be Tolstoy’s. Her eyes brighten; already she’s picturing the cheerful mural she will paint, a scene of bears and rhinos, Tolstoy’s favorite animals—we think. She sniffs happily at the air, but I detect dust and toxic molecular particles rising from the beige wall-to-wall carpeting. Peter walks to the window and parts the green curtain left by the former occupants who are still in the process of moving their last things out. Here and there boxes are piled up; my sense is of a family fleeing in chaos and ruin.

“Bit late in the day now,” Peter says in the dim room. “But in the morning you’ll get a lovely light and a nice view of the street. The baby can watch the cars drive by.”

“How nice,” Ellen says. “He’ll like that.”

“If the molecular breakdown doesn’t make him too woozy to care.”

Peter slowly lets the curtain fall back in place. He turns. His voice comes out a bit breathless and high. “What is wrong now?”

“Oh, there’s nothing wrong. It’s just that the molecules break down in wall-to-wall carpeting and give off toxic particles that might give the baby a sinus condition. Asthma later on.”

“You could take the carpet up,” he whispers. “Certainly. Why not?”

He adjusts his glasses—a black, horn-rimmed type. He’s taller than I by several inches. I’m thicker, though, and I think I could take him if we went to the carpet. Could pin and pummel him. Though that might be an inappropriate thing to do to one’s realtor.

Ellen’s shoulder dips again. “You never said anything about wall-to-wall carpeting before. But we could take it up. Good idea. I bet it’s pinewood beneath. I love pinewood.”

A traitor in the family. I see that she and Peter have conspired against me. I must watch Tolstoy, see with whom he’ll throw in his lot. We’ll head south, find an adobe house with a couple of cottonwood trees. Hang a hammock . . .

Peter gives a sinister chuckle. “This is your man, Frank. It’s a steal.”

Ellen floats happily into the master bedroom; we follow as the toxic particles encircle us and waft about our heads.

The bed is gone, but the imprints from the bedposts remain in the carpet. Soon our bed will take its place here and the years will pass as we live within the walls of this little yellow house. As my wife and my realtor exchange glances and the baby writhes like an eel in my arms, I am gripped again by the question that haunts me, the question that stalks me as I shave, sip my morning coffee, drive to work: Is this my life? Is this the life that I was meant to live?

Nearing forty, one becomes aware that one can’t afford to make too many more mistakes, to take too many wrong turns. The possibilities, the options, narrow down. Choose one thing and it precludes another. At night I wake and lie trembling to the bone. I listen to the rise and fall of Ellen’s breathing and I wonder: Is this my life? Is this the life that I was meant to live? In the darkness, I slip to my son’s room and stand over his crib and listen to his mutterings and stirrings; it is a kind of awe and wonder and joy and sadness that makes me ask: Is this my life? I love. I am loved. Yet a younger me still roams the rugged foothills of Guanajuato, or steals through the night to the cantinas, called on by the ballads of lost men and saloon love.

Instead we come to this. A little yellow house. Perhaps it’s the right move, the right turn to take. No doubt. On summer evenings the aroma of lawnmower oil and barbecued steaks will envelop our patio, call us to some higher purpose.

Shall I plant saplings as my father did when he slowly turned our dirt plot to yard? Those trees are tall and sturdy now, the grass lush and thick, the dogs of thirty years buried near the garden, their graves neatly marked with stones. Oh son of mine, would you be happy in a little yellow home? Or shall we take our dough and split for Mexico?

Tolstoy wriggles into his mother’s waiting arms, and Peter and I wander out to the backyard and survey the rickety cedar fence. It’s an overcast day with hints of an approaching storm. A breeze blows the brown leaves across the yard, and I sink my hands in the pockets of my windbreaker. Winter soon. We shuffle about, look down at our shoes. Peter clears his throat. “We can’t wait on this too long you know, Frank. It’ll slip through our fingers. I know it’s what your family wants.” His eyes bore into me. He isn’t the most successful real estate agent; his tweed coat looks a bit threadbare, and I fear his concern for my family may be tempered by his anxiety about meeting his own mortgage payment.

But the moment seems suddenly soft and intimate. Now Peter’s eyes resemble those of a therapist, and I find myself blurting out, “Have you ever wanted more from love, Peter?”

“Beg pardon, old boy?”

“The big splash, you know. The earth moving under you and all that, the stars spinning overhead, an out-of-body experience. Oh, it’s all fine, you know. It’s great. No complaints here. But that mystical thing? Do you suppose it’s all a myth?”

He coughs once into the middle of his hand, gives a nod, eyes bright, moist. “Ever been to a pro, old boy?”

We walk side by side, shoulders bumping, back to the patio. Peter taps on the exterior wall. “What would you say this siding is, Frank?” he asks, feigning ignorance to get me involved.

“I don’t know. Some kind of cheap chipboard, I guess.”

He grimaces. Through the rickety fence slats, the neighbor’s dog sticks its black muzzle and growls.

“I don’t know if I want my boy living next to a brute like that.”

Peter removes his glasses. He breathes on one lens. With his thumb, he wipes the lens clean with precise, circular motions. His lips twitch.

“My father didn’t have siding like this. Our house was brick.”

He holds his glasses up to the sun, sighs, puts them back on. “This is washable, Frank. That’s the nice thing. Besides, it’s only a starter home.”

“Wouldn’t a starter home be more suited to someone a bit younger?”

“People are buying later these days, Frank.”

“Are they?” I frighten myself by the note of desperation in my voice.

He lays a hand on my shoulder, and I momentarily experience a feeling for my realtor which is not too unlike love. “They certainly are buying later, Frank. Grown people live with their parents these days. I worked with a man fifty-eight years old, just moving out on his own for the first time. Found him a nice starter home. People are living longer, Frank. Plenty of time to upgrade.”

The dog forces its paw through the fence; it whines with bloodlust frenzy and claws the air.

“Could we meet the neighbors?” I ask.

Peter brightens. It’s the kind of question a realtor respects. “Certainly, Frank. Good idea.”

We walk around the side of the house to the front yard, cross a small yellowing lawn, mount one step, and ring the doorbell. I wonder what kind of neighbors they’ll be. Thieves? Eavesdroppers? Will they play their music loud and snicker as we stroll past with Tolstoy?

“Maybe this isn’t a good idea after all.”

“Wait,” he says, touching my sleeve.

We hear a movement behind the door, and then a woman about my own age swings open the door and looks at us through the screen. She’s pretty, but tired looking. I hear the shouts of children playing.

“Hello,” Peter says cheerily. “I’m a realtor. I’m selling the house next door.”

“Oh.” She smiles at us. She glances back in the direction of all the commotion and chuckles. “Want to sell this one while you’re at it? Kids included.”

Peter smiles. He puts his hand on my shoulder and kneads. “Frank here is going to be your new neighbor. He was wondering if you could tell him something about the neighborhood?”

“Sure. What do you want to know?”

“Is it . . . well . . . is it . . .”

“Is it nice?” Peter asks. “Is it a nice place to live?”

“Oh sure. Yeah. It’s safe. Quiet. The people are friendly. It’s just . . . you know . . .” She shrugs her shoulders. “We bought it as a starter home.”

I sigh. “And now you’re stuck.”

Peter takes me by the elbow and steers me away. “Frank, Frank, Frank,” he breathes as he leads me across the driveway and back onto the front lawn of the little yellow house. “Frank, what is this attitude of yours?”

“I’m just trying to get to the truth, Peter. If we make the wrong choice now . . .”

“Frank.” He grips both my elbows, looks me in the face, his eyes glinty beneath the thick glasses. “Courage, Frank. These are nothing but ordinary pre-sale jitters. Stay the course, man. Remember the purpose. A home. For Ellen. For the baby.”

But as he holds me I suddenly realize what it is that I want. Not a home, not a family, not love . . . What I want at the moment is loneliness, sheer hurting loneliness. The kind of loneliness that burns out the old self, that sets one a-spin in the universe, free to be broken and made anew.

I pull my arms free. “I’m not buying it.”

As I take off walking, I have a recollection of a long-ago argument with my father, when I left him standing in the yard in a hurt, abandoned pose such as Peter’s. My father held out his hand to me and then let it drop in despair, as Peter does now. But I must not think of anyone else’s hurt now. I must think only of my own escape. I am leaving; I am leaving; I am going to look for my new life.

Within two blocks, it occurs to me that this may not be the best place to begin searching for my new life. The neighborhood makes my spirits sink—the houses huddled on leaf-strewn lawns, teenagers on a front stoop casting sullen, dulled-out glances my way, a muddy drainage ditch in sight across a weedy vacant lot—a breeding ground for plague-carrying rodents. To the west, the sky has darkened to stormy black. By the next block, a squall descends, the wind whipping rain against the back of my neck. I raise the collar of my windbreaker and hurry on.

Then Peter toots his horn and pulls up beside me. Ellen’s on the passenger side, her shoulder ominously dipped and stiffened. Tolstoy’s tucked into the car seat in back, his face turned toward me, eyes wide, astonished.

I pick up my pace as Peter rolls alongside me, driving on the wrong side of the quiet street so he can talk out the window. “They’re hot to trot, old man. They need to unload fast. We’ll go for blood and ask for a point.”

“You’ll have to catch me first.”

Ellen looks anxiously at me and Tolstoy stretches out a drooly hand and grins, and I know that I am already caught.

But I give a crazy laugh, crying out, “Catch me!” as I take off running down the sidewalk through the downpour.

Peter keeps tooting his horn, a melodious sound as they roll alongside me. The rain drenches me, runs down my neck; cold and clean, it revives me. Peter calls out his window, “I won’t let you pass this up! You’re going to love it here once you get used to it!”

I cut down an alleyway, but when I come to the other end Peter’s car charges up like a determined, feisty bull. “Steady, man! Stay the course. Build up your equity!”

I dodge across a yard, hurdle a rose bush, trip on soggy turf, throw something in my knee. I stagger on, running for my life . . .