Published Spring 2007
 
House Tour
And it was when the "PRICE REDUCED" signs went up that people started coming out of their houses again.
Before, they had called the "SALE" signs "pure," "uncluttered," "minimalist." Deemed unnecessary: "Homeowner's Warranty Included!" Deemed unnecessary: "I'm gorgeous inside!"
"It's redundant," the realtors said, when they had time to speak to anybody. "At this moment, every house is gorgeous inside."
Realtors hammered "SALE" in front of houses, and hung "SOLD" later the same day, and in some neighborhoods, they brought out stopwatches so they could advertise their sale speeds by the second.
In her neighborhood, so many moving trucks rumbled through that she had to wait for ten minutes every morning to get out of her driveway, and the neighborhood roads were repaired two times in the course of three years. The trucks gouged that many holes in the soft pavement.
During the election season, things reached such a pitch that people who posted signs for their candidates were awakened by knocks on their doors in the middle of the night.
"We're looking for houses," the people said when the others opened their doors into the night air. "We buy homes! Fair prices. Cheap fees."
And when residents realized that people simply were stumbling around in the dark looking for signs, any signs, they first added lights and then "By Appointment Only" placards at the tops of the political signs, so that confusion spilled over into election day itself; people followed the signs they'd seen in front of all those houses. They pooled in great masses at the neighborhood school, the local polling place, where they asked for the "real estate seminar" or filled out write-in ballots with names such as Long & Foster, ReMax, and Coldwell, thrusting folded sheets of paper at local election officials even when volunteers couldn't find the people on their lists of registered voters.
"Hold on!" cried one volunteer, Edna, a local spokesperson for Bell's palsy whose tangled yard of shrubs and vines harbored thirty-seven different bird species, three of which almost had been declared endangered. "Hold on! We have a problem here!"
But people, their ears tuned with hope, their senses dimmed with noise, heard "Coldwell" instead of "problem"—and maybe "Coldwell" instead of "Hold on!"—and they pressed poor Edna against the wall as they grabbed the fliers from her hands on "VOTING MACHINE OPERATION INSTRUCTIONS."
The only thing that saved her, she realized later, was an instinctual revelation that they were drawn to the thrashing motions she made while fighting them off. She told herself to stop, and then she calmly handed each one a flier and instructed, "Through that door over there," with a smile, before sending them out through the exit in the far left corner of the gym. A local reporter, informed of the confusion, found the group much later at the schoolyard's playground equipment, the closest thing they could find to the voting machines. When asked what they hoped to accomplish by their measured tuggings on swingset chains or active working of the piece that has that giant handle you can move up and down, they told him they were just following the instructions someone had handed them and that if he wanted a chance, he really should get in line. His filed report ran the next day: Playground Equipment Offers Room with a View AND Structured Garden Space All in One!
But whether they were coming or going, the real problem, she thought, was that moving trucks seemed to pull directly up to house doors so people could slide between front entries and trucks—walk on air and never on a piece of sand on the neighborhood ground.
It seemed like this because when she walked her dog at night through the neighborhood streets, not a single neighbor appeared. She imagined them stuck, stuffed in, hanging from the walls of their houses like giant cicadas, their electronic household devices chirruping and whirring.
And then one summer, millions of real cicadas hatched and filled the air. Some bumped into her head, their wings whirring as they flew straight for her face, and if you stood still and held out your arms, they landed on you and stayed to visit even as you continued your walk. And so, she thought, her comparison had not been apt at all—because the cicadas in real life in fact were entirely more sociable than the cicada-residents who lived in her imagination.
Once, looking out her living room window, she saw a woman sitting on the curb under a tree. It was 100 degrees out, and while the woman wore plaid shorts and a short-sleeved t-shirt, she didn't belong outside—her pasty skin hung in folds over her knees and elbows.
Now there's a woman desperate for some company, she thought. She called the woman Bernadette in her mind, and she filled two cups with lemonade and brought them outside.
But as she approached Bernadette, summer school let out for the day, a young girl ran up the hill to the curb, and Bernadette walked off with the child on the path that led out of the neighborhood to the closest stop on the bus route. The streets were empty otherwise.
She had to wait, she realized, for the right time. And when the right time came, they would crawl out of their shells, every last one, and she imagined that the neighborhood then would swarm and teem with their bodies. And so she waited. And then the "PRICE REDUCED" signs started going up. And the realtors went away. And the people came out of their houses.
Some came out only to drive away in panic.
"Get in the car! Quick!" Men drove getaway vehicles to curbs, and children wearing pink princess costumes ran down sidewalks, their arms loaded with plastic suitcases that held glitter stickers, temporary tattoos, and electronic devices that beeped and flashed in the dark caverns of the containers. Later, the children took inventory and felt the same intense longing as their parents about all that had been left behind.
"We're out of practice," their parents grieved. The parents' names are Charles and Louise. "We simply had forgotten how. But we know we would remember now if someone only gave us a chance."
"In a fire?" Charles prompts. "Or in any other such circumstance when there's only a fractional moment to make the most important decisions?"
"The Bible and the baby," Louise triumphs. "The Bible and the baby!" Louise slaps herself on the forehead. Then, "But really, who could blame us?"
One morning, long after such exits had become commonplace at night, two screeching getaways took place on the steepest hill in the neighborhood—but at ten o'clock in the morning.
People had talked about the street for some time, how the "PRICE REDUCED" signs had collected there first and collected there in greater numbers than anywhere else in the neighborhood, and how things now were sliding to worse—"Oh, much worse!"—with the appearance of a new word: "AGAIN." And people tried the words out on their tongues, "PRICE REDUCED AGAIN," and found they did not like them and wondered why this particular street was so tough. They had stayed away from there at night, even though the street ran straight down the center of the neighborhood, because you can't trust the drivers of getaway cars. But it always had been okay there during the day.
Still, you could take something good from all of this, she told herself the following week as she walked to the community rec center. People were coming out of their houses again. Not just with getaways—although there had been four more just in the past week. There were signs as well, she thought, of something else. Three small boys—or were they girls, she couldn't tell anymore—riding their tricycles around the neighborhood tennis court, their mothers watching their halting motions with faces pinched in fear and anger. Bernie, Kimmie, Sharique. She thought there might be hope somewhere in what she saw, and she held on to that hope as she filed into the rec building for the community meeting that would Address the Problems Our Community Faces and Enjoy! Refreshments Served!
"Remember," a woman, Jean, in tan shorts began. "How we overextended ourselves on financing and refinancing and how Peter and I bought the most beautiful Lapis Lazuli paint—the most expensive paint in history—and how we used it just to edge the walls around our interior molding? And how I said, 'We'll think of it as our summer sky' and Peter said, 'We'll think of it as our Egyptian tomb.' And then we threw the remainder away?"
"That's nice, dear," said Sharon, who wore Keds and a freshly ironed t-shirt. "But let's move on if you don't mind. Think about what happened two years ago when Paul and I decided we needed to lose weight. Most people invest their money in kitchens and bathrooms—it's really where the payoff is. Something like a pool is much riskier. Much. And some would say it might even bring down the value of the home." Sharon moved to the front of the assembly as she spoke. "But think of our predicament. We already had pushed out the entire back of the house so that it now featured a spacious kitchen with vaulted ceiling, open floorplan, built-in seating, and ample counterspace. We already had added a master bath, as well. So we thought we could expand that bath or—and here I must share credit with our brilliant architect, Mikha Tyrell—or we could break through the back wall of the bathroom and build an indoor treadmill pool. And let me ask you today: Is that not much better than a common soaking tub?"
"Consider tradition." Janice pulled herself up. Gray curls. Pink lipstick. "Consider, that is, the recent disregard for tradition."
We need ... Kristin in a note to Shelley.
"Look at how much space we, the original owners, added to our houses just by finishing off the basements and garages."
... to recruit ...
"Tea for two and two for tea—that's fine on a back patio."
"With wrought iron table and chairs only $299," Vera murmured in support.
"Including special summertime rebate." Janice didn't miss a beat. "But I'm talking about space—real space. My dining room table—original design, solid oak—seats 18 every Thanksgiving. We had to carry it halfway up the stairs when we moved it in."
... more young people.
"Yes. I see you want to speak. But I'm going to finish, because I want you to make no mistake: I managed this all without bumping out even an inch of the back of my house."
Gordon, apologetic, yet hostile and cool. Salt and pepper hair.
"Look. It's just that we're not getting anywhere like this. We need a larger vision, one that takes in the concerns of the neighborhood as a whole. Curb appeal is gazebos and brick pavers and wrought iron fences. It has nothing to do with tomato red paint in the dining room."
"I beg your pardon!" Larry. Hot under the collar.
"What's your problem?" Gordon. Quick to anger.
"Just watch it." Larry. "I mean, what do you know about what a person sees from the curb? What do you know about the way the light from the dining room shines out in the night? Or about the dreams people have when they walk by and see Mother slicing a piece of turkey—"
"White damask tablecloth. Relief pattern. Finished edges."
"—after Junior's been sent from the table to wash his hands—"
"Hand towels. Egyptian cotton. Only $6.99 apiece."
"—There's a shelf of books on the wall behind the table. You can't read the titles from the curb—you know they're different heights, different thicknesses, but it's all you can do to make out the colors on their spines. Isn't that in fact curb appeal? When you can see enough to make you want to imagine more?"
In a moment, the group would fragment further. Janice would tell Kristin to read her note to the entire assembly. Kristin instead would recite from memory the entire text of the Good Housekeeping spread on her house that ran five years earlier. No more rich, old clients in Potomac for Mrs. Kristin Kampf! Now this up-and-comer keeps the design flair for her own home! Powder blue pants. Blond pageboy scream. Tyrone and Vera would argue over the price of Placemats. Sisal. Fiesta Colors, Fiesta Fun.
But when Larry's speech ended, the entire back row broke out in applause. Shadya. Ronnie. Kimber. Nicole. Karina. Thomas. Littrell. Kandice. May. Burrell. Wynter. Pete. From where she stood behind them, she could see the back of each one's head. Pete whistled. Karina murmured, "You tell 'em!" Not a single person turned around as she walked away. She pushed open that back door. It swung heavy, then clicked, closed into place.
As she walks away from the rec center, she sees nothing above her but the tops of the neighborhood trees. They're old. Not like the houses: older. At some point, someone built around them. Now they cover up a starless evening sky, but as she walks, she sees one light after another.
Every one of them, as they left their houses, had kept on the lights. An incandescent lamp in the living room. A fluorescent overhead in the basement. Something red that blinks out from what must be the master bedroom. And that sound. It must be a child's CD. Someone had been in a hurry to leave. Isn't it a children's musician with long white hair and a turban who makes that sound? Sssssshhhhh. Sssssshhhhh. Sssssshhhhh. He has an instrument that he scrapes along the ends of his fingers. Tiny strips of bamboo or something like raffia but strong and strung out tight on a simple wooden frame. Sssssshhhhh. Sssssshhhhh. Or is that the wind picking up in the trees? Something hangs heavy in the air or it's starting to crash around. She can't tell which.
There's a light on in the dining room of the one she's by right now. She goes up the walk. Puts her hand on the doorknob. She's sure she can get through at least ten before the owners get home.
|
