Cottage for Sale, Must Be Moved (3 page)

Sunday dawns bright blue and bitterly cold, the kind of day when it is better not to know the “windchill factor.” When Harry arrives, I give him barely a moment to say hello to Bruce before I bundle the three of us into Harry’s car. “I really need to find you a car,” I say, as we pull out of the driveway. “I’ve been looking, you know.” Another classified assignment.

“I know,” he says, without enthusiasm. He is not convinced his 1986 Toyota Nova is on death’s door, and he feels a certain loyalty to the aging vehicle. I, on the other hand, believe it is time to move on. I worry about his late-night gigs and his unreliable vehicle. I don’t feel safe in the car, which rattles and shakes and farts without apology. But we are three, and his back seat accommodates full-sized passengers. Mine requires the folding of body parts and elicits complaints from any adult who is forced to ride in the rear.

We follow Ed’s directions to a small cottage colony in Harwich Port. Once the vacation retreat of choice on Cape Cod, only a few cottage colonies are still in business these days. They once offered families a homey alternative to motels, more comfortable than a campground but with some of the same benefits: room for the kids to roam, other families nearby, and the sense of being part of a vacation village. In recent years, cottage colonies have hit upon hard times. The cottages are too tiny and too primitive for today’s vacationers, and the colonies are often located too close to what are now too busy roads. Most cottage colonies have been redeveloped, many demolished. In this case, they are making way for new homes. The sign by the road confirms the price and availability of the buildings and reminds us they must be moved.

We discover the cottages are open to visitors, front doors unlocked. Each has a living room, a tiny galley kitchen, a minuscule bathroom, and a very, very small bedroom. They all have little screened-in porches. I imagine the vacationing families who came home to them all those years ago. Sitting on their porches late at night, content in their week on Cape Cod, they would play cards and music and sip vacation drinks. They were happy families, and these are happy cottages, though empty now and a bit worn out.

We walk through each little house, noting the slightly varying layouts, the positioning of windows and doors. I am Goldilocks, visiting the Bear family compound in their absence, searching for the cottage that is just right. And I find it. It is at the very back of the cottage colony, the cottage farthest from the street. Though it is not discernibly different from its neighbors on the outside, the inside of “my cottage” is warm and appealing, with Mexican tiles hand-laid on the tiny kitchen wall, a deep green living room with real knotty pine paneling, a bold purple bedroom, scuffed but promising wood floors, and bright white ceilings. There are odd built-in features that speak of a weekend carpenter, and a yellow bar of soap still resting on the white porcelain sink. While the other cottages feel as though they have been abandoned for some time, this last little cottage has been loved, and recently. We tour all the cottages one more time, comparing details, measuring rooms with Harry’s footsteps, making notes, but we know we’ll return to the last little cottage in the row. Inside, I jump up and down, up and down, making my way across the floorboards. I detect no soft spots. “It seems sturdy,” I say, and Harry agrees. Bruce is slightly dubious about my research methods.

I open up the little notebook I have brought, the gridded paper perfect for sketching a floor plan. I outline the cottage, rough the locations of the doors and windows, and Harry provides the measurements.

“I could live here,” Bruce says, “just as it is.” Bruce has had an ongoing fantasy for as long as I’ve known him. A small-house fantasy. I first learned of it when we worked at the BU Bookstore and he was visiting me in Marblehead, a town full of charming old homes. We were walking around the Old Town section when we came upon a little house, snuggled into a hillside, a tiny porch only a few feet from the sidewalk. “Now that could be my house,” Bruce said. I agreed it was a sweet little house.

“Whenever I see a little house like that, I think: The owners could give that house to me. They would see me looking with admiration on their home, and decide to give it to me. They’d walk outside, and say to me, ‘This little house is just the right size for you. We have decided to give it to you.’”

I wanted to ask, What will happen to the couple; where will they live? But I understood I was being picky in the face of his fantasy. In the years since, Bruce has refined the scenario, and I have dared to ask a few questions. No strings attached, I have learned, in this house-gifting, and no worries about the couple (I think it is always a couple) who give him the house. They will not be homeless, but instead will move into a bigger house when he moves into the smaller one.

Bruce is an economical man; he is a poet for whom every word counts, and he lives sparingly in a two-room apartment in Vineyard Haven. As long as I have known him, Bruce has been a bookseller. He’s a voracious reader, but due to space constraints, he limits the number of books that he owns. He invests only in art books, and takes most of what he reads home on loan.

I too can imagine Bruce living in this tiny cottage, seventeen by twenty-five, according to Harry’s feet. I wonder if the cottage could take the ferry over to the Vineyard. House-moving is an old and honored tradition on Cape Cod, dating back to times when wood was scarce and transport to this spit of sand was expensive, even dangerous. I have heard stories of houses crossing the channel from the Cape to the islands. But I have already taken possession of this cottage in my mind. And I am not gracious like his fantasy couple. I want to keep this small house. I want to take it home.

“This is the best of the bunch,” I say, not yet willing to admit I have fallen deeply, irretrievably in love.*

*
IN THE CAR
Harry blasts the heat at my request, pointing out that his radiator is in excellent repair. We talk about the little cottage as we ride around seeking a quick bite before we pick up champagne for a New Year’s party. In Massachusetts, what we call the blue laws keep the liquor merchants shuttered on most Sundays. Only during the holiday season could we hope to purchase spirits on the day of rest. The original blue laws shut down all retail on Sunday, and frankly, I preferred it that way. My reasons were more pragmatic than spiritual. I was a bookstore manager in those days, and I found peace of mind knowing the shop was closed up tight one day a week. But it was more than that. There was a quiet in the streets around the shuttered shops, a quiet interrupted only by meandering Sunday afternoon drives, a quiet that made napping on a Sunday afternoon easy—and entirely guiltless. But slowly the laws eased, and less slowly the stores opened, one after another. Soon enough, everybody was open, pretty much all of the time. Convenient, sure, but I have this unkickable sense that something valuable was lost.

On this day, though, I am happy to find a package store open where we can buy our holiday spirits. (A famous Massachusetts expression, “package store”; in the “package” are always alcoholic beverages.) Happy too for our midafternoon meal of pizza, salad, and root beer all around. Between bites, Harry and I take turns with the notebook. We draw an outline of my house, an outline of the cottage, and the three of us discuss the possible placement of the addition. “Leave it detached? Maybe with an interesting walkway to it?” This is Harry’s suggestion. He’s carried an image of a glass walkway connecting to an outbuilding on my property for many years.

“But where?” I ask him.

“Out on the corner by the shed.”

“Won’t meet setback requirements. That’s right on the property line.”

“Take the shed out and put it there.”

“Too close to the septic. We need at least ten feet.”

“You know all this stuff,” he says.

“I do.” I have looked into adding on so many times in the past eight, ten, twelve years that I know every pro and con of every option.*

*
WE MAKE OUR WAY HOME,
only to pack up Harry’s gear and head out again, this time to Hyannis—the downtown of all Cape Cod. We find parking across the street from tonight’s venue, The Prodigal Son, a coffeehouse with an eclectic entertainment calendar. In any given month, you can hear rock bands, attend poetry slams and unpredictable open-mike nights, listen to folk music, and see Middle Eastern dance performances. Tonight, Harry backs up Tiffany Park, a young singer-songwriter who has a loyal following in the area. Bruce is eager to hear them; he hasn’t heard Harry play since the days of the BU Bookstore, more than fifteen years earlier.

Bruce wears a neat brown beard streaked with gray and slightly outdated aviator glasses. He could easily be mistaken for a literature professor, especially when he opens his mouth. Bruce is highly intelligent, and highly verbal in the right setting. I think because he lives on an island, he saves up all his deep thinking. That might explain why he speaks in paragraphs rather than sentences, and why almost every observation he makes is thoughtful and well considered.

Self-schooled in music appreciation, Bruce has a CD collection that must rival the Smithsonian’s, at least in the contemporary and minimalist departments. But he doesn’t hear too much live music outside a concert hall. He is immediately disconcerted by the sound level at the coffeehouse, and upset that he is without earplugs. He folds his arms across his chest and refuses a drink. I find myself annoyed with his behavior, or maybe it is my defensiveness at work. Would a more thoughtful hostess have suggested ear protection?

I make my way to the bar for a glass of white wine. I bump into my friend Katrina, who has come to hear Harry, too. Katrina is tiny, beautiful, and blonde, and she is known to the bartender-owner because she hosts the Middle Eastern dance events here at The Prodigal. I introduce her to Bruce, who remains disgruntled. Usually the sight of Katrina improves the day of any person of the male gender. I allow myself one more moment of guilt for Bruce’s bad feelings, and then I sit back to enjoy the show.

Tiffany is young, in her mid-twenties maybe, and obviously talented. She wears 1950s-style plastic eyeglasses, a red plaid woodsman jacket, and army boots. Her voice is resonant and evocative, and so are her own songs, of which, Harry tells her, she does not write enough. Harry, close to twenty years older, is just as gifted. He is as much Tiffany’s cheerleader and coach as he is backup to her lead. He prefers the backup role, he says. He plays a mean guitar, a double-mean bass; the depth of his voice complements his own complex and lovely songs. What Harry lacks are the psychological components to solo success in the musical world: abiding confidence and unstinting ambition. He is happier helping someone else along.

Tonight Harry wears his usual uniform: black jeans and a black T-shirt. He is a big guy, tall, strong, and rounding slightly as he hits the middle of his life. He’s been bald as long as I’ve known him, since he was not yet twenty-five. Harry has what another friend calls “a well-shaped head,” and he looks great without hair. Perhaps it is his clean-shaven head that makes his eyebrows appear so unruly. I have known him for so many years, I sometimes fail to notice his distinctive looks.

On the tiny stage, Harry and Tiffany create an unlikely aesthetic, an odd yet perfect combination of sight and sound that is precisely wacky now: In their own version of “I’m Gonna Love You Just a Little More, Baby,” Tiffany is Barry White, while Harry, in falsetto, joins her for the chorus.

I steal a glance at Bruce. He has unfolded his arms, opening himself to the music. I see his fingers tapping out a rhythm on the table, and a smile playing on the edge of his lips. I shift my attention back to the stage, where Harry has become Barry, leaning into the mike and making every attempt to maintain a serious demeanor as he lowers his voice to a deep-throated rumble. As they finish the tune, Tiffany and Harry are grinning, and we are clapping, laughing, clapping.

THE NEXT DAY,
a Monday, I call the number on the sign.

“Eastward Companies.”

I notice speaking voices more than most people do. Perhaps it is my musician’s ear, or maybe all these years of listening to the radio instead of watching TV. I appreciate any lovely voice, whether it is male or female, and I am apt to idealize the person behind the voice. Many years ago, I met the late Robert J. Lurtsema, legendary host of
Morning Pro Musica
. The gray-white beard I expected, and I was unsurprised that voice, more bass than baritone, would reside in a barrel chest, supported by a big belly. What stunned me was Lurtsema’s height, not to mention his apparel. That voice belonged in a tall man’s body; that voice belonged in a tuxedo jacket. But the voice lived in a short, round man; the voice wore a red chamois shirt from L. L. Bean.

Voices, I have learned, are not always to be trusted. Broad voices live in thin bodies, young voices in old bodies, and voices, it turns out, dress however they like. Still, I persist in reading voices, and I am not always wrong. I met a significant man in my life over the telephone. His voice was warm, unconstrained, and so appealing that I wanted to curl up inside it and live there. When we met in person, I was not disappointed. Now we communicate only occasionally—usually through e-mail—and for this I am grateful. To hear him speak requires a deafness my heart can barely achieve. It is one thing to lose a lover; another thing entirely to give up such a voice.

“Eastward Companies.”

This voice is female, and she breathes the greeting into the phone. If Marlene Dietrich had answered telephones for a living, this would have been her voice. Deep, sexy, yet remarkably professional. This voice makes me want to pack my bags and head for the Eastward Companies, wherever they are. Just to satisfy my curiosity. I wonder what effect this modern-day Marlene would have on male callers. I know my ears are more sensitive than most, and I’ve learned to tone down my aural fantasies. Even as I try to dress her voice in lumpy pink sweatpants, I am willing to bet contractors hear fishnet stockings when they call Eastward Companies.