Cottage for Sale, Must Be Moved (8 page)

“Is there any way to do it without taking down these spruce?” I ask the men now. “Conservation may want them to stay.”

“Excuse me?” Mr. Hayden says, loudly, indignantly. “Aren’t these trees on your property?”

“Yes, but they’re in that buffer zone. I need their permission to take them down.”

Mr. Hayden, disbelieving, shakes his head, grumbles something unintelligible and nasty about town government. John Baxter makes some fresh calculations, takes some more measurements. “If we had to,” John says, “I think we could do it. We can swing the cottage up this way—he gestures to indicate the long side of the cottage would move through the trees—and then swing it around ninety degrees to make the landing. But it wouldn’t be easy.” The cottage is sixteen feet wide. It would be a very tight fit.

We walk back up the hill and designate the trees that will have to come down, no matter what—a few small oaks, a larger one by the corner of the house. “I can’t make any guarantees,” John says, looking back at the spruce closest to us. “It would be better to take one tree down, probably this one.”

“You can cut it down ahead of time, or we can knock it over with the cottage.” Mr. Hayden clarifies. I let that image lie.

“If they both stay, I could end up hurting both of them during the move.”

“Killing ’em is another way they could come down,” Mr. Hayden says. It’s clear he is still mad at the unavoidable regulators of my backyard.

“It would be a lot better to take this one down.” John Baxter repeats his message. “Besides, you’ll have to cut it way back, won’t you? It will be too tight to the house.”

“You’re right. It might be better if we take it away, rather than hack at it.” I pause for a moment, staring at the space where I imagine the cottage will land. “Okay, assuming we can solve the spruce issue,” I say to Mr. Hayden now, “you’re saying you can do this job?”

He shrugs, nods in the direction of John Baxter.

“We’ll need to use the biggest crane I have,” John says, “because the hill is so steep. But the driveway is just wide enough, and as long as we can dig into the hill a little for the pads, there’s enough room. Damn, it’s tight! But I think we can do it.”

“If he says he can do it, we can do it,” Mr. Hayden says cheerfully.

John Baxter shakes my hand as I thank him. He gives me some advice on the Conservation hearing. “Go yourself,” he says. “Don’t hire some attorney to go for you. I watch those hearings on TV. They hate the big shots.”

“What about an engineer?”

“Oh yeah, you need an engineer, but do all the talking yourself. You’ll have a much better chance.”

We walk toward the circle. Mr. Hayden is getting in his car. “Get back with a price,” he calls—I think—to me.*

*
I MAKE FIVE TRIPS
to California in six weeks. Leave on Wednesday, return on Saturday, three days at home, leave again. It is grueling, and the travel is that much worse because the project is not going smoothly. There are too many people involved in the design decisions; every meeting is a clash of sensibilities. I feel annoyed most of the time—and jet-lagged. On the other hand—and on the other coast—the bookstore in Maine is a breath of fresh air. The architect and I are in tune, talking and sketching and faxing back and forth. Already, I can see the space. It will be beautiful.

I’m grateful for Tony’s willingness to kitty-sit and back me up at the office. He is eager for hours as he saves up for that new, old Volvo wagon he was wished for the New Year. The one he’s been driving is about twenty years old. He’s looking for something about half that age, and he’s looking hard. Online, in the papers, in person, his search is earnest and thorough. Just like Tony.

I am thrilled he wants more work. I am also thrilled by the news he brought a few weeks back. He and Anna were married the first week of the New Year. A city hall marriage—no fluff, and not a ring bearer in sight. “We’ll probably do it again later, for Anna’s parents,” he said. They live in Italy and don’t yet know their daughter is a married woman. “I wanted to tell you, because that New Year’s party of yours was kind of a catalyst.” They had applied for a license back in October, he told me, but they hadn’t made up their minds how or when to get married. The license would expire in early January, and they figured they would just let it go. Apply again when they knew what they wanted to do. “But our time on the Cape, and your party, and then driving back—we said, ‘Oh, let’s do it.’”

There is nothing like a car ride early in a millennium to spark a romance. Harry and Tina are dating now, and I am pleased to see my friends discover the wonder of each other. My own love life has been actively—and classically—disappointing: lunch without lust, and one former girlfriend stealing back the only promising man I’d met in some time. Tony, my unofficial romantic advisor, is also my personal advocate. He is hopeful when I am hopeful and always on my side when things don’t work out. “No great loss,” he says about the latest disappointment. He tells me I deserve better. “You’re such a great catch. If you lived in the city, you’d be turning down the offers. You just have to get out more.”

Get out more? I’m barely home at all. I thank Tony for his moral support as I recall the desires tucked inside that master wish I made for the New Year. First comes the cottage, I remind myself—the place to write, the space to share. I have no doubt that opening up my workspace will also open up my work. And taking the work out of the bedroom? Surely, that can only help in the romance department. Create the space, I tell myself. The man will arrive when I have room for him. In the meantime, I have this cottage to move.*

*
THE HEARING IS ONLY
a few days away. Everything is ready. I’ve spoken to Scotty, an arborist and neighbor, who assures me that taking down one spruce is the thing to do. “There’s a beech tree here that needs room to grow. Clear out that spruce and a couple of these oaks, and you’ll have a beautiful European beech.” Scotty is a fan of beech trees, of which I have a few on my property, all young, all self-seeded—from where, we aren’t sure. The closest beech is in front of the library, a couple of blocks away. Those trees are seventy-five years old, huge and graceful and unmistakable. Scott considers my baby beeches a mystery to be solved; he is on the lookout for a closer parent that he may have missed in his travels through my neighbors’ backyards.

Mr. Hayden has been back, in person, with an estimate. “Around $3,000, maybe $3,500 depending on the crane. Challenging site,” he says. “Have to rent the crane for the whole day. $800 right there, unless I use it on another job.”

“No problem,” I say. “Sounds good.”

When I ask him, Dave says we are ready, and he feels optimistic. The plans have been submitted, and the bog scientist has located the border of the bog. It’s true I’ll be edging into the buffer zone with the cottage, but the zone includes my neighbor’s driveway, which is disturbed every day, many times a day. My neighbor, too, has pointed this out. He’s on my side, happy to lend me his driveway for the cottage delivery. I know I’ll pay later; when he applies to pave the gravel drive, he will expect my support. For now, I am grateful he is so gracious and agreeable.

Ed has visited twice, once alone and once with his son John, who will oversee the project until Ed is back from Florida. We walked the property together, tracing the invisible outline of the cottage. It was a warmish day, so we stood outside to talk. The project was new to John, and he was listening carefully to his father as he spoke.

“We have to get the equipment in over on this side on account of Conservation, and we have to use small equipment—maybe a couple of Bobcats.”

“My mini-excavator?” John asked. Ed laughed and turned to me.

“John needs to do something to justify that mini-excavator he bought last year,” he says to me. “He promised Margaret he’d use it to make her a garden, but that hasn’t happened yet.”

“Are you guys going to do the clearing?”

“Looking that way.” His excavator friend is out of business, Ed told me. But they know someone else who will work with them.

“Brian’s done a lot of this,” John said, reassuring me.

“Anyway,” Ed continued, “we have to be very careful with the digging, and we can’t get too close to this house. Foundation’s only four-foot block.”

John nodded.

“We’ll get Ronny in here to pour the new foundation. Hayden will deliver the cottage.”

John listened some more to his father, got his questions answered before he said, “I just can’t see the roofline.” We were standing by the kitchen window, just in front of where the cottage will land.

“Well, you know, we won’t be sure of it till we see the cottage sitting right here. But that’s the beauty of this job,” Ed said to John. “We have to get the excavation done as soon as Conservation says it’s a go, because we have to get the foundation in so the cottage can get over here before the summer traffic. But once that cottage is here, we can just relax a little, and figure things out. We’ll pour another little foundation wall here, to support the hallway, and we’ll connect them with the deck—that will be the floor in the hallway,” he clarified for me. “When the rooftops are side by side, we’ll know what to do. And Kate has an idea what she wants.” John looked at me. “The main thing is to get it over here onto the foundation. Then, we build the connecting passageway, and finally we marry the houses together.”

Marry the houses together. I love the language. I love the image. I love the metaphor. And I love Ed’s kind and easy manner. It turns out that Egypt does, too. In an unprecedented act of affection, he came racing down the hill straight to Ed, giving him a head butt and a sideways rub just below his knees. A certain seal of approval for our builder, and all the more amazing, given that Ed was wearing steel-toed work boots. Egypt is uniformly frightened by men in big boots. Even the Bog Boys, whom he adores, make him nervous when they wear boots.

I take Egypt’s affection as a good sign. I am looking for good signs wherever I can find them. When I find a lucky penny, I pick it up, and so far, I have found heads-up pennies at the entrance to the cottage, in the parking lot at Eastward Companies, on the threshold of the Building Department office. It was a little tricky to pick that one up, as I trailed Mr. Crossen’s secretary on the way to his office, but I just bent down and scooped it up like a lost button. I am certain these pennies mean something. Find a penny, pick it up, and all the day you’ll have good luck. I haven’t found a penny yet at Conservation, but I plan to keep my eyes on the carpet.

I’VE LIVED IN THIS TOWN
for thirteen years now, and if on average I pass by twice a week, I’ve driven by Town Hall more than thirteen hundred times. More than once I have wondered about the people who turn into that parking lot. Most, I have assumed, work there. When I was growing up, my grandmother worked at City Hall in Somerville, Massachusetts. It was a beautiful building, clean red brick with white-trimmed windows—right next to the high school, and just past the billboard that said, “You May Be Dead Right and Still Be Dead. Drive Defensively.” I remember puzzling over those words for years, my reading skills far ahead of my comprehension. Each new administration repainted that billboard to accommodate the new mayor’s signature. Sometimes the grim graphics would change slightly, but never the message. As I grew older I wondered if this were the city’s slogan, and if so, thought they could do better.

When I was small, and still confused by the words, I thought of them only as the curtain rising on my view of City Hall. We’d turn soon, and I’d run through the maze of corridors to the Planning Department, where my grandmother worked as executive secretary. “Well look who’s here!” she’d say, acting as though I were the biggest surprise of her day. In fact, every trip to my grandmother’s was planned well in advance. She’d wrap me up in a hug and show me off to her coworkers. I remember Fred best of all, a draftsman for the city who would draw me pictures to color, running copies on the mimeograph machine so I could color, recolor, and recolor. Even when I wasn’t visiting my grandmother, Fred would send me pictures in the mail, stacks of purple outlines, all the same design, usually with a seasonal flavor—a stained-glass window with the Virgin Mother at Christmas, a leprechaun smiling with a pot of gold for St. Patrick’s Day. I used to smell each sheet before I began to color it. I can still recall that sharp scent, lost now, of mimeo ink.

I loved my grandmother’s domain of maps and plans, and I loved especially the stamp she had with her signature.
Mary A. Ford,
it read, in her distinctive, beautiful script. She’d let me dip it and stamp it all over the scrap paper she saved for me. She had stationery of her own, too:
Mary A. Ford, Planning Board.
I could not help but notice that it rhymed.

As much as I loved visiting the Planning Department, the maps and the mimeos, my favorite part of City Hall was down the hall from where Nana worked—the home of the switchboard and another Mary, who wore a headphone and spoke into a tiny mike, and who knew the giant maze in front of her by heart. “City Hall,” she would say, and after the caller announced his desired destination, she would plug one of the rubber-coated wires into the numbered extension that represented the department he sought. It was fun to watch Mary and her huge board, but it was even more fun to be Mary, or Mary’s little helper. She’d let me sit on her lap and wear her heavy headset. When the phone rang, I’d put the right wire into place, and in my most grown-up voice, I’d answer, “City Hall.” Then I’d repeat the caller’s request, so that Mary could show me where to plug the caller in, and I would stretch to make the connection. Sometimes, when I was feeling extra bold, I’d imitate Mary’s efficient reassurance to my caller. “I’ll connect you,” I’d say, as I plugged the wire in tight to the extension Mary had indicated.

To this day, I wonder whether the callers at the other end of the phone thought it odd to hear a child’s voice when they called City Hall. Or whether they noticed at all. Certainly we had no complaints. It was usually late enough in the day that the call volume was light, but every call was a thrill, a delight. For many years, I believed that Mary’s was the perfect job.*