Best Staged Plans Page 5

  I decided to inspect the cabinet doors instead. I put on a pair of readers and bent down to pick one up.

  It was stuck.

  “Don’t even tell me,” I said out loud.

  I wiggled the cabinet door back and forth. When it broke free, it pulled a jagged strip of paint from the next cabinet door with it.

  “What is wrong with this picture?” I yelled.

  I thought it was an excellent question, but my words merely echoed from the deep recesses of a kitchen full of doorless cabinets.

  I turned off the carrot soup. It was only a clever decoy to divert my attention from the fact that my husband was off playing tennis with his lunatic friends, even though the weather had turned cold again and everyone in their right mind knew that normal people do not play outdoor tennis in New England in March. They sell their house and go play tennis in a warmer climate.

  By the time Greg got home and turned off the stove himself, the carrots would be mushy. By the time we got this stupid house sold, we’d both be too old to play tennis. Our carrot ginger soup would have to be strained so we wouldn’t choke on it.

  I opened the cellar door to yell down to Luke in the bat cave, since Greg was just responsible enough to have left him in charge of the soup. Then I pulled it closed again, wiggling the handle until the century-old couplings clicked back into place. I mean, what was the point?

  I’d just take the botched cabinets out to the side yard and start sanding, one cabinet at a time. And then I’d paint the cabinets myself, because at least that way I could make sure they were painted the right way.

  I’d pretend I was my own client. I’d finish painting and stage this house until it was ready to sell itself. The offers would come flying in, and we’d go flying out.

  “Mmm, smells good,” Greg said as the kitchen door closed behind him.

  I glared at him over the cabinet door I’d managed to unstick. “You’re going to have to start using the front door,” I said. “We need all the chi we can get around here.”

  He put his cold hands on my shoulders and gave me a sweaty kiss over the ruined cabinet door. His eyes were bright and his cheeks were pink, and if I didn’t have to do everything all by myself, I’d probably look that good, too.

  He beamed at the door between us. “Not bad, huh? The Lukester and I took care of those puppies in record time.”

  The good news was at least we were past the real puppy stage of our lives, because if we had one I sure as hell knew who’d be taking care of it. I pushed past Greg and stomped through the mudroom and out to the garage. Twenty-nine empty liquor boxes were scattered everywhere, like the remnants of one seriously wild party nobody had even bothered to invite me to.

  I grabbed a sheet of sandpaper and carried the cabinet door out to the side yard.

  “What time do you want to eat?” Greg yelled from the doorway.

  I ignored him and started sanding. And sanding. As if I could somehow sand my way through all the layers of paint on this old wooden cabinet door and into the next part of my life.

  Greg and I had been married to each other for more years than we’d been single. It was amazing that couples like us even bothered to fight at all. I mean, pick a marriage, any marriage, and basically it’s the same five fights over and over again. You might as well just number them.

  “Three,” the wife would yell.

  “Let me explain,” her husband would say.

  “Four,” the husband would accuse.

  “I did not,” his wife would argue.

  Back in high school, if my friends and I didn’t want to do something, we used to have an expression: “Let’s not and say we did.”

  That’s exactly how I felt about having the same old getting-the-work-done-on-the-house fight yet again. It’s not that I was dodging the confrontation. It’s just that I’d been there so many times, I knew exactly how it would go—who would say what, how it would end—and the thought of doing it again bored me to tears. So, let’s not and say we did. I’d rather have a root canal. I’d rather repaint the cabinets.

  “Soup’s on!” Greg yelled from the house.

  I kept sanding.

  The storm door slammed shut. Greg strolled out, wearing sweats and a hooded sweatshirt.

  He stopped in the middle of the driveway. “I wasn’t sure if you heard me.”

  I kept sanding. “I heard you.”

  “Did we miss a spot?”

  “The paint wasn’t dry. The doors are all stuck together.”

  When Greg let out a puff of air, you could see his breath. “So, what, now you’re going to play the martyr instead of asking us to fix them?”

  I stopped sanding. I crossed my arms over my chest. “I am not playing the martyr. I am trying to get the cabinets unstuck, sanded, and painted in this lifetime.”

  Greg shivered. “Come on, it’s freezing out here.”

  “Right. Funny how it’s never too cold for tennis, but when there’s work to be done, it’s suddenly freezing out.”

  Greg shook his head. “Why do you always have to do that?”

  Two! I wanted to yell.

  “Do what?” I said instead.

  “Why do you always begrudge me the things I enjoy? I could be out drinking or gambling or screwing around. . . .”

  “How about this,” I said. “Help me get the house on the market and I’ll buy you a girlfriend to celebrate.”

  Greg took a few steps in the direction of the house, then stopped and turned around again. “The thing I don’t understand is, what’s the big rush?”

  One! I could have yelled. It was like I was Drew Barrymore, only older, and instead of 50 First Dates, I was stuck having the same day over again, day after day, week after week, as the female lead in 50 First Fights.

  I had my lines down cold. I opened my eyes wide to show my incredulity. “Rush?” I said. I shook my long-suffering head. “It’s been practically forever.”

  “I think we’re making good progress.” Greg had his lines down, too.

  In most fights, one of you gets to win. But in a marriage, you can’t even savor the thrill of victory. By definition, you’re supposed to be on the same side, which really takes the fun out of trying to beat an adversary into submission. The best you could hope for was to make the fight go away.

  “Listen,” I said, taking a stab at some improv. “I know it’s a lot of work, a lot of stuff, a lot of memories. Sometimes it feels overwhelming to me, too. But the sooner we finish, the sooner we can get on to the next part of our life.”

  Greg looked at me. “What I want to know is what’s so wrong with this part of our life.”

  After Greg disappeared into the house, I stood outside for a long time. I wasn’t even sanding anymore. I watched the fiery orange sunset drop and turn the night from dusk to dark. A scattering of stars began to twinkle, and the full March moon peeked through the tall evergreens flanking the edge of the driveway. I’d read that because it heralded the time to start tapping maple trees for syrup, it was sometimes called the full sap moon.

  And if I let my husband confuse me, then I’d be a full sap, too.

  CHAPTER 9

  “BUT I LIKE IT in the bedroom,” Mrs. Bentley said.

  “Sorry,” I said. “An elliptical machine in your bedroom isn’t going to get this house sold. It’s bad feng shui. The only working out going on in here should be of the romantic variety.”

  Mrs. Bentley’s cold hard stare made me think that not a lot of hot sex was happening in her bedroom.

  But who was I to talk? Resentment between Greg and me was growing like spit in a petri dish. Before we knew it, we’d be sleeping in separate beds, and couple time would mean watching the same show on televisions in different rooms. Luke would feel the vibes and start cooking his ramen noodles on the radiator down in the bat cave.

  Even when they were little, both kids could smell a fight between us, no matter how calm we pretended to be. Luke would climb under the kitchen table with one of his plastic di
nosaurs and pull his blankie over his head.

  Shannon was more direct. She’d stamp her foot. “Go hug Mommy,” she’d say to Greg.

  “Mommy doesn’t want to be hugged right now,” I’d say. “Even though she loves Daddy very much, sometimes she gets mad at him, and that’s okay.”

  Shannon would give Greg a push. “Hug her anyway.”

  Greg and I both grew up in households where outbursts of rage were followed by long stretches—weeks, even months—of frigid silence, and then suddenly everything was all right again. Nobody ever explained to us how people got from one stage to the other. So we spent our first years together figuring it out on our own.

  If something bothered me, I’d get it out right away and move on. Greg, on the other hand, let the little things go. Then some random day one of those same little things would set him off, and he’d present me with a detailed list of every other little thing he’d pretended to let go in the last, say, three months.

  Fused together, the list seemed unreasonably long in my opinion, and Greg’s laid-back attitude up to that point felt like an elaborate entrapment scam. So I would click into high-drama mode, pack a suitcase, and announce that life was too short to put up with this shit and thanks for the memories but I was out of here.

  Greg would wait until I was almost to the door. He’d apologize. I’d apologize. We’d have great sex and put the suitcase away.

  About three years or so into this pattern, I’d just finished an ovation-worthy speech and was flamboyantly pulling my suitcase out from under our bed.

  Greg watched quietly. Finally he said, “Aren’t you still packed from last time?”

  I looked up at him.

  He raised his eyebrows.

  We both totally cracked up.

  Right after that, we ditched the birth control and I got pregnant with Shannon. And as much as I’d never completely lost the knack I’d inherited for high drama, and Greg could still be a virtuoso of silence, we tried to set a better example for our kids.

  We also vowed early on to always present a united front and never to talk about each other to our children. When Luke was younger and I told him it was time for bed, he knew better than to run to his dad to try to get a reprieve. And when Greg was driving me crazy, I knew better than to bad-mouth him to Shannon.

  I shook my head to bring myself back to Mrs. Bentley’s bedroom. I borrowed the painters to help me carry the heavy elliptical downstairs.

  Mrs. Bentley’s basement was a total blast from the past—flecked acoustical ceiling tiles, orange shag carpeting. The Big Bird yellow of the Parsons tables popped against a brown-and-avocado-plaid sofa and armchair set. Above the couch a groovy chrome-framed Peter Max poster looked down on the plaid sofa as if to say this room isn’t big enough for both of us. A dark wood built-in bar dotted with bright yellow ashtrays took over one entire wall of the room.

  When I was growing up, we’d had a bar just like this in our basement. It was my father’s pride and joy. I’d had my first Shirley Temple there, with two extra maraschino cherries, sitting on one of the padded vinyl barstools that spun all the way around. My sister and brother and I would crack open peanuts and were actually allowed to throw the shells on the cement floor. Then one day the rules mysteriously changed, and we got a linoleum floor and had to start putting the peanut shells in wooden bar bowls instead.

  The next owner could turn this space into an Irish pub, or an old western-style saloon, or even a billiards room. But it was more likely that the basement would be gutted and turned into a media room, complete with theater-style seating and surround sound. If the old wooden bar were lucky enough to survive at all, it would become a movie concession stand.

  If Denise’s boyfriend ever got around to actually calling me about that boutique hotel in Atlanta, I might try something elaborate like that, but for this job I was going for a quick fix. I’d turn this basement into an exercise room.

  A big part of what home stagers do is create fantasy space. We’d already gotten rid of all the rest of the furniture in the room except for one overstuffed chair. The painters and I placed the elliptical in full view of the television. I threw a white terry cloth robe over the chair and arranged Mrs. Bentley’s exercise videos—mostly unopened, I noticed—on the bookshelf. I spread out an exercise mat on the freshly cleaned carpeting midway between the elliptical and the TV. I crisscrossed two shiny purple weights on top of the mat and placed a royal blue exercise ball beside it.

  Next, I took down all the dusty old liquor bottles from the open shelves in the bar and boxed them up. Mrs. Bentley and her husband would have to either rent a storage unit or drink up all that booze fast. I lugged the boxes out to the garage. I rolled up five plush white towels and arranged them on the shelves where the liquor bottles had been. I placed some fancy, overpriced bottles of water on the bar.

  The moment potential buyers enter a house, they make a judgment, either conscious or unconscious, based on the smell. They make a second olfactory assessment as they head down the basement stairs. Fortunately, Mrs. Bentley’s basement didn’t have even a trace of mustiness, so all I had to do was bring in some candles.

  I arranged three grapefruit candles in round metal tins across the length of the bar like bowls of cocktail peanuts. The citrusy smell would bring a clean crispness to the space, and the grapefruit might send a subliminal message to potential owners that they were losing weight already just by standing here. This was the exercise room that might finally get them into shape.

  Now that all the work was done, Mrs. Bentley meandered into the room. You just never knew with clients. Sometimes they were such hard workers, if only inspired by the thought of cutting down my final bill, that I’d be tempted to hire them to work for me. Other times they treated me like I was the hired help, which I supposed, technically, I was.

  Mrs. Bentley didn’t say a word as she looked her staged basement up and down. I tried to read her expression, but it was hard to gauge. I wasn’t going to lose any sleep over it. Once her house sold, she’d come around and tell all her friends about me. Or she wouldn’t. Either way, I’d have my check and be out of there.

  There was always a chance she’d eventually be so impressed that she’d want to hire me to help her get her next place set up. Even though I marketed myself as someone who staged to sell, it was a natural offshoot, so I did it all the time.

  All I knew was that Mrs. Bentley and her husband had already bought a condo and that they were paying two mortgages.

  I faked a big smile. “So, what do you think?”

  She shrugged. Clients, especially women, often got really territorial about the homes they were trying to get rid of. Any change I made felt like a personal attack on their taste, or lack thereof. It’s crazy. If you want to sell your house, you have to keep your eye on the prize and let that kind of thing go.

  I kept smiling. “I don’t think I’ve even asked you where you’re heading next. Is your new condo local?”

  Mrs. Bentley ran a hand through her hair. “Minneapolis.”

  “Wow,” I said. “Minneapolis. Great place to get out of the winter.”

  She still didn’t say anything.

  “Ha,” I said. “Actually, I love Minneapolis. Such warm, friendly people. Fabulous arts scene. And those skyways are genius. Why are you moving there?”

  Mrs. Bentley shrugged. “Our kids live there. They love it.”

  As a civil engineer, Greg had spent far too much time working outside during the cold New England winters, so we’d always talked about heading to some warm southern beach one day. Maybe Siesta Key. Or St. Simons or Tybee Island. Or even Amelia Island. Fairhope, Alabama?

  Or maybe we’d follow one of our kids so we’d be around when the grandkids came, and they’d be nearby to house-sit for us when we traveled. But what if we got to Atlanta, and then Shannon and her husband packed up and moved somewhere else? And then again, while I knew booting Luke out of the bat cave would be the best thing that ever happened to him,
he didn’t seem to have any noticeable plans for his next horizon. He might need us to stay in the area, at least temporarily, to keep an eye on him from an easily commutable distance.

  We could always put our things in storage and just rent for a while. Somewhere. Or we could even rent a tour bus instead of a house and take the next stage of our life on the road.

  Greg and I had had the where next conversation over and over again, in ever-widening circles. Maybe we had to let go of one place for the next one to call out to us.

  Or maybe we wouldn’t really be able to let go of the house we were in until we knew where we were headed.

  And then again, perhaps we just had a bad case of analysis paralysis.

  CHAPTER 10

  THAT FIRST WINTER in our new old house I almost got pregnant again. Two kids were the trend back then. I’d like to think we were above being influenced by that sort of thing, but I’ve wondered since what would have happened if we’d had our children a few years later instead, when the pendulum started swinging back in the big family direction.

  In any case, Greg and I had agreed that two children, a girl and a boy, no less, made our family perfectly complete. We each had one hand for each kid. When we were both around, we could trade off and give them lots of one-on-one attention. What could be better? I went back on the pill after Luke was born, and Greg promised to get a vasectomy as soon as things settled down and we had some extra money.

  I kept my birth control pills in the cabinet closest to the kitchen sink, where we also kept our One A Day vitamins and the kids’ Flintstone chewables. Like any habit, taking a pill at the same time each day reinforces the behavior, and I was religious about it. I believed, and still do, that we choose our lives by our attention to the little things.

  My system was that before I went to bed, I’d put everyone’s vitamins on the kitchen table next to their juice glasses and take my birth control pill at the same time. I’d leave the rectangular top of the pink plastic case up, and I’d place the vitamin bottles right on top of the pills so I couldn’t miss them.