HOUSE
*Nonfiction Excerpt: to read the rest, see The Southeast Review Volume 28.1
My husband spends weeks trying to find a place for us to live. Because I’m six months pregnant, we’re in a hurry. We want more space for us, a room for the baby, some grass for the dog. Fewer neighbors. Last year’s hurricane spiked what used to be college-town prices. Now everything we can afford has a waiting list. Twice, we’re told by realtors to come get a key and take a look, but, both times, someone else signs the lease before we get there.
We stop at the only realtor in town we haven’t asked, and a woman behind small piles of papers tells us someone turned in a move-out notice earlier that day. A rental house, three bedrooms, she says. Southeast part of town. I ask her what street, and how much. It’s two hundred dollars more a month than we want, but we give her a check to hold.
The house is at the dead end, situated in such a way that it’s not visible if you’re more than a hundred feet away. We’re almost in the driveway before we see it.
“Selling point,” I say to my husband.
The uprooted pines and water oaks lying in the weeds have been there almost a year. Once they’re cleared, there will be a view of the creek, which runs through downtown and has concrete slabs where the banks should be. A clean-out pokes through the grass near the front door. I get out of the car and see cats under the carport—a gray-and-white striped mother, whose shape looks more like a skeleton, is nursing a few black kittens. The black father watches from the yard, which has been neglected all summer. The grass is growing seedy, and the dandeli¬ons are three feet tall, the stalks firm. I walk up to the cats, and my dog follows. Kittens scatter like fish, but the sturdy male cat rubs against my shin. My dog, not much bigger than the cat, whines and wags. The animals practically hug. After a walk-through, I realize the house needs work. I’m wary, but we will be left alone here, so I turn to my husband and say, “This is it.”
*
After college, I moved away from roommates and live-in boyfriends and went back to my coastal hometown. A teacher at the high school heard I was around and talked me into applying. I found a wooden apartment on the beach. Like the stucco motels further down the highway, it was cheap, old enough to look dated, but not appealing enough to be quaint. I liked the gray wood of the balcony, warped from too much moisture and salt, and the overgrown popcorn tree that pressed its leaves into the kitchen window screen.
After I moved in, I spent most of my free time in the apartment. I went out for drinks sometimes and made it to meet-the-teachers nights, but usually I was home. I faked stomach bugs to break plans with friends and let the machine take most of the calls. I didn’t miss people. After all, my half-hearted attempts at relationships had all ended because I wanted them to, friendships faded because I was the one who never bothered to call. My sister moved in and back out. The apartment was noiseless, save for the CD player and cell phone. I told myself I should give people a chance but waited for them to leave. Take care.
After dark, when I didn’t feel like reading or writing, I walked across the beach highway, with a comforter if it was chilly, to watch the night fishermen who waded near the shore, spearing for flounder. I sat in the dark, mashing damp sand like clumps of brown sugar into my palm while the heavy Gulf air blew my hair into ropes. Sometimes I worried that I was unable to need people, but, as much as the thought upset me, I couldn’t make myself truly want them around. Beams of the fishermen’s handheld lights darted and flashed, and their rubber boots swished in the shallow black water. Some nights, I counted half a dozen men, but I never heard them speak.
*
The semester starts again, and my husband and I are back to the university campus, working and teaching and being graduate students. We’re barely in the house two months before everything about it begins to irritate me: the forty-year old green kitchen linoleum, which peels and cracks, the brass cabinet handles, caked with black grime, the rough patches on the old hardwood floors where kick molding was pried off and never replaced, the small hole at the base of the front door where an animal clawed through. The air conditioner breaks twice, and the realtor sends over a man who “shoots nitrogen through it” the first time and, the second time, after condensation leaks into the cabinet above the stove, takes the inside unit apart and then binds it back together with silver tape. I find two gas pipes inside that have never been capped, and when I crouch low beside them, I smell gas. I’m still mad about the strange air-conditioner repair job, so I call the plumber myself. While my husband is at work, I put chains on the doors, do the best I can with the broken casement window locks to keep them from popping open, cover the cloudy Plexiglas six-foot window with paper made to look like real stained glass. I scrub the floors and paint the rusty vents white. The kudzu creeps closer, curling over the downed trees and stunted azaleas.
One buzzing September morning, a pickup truck parks at the dead end, and a few men come to the door. One of the men, in overalls, removes a floppy hat and tells me he’s here to see about the yard. The others are already pointing at the shingles, squinting and considering what to do. Every one of them has a wiry square beard, except one, who has an old-fashioned curled mustache instead.
“We’re going to get these trees up for you, ma’am,” he says.
“You are?” I glance to the truck, looking for another one, a trailer or tractor I might not have seen.
“We’re just going to chop them up for you,” he says. “I’m Nell’s husband.”
“Nell?” I search my mind for who they’re supposed to be. “The realtor?”
“No, that’s Sharon. She’s Nell’s best friend from high school. This is Nell’s mama’s house. Nell and I’ve been renting it out since her mama died. She had Alzheimer’s, you know. Had this yard beautiful, once. The armoire you see in the kitchen, well, that’s staying. Nell’s daddy built it into the kitchen and no one can get it out. You may use it if you would just be kind enough to take care of it.”
“Sure,” I say. “We’ve just got dishes and things—”
“We just couldn’t get down here before now to clear these trees. We appreciate you.”
He leaves, so I shut the door. A few minutes later, he knocks again, and when I open it, he’s holding a tool box and some weather-stripping. He sits down in the living room, patches the hole in the door, tells me the girls that lived here before us had cats. I stand there, one hand on my pregnant belly. He tips his hat again and tells me they’ll come back in the morning. The next day, chainsaws wake me early. The bed is empty, and as soon as I sit up, I hear the back door open and shut, and my husband comes to the bedroom, then takes off his baseball cap.
“They’re Civil War re-enactors,” he says.
“Seriously? What are you doing out there?”
“Just talking to them.” My husband takes off his shoes, too, and climbs back into bed. “You should hear the way he says fascia.”
I pull a pillow over my head and lift it enough to uncover one eye. “Should I bring out a pitcher of lemonade or something? Isn’t that what people do?”
“Already tried to offer them some water. Listen to what he said. He said, ‘No, thank you kindly, sir, but I have a plethora of ice cold water here in this cooler.’ ”
We doze together, and when we wake up, the men are gone. Everything they’ve touched is fixed.
Elizabeth Hegwood, a Mississippi native, lives in Georgia with her husband and sons. Her work has been published in Juked, Public Scrutiny, 971 Menu, and elsewhere, and her flash-fiction piece “One A.M. at the Beau Rivage” was named by Wigleaf as one of the “Top 50 Very Short Stories of 2008.”
