A Place I've Never Been by David Leavitt

Author:David Leavitt
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 2014-03-03T16:00:00+00:00

That day—the day of Ed and Grace-Anne, the day that threatened to end with the loss of my beloved house—Susan did not call me at work. The morning progressed slowly. I was waiting for Ed and Grace-Anne to reappear at the window and walk in the office doors, and sure enough, around eleven-thirty, they did. The receptionist led them to my desk.

“I’m Ed Cavallaro,” Ed said across my desk, as I stood to shake his hand. “This is my wife.”

“How do you do?” Grace-Anne said. She smelled of some sort of fruity perfume or lipstick, the kind teenaged girls wear. We sat down.

“Well, I’ll tell you, Mr. Hoover,” Ed said, “we’ve been summering around here for years, and I’ve just retired—I worked over at Grumman, upisland?”

“Congratulations,” I said.

“Ed was there thirty-seven years,” Grace-Anne said. “They gave him a party like you wouldn’t believe.”

“So, you enjoying retired life?”

“Just between you and me, I’m climbing the walls.”

“We’re active people,” Grace-Anne said.

“Anyway, we’ve always dreamed about having a house near the beach.”

“Ed, let me tell about the dream.”

“I didn’t mean that dream.”

“I had a dream,” Grace-Anne said. “I saw the house we were meant to retire in, clear as day. And then, just this morning, walking down the street, we look in your window, and what do we see? The very same house! The house from my dream!”

“How amazing,” I said. “Which house was it?”

“That cute little one for one sixty-five,” Grace-Anne said. “You know, with the cedar shingles?”

“I’m not sure.”

“Oh, I’ll show you.”

We stood up and walked outside, to the window. “Oh, that house!” I said. “Sure, sure. Been on the market almost a year now. Not much interest in it, I’m afraid.”

“Now why is that?” Ed asked, and I shrugged.

“It’s a pleasant enough house. But it does have some problems. It’ll require a lot of TLC.”

“TLC we’ve got plenty of,” Grace-Anne said.

“Grace-Anne, I told you,” Ed said, “the last thing I want to do is waste my retirement fixing up.”

“But it’s my dream house!” Grace-Anne fingered the buttons of her blouse. “Anyway, what harm can it do to look at it?”

“I have a number of other houses in roughly the same price range which you might want to look at—”

“Fine, fine, but first, couldn’t we look at that house? I’d be so grateful if you could arrange it.”

I shrugged my shoulders. “It’s not occupied. Why not?”

And Grace-Anne smiled.

Even though the house was only a few hundred feet away, we drove. One of the rules of real estate is; Drive the clients everywhere. This means your car has to be both commodious and spotlessly clean. I spent a lot—too much—of my life cleaning my car—especially difficult, considering Charlotte.

And so we piled in—Grace-Anne and I in front, Ed in back—and drove the block or so to Maple Street. I hadn’t been by the house for a few weeks, and I was happy to see that the spring seemed to have treated it well. The rich greens of the grass and the big maple trees framed it, I thought, rather lushly.

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