The Displaced Nation

June.

Summertime. Crickets, cicadas. Long evenings, hot days.

Or, back on Planet Earth in 2013: June. Thunderstorms. Hailstones, lightning. Flood warnings, incessant rain. Central heating returning for another encore, and cabin fever causing small children to ricochet off walls and demand opportunities to test the effectiveness of recently purchased wellington boots.

Rain or no rain, after several days cooped up inside, we are going for a walk this afternoon.

It’s a slow process, though, I’m discovering. It’s taken nearly five minutes to get Jack, plus the twins in their double pushchair, from the front door to the other side of our street, because the very puddles I need to avoid with the pushchair are those in which Jack wants to jump with his new, camo-patterned rainboots.

As the children and I bicker and squelch past the entrance to Maggie’s long gravel drive, I spot Maggie trotting from her house towards us, holding a black and red golfing umbrella above her head and squinting into the driving rain.

“You do know,” she shouts, “that if someone who is not English sees you out in this downpour, they will call child protection services? Or at the very least, they’ll call the men in white coats?”

We laugh. The Woodhaveners’ attitude to rain is a private joke between me and Maggie. Woodhaveners will happily cope with two feet of snow and an ice storm, but send them a bit of rain and they flap around, panicking about damp basements and aquaplaning cars.

I explain about the cabin fever and Jack’s new wellies. “What’s your excuse for going out in it?” I ask.

“Checking the mail for Montana-postmarked letters,” she says, and I groan softly.

Maggie’s been waiting for a letter from Montana for about a week now. A letter from Chuck, the current owner of the house I want to buy. Chuck is strangely inaccessible by modern communication. After our liquid lunch in the Maxwell Plum, Maggie phoned the emergency number he gave her a few years ago — his neighbours’ number — and left a message.

The message was that Maggie thought he should know that someone (me) was interested in buying his mother’s house, and Maggie had reason to believe he might not know this (because we think Melissa, his real estate agent, hadn’t told him we’d put in an offer) so would he please call Maggie back ASAP.

After two days with no response, she phoned again. Chuck’s neighbours sounded slightly annoyed and told her they’d most certainly passed on the message to Chuck, who had said he would write a letter to Maggie. Yes, they told her, a real letter. On paper, in an envelope, with a stamp, with her address on it. Surely she had heard of such an invention in Massachusetts?

“More to the point, hasn’t he heard of Facebook in Montana?” I asked. “Who writes letters on real paper these days, for goodness’ sake?”

“People who live in the middle of nowhere and communicate mainly with horses, apparently,” Maggie said.

Now, as Maggie opens her mailbox and I see that it contains only this week’s issue of the Woodhaven Observer, I’m starting to think that he’d decided to bypass the postal system and deliver it himself. On horseback.

I voice this theory to Maggie, who looks at me sympathetically.

“At least you’ve got somewhere to live in July now,” she says. “You won’t be homeless.”

This is true. Oliver, via his company’s HR contacts, has managed to get a three-bedroomed apartment near the mall, in the same complex we stayed when we first arrived in America, two years ago. So, no, we won’t be homeless —  but the apartment faces the freeway, it’s noisy with the heavy traffic, and I’m not counting on many undisturbed nights from the twins. It’s most irritating, because they’d both just started sleeping through the night.

We looked at some new houses in Banbury, two towns away. The houses that Melissa’s new boyfriend built. This detail would have been enough to put me off buying one, if the cost hadn’t already done so. The base prices of the houses seemed reasonable enough, but once you started adding in the cost of options, the real prices zoomed vertically, because the “options” weren’t terribly optional. The houses don’t come with decks, for example; not a big problem, you might think, until you realise that the French windows (or French doors, as they call them here) leading out into the back garden have a five foot drop to the ground when you open them.

Both Oliver and I want, more than ever, to stay in Woodhaven, in the magical old house that used to belong to Maggie’s friend, Cathy.  Oliver even calls it “our house” whenever we drive past it.

If only we could speak with Chuck, the actual seller, instead of having to go through real estate agents who have their own unscrupulous agendas. Because Maggie, Oliver, and I are absolutely convinced that Melissa has her own agenda in all this. It’s no coincidence that a house with a lot of acreage and a need for fixing up isn’t selling if she’s a) representing the seller and b) dating a local builder/property tycoon.

But without Chuck’s side of the story, we have no proof.

As we all stand in the rain, a black Escalade tears up the street and drives through the water-filled pothole next to us in the road, sweeping a wave of muddy rainwater onto the sidewalk and all over our little group. Beth and George are safe behind their clear plastic rainshield, but Jack, who was nearest the road, is drenched. He bursts into tears, and sobs that his new rainboots are broken because they’re filled with water.

“No, they’re not broken. They just don’t work when the puddles come from above,” I say, mopping his face as best I can with a tissue that is similarly damp. “We’d better get you home and dried off. Honestly, some drivers, no common courtesy or even common sense…”

“That’s our Melissa, all right,” Maggie murmurs.

I look up. The black Escalade is now parked on the driveway of my house and, sure enough, Melissa Harvey Connor is getting out of it.

“What’s she doing here?” Maggie asks.

“Beats me. Can we disappear up your driveway and hide until she goes away?”

Too late. She’s already seen us and is gesturing furiously.

“I suppose I’d better see what she wants. You wouldn’t like to come with me for moral support, would you?”

“Much as I love a nice bit of gladiatorial entertainment with my afternoon tea,” Maggie says, “I’m expecting a parcel delivery, so I’d better not. Good luck,” she adds, as she starts to wade up her driveway towards her house.

Who is the gladiator and who is the lion?  She doesn’t say.

I look across the street at Melissa, who has seemingly forgotten I changed the locks on her house eighteen months ago and is trying to open the front door with a key that doesn’t work.

When I eventually reach the door, I get my own key out of my purse and Melissa steps aside.

“I’m here to inspect the house for damage,” she says, and my heart sinks. Three children, two adults, and a dog have lived in this house in the last two years. “You know, for things that have to be put right before you move out, that you have to pay for.”

She holds up her useless key.

“New lock system, for example.” She smiles, baring sharp canine teeth. Or perhaps feline.  I’m the gladiator, it turns out; the one facing a big cat. “Cost to you: $300. And that’s before we even get inside the house, Libby.”

.

Next post: LIBBY’S LIFE #80 – A place of our own

Previous post: LIBBY’S LIFE #78 – Trust no agent

Read Libby’s Life from the first episode. 

Want to read more? Head on over to Kate Allison’s own site, where you can find out more about Libby and the characters of Woodhaven, and where you can buy Taking Flight, the first year of Libby’s Life — now available as an ebook.

 STAY TUNED for next week’s posts!

If you enjoyed this post, we invite you to subscribe for email delivery of The Displaced Dispatch, a round up of the week’s posts from The Displaced Nation. Sign up for The Displaced Dispatch by clicking here!

Image: Travel – Map of the World by Salvatore Vuono / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

There is nothing better than spending a sultry, summer afternoon in the cool darkness of the Maxwell Plum. We’re the only customers here, Jack is at nursery, and the twins are napping in their double pushchair beside our table. If I shut my eyes like this, thereby ignoring both the twins and my thirty-something reflection in the window, I can almost believe I am twenty-two again. Of course, I didn’t know any Americans when I was twenty-two, so the three other accents at the table aren’t authentic, but—

Wait — you thought I was with Oliver? Heaven preserve us. I’ve come here to get away from Oliver and his irritating, logical arguments. The three ladies I’m with now — Willow, Anna, Maggie — will give me nothing but sympathy. They are absolutely, completely the best friends I’ve had since my days in University halls, and for that, I’m grateful. Very grateful. Sooo grateful. And I get more grateful with each top-up of Chardonnay.

You see, sometimes, only girl-time will do. Girls will listen, nod, listen some more, fill your glass with more wine, and offer anecdotes of similar experiences to the one you’re bending their ears about.

They will never, repeat never, say, “For God’s sake, Libs, quit moaning. I’m not paying more than $140k for that heap of dry rot, and the owners are not accepting less than $200k, ergo we are not buying it. End of story. If you want a solution, go and look at those nice new houses in Banbury and stop being such a damned hopeless, stupid romantic. There’s nothing romantic about leaking roofs and rotten floorboards.”

“And even though he knows I’ve got my heart set on this house, that’s what he said. That’s what Oliver said,” I say, leaning back in my chair and stifling a small hiccup, my eyes still closed to keep up the illusion of being twenty-two. “I know you guys would never say that and call me a stupid romantic.”

Girls are more supportive than that.

Or at least, they should be, but as I open my eyes, I see my three friends looking at me with one expression.

Concern? Or is it amusement?

“What?” I say. “What’s wrong?”

Maggie’s lips twitch.

“You’re not used to liquid lunches these days, are you, my dear?”

“She drove here, right?” Willow asks Maggie. “Because I can totally drive her and the twins home and pick up Jack and she can get her car later.”

“It’s a nice afternoon! I walked!” I’m not happy at this unsupportive conversation about me that’s taking place as if I weren’t here. “And it’s not my turn to carpool today, so someone else is bringing Jack home.”

“Thank God for that,” Willow says. “Because you’re barely fit to push that stroller home, let alone drive anything with an engine. And there I was,” she says, turning to Anna, “thinking all Brits could hold their drink.”

Anna gets up from the table and heads towards the restaurant’s kitchen.

“Perhaps it’s time we put the wine away and switched to coffee. What do you say, Libs?”

* * *

“Tell us again. You want to buy The Forge, the old house at the bottom of Main Street?” Maggie draws patterns with a spoon in her coffee foam. “The one with acres and acres of land? I know it. The owner, the one who died recently, she was a friend of mine.”

“That dotty old lady? Really?” Willow sniggers. “I heard the rumours about her, how she’d dance naked in the back garden and talk to the trees and flowers and stuff. A real tree hugger.”

“And that,” Maggie says, a stern expression on her face, “is why you should never pay attention to rumours. I used to work for that ‘dotty old lady’ as you call her. She was my employer, before I bought her craft shop and all those teapots. I expect Anna remembers her.”

Anna shakes her head.

“You must do,” Maggie persists. “You remember when I opened Maggie May’s, when you were in high school here, when you and Sara were attached at the hip.”

Sara again. Maggie’s mystery daughter who swans off to the Seychelles to get married but won’t come to see her mother in her hometown.

Anna’s still shaking her head. “I’m sorry,” she says. “So much of that time is a blank. I think I’ve blocked it out.”

Maggie places one hand over Anna’s, on the table. “And I don’t blame you one bit,” she says in a gentle tone, which makes me wonder what happened to Anna at high school. “It’s a shame, though. Cathy was a great character.”

“Cathy!” I exclaim, feeling slightly more alert now. I have no idea what Anna puts in her coffee, but it’s good stuff. “The cat-shaped teapots in your kitchen!”

“The same.” Maggie beams at me. “Well, she was in her sixties when I bought the shop from her, and she must have been well into her nineties when she died last year. The poor soul had been suffering from dementia for about ten years. Didn’t recognise her own son four years ago, but knew what people were doing, all right, when they tried to put her into a nursing home. The last six or seven years, she’s been in that house with a team of nurses and carers coming in every day. And when they didn’t keep a close enough eye on her, that’s when she’d strip off and run around the back garden and talk to the trees. She got frostbite once, doing it in the winter. Senility is a very cruel fate for the old.”

She fixes Willow with another stern stare, and Willow looks down, abashed.

“Why won’t her son sell it to you?” Maggie asks me.

I shrug with rather more vigour than I’d intended, and knock over my glass of water which is nearly empty but still contains enough liquid to flood my side of the table and drip onto my lap.

“I don’t know,” I say, as Anna and Willow rush at me with paper napkins. This must be what it’s like to be Jack at every mealtime. “Donna didn’t say. She just said he didn’t accept our offer, and didn’t come back with a counter offer.”

“I wonder why that was.” Maggie rests her chin on her hand and gazes out of the window at a group of high school kids gathering on the village green that splits Main Street lengthways. “It’s not as if he needs the money. Or maybe that’s why. Perhaps he’s hanging in there until he gets a high offer because he can afford to do so.”

“He doesn’t need the money?” Willow voices the surprise of the rest of us. “Who’s got so much money that they flatly turn down $140k?”

“People who win a small fortune on the Powerball lottery and retire to Montana, that’s who. Believe me, that $140,000 is a drop in his ocean of winnings. That’s how Cathy was able to afford her team of 24/7 nursing staff for so long.”

“Wow.” I pat with another napkin at my shorts. They look as if I’ve had an embarrassing accident, and I hope they dry before I have to walk back home. “What does he do in Montana?”

“Chuck’s a hermit. A hermit with 400 acres. He came to see me last time he was here, four years ago — that was after he found out his mother didn’t know she’d even had a son, let alone recognise him. He was very concerned about her and, since he’s such a hermit, was worried he wouldn’t know until it was too late if anything happened to Cathy.”

“Hadn’t he heard of cell phones?” Willow asks.

“There was barely a signal where he lived, he said, and he liked it that way. No interruptions, no telesales. So he gave me his neighbour’s number and told me to call there if there was anything he needed to know urgently. Otherwise, he was quite happy to rely on regular mail for normal communication.”

Anna, Willow, and I all gape at Maggie. None of us can imagine living without a cell phone in reach of our fingertips. And I can’t remember the last time I wrote an envelope that didn’t contain either a greetings card or a cheque.

Through the wine-fuelled haze, the coffee penetrates my brain, and something occurs to me.

“Do you think he has a phone now?”

“I have no idea,” Maggie says. “But he didn’t when Cathy died a year ago.”

“So, I’m wondering,” I say (actually, I’m wondering if I’m still tipsy and have missed a vital point in the argument I’m about to make); “how did Melissa contact him with our offer?”

Silence from the girls. Either I’ve put forward a really good argument, or I’ve said something very silly.

“On the neighbour’s phone?” Anna sounds uncertain.

“Email?” Willow suggests.

“I’m not sure Chuck has ever come in contact with a computer.”

I look from Maggie to Anna to Willow.

“Is this the Chardonnay doing my thinking for me, or is it entirely possible that Cathy’s son doesn’t know he has a potential buyer?”

*  *  *

Evening hangovers are the absolute worst, but I’m feeling less fragile now, and in any case I think today’s was worth it. Maggie walked home from the Maxwell Plum with me and the twins, and on the way she promised to phone Cathy’s son in Montana, or rather, his neighbour, to see if he’d  reconsider our offer on the house.

Meanwhile, I am racking my brains (as best I can, under today’s circumstances) to wonder why Melissa might be telling blatant lies so as not to sell us a house that she’s listed. It means she won’t get the commission, surely?

Oliver comes in from work, two hours late. He’s been at someone’s leaving bash in the Irish pub in Banbury, near the new houses and condos that Donna’s shown us. They’re nice enough, I suppose, but they’re so crammed, with such small lots, that we might as well be living back in Acacia Drive in Milton Keynes.

“Guess who I just saw in the pub?” Oliver says. “Our landlady. She’s got herself a new bloke.”

I wince. Oliver is a bit loud when he’s just been to the pub and has spent two hours shouting to make himself heard.

“Am I supposed to be surprised at that information?” I ask.

“Quite a well-known bloke in these parts, apparently,” Oliver says, ignoring my comment. “Local builder. Rich as Rockefeller, by all accounts. Built those little condos we looked at in Banbury.”

That’s all it takes to make me dislike Melissa’s new boyfriend.

“Yes, he does quite a bit of that kind of thing,” Oliver continues. “Buys falling down houses with lots of land, knocks them down, then puts up a load of smaller new houses. No wonder he’s rolling in it.”

And no wonder, I think, as the bright flash of understanding nearly blinds me and banishes any remains of hangover, that Melissa is dragging her heels about selling us a falling down house built on twelve acres.

.

Next post: LIBBY’S LIFE #79 – Gladiator games

Previous post: LIBBY’S LIFE #77 – First refusal

Read Libby’s Life from the first episode. 

Want to read more? Head on over to Kate Allison’s own site, where you can find out more about Libby and the characters of Woodhaven, and where you can buy Taking Flight, the first year of Libby’s Life — now available as an ebook.

 STAY TUNED for next week’s posts!

If you enjoyed this post, we invite you to subscribe for email delivery of The Displaced Dispatch, a round up of the week’s posts from The Displaced Nation. Sign up for The Displaced Dispatch by clicking here!

Image: Travel – Map of the World by Salvatore Vuono / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

“You have got to be kidding me. What were you thinking, Libs?”

Oliver prods with his toe at an oak panel in the empty, echoing living room. The panel cracks; a large piece of wood falls backwards into the abyss behind, and a suspicious scurrying tells us we have disturbed someone’s living quarters.

“Christ in a bucket,” Oliver mutters, as I try to keep an optimistic smile on my face to balance out his own expression, which is grumpier by the second.

It’s his first visit to see the house I found for us and, so far, things are not going well. Although the house boasts new electric wiring and plumbing, as our realtor Donna proudly pointed out last week, it does not boast a new furnace, a new roof, solid floorboards, or any air conditioning.

Or even wooden wall panels that stay intact when you kick them.

But you know what? I don’t care. I want this house. It’s old, it has character, it is full of quirky little corners and unexpected alcoves. I want it. Don’t ask me why.

I just know I want it.

“But it’s so cheap!” I say to Oliver, who is now looking critically at the door frame between living room and dining room. The builder of that part of the house apparently was not familiar with set squares or right angles two centuries ago, because the door shape is an interesting variation on a trapezoid.

“It would need to be,” he says. “Even if it’s free, it’s too much.”

Donna watches us, her eyes swivelling left, right, and back again. She doesn’t like the way this conversation is going, I think. She can see her commission flying out of the dusty windows.

I have an ally.

“An antique house is an investment,” she squeaks in her Minnie Mouse voice. “People like the knowledge that no one is going to build an identical house on the next lot. They like the original features. They like not living in a cookie cutter. They like owning a piece of history.”

“And they like repaying a very, very large home improvement loan and spending all their Saturdays in Home Depot,” Oliver says. “Because if you didn’t like those two things, you’d need to be bloody barking mad before you bought a crumbling money pit like this.”

He turns to me.

“Nope, I’m sorry, Libs. No can do. We’ll keep on looking until we find something more our style and less work. I’m sure Donna can show us some new construction in another town, can’t you?”

I stare at Donna, silently pleading with her to say “Absolutely not. The state has issued a moratorium on the building of new houses. If you don’t buy this house, you’ll be homeless in two months.”

But she doesn’t, of course. Instead, she takes an exaggerated breath, closes her eyes, and breathes out again. As if she thought of saying something but then thought better of it.

“Of course I can,” she says, “if you really want me to. But — could I just say something?”

Oliver looks up at the ceiling, as if asking a deity to give him strength. A dead spider is dangling from the light fitting just above his head, and he steps to one side.

“Be my guest,” he says.

“Woodhaven is a desirable town. We have an excellent school system, yet disproportionately low taxes. If you go to one of the neighbouring towns, you could end up spending on school fees and property taxes what you save on buying a house. Woodhaven is a little oasis of value-for-money town taxes. You might find what you’re looking for in Banbury, two towns away, but believe me, the twenty thousand you save on a house purchase there will be spent in eighteen months in extra taxes and school fees. I wouldn’t put my own children in Banbury schools,” she adds. “Their standardised test results last year were appalling.”

“Huh.” Oliver is scornful. “Jack’s a bright child. He’ll do fine wherever he goes to school.”

“And believe me, I admire that attitude,” Donna says, leaning towards him and patting his arm.

Actually, I don’t believe her. Nor, I can tell, does Oliver. He doesn’t like being patted by realtors with high-pitched voices, either.

“The problem is,” she continues, “most homebuyers don’t have that attitude, and you’ll find that out when you come to sell. You could be stuck with a new house that’s exactly like every other house for sale, in a school district that’s less than stellar. Whereas this house–” she makes a sweeping gesture around the living room, her arm cutting through a swathe of dust motes “– with a little love and attention from you beforehand, it would be snapped up in an instant. Like that,” she adds, snapping her fingers in case we hadn’t understood.

Her cell phone chirps. She pulls it out of her pocket, looks at the screen, and frowns.

“Excuse me.”

She trots out into the hallway where we can hear her murmuring a few seconds later.

I turn to Oliver and open my eyes very wide.

“Please?” I say. “Pretty please? With sugar on the top?”

“No.” He folds his arms, tapping one foot.

“We won’t have anywhere to live if we don’t buy it.” I stick my lower lip out. “And then we’ll have to live in the apartments near the mall again, next to that crazy man who likes using the azaleas for target practice. Remember him?”

Oliver stops tapping his foot and winces. He remembers our old neighbour, all right. The one with the pickup truck with the NRA sticker on the bumper. Oliver was convinced the man was harmless until we ran into him at a Fourth of July celebration, when he rambled on about how he hated all effing Limey effers, and we had to pretend for the next three weeks that we were Australian. Oliver avoided him as much as possible after that. One day he was late home from work, and it turned out he’d been sitting in the car for over an hour, waiting for the crazy man to finish playing poker on the front porch with his equally crazy friends, before he dared to venture into our own apartment.

Considering how he’d told me off for being silly and paranoid, you’d think he would have been less of a wuss.

Donna returns from the hallway, cell phone in hand.

“Another couple is on the way to see this house, so we should leave very soon,” she says. “The office tells me it’s the second time they’ve viewed it. That tells me they’re keen. If I were in your shoes, I’d be making an offer this afternoon. But if you’re sure you want to look at some new houses in Banbury…”

She shrugs. It’s your funeral.

I look up at Oliver, pouting a little again, and make puppy-whimper noises. “I really don’t want to live next door to that man with the BB gun again.”

“Oh, for God’s sake.” Oliver snatches the sheet of property details from me. “Offer them a hundred and forty, and not a cent more.”

Donna beams, and I try not to do a happy dance.

“You’ve got a really good chance of getting it at that price after so long on the market,” Donna says. “I don’t want to raise your hopes or anything, but if I were the seller, I’d jump at that offer. Let’s head back to my office and complete the paperwork.”

She walks back into the kitchen to collect her briefcase.

I hug Oliver, and after a split second while he tries to pretend he’s not in the least excited about buying a two-hundred-year-old American house, he hugs me back.

* * *

Four hours later, our mood is very different.

“I don’t understand it,” Donna says. She’s come round to our house to give us the bad news in person. “If it had been me, I’d have accepted that offer. I know the seller doesn’t live round here, but surely they must realise that in this economic climate you sometimes have to take what you’re offered, especially with the house needing so much renovation. I am just so sorry.”

I can’t speak. I am, as they say back home, absolutely gutted.

“They didn’t make a counter offer?” Oliver asks.

Donna shakes her head.

“Is it the other couple who saw it today? Did they make a higher offer?”

“Not that I know of.”

“Who was their realtor?” I ask. “Could you find out?”

“It was the seller’s realtor. Melissa Harvey Connor. If they want to buy it, she will probably pass them onto another realtor so there isn’t a conflict of interest.”

I manage to turn a splutter of disbelief into a cough. Conflicts of interest have never bothered Melissa in the past.

“Do you want to make a higher offer?” Donna asks.

I look at Oliver and we both shake our heads. If we pay anything more, I’ll never hear the last of it from him.

“I’m sure I can find you something nice in another town. It might mean moving away, and Oliver having a longer commute, but don’t worry. We’ll find something.”  Donna gathers up her briefcase and jacket, and leaves.

Oliver and I sit on the sofa in silence.

“The idea of making that house a project was starting to grow on me,” he says. “I’m kind of surprised at how disappointed I am now.”

We sit some more, considering our options.

“So,” Oliver says at last. “We’ve got Melissa Harvey Connor representing the seller and a potential buyer, and she just happens to be our landlady. Is it just me,” he asks, “or can you also smell a rat?”

I’m so glad I’m not the only one with paranoia.

“Oh yes,” I say. “A big rat.”

A great, big, fat rat called Melissa.”

The thing is — how on earth do we prove it?

.

Next post: LIBBY’S LIFE #78 – Trust no agent

Previous post: LIBBY’S LIFE #76 – This old house

Read Libby’s Life from the first episode. 

Want to read more? Head on over to Kate Allison’s own site, where you can find out more about Libby and the characters of Woodhaven, and where you can buy Taking Flight, the first year of Libby’s Life — now available as an ebook.

 STAY TUNED for next week’s posts!

If you enjoyed this post, we invite you to subscribe for email delivery of The Displaced Dispatch, a round up of the week’s posts from The Displaced Nation. Sign up for The Displaced Dispatch by clicking here!

Image: Travel – Map of the World by Salvatore Vuono / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

“Did you do something special with the twins on their birthday?” Willow squirts ketchup on the burger that Oliver’s handed her, then pops open a can of Bud. “On the day itself, I mean?”

Oliver catches my eye, grins, and turns away to flip more burgers while discussing cricket, or the American lack thereof, with his English friends. They, in turn, are trying to explain to Willow’s bewildered partner, Dan — Bronx native and lifelong Yankees fan — a sport where one game can take up an entire working week and which has rest breaks for tea and cucumber sandwiches.

I stick my tongue out at Oliver’s back.

“We went out for ice cream in the evening,” I say, “after I dragged them round the streets of Woodhaven with a realtor. After trailing through eight houses, though, they were ready for bed rather than for ice cream.”

Willow, I reflect, is the type of woman you can say this to. She won’t be shocked that you didn’t do something special for your little snowflakes on their first birthday, or that you are celebrating it nearly two weeks late in the form of a backyard barbecue for grownup friends. She understands that while twelve-month-old babies won’t care if you have a children’s party for them on April 23rd or an adult one on May 4th, the whole family is going to be in the soup if no one has anywhere to sleep on the night of July 15th.

The prospect of homelessness has been playing on my mind more than my children’s numerical milestones have, I admit.

“And did you have any luck finding a house?” Willow asks.

I shake my head.

“Either the work they needed would put them over budget, or they were too expensive to start with.”

Willow doesn’t say, as many people might, “I’m sure something will turn up” or “Everything will be OK”, and for this I’m grateful. There’s a fine line between spouting comforting platitudes and sounding as if you don’t give a damn.

“What are you going to do?” she says instead.

I make my way across the deck to the food table where Beth and George are strapped into their high chairs, tantalisingly out of reach of their birthday cake.

“Donna, the realtor, is taking me round some more places tomorrow. If I don’t like any of them, I suppose we will have to move back into an apartment near the mall, where we lived when we first arrived. The alternative is to look for a house outside Woodhaven.”

“Is that what you want?”

I cut two more pieces of cake and plonk them on paper plates in front of the twins, who look at each other and wave their arms around in choreographed excitement. Beth and George are already covered from forehead to chest in red velvet cake and cream cheese frosting. They look like twin Hannibal Lecters, but appear to be enjoying their belated birthday party.

Eventually, I answer Willow.

“You can’t imagine,” I say, “how much I don’t want that.

* * *

I’m surprised how upset I am at the prospect of moving to another town. I’m sure another town in Massachusetts would be just as nice, but there’s something special about this one. When I first met Maggie eighteen months ago, she summed it up by saying “Woodhaven is the kind of place that gets to you. It’s like Hotel California — you can check out any time you like but you can never leave. I’ve been trying to leave ever since 1976, but haven’t managed it yet.” After less than two years in the place, I already know what she means.

It’s scary to think that, if not for Oliver’s promotion at Christmas and subsequent extension of his contract in Massachusetts, we’d be packing our belongings into cardboard boxes ready to go back to Milton Keynes next month. Though, as Oliver’s mother is still living in our house there, perhaps it’s just as well we’re staying. I really must check up on what she’s doing to the place, but until we’re sorted out with somewhere to live, that’s a distant second place on my list of priorities.

Still. Chin up. Perhaps today is the day that Donna, our geographically-challenged realtor, will find us a house that’s a) big enough, b) cheap enough, and c) empty.

* * *

“What do you think?” Donna asks, when I’ve looked in all the bedrooms and opened all the closets.

This is the thirteenth house she’s shown me round in as many days, and she’s learning. No longer does she froth with enthusiasm over hardwood floors and granite countertops. I need three, if not four, bedrooms; two bathrooms that don’t contain 1970s-coloured suites or swimming pool-sized bathtubs that require an entire water tank to fill them; a bedroom for me and Oliver that’s on the same level as the other bedrooms; and, most of all, a laundry room that isn’t in a dark, cobwebby basement. If none of those conditions apply, the house needs to be cheap enough for us to make the necessary improvements.

“It’s better than the last one,” I say, “but still not there. The blue bathroom suite is an improvement on the chocolate brown one, I’ll give you that, and the kitchen is old enough for me to call it ‘retro’, but I am not prepared to do my laundry in a dungeon that has a mouse carcass next to the washing machine.”

“That’s not a problem,” Donna says. She’s got a squeaky little voice; she doesn’t so much speak as chirrup. “We can ask the sellers to remove the dead mice from the basement.”

“If you can make it a condition of sale that they come and remove every mouse that enters the house after we’ve bought it, I might consider it.”

She frowns.

“No, I don’t think we could ask them to do that. It wouldn’t be their property any more, so it would be your responsibility after you move in, you see.”

I sigh inwardly. Donna’s one of those people who always take you literally. It’s exhausting.

“How many houses left to see today?” I ask.

She shuffles her sheaf of papers around and passes me a sheet of closely typed, small fonted property details.

“Just the one. It’s a long shot, though. I doubt it’s what you’re looking for.”

I squint at the flyer for this last house, our last chance to find something today, and for the first time since we started on this house hunting lark, I feel a spark of optimism.

* * *

When you come to live in America, you realise that, your whole life, you’ve been taking something for granted in England.

History.

There is so much of it back home. (OK, so maybe my home town of Milton Keynes isn’t the best example.) But every day, we stop in pubs and shops that were around when Columbus was getting seasick, take shortcuts through churchyards over graves that are centuries old, drive past ruined castles that were built to stop marauding invaders.

Do we appreciate it? Not really. Not until it isn’t there.

Here in Massachusetts there seems to be an all-or-nothing attitude to history. Old houses and monuments are reverently preserved, while anything younger than fifty years is, sooner or later, demolished to make way for something bigger, brighter, and brand new.

And while I like big, bright, and brand new, sometimes I miss low, beamed ceilings, and signs in pubs saying “Duck or Grouse.”

* * *

“What do you think of this house?” Donna asks for the last time.

Not for the last time today, but for the last time ever. I can feel it. She won’t have to ask me again, or show me round any more houses.

I’m in love. I’m in love like I was the first time I saw Woodhaven, with its shuttered, clapboard houses and village green, its white church spires and maple trees.

This house is Woodhaven encapsulated. It’s nearly as old as the town itself which, according to the signpost at the city limits, was incorporated in 1766.

It needs a lot of attention and TLC, of course, but I like to have a project.

“How come no one has snapped this up before?” I ask Donna. “It’s been on the market for nearly a year.”

She shuffles her feet a bit before answering. “An old lady owned it before she died. It had been in her family for years. Not everyone wants to take on a fixer-upper like this.”

In that case, other people are big wusses with a very different idea than I have of what constitutes a “fixer-upper”. According to the house details, it’s had new plumbing and electrics within the last year — presumably to hasten its sale by the old lady’s beneficiaries — and the outside also has a fresh coat of paint. The bathrooms — OK, they’re 1970s avocado and orange, and the kitchen needs to be gutted and sympathetically replaced — but this house is so cheap, we will have more than enough headroom in our budget. And, most important of all, there is plumbing for a washing machine in the little mud room next to the kitchen, with not a mouse cadaver in sight.

“I need to talk it over with Oliver, and he’ll want to see it, of course. But we need a place pretty soon, and this is a good price.”

Donna nods.

“It’s been for sale so long that we can probably get them down even more on price.”  She glances at the paper of house details. “Actually, I know the realtor it’s listed with. She’s a friend of mine, which might make things easier. I think you said you know her, too.”

I study my own copy, and when I see the name of the seller’s realtor, I shut my eyes.

Can you say “Conflict of interest”?

And now can you say “Melissa Harvey Connor”?

.

Next post: LIBBY’S LIFE #77 – First refusal

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