Well, it did make things easier for his children. And they could always do some refurbishing after he’d moved in.
Helen was going to handle the house sale as well. She came in with them after the apartment tour to discuss the arrangements for that, with Stem and Denny joining in. “Such a comfortable old place this is,” she said, looking around the living room. “And of course the porch is a huge draw. It’s going to be a pleasure to show.”
Everyone except Red looked encouraged. Red was gazing toward a nearby newspaper as if he wished he could be reading it.
“But it is still a sluggish market,” Helen said. “And what I’ve learned is, buyers in these times expect perfection. We’ll want to spruce the place up some.”
“Spruce it up?” Red said. “What more could they possibly ask for? Every downstairs room but the kitchen’s got double pocket doors.”
“Oh, yes, I love the—”
“And it’s not often you see an entrance hall like ours, two-story. Or these open transoms with the handsawed fretwork.”
“But it isn’t air-conditioned,” Helen said.
Red said, “Oh, God,” and he slumped in his seat.
“These days—” Helen said.
“Yeah, yeah.”
“It won’t be so hard,” Denny told him. “They’ve got these mini-duct systems now where you won’t need to tear up the walls.”
Red said, “Who do you think you’re talking to? I know all about those systems.”
Denny shrugged.
“Also,” Helen said. She cleared her throat. She said, “This would be your choice entirely, but you might want to consider his-and-her master bathrooms.”
Red raised his head. He said, “Consider what?”
“I wouldn’t bring it up except you do own a contracting firm, so it wouldn’t be such an expense. That master bathroom you have now is gigantic. You could easily divide it in two, with a shower stall in between that’s accessible from both sides. I just saw the most dazzling shower stall, with river-pebble flooring and multiple rainmaker nozzles.”
Red said, “When my father built this house, it had only the one bathroom off the upstairs hall.”
“Well, that was back in the—”
“Then he added the downstairs powder room after we moved in, and we thought we were something special.”
“Yes, you certainly need a—”
“The master bathroom itself he didn’t put in till my sister and I were in high school. What he’d say if he heard about his-and-hers, I can’t even begin to imagine.”
“It’s customary, though, in the finer homes these days. As I’m sure you must have learned in your business.”
“He himself grew up with just a privy,” Red said. He turned to the others. “I bet you didn’t know that about your grandfather, did you?”
They did not. They knew next to nothing about their grandfather, in fact.
“Well, a privy,” Helen said with a laugh. “That would be a hard sell!”
“So we’ll forget about the his-and-hers,” Red told her. “Now, how long do you expect it will take to find a buyer?”
“Oh, once you’ve installed the air conditioning, and maybe upgraded your kitchen counters—”
“Kitchen counters!”
But then he clamped his lips tightly, as if reminding himself not to be difficult.
“It does seem the market’s started looking up,” Helen said. “There was a time there when places were languishing for a year or more, but lately I’ve been averaging, oh, just four to six months, with our more desirable properties.”
“In four to six months it will go to seed,” Red told her. “You know it’s not good for a house to sit empty. It will molder; it will get all forlorn; it will break my heart.”
Amanda said, “Oh, Dad, we would never let that happen. We’ll come and, I don’t know, throw family picnics here or something.”
Red just gazed at her miserably, his eyes so empty of light that he seemed almost sightless.
“Be honest,” Jeannie said to Amanda. “Does any little part of you feel relieved that Mom died so suddenly?”
“You mean on account of her lapses,” Amanda said.
“They would only have gotten worse; we can be pretty sure of that. Whatever they were. And Dad would be trying to look after her, and so would Nora; and Denny would have thought of some excuse to leave by then.”
“But maybe it was just, oh, a circulation problem or something, and the doctors could have fixed it.”
“That’s not very likely,” Jeannie said.