We carefully unload our car full of breakables alongside the movers strapped with three times as much as we can carry. As we pause between loads to look up at our new home, the neighbor’s front door eases open with a stiff, loud scrape. The sound draws Julie’s eye. “That’s him, huh?” she asks, craning to get a better look.
Julie moves to raise her hand, but the door is already closing. She can have a sweet, useless way about her when she thinks it might serve her. After this failure, she sets back to work, lifting the next bulky box and stepping toward the house carefully, her view obstructed.
We show the movers where to put boxes. We stray from room to room, evaluating our purchase again with our new homeowners’ eyes. All of it belongs to us now. I point to the basement wall. The stain has pulled itself wider. I ask Julie if she thinks so, too, and immediately regret it. We stare. The spot seems to inhale a little, lungs expanding.
“Could we have thought it seemed smaller because we were so eager? I knew that inspector wasn’t very good,” she says. Julie places her hand on the discoloration. “It’s dry.” She leans her face into the wall. “It smells like mold. Chemical, bitter. Do you think a leak might still need fixing?” She pushes her nose around with the back of her hand.
I feign indifference. I want to take back the worry I’ve caused.
“You’re the one who noticed it, but I’ll call someone to take a look,” she says, already annoyed.
“I can call someone.”
“But you won’t. It’s better if we acknowledge that now.” She mashes her nose again, trying to stop the itch.
3
“WHAT’S THE HURRY?” James asks. “We’ll be in this house for the rest of our lives.”
I prefer to unpack quickly, eager to organize, insistent on accomplishing what I can so I’ll be ready for whatever other surprises need addressing. I don’t know how to relax with boxes around. My instinct is the opposite of what James suggests: I want to revel in the milestone of homeownership and that requires settling ourselves in. James is sprawled on the couch blocking the entryway, propped on one elbow, flipping through his phone. I gather all the packing paper and shove it into a trash bag. I collapse the boxes, and when the racket of my cleanup ends, the sound of the house reminds me of itself again, that ringing hum. “What is that noise?” I ask James.
He raises his head with a question, but sees my frustration and stays cool. “It’s the electricity. It’s an old house. I said I’ll call an electrician.”
“You’ve got your phone right there,” I say.
“It’s Sunday,” he responds.
I turn and catch sight of the neighbor watching from his living room window. I wave, but he doesn’t return the gesture or look away. “The neighbor’s pretty nosy.”
“Yeah.” I try to tell if James’s yeah means that he has also noticed or that he’s merely accepting what I’ve said as true or if the response is automatic, not attentive.
I assess the cluster of pots on the cocktail table. I have no affinity for Pueblo ceramics, but my stepmother, frustrated with my lack of particular-gift requests, decided to turn me into a collector. I appreciate the classy neutrality of the geometrics, but still feel a tilt of resentment at how many of the jars I now possess.
I set a couple on the mantel. I carry two trips’ worth to the bookshelves and randomly punctuate the empty space. The remaining pots I leave together on the coffee table, but when I consider the arrangement and count them, the number comes up short. “Huh.”
“What’s up?” James says without lifting his eyes.
“We’re missing a pot.” I glance around, counting again.
“Probably got packed in a different box.”
“That would be an entirely reasonable theory if I didn’t remember feeling so proud that I’d fit them all into two perfectly sized boxes.”
James rolls his eyes and I know why: because this is precisely a thing that would bring me joy, boring to anyone else, but thrillingly efficient to me. He’s about to look back at his phone when his eyes stop in the dining room. “Is that it?” He nods toward the table, and sure enough, there is the missing vase.
“You fink.”
James laughs. “I didn’t move it.”
Could I have set it there and forgotten? Could I have had it in my hand on the way to the kitchen and put it down? This seems like the only answer, so I accept it. “I don’t remember doing that at all.”
“Ooo, so spooky,” James growls because he’s sure I must be wrong, that I must have placed it just so, that my habits of organizing and arranging are so second nature, I needn’t even think to make them happen, and, really, that’s exactly the definition of a habit, right?
“You moved it. I know you did,” I say, setting myself on the arm of the couch. I run my hands through his dark hair, longer every day. First it was job searching, then night after night of goodbye drinks with friends, then packing: so many reasons a twenty-minute visit to the barber wasn’t possible. I tuck a lock behind his ear and let myself admire the rakish quality he acquires when his hair grows to this length.
“I know, I know. I’ll get it cut soon.” He doesn’t look up.
“It does have its charm when it starts to curl like this.” I let my hand wander down to his chin, lifting his face from the screen.
His eyes glint and he sits up. “Oh, it does, does it?”
“It does.” I feel my mouth buckle into a grin and keep my eyes trained on his.
“I should make the most of this power before you Delilah me in my sleep.” He turns to kneel on the cushion of the couch. “Should I use my magic for good … or for evil?” He reaches around to squeeze my hip.
“Good.”
“Very well. Maybe a christening of our new home then?”
“A prudent idea.” I lean close. “We wouldn’t want to risk ending up in limbo.”
“Definitely not worth the risk.” He closes the distance.
4
ON MY FIRST walk through the woods, I find neighbor kids playing a game called Murder. One kid has to hide and think up a way to have been killed. Then, the others have to guess how it happened. I can see only one of the children, hanging over a high branch. I hear the others below trying to determine how the body has gotten into the tree. I try not to get too close, worried I’ll interrupt.
I walk through the woods to the beach. I try to place odds on the different ways a dead body would arrive in the branches of a tree. My therapist said I should turn thoughts of gambling, odds, even mathematical ratios, away when they come into my mind. I look instead at the way the private sections of beach form one long, uninterrupted strand, comma’d with rowboats and picnic tables. I unmoor myself and wander back to the house. I look for the children, but they have finished their game.