“You could sell your house,” said Elliot. “And I’ll sell mine, and we can buy this place together.”

 

I took in the idyllic setting. A graceful stone house with a “For Sale” sign on the lawn, a decrepit detached garage. The place needed a great deal of work, but it had “good bones” as Elliot liked to point out. There were two or three old apple trees. A small stream flowed next to the house, crossed by a wooden bridge that married one bank to the other. Few cars passed this way, and there was no sound of traffic on the rural road. The setting reminded me of the romantic English countryside, Wordsworth’s region, perhaps, but the house was located fewer than one hundred miles from Manhattan. 

 

We had stumbled across the property by chance.

 

Well, not quite by chance. Elliot often drove around in search of unusual properties, quaint cottages, old chicken farms, once he even found a castle-like building that had no back end, just a front, like a movie set. 

 

“Think of the parties we could have there,” he mused. 

 

He was a frugal dreamer, with a humble salary, a practical skill-set, and an active imagination. A man who fancied himself on an expansive green lawn, playing croquet, living a Gatsby life. 

 

Never married, no kids, Elliot was tethered to nothing visible, but he loved architecture and aesthetics and houses. He had once converted a small barn into a stunning contemporary, complete with skylights. He could do carpentry, plumbing, all manner of bricolage. He had designed and built his current house, a narrow tower, set high on one of Connecticut’s many ridges. From the deck, between the curtains of the trees Elliot had trimmed, you could see a city skyline miles and miles away. In the summer, he’d move his night-blooming cereus plant outside. The penetrating fragrance of that cactus flower would drift through the warm air. We’d sit on his deck our suntanned legs entwined, and watch bats fluttering in the twilight.

 

Elliot liked his tower well enough, but he was getting itchy for a new project. He frequently got itchy. Hence the weekends spent looking for something to catch his eye. 

 

“Let’s do it, let’s buy it. It’s gonna sell quick.”

 

Elliot often said those very words. It’s gonna sell quick. We’ll miss out. 

 

We’d been seeing each other for a few years, Elliot and I, always living separately, each attached to our own abode, our own routines, the exact way we folded laundry. We’d break up and get back together. Our attraction was electric, with an underlying ambivalence that ran through the relationship like a short circuit. We’d enjoy the heat, the smolder, the pull of each other’s bodies….then something would flip, sparks would fly, our two negative poles would repel each other. He’d grow cold and distant, I’d weep and pine. We’d each say terrible things and run away, only to return a few months later, hungry for each other’s skin.

 

We looked again at the beautiful stone house. Clearly, he couldn’t afford to buy it without a co-buyer.  He encouraged me to take the risk, to take the plunge. He taunted me with the challenge, probably because, on some level, he knew I wouldn’t do it.

 

“We could open up the kitchen,”he suggested, “That’d be easy enough, there’s no supporting posts in the wall there. It would be just like your current kitchen.”

 

But how could a new kitchen be like my kitchen?  My kitchen had a chipped ceramic counter, just the right height for bread making. My kitchen had worn spots on the floor where I’d stood and washed hundreds of Sippy cups, and Crate and Barrel wine glasses, and hand-made pottery bowls. A place where I had cleaned up after children’s playdates and loud dinner parties, and disastrous Thanksgivings where the relatives argued and there was too much salt in the dressing. My kitchen had a jumble of open shelves, a minuscule pantry space, questionable plumbing, an Indian print tablecloth with stains. It smelled like oregano and garlic and homemade yogurt and old birthday candles. And, with windows in three sides, my kitchen offered light during most of the day. Beautiful amber sunshine in the morning, steady yellow rays at noon, a hint of purple at dusk. 

The stone house had one window over the sink, facing north. 

“Well, you can always add windows in the kitchen”, said Elliot, walking me through the stone house as if he were a real estate agent.

I nodded, but said nothing. He pointed out the once-beautiful wooden stairs leading to the second floor, the large master bedroom with a dressing room and wainscoting.

“I could make this into a showplace,” said Elliot. 

I had no doubt that he could.

 

I actually preferred the layout of my own home with its cozy, one-story convenience. I liked its outer shape, eaved and welcoming. I liked its inner smell, musty like an old trunk. The rooms were worn and weighty with memories.  My kids’ heights and dates scratched in pencil on the hallway wall. The family cats buried under rocks in the back yard.

 

“But your house is smack dab in the middle of the suburbs.Wouldn’t you like to live where it’s peaceful? ” asked Elliot.

 

Actually, I wasn’t sure I would. I liked my tight suburban neighborhood. I knew almost everyone on the block; I’d walked dogs there and pushed strollers and borrowed weed whackers. Yes, from my driveway, you could hear the intrusive rumble of the Parkway, but you could also see the moon rise from behind the firehouse on the next street. 

 

It had been hard-won, that little house. I had bought out my ex husband’s share when we divorced. My older brother loaned me the money, I paid him back. I remember the little blue notebook where I would record the payments. The final entry.

 

A few weeks later, Elliot and I drove by the beautiful stone house and there was a sold sign. Elliot didn’t seem that disappointed. He’d found another dream house, somewhere else.

 

It was no different with other things in his life. Women, for instance. It was always the aesthetic, not the attachment, when he talked about his past girlfriends, he’d say who was a model, who had gorgeous red hair, which one had breasts like the Venus de Milo. 

 

Elliot and I bumbled along as a wobbly couple for another year or two. And then the negative poles touched again and we broke up, this time for good. 

 

I stayed in my own house. I fell in love with a kind, steady man and married him. He sold his big old colonial upstate and moved into my suburban house with me. Together, we buried yet another cat in the yard.

 

I heard that Elliot sold his little tower on the hill. A mutual friend told me that Elliot had bought a fixer -upper in a lake town nearby. I wondered if he had purchased it with someone else on the deed.

 

“He won’t stay there long. Probably he’ll sell it for a bundle in the future,” said the friend.

 

For a short time, even after I was married, I’d purposely drive by Elliot’s new house in the lake town, always wearing sunglasses, a scarf around my head. I’d slouch down so I wouldn’t be recognized. I’d look at his last name artfully painted on the mailbox, observe the way he had added skylights, placed the night blooming cereus by the front door. But, after a while, I realized that I didn’t care anymore. Or not much anyway