Our Little Showplace

The realtor and her business partner came last week. Her business partner is her son. He slept in this house dozens of nights when he was a kid and my younger son’s best friend. Now he is a tall man who, with a mask on, is barely recognizable.

I stayed in my office while they walked through the house with my husband. He prides himself on handling things like this, taking people into our ancient basement and for tours of our dimly lit attic with the insulation threatening to fall on visitors’ heads. If I were to go along, I’d be scurrying ahead with a broom and a dustpan, as if, at this late date, sweeping would make any difference.

Our realtor’s business partner, also known as my son’s best friend when they both were kids, said there was a wire in the attic that should get fixed because inspectors would be very unhappy to find it. The wire has been there forever, since before us, and is stapled to the wall. It looks secure enough, but something apparently is horribly wrong with it.

My first reaction was that we should find an electrician immediately. My husband nodded but hasn’t said another word about it in the five days that have passed since the wire’s discovery. Unwittingly, these past thirty-eight years, we have figured out how to live with the noncomplying wire.

“You can’t say our house is a showplace,” I said to my husband that morning before the realtor and her business partner came. In the daylight, I could see the places where the paint was bubbling in the entryway. The scratches on the back door, made by the paws of seven dogs, gave testament to that statement. People with a showplace of a house would have replaced that door and the dogs with cats long ago. The flaws of one’s house start wearing neon knickers when a realtor comes to give you that what’s what.

Later that night, after the feeling of gross exposure caused by having the realtor and her business partner go through every nook and cranny of our house, I sat on the couch under my favorite, super heavy winter blanket. The lamp on the piano cast a gold tone on the whole living room. In that moment, the room looked as if it had been staged by a realtor and her business partner. Beautifully appointed, deep reds and browns, eclectic art, leafy plants, and a bay window that let in the streetlight and sent our light into the world. It was possibly the coziest place in the world.

“Our house is a showplace, don’t you think? This room is showplace quality.” I said this to my husband who was sitting in his chair with his feet up, a stocking cap on his head because we never turn the heat up very high even in the dead of winter, which it isn’t yet.

“It can be.” he said. He didn’t say it, but I knew what he was thinking. It helps if it’s dark.