Househunting on the brain

I pull into the driveway of the farmhouse.  It is three stories tall and narrow, old, but recently painted - yellow with dark brown trim.  I use the realtor code that I shouldn't have to get in.

Inside, the air is musty though not in an unpleasant way.  I have recently watched a horror film.  It makes climbing the dark stairwells and opening the old creeky doors a mildly challenging experience.  But it is midday.  And I am 43 years old.  I brush off the ghosts with logic and keep going.

The sun is half-shielded by clouds.  In the white-walled kitchen, the winter light pours, bright and watery, through old but big single-paned windows, making everything seem simultaneously soft focus and overlit.

I expected the house to be cold and it is drafty in spots but surprisingly warm and cozy overall.   I am chilled from the bitter wind outside, don't even realize I am hunting for baseboards to turn on till I reach the living room, and walk through a jet of warm air; it's coming through a vent in the ceiling.

Imagine living again in a centrally heated house!  For a moment I daydream.  The house is in good condition - for its age.  On the lawn, I had stood on the gravel drive and reveled in the hush, the ground soft with calf-high wild grasses that stretch for acres in all directions.

But the floors tilt this way and that.  Walls would have to be knocked down.  Wiring, appliances, windows.  The farmhouse's antique charm is no match for the ancient adding machine ticking up in my head.  The dream dies before I have even started adding in the cost of refinishing the hardwoods.

On the top floor a long corridor emerges into an attic that bulges out over a barn sized garage.  I don't remember seeing this from the road, a puzzle since the road curved around the property for a quarter mile on the approach, showing it off from at least three angles.

Narrow, steep stairs.  As I descend, I hear car tires, someone talking.  My realtor, talking to someone on the phone?  No.  Two children's voices and a slightly deeper but still female voice.  In the gloom of the staircase I must have dislodged something because I hear "thump, thump" then raised voices all at once, the only discernable phrase from the jumble something like "oh my god, a severed head!"

I freeze then, five steps from the bottom.  I can see three sets of legs, not sure if they can see mine.  "Hello?" I call out, not wanting to show up unannounced.  I startle when I spot the trophy head of a deer, staring up at me from the floor where it must have rolled after thump-thumping off some wall. 

"Is someone there?"  The woman's voice.

"Hi, yes, I'm so sorry" I talk fast but take each remaining stair slowly, "I'm here looking at the house with my realtor.  We must have miscommunicated the timing somehow."

I emerge from the gloom of the stairwell into the garage.  The ceiling soars two stories above us, complete with old wooden rafters, and the requisite layers of cobwebs.  The mother seems mid-30s, short curly dark hair.  Her voice is steady as we introduce ourselves but the kids have become utterly still and silent.  They press into her, tight, making her into a human insect, six feet, one body.

"Sorry about the head," I blurt.  "I mean, I don't know how it got there but I was trying to be careful, and I really had no idea someone would be here..." I trail off, realizing I am not making myself seem any less crazy or dangerous.

She just smiles, takes a breath as if to say something and - "Mom look!"  Her son points to something shiny on the ground midway between us.  Things, plural, actually.   We all converge on the pile, bonded by curiosity.

The mom bends down.  "It's jewelry," she says.  "Uncle used to store it in all sorts of weird places.  I bet it fell out of that deer head when it rolled down the stairs."  She begins sorting the pile into bracelets, necklaces, rings.  "Look around," she instructs.  "There could be more."  I search nearby and bring back some earrings, coins, a small satin purse.

"Don't worry," she says glancing up at me, "I'll give you a cut."  I shake my head, uncomfortable, feeling more acutely than ever that I am an intruder, but she is already head down back at her task, and I find myself unable to speak.

Through the open barn door it is suddenly dark.  Light spills from the windows onto the gravel drive.  The woman and her children have disappeared, leaving only the pile of jewelry.  The "For Sale" sign sports a "SOLD" banner.  People mill inside and out, holding cups of cider, glasses of wine.  They chat and drink and the summer air is that comfortable perfect temperature that comes like an apology after a long, scorching day.

This isn't my housewarming party.  This isn't my house.  I don't have one, don't own even personal portable property, just a battered rucksack and this loot scavenged from the garage.  I straighten my ragged sweater, run my hands through my hair and stroll out to the table for the free snacks.