The House on Elm Street
The price was $189,000. The bank preapproved us on my pay alone. Kim, the realtor, wrote the offer up in my name, with Hannah’s name going on the title and the loan, and told me plainly that Hannah would have to sign both at closing. Nothing could be final without her.
“You understand you’re buying a house as a surprise,” Kim said, the day I signed. “I’ve been doing this nineteen years and I’ve seen this twice. One of them went fine.”
“What happened to the other one?”
“She wanted a bigger kitchen,” Kim said. “Let’s hope your wife likes small kitchens.”
Mrs. Hall accepted on the second Tuesday in November. Closing was set for December 18th. And because the house sat empty, and because Mrs. Hall was eighty-one and liked me, she asked Kim to write up an early access agreement so I could start painting the back bedroom before we moved in.
She gave me the key herself, at the care home, on a plain silver ring. She held my hand a second too long and said, “You make sure your girl sees the lilacs in May.”
Kim put the sold sign up in the yard the week before Thanksgiving, at my request, a little earlier than she usually would. She said it was against her better judgment. She said it with a grin.
My plan had been to give Hannah the key at Christmas. Then her father pushed a check across the table, and Christmas felt about four weeks too far away.
At seven the next morning, I made coffee and stood in the bedroom doorway until she opened her eyes.
“Take a ride with me,” I said.
“Cody, I don’t want to go anywhere.”
“I know. Come anyway.”
She almost didn’t. She sat on the edge of the bed for a full minute with her hair in her face. Then she got up and pulled on the same maroon knit sweater she’d worn the night before, and her jeans from the night before, the check still folded in the back pocket. She didn’t put on a coat.
“You’ll freeze,” I said.
“Then you’ll drive fast.”
Before she woke up, I’d driven over to Grandma Ida’s at six and picked up the coffee can. Ida was already up, in her robe, and she just handed it to me at the door and said, “Go on.” It was on the floor of the truck behind my seat, wrapped in a grocery sack.
Elm Street is six blocks from the courthouse square. It’s the kind of street where people still rake their leaves into the gutter and the mail carrier knows every dog by name. I parked at the curb and turned off the engine.
The house is small and white and one story, with black shutters and a small front stoop with black iron railings. There was frost all over the lawn, so heavy it looked like somebody had sifted flour on it. The trees along the street were bare.
In the yard stood the realtor’s sign post, with a sold sign bolted to it, white and red against the frost.
Hannah got out of the truck before I did. She stood in the frosted grass beside the front walk in her maroon sweater with her long blonde hair loose over her shoulders, and she looked at the house, and then at the sign, and then at me.