Have you ever been seduced by a house, or in the case of this tale, a townhouse? When I fell in love with it, it didn’t even exist. It’s the way a lot of romances begin, with a vision of something that isn’t really there.
It was shingle-style, with stone foundation and two porches, one screened in. It was roomy for a townhouse, meaning I wouldn’t have had to get rid of any of my lifetime accumulation of furniture I’m apparently not done with yet. The English basement even had room for the pool table and the juke box.
The sales team had it conjured on a full-wall video mural depicting the full sweep of the new neighborhood, to be constructed on the site of a recently leveled downtrodden apartment development. The sales office stood on an adjacent property, accessible via a circuitous route involving three left turns.
As sales teams should be, this group was bursting with predictions - the units would be snapped up in a flash, several people had already put down deposits, the building would commence in accordance with the speed of the closings. It would start with the first row of townhouses and the first condo building, close to the elegant entrance, so new residents would not have to drive through a construction zone while the rest were completed. The landscaping would be done right away, not to worry.
I went home clutching gorgeous brochures and memories of the quality cabinet and hardware options. I could just imagine the sunlight streaming in through the bay window in the breakfast area. It reminded me of the house in the movie with Diane Keaton I can never remember the name of where Jack Nicholson recovers from a heart attack or something at her fantastic seaside house. (Remember? He is dating her nubile young daughter which pretty much turns your stomach so imagine how the Diane Keaton character must have felt, but came around to falling in love with her [Diane] instead.) Something’s Gotta Give, that’s it.
See? That’s where the fantasy took over. I floated through the next few days, researching the developer, visiting their other properties, imagining the cleansing process of a move for the first time in 15 years, and dreaming of my new life with no landscaping bills.
My husband sobered up first - why would we want to live in a construction site? The floor plan was awkward and the entryway a disaster - come in the front door and three feet later you have to climb up or down to get to the living space. How would his dad in his wheelchair ever visit?
Oh, good point. Is there room for an elevator, we asked the bright sales lady. Well yes, she stammered, if you give up a chunk of the kitchen, and a bedroom, and the bar in the basement.
Hmm. The dream started to fade. Also influential, the consideration of whether to commit before selling our current house, which wasn’t hard to decide since we’d once owned two houses for a spell and swore to learn from our mistake. The brakes engaged. We told them no the next time they called, crushing their dreams, and mine.
I used to drive by sometimes, watching the project begin. True to their word, they started with the two buildings they’d promised, and the gate looked great. The recession was starting to show itself though and I noticed that the newspaper ads that used to feature snob appeal of living in the village, now took on a budget tinge - townhouses for only $700,000, condos in the $300,000s. Wait, weren’t they vastly more expensive than that when we looked; where were those brochures?
The recession won, the salesladies are long gone, their sales office still perched above a vast empty parking lot. There is a leaning chain link fence around the whole property with No Trespassing signs every six feet. Giant puddles collect in the unpaved streets. Piles of building materials dot the property, stacks of concrete curbs, concrete blocks, and stones. Lengths of giant sewer pipe rest against rolling hills of dirt with new grass poking through straw. A mountain of landscaping boulders sits near the entrance. A lone trash container sits imprisoned behind the fence.
It reminds me of Pompeii, life frozen in the moment of disaster. But now life is taking over again - the grass, dozens of birds chirp crazily because it’s finally spring. A neighbor walks her dog through the one paved street that leads from the sales office to the gate. The two buildings sit, stickers on each window, paused just before happy people were to move into their new lives.
Except for the first townhouse of the four. It’s the unit we picked out - for best sunlight both morning and evening, best view of the treed neighborhood behind, in view of the community gazebo. In that unit, the stickers are off the windows, Venetian blinds and shutters are up, and the porch light is on. Two cars sit out back alongside a basketball hoop. An urn holds flowers. Someone is living in our unit, carrying on life in the middle, well really at the edge of, the stalled construction site. They have a very short ride until they are out on the street driving past the construction sign no one ever took down that promises access to the office and exciting deals 11-6 every day.
Narrow escape? Yes, except for one family who may feel foolish, or unlucky, or philosophical, depending on who and how they are. Give them credit for pulling the trigger on their new life, even if it didn’t turn out quite as they expected. A little part of me still longs for the new start, the sun in the morning and all that. It looks cozy in there in the rain, a good place to read a book. Looking too closely feels a little dangerous, like looking back at an old boyfriend and wondering, even when you know better. Thank goodness you snapped out of it, but the dream lingers, of how things might have been.
CBH 05/10
