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apparitionism · 2 years

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Appreciation 4

“All the AUs”... I’ve written a few, and they always make me recall words from Elaine Scarry that I used in an essay about such things a while ago: “Beauty brings copies of itself into being.” An AU is a particular sort of copy, one that may be wildly inflectionary... also I personally prefer AUs, much of the time, because I think Joanne Kelly and Jaime Murray would be well served by appearing together in non-Warehouse contexts that make use of their sparking magic.

This fourth stave of appreciation follows “Architecture,” “Bridge,” and “Worry.”

House

Elizabeth Bishop, “Sestina.” New Yorker 15 Sept. 1956: 46.

With crayons the child draws a rigid house / and a winding pathway.

****

Myka Bering is selling her house. She has lived in it for two years, but it is simply the wrong space, and its wrongness has become too much to bear.

When she conveys her decision to her friend (and real estate agent) Pete Lattimer, he says, with gloom, “And you blame me because I sold you the house in the first place. And because I sold you on the house. Because I said I had a feeling.”

Myka assures him this shouldn’t be his worry; the house just didn’t work out. On the other hand, she doesn’t tell him that she’s disappointed, even though she is. It isn’t that she really believes that any feeling Pete has is really some communication of real meaning, something from elsewhere... but he’s in the past had an uncanny ability to steer himself and his friends toward productive choices.

But, okay, not this time.

Pete concedes it’s a good time to sell: “Hot market,” he tells Myka.

“You just like saying ‘hot,’” she accuses, and he grins.

****

Barely seventy-two hours after he lists the house, he shows up at her door—but she’s trying to stop thinking of it as “her” door—and announces with glee, “You got a love letter.”

She can’t have heard him right. “I got a what?”

“From a buyer. Saying how much they love the house so you should pick their offer. Toldya the market was hot.”

“Is that a thing?” she asks. She certainty didn’t write a letter to the previous owner of this place; everything was very straightforward: offer, escrow, inspection, close.

“Huge thing in markets that are hot.” He repeats it, “Hot hot hot!”, and giggles. “Kind of a sliding scale of realness to ’em though—you get your flippers pretending they’re gonna take such good care of the place all the way to people so, like, heartfelt, you just want to hand over the keys on the spot. Normally I wouldn’t even show it to you.”

“But?”

He shrinks back a little from the threshold, like a cowed vampire. “You’ll hate me, but I got a feeling.”

Myka sighs. “Hand it over.”

“I gotta be up front about this,” he tells her, not quite apologetically. “You’ll get multiple offers. Some’ll be better than this one.”

“Don’t tease me with a feeling and then wimp out. Hand it over.”

“Promise not to blame me if you leave money on the table?”

She laughs. “Are you insane? No.”

“Fair,” he says. He places in her hand a creamy envelope addressed simply to “Myka Bering.” Then he waggles his fingers in goodbye and scoots away, as if the faster he moves, the lesser the consequences.

****

The letter is written in a precise, not-quite-cursive hand.

Dear Ms. Bering,

A letter such as this may be viewed as manipulative, my Realtor tells me; she tells me also, however, that they can succeed in influencing a sale. I do want to influence you, for I would very much like to buy your house. No, I should be more specific: I feel that I need to buy your house, so that my child and I can live in it.

Allow me to explain. My mother, with whom we have lived since Christina was born, passed away some months ago, and due to difficulties with the estate, her house had to be sold. We are thus both contending with loss, but Christina more so than I: not only of her grandmother, but also of her only home.

We’re seeking a bridge—from our previous life to a new one, from grief to... I’d say “acceptance,” but neither of us is yet able to imagine that such a state exists.

And yet in this house—your house—I feel a difference. It may not be the right difference; that, only time can reveal. But Christina asked me, upon walking in, “How does this one make you feel? Do you feel okay?” and I had to acknowledge that I did, while adding a caveat that I was unsure what “okay” meant in the present moment. I asked her the same question, and she answered, “It makes me feel like I know what okay means in the present moment.”

At that, Myka has to stop reading, because it is exactly what she’d hoped for, in this house, and exactly what had eluded her.

That may seem a bit koan-esque, but the fact of the matter is, Christina is seven years old and far wiser than I.

Apparently I needed a seven-year-old around to tell me what was what, Myka thinks.

In conclusion, lest you think my feelings about your house are entirely metaphysical: the kitchen, to my eyes, is a marvel. The available information indicates it is your remodel, and I applaud your choices, as does Christina. She said, and I quote, “I like the stove. It looks new. The right kind of new. Like someday it will be old.”

Forgive me for turning to her words again, but I find them more meaningful than my own, and I hope you will as well. Or is it evidence only of further attempted manipulation?

If so, I hope it works.

Sincerely (if that doesn’t, in context, seem too much of an oxymoron),

Helena Wells

****

Myka calls Pete. “Is the offer reasonable?” she asks. “The one with the letter?”

“I guess. But like I said, you’ll get—”

“Still got your feeling?”

“Why are you making me say it? Yeah, I still got my feeling.”

“Feel anything about my Viking stove?”

“I feel like I was right to tell you to pay through the nose for it when you redid the kitchen, because it fits the architecture so pretty. Better than anything cheaped-out would’ve. I also feel like you used it that one time to cook—well, ‘cook’—that Thanksgiving turkey till we all could’ve used it to play touch football in the backyard and had to order pizza for dinner. And then I feel like you never used it again. I could be wrong, but I hope not.”

Myka would like to be able to be mad at him about the Thanksgiving description, but he’s entirely right. About all of it. “Take the offer,” she tells him. “I think I know why you had your feeling, first about me buying this place and then about the letter: they need this house.”

****

In addition to her little-used (but extremely aesthetically pleasing) Viking stove, Myka leaves for Helena Wells and her daughter another item she hopes will be of interest: the small almanac she discovered in the attic some months after moving in. It belongs to the house, not to her.

It’s a 1911 facsimile of Poor Robin’s almanac, published by Ben Franklin’s older brother James. (Myka of course researched its provenance.) It proclaims itself to be “The Rhode-Island almanack. For the year, 1728. Being bissextile, or leap-year.”

She determines she should leave a note in the homely little book: her own “love letter,” as it were, to the almanac itself, to the house, and to its new inhabitants. She’s not quite sure what to say, given that she doesn’t need to persuade anyone of anything... It’s just a document of existence, she tells herself, so she tries to write some things that are true.

Dear Helena and Christina Wells,

It’s only fair that I answer your letter, given that it’s why you’re here. First, I’m so sorry for your loss. I’m thankful that this house was here when you needed it, certainly at first, and if this letter finds you settled in the way you want to be, I’m of course even happier.

I’m glad also that you’ve now come across this almanac, which has clearly lived in the attic here for some time. It captivated me from the moment I saw it, mostly because its title taught me a new word, and I love anything that can do that.

You’ll notice that the pages are worn. That’s not my doing, but I did think it was a little strange that a reprint, not even the original useful thing, was so handled.

Then again, once you fight through the colonial typography and spelling, there’s a lot of useful guidance. For example, here’s October’s instruction: “Now button your Garments close, for the Cold comes insensibly, and oft times begets a whole Winter’s Cold. Consult your Taylors as well as Physicians.” Which reminds me to warn you—or maybe you’ve already discovered—that even though I added more insulation, there’s some draftiness, so around October, the warmth of your Garments will come to seem pretty important.

There are also some lovely natural-world auguries. Here’s my favorite: “When the Owl scrietcheth in foul weather, it is a Token of fair weather at Hand.” I have to admit I’ve never heard an owl around here, but ever since I read that, I’ve felt myself hoping, when storms come. As they do.

Whatever would signify fair weather for you two, I hope you hear it in this house.

Sincerely,

Myka Bering

P.S. I’m envisioning you using the stove, insofar as I can envision people I’ve never seen, and I think it’s very happy to be used. I think it wants to grow old that way.

****

Some months later, Myka picks up a call from Pete. She lives in an apartment now, a generic space that isn’t right but at the very least isn’t wrong.

“I know you’re sick of hearing this,” he starts, then stops.

“What am I sick of hearing?”

“A feeling...”

Great. Just what she needs. But she’d better let him tell her, or he’ll keep bugging her... either that, or he’ll burst. “Fine. What’s it about?”

“Did you put a note in a place?”

“Did I what?”

“Note. Place. You. Putting.”

“I heard what you said. What are you talking about?”

What follows is a convoluted story of a Realtor who contacted him “because the lady who bought your house found a note that you left and now she wants to get in touch but she thinks that might be intrusive or aggressive or something so she wants to make sure you’re okay with it but anyway what note are we talking about and why do I have this feeling?”

Well. “I don’t know about your feeling,” Myka says. “But I did leave a note. In the almanac.”

“Is that some secret code? Is the note in code? What do you want me to say?”

Myka, who has a feeling of her own, tells him, “I want you to say yes.”

****

In retrospect, her feeling was justified, for when she and Helena Wells met, on the threshold of that house in which Myka felt wrong, they fell into what seemed to be a predestined exchange.

Helena Wells said, “It’s October.”

“Are you keeping your garments buttoned close?” Myka asked.

“On good advice, we are.”

That was all, for their first words, as time slowed... as they both stopped, as if in agreement to be conscious of that slowing, to ponder its meaning, to accept its novelty.

Then, a small voice from behind Helena said, “We made an apple pie.” Then Christina Wells emerged, positioning herself next to her mother, albeit a ghost-width behind.

All three of them in the doorway: waiting. Liminal.

“How’s the stove working out?” Myka asked at last.

“It didn’t burn the pie,” Christina said.

“It would have if I’d made it,” Myka said. “I guess it likes you.”

Christina considered. “Or pie.”

More silence, while two pairs of Wells eyes scrutinized Myka. Inspection. Due diligence. “Any owls yet?” she tried, after a time.

“Maybe,” Christina said.

And Helena said, “Come inside.”

So Myka did.

****

After they had shared apple pie in the kitchen next to the happier stove, after Myka’s time in the house had stretched such that taking her leave felt embarrassingly overdue, after she stood and made I-should-go noises, Helena asked, “Will you come back?”

And Myka once again said yes.

Not twenty-four hours later, she did go back, for Helena texted her: “I want to teach you a new word.”

When Myka arrived, Helena asked, “What were we to listen for the owl to do?”

“Screech,” Myka said.

“That’s the word,” Helena said.

“That isn’t new,” Myka told her. Was that the right thing to have said?

“It is for us.” And Helena took Myka’s hand—not their first touch, but their first to augur of more—and drew her in.

****

Pete’s feelings. How many tears of gratitude has Myka shed for them, for the way they have bestowed such beautiful contours upon her life? Many, but she’ll never tell him; he’d be embarrassed. But she has said the words “thank you” more times than either of them are comfortable with.

She’s said them to Helena too, of course, and even more often.

“It’ll appreciate,” Pete had originally said of the house’s value.

He was right.

END

#bering and wells #Warehouse 13 #fanfic #Appreciation #House #Bishop's Sestina is a true exemplar of the form #then again anything by Bishop is an exemplar of itself alone #reflecting and embodying her singular gifts #and she'd without question be appalled by my miserable attempt at tribute #anyway the book mentioned herein is real #a fact of which I hope there could be no doubt #beringandwellsappreciationweek #day 4

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