My Life in Dioramas (11 page)

“That'd be awesome.” Naveen nodded.

“Right?!”

We both laughed.

“Did you get your food stewing?”

“I did.”

“Awesome.”

But then Naveen looked sort of faraway and sad, and I said, “What?”

“You
know
you won't be able to keep it up forever.”

“I know.” It felt like a bubble popping between us.

“It's pretty sad to think somebody might knock Big Red down,” he said.

“What are you even talking about?”

“I looked it up. The listing for the house. The ad said it was a fixer-upper or possible partial teardown on amazing property.”

I felt sick. “A teardown?”

“They said something like ‘possible reno to suit your vision' but that means teardown.” He took my elbow and we both moved forward in the line. “Sorry, Kate. I figured you knew.”

It was my turn to kick. I fouled out twice and then, on my third kick, I nailed it. But it flew right at Sam Fitch, and he caught it. Pop fly out.

“Sorry, Kate!” he called out as I walked back to the end of the line.

“Not your fault!” I said, feeling my palms start to sweat.

What was that even about?

At home that afternoon,
when I saw my parents were both distracted by their own tasks, I got my Tupperware out of the pantry and walked down to where the old composting bin had ended up, overgrown behind the garden. I opened the lid, placed the container inside, and closed the bin.

With any luck it would reek by Saturday.

Then I went up to the computer and found
realtor.com
and looked up my address. The listing loaded, with photo after photo of my house. I clicked on the picture of my own room, the ballerina print still on the wall, the paisley of the bedspread looking lovely. When had they even taken that picture? It felt weird how much they'd done behind my back.

I opened the pop-up slideshow so that I could study the pictures more closely. Everything looked funny. Like my parents had hurriedly cleared off surfaces and moved chairs to get better shots. Probably Bernie had come to help. Probably when I was at school.

I exhaled so hard that my hair moved.

The picture of the old bathroom with the claw-foot tub was especially lovely. Then there were pictures of the stream, the garden, and the barn. I tried to imagine what I'd think if I were someone shopping for a house, but it was impossible for me to separate out what I knew.

I scrolled back up and read the description:

Just minutes from the Shawangunk Mountains and surrounded by apple orchards is this 1900 farmhouse on a country road. A 1998 post and beam addition, including a stone fireplace, brings charm, warmth, and style together all in one sweet home, and is in great shape. Older farmhouse section needs TLC or possible reno to suit your vision. Outbuilding has great guesthouse potential. Original wide board floors, beamed ceilings, eat-in kitchen, and two staircases. Enjoy the private backyard from the walk-out lower level with a small seasonal stream and grape arbor. A rocking chair front porch is just one of the special characteristics still evident from yesteryear.

I actually said, “Oh, give me a break,” out loud.

Because: “Yesteryear”?

Was that even a word?

TLC, I could totally see. Especially since my parents had sort of let things go recently. But the idea that someone might tear down the old section seemed crazy.

Then I saw another note that made my skin feel tight. “Great potential as a second home for city dwellers. Only 90 minutes from the heart of NYC!”

So someone could buy our house, our
home
, and then
not even live in it
.

I looked at the price: $285,000.

That was a lot of money. But it wasn't a ton of money, like a million. Still, we should be able to buy a house with
that. Another smaller house, right? Why weren't we doing that? I clicked around and found a few cute-looking, two-bedroom houses for half the money. Why did we have to move in with my grandparents at all?

I went into the old bathroom and started to fill the claw-foot tub. It was the middle of the day, but I didn't care. Then I added some bubble bath to really make it worth my while—also to hide the blue lime stains near the drain—and got in, careful to close the doors so that they actually stayed shut.

The wall I was facing was covered in old-fashioned patterned blue wallpaper that had roosters and tall grasses in its design. There was a long-standing joke between my father and his friends about him liking roosters. Like someone spread the word that he liked roosters as a joke and it stuck? Hanging there on the wall were a bunch of framed cut-paper silhouettes. One of me, one of my mom, one of my dad—all of them made at some colonial village we'd visited when I was about seven—then two of my grandparents. They looked good there, old-fashioned. I hated to think they wouldn't always be there, that the new owners would probably tear down the rooster paper at the first opportunity. That the old tub, which had lasted THIS LONG, might end up in a landfill somewhere. Or worse, taken outside and converted into a flowerbed.

I sunk down so my ears were underwater and swished water around with my hands.

“Kate?” My mother's voice penetrated the water. “You in there?”

I said, “Yup!” and sat up a bit.

“Are you
in the bath
?”

“Yup!”

“Kate.” She poked her head in. “You're going to be dirtier now than you were before. Did you clean it first?”

I sunk back down. “Nope.” There were probably some dusty bits floating around, but the bubbles hid them pretty well.

She sighed and shook her head and closed the door.

Mom was unwrapping trays of food
in the kitchen, rearranging, putting some in Tupperware, when I paraded through with just my towel on.

“What's all this?” I asked.

She was at the Tupperware drawer, looking around.

“Leftovers from a conference,” she said, still looking. “Where's that good square Tupperware with the red lid?”

“Sorry, Mom.” I pictured my food festering in it out back. “I don't really keep track of the Tupperware.”

“I can't find the spatula either. Do you think someone
stole
them? Like at the open house?”

“That would be pretty weird. Better get Bernie on the case.”

“Anyway,” she said. “Everything was delicious, we just
had too much of it. Should get us through the week.”

“Leftovers all week,” I said. “Yay.”

I got dressed in comfy clothes and was going to do homework in my room but then I heard my mother on the phone talking to my aunt Michelle, best I could tell, and it sounded like she was crying. I heard sniffling, and “I know, I know,” and “yeah, maybe,” and “but you know me, I don't even like to take Advil.”

It was hard to be angry after that.

When she hung up, I went back downstairs to do homework at the dining room table. My mom was there, on her computer, probably just emailing. I wanted to be in the same room with her.

“Mom?” I said after a while.

“Yeah?”

“It's a lot of money, right? Two hundred and eighty-five thousand?”

“How did—?”

“It's called the Internet.”

“Of course,” she said.

“Won't that sort of make us rich? Like we could buy a house that cost a little less than that and still have money left over.”

“It's a bit more complicated than that, honey. And you really shouldn't be worrying or thinking about any of this.”

“So I'm supposed to pretend it isn't happening?”

She sighed. “We paid more for the house than we're trying to sell it for is the long and short of it. The market bottomed out and we hit the bottom, too. And we borrowed against the house at one point. So we need to sell and pay down some debt and then start over.”

I didn't entirely understand how mortgages worked. But it didn't sound good.

“So we won't actually have any of that money to spend.”

She shook her head.

“How did that even happen?” I asked.

She got up and said, “I need to lie down.”

I followed her a few minutes later, and climbed onto her bed. I wanted to apologize, but I also wanted
her
to apologize. I wanted everything to be different, to be like it used to be.

“There.” I pointed at some knots in the wood beams overhead. “An owl in flight.” I looked around some. “And there, a deer head.”

My mom sniffled a bit beside me.

“Over there,” I said. “An upside-down dog.”

Then she started crying really hard.

“It'll be okay, Mom.” I swallowed hard. “I'm sorry I brought it up.”

She bit her bottom lip and nodded.

15.

My mother mentioned over
breakfast that Bernie was getting a ton of calls and wanted to have two open houses this weekend instead of one. If Bernie was escalating things, I had to also. I asked Naveen if he could come over to consult on where best to put the rotting food and he said yes.

My mother was working that afternoon, so I texted my dad to ask if Naveen could come over to study and he said,
Sure thing.

I coasted through the school day, just counting the hours until it was done.

There was a chalkboard over the kitchen sink where my parents and I left notes for each other. When I got home, I saw my dad had written,
Running a few errands. Back in twenty.

Which was typical of my dad. There seriously weren't any errands you could run around our house that would take only twenty minutes. It took ten minutes to get anywhere. Also, he hadn't written down the time he left. Had it already been twenty minutes ago?

It didn't matter.

I knocked off a few pages of homework with Angus lying by my feet, and then I heard the sound of bike wheels crunching on gravel and went to the front door.