The Stager: A Novel (27 page)

I hadn’t thought about there being other stagers in the world, or ones that come with money-back guarantees. I wonder if Eve Brenner comes with a money-back guarantee.

“Do you come with a money-back guarantee? Can you promise a five hundred and eighty-six percent return on investment?” I shout.

“Elsa, I can’t really hear you. Just give me a few minutes, okay?”

I wonder if the staging app has anything to say about the Rule of Three, or crazy ladies with nail guns, or no toasters on the kitchen counter. I don’t see anything about that, but I do see a button that says “Stage Your Own Virtual House!”

I click on that, and, my God, it’s amazing: you can do anything you want in the virtual house! First you can pick the outside of your house—anything from a small house that’s all on one level called “a rambler,” to an enormous house with turrets that looks like a castle. I pick the house that looks the most like ours. It’s called a Tudor, even though our house is a lot bigger and more modern-looking. Then, inside the house, you can add on rooms, and you can even create extra levels. I add a room to the top floor, just like where my parents’ room is, and I make a room like Nabila’s in the basement. It goes well until I try to put the swimming pool in the backyard. I’m having trouble dragging it into the right spot, and it winds up on the
side
of the house, which looks pretty weird. I fool around with it for a while and I can’t get it to move. When I click on it to drag it, it just gets bigger. Soon I’ve accidentally created an Olympic-sized pool between the house and the one next door. When I try to make it smaller, the whole thing freezes, so I leave it there and go back to the part of the app that lets you fill the house with furniture.

“Do you know if your mom keeps any spare potting soil?” the Stager calls from downstairs.

“I don’t know. We have a gardener named Alejandro who usually does all that stuff. You should ask him. You’ve really got to come see this!”

“Okay, just give me a few more minutes. I’m going to go look in your back shed.”

“Okay. I’ll finish making the virtual house, and then I’ll put some furniture in it.”

“Please promise me you’ll behave while I pop around to the back for a few minutes.”

“Yes, I’ll behave. No problem.”

Staring at the screen, I decide that what the house needs first is more windows, especially since my dad likes a lot of light. There’s a toolbox on the left side of the screen, containing things like doors and windows. Then, when you click on the item, it gives you a choice of which kind. Who knew there were so many different types! For doors there are slab, French, Dutch, sliding, and bifold. For windows there are single-pane and double-pane, casement and block-glass. Also accent, picture, and bay bow. There are all sorts of different ways of opening them, too—sliding to the side, pulling open from the top, or just normal. It seems like you could spend an hour trying to decide which kind of doors and windows to put in your house. And then there are all sorts of different doorknobs, which I’ve never even noticed before! I decide to do one of each kind of window in the master bedroom, but then I run out of space on the wall, so I have to enlarge the room. But to get it big enough to fit every kind of window, the master bedroom starts to grow, and soon it takes over the whole upstairs. I have to get rid of all of the other bedrooms on the top floor, but once I do, I make it the biggest, most light-filled master bedroom in the world.

Then I decide that the downstairs needs to be just as bright, but this means that, instead of staging each room, I’m going to have to do some
destaging
. I wonder if that’s even a word.

“Do you
destage
something, or do you
unstage
it?” I yell.

She doesn’t answer. I take out the stove and the sink and the countertops and put in some sliding glass doors. It makes the room look much bigger. I add three windows on the side that’s looking out onto the ginormous pool, then three more, and then another three. Now the kitchen has nine windows. I begin destaging the bathrooms and adding windows to them as well. I wonder if I can keep doing this forever, or if at some point the program will run out of windows and shut down. I’m so busy with this, I don’t see the Stager standing at my door. She has her arms crossed and she has dirt on her pants. Like everyone else in the world, she seems to be mad at me.

“My God, Elsa, what happened to the rug? And the toys! I thought you were going to clean this all up.” She walks over to the part of the rug that has the most red paint and squats down to look more closely. “Seriously, what are we going to do about this carpet? It’s too late to get it replaced.” Now she stands up and glares at me again. “This room is a disaster.”

“I thought it was the best room in the house!”

“Well, it
was
. But look at it now!”

“It’s just the carpet. Are you sure it’s too late to get it fixed? Have you seen those commercials for Mrs. Karpet? I think they can do same-day installation!”

“Really? Is that your plan? Just make a huge mess and let someone else take care of it for you?
Like mother, like daughter
.”

“What did you say?”

“Nothing.”

“You said something about my mother.”

“You’re hearing things. So what’s our plan?”

“Our plan is, we use some soap … or maybe shampoo. I’ll get it. But let me just show you something first—it’s a stager app.”

“A what?”

“You know, an app for the iPad.”

“You have an iPad?”

“Don’t you?”

“No.”

“Oh, well, I only have an iPad 2, so it’s not that big of a deal. Here, look. Really, I promise we’ll fix my room right after I show you. I’ll start you a new house, since this one is pretty messed up. It’s all windows.”

“People in glass houses…”

“What?”

“Nothing. It’s just an expression.”

“You are saying a lot of weird stuff. Do you want a colonial, or a rambler, or a studio apartment … What’s a studio apartment? What’s this mean, a Murphy bed?”

“A Murphy bed is a bed that folds up into the wall. It’s for small spaces like a studio apartment, which is an apartment that’s just one room.”

“The whole house is one room and the bed is in the wall? Why would anyone live that way?”

“Housing can be expensive, especially in cities, and sometimes that’s all people can afford.”

“So they sleep in the same room where they eat and play?”

“They do, but that can be kind of nice. Not everyone needs, or wants, lots of space. Some people like to minimalize.”

“That’s kind of sad. Especially when we have so many extra rooms. If your staging doesn’t work and we move to London and no one is living in this house, maybe some people who only live in one room could move in here.”

“Well, that’s a nice idea, but the world doesn’t really work that way. Also, it’s really the case that some people want to live in smaller spaces. They feel it’s liberating to spend less time and money taking care of their homes. There’s even something called the Tiny House Movement now. People deliberately build tiny little houses, even smaller than this bedroom.”

“My God, I’ve never heard of such a thing. I think you’re making that up. Do they have tiny houses at Unfurlings?”

“No, but maybe if they did it wouldn’t be in foreclosure. The thinking behind that place was kind of backward. It was built on the premise that we’re not living the right way, that our houses are too far apart, and too far away from anything, and that this fosters loneliness and isolation. And yet the houses are monstrously huge and on big lots, which is kind of retrograde thinking. There’s no dancing in the streets anymore, the way we live.”

“What are you talking about?”

“That the houses are…”

“No, the dancing-in-the-street part, I mean.”

“Oh, just an observation about the way we live these days. Back in the old days—or even now, in other countries—there’s much more communal activity. More joy. There are bands, mariachi bands playing outdoors, outdoor theater, festivals, there’s just a lot more playfulness. People literally dance in the streets. Now we have shopping malls and highways.”

“People do Zumba at my mom’s gym.”

“Yeah, I guess that’s the modern-day equivalent, which is a little sad.”

“It’s not sad. I’ve watched them do it, and it looks like fun! Also, we went to New Orleans once and there was dancing in the street.”

“That’s true, Elsa. Good point. Maybe we should all move to New Orleans.”

“Anyway, nothing is stopping us from dancing in the street. Right? We can go outside and dance right now!”

“Sure, we could, but we don’t.”

“Why not? Let’s just do it! There’s not that much traffic. We can bring my phone, maybe hook it up to some speakers and live-stream some music.”

“I’m not even sure what that means. But whatever. Listen, let’s first clean your room, then we’ll talk about dancing. Now, tell me once and for all, what are we going to do about the carpet?”

“I’m sure we can get the paint out. I wouldn’t worry about it.”

“I
would
worry about it. I
am
worried about it.”

“I have an idea. Let’s just move the bed over the big part of the splotch. Then maybe we can scrub the footprints out with carpet cleaner.”

We both stare at the bed, and stare at the red splotch, and stare at the trail of red footprints leading to and from the bathroom.

“That looks like one very heavy bed! Even if we manage to move it, the bed will be sort of floating in the center of the room, which is a little strange, but we can work with that, I suppose. There aren’t a lot of better options at this point—that huge blotch of paint isn’t going to come out, although you may be right that we can get the footprints out. Better to try than to postpone the open house. But … I don’t know, if we move the bed there, not even taking into consideration the question of how we would do it—that thing is a monster—where would we put the dresser, and the end tables? That left one might have to go in the attic.”

“This is exactly what the stager app is for. Let’s make a room just like mine, and then move the pretend furniture around.”

“You know, that’s not a bad idea. Let me see that thing.”

The Stager stares at it for a minute like she’s never seen an iPad before, and then the screen goes dark. “You have to push that button,” I explain. “It works just like your phone! Now slide your finger across the lock. Okay, pick a kind of house. I think we have the one that is called a Tudor, right?”

“Technically a Tudor. A perverted Tudor.”

“What does that mean?”

“Nothing, just that it’s not a very classical Tudor. Okay, now what?”

“Well, let’s pretend that room is my room. Put your finger on it. You can make it bigger by tapping that button there … Great … Perfect … Now you can drag in furniture, so maybe take that bed and drag it into the middle of the room, like we might do in here.”

She moves the bed into the center of the room and sets it at an angle. Then she moves a side table over, and sets a lamp on top of it. She stares at it and begins to laugh. “This is amazing!”

“Maybe you should put a picture on that wall.”

“Do they have pictures, or do you draw your own?”

“I don’t know … Wait, tap that button right there—‘household accessories.’”

Up pops a range of categories: rugs, art, throw pillows, pets.

“Pets?” the Stager says.

“Pets?” I repeat. We look at each other and start to laugh. She taps “pets.” Then she taps “rabbits.” She drags a rabbit and puts it on the bed. Then I drag another rabbit onto the bed. We take turns for a minute dragging rabbits onto the bed. We must drag about a hundred rabbits.

“Do you think it’s possible to run out of rabbits?” she asks.

“No, I think the Internet just keeps sending the rabbits from somewhere. Not sure where they are coming from, but I’ll bet we can keep dragging them forever. I never ran out of windows in my other house. But let’s see.” I tap and tap and tap, and the rabbits just keep coming, and soon you can’t even see the room. We look at each other, and then we both start laughing again. Soon we’re laughing so hard that it’s like the first time we met and read the Max books and I had to go get my inhaler, which actually happens again.

“You okay?”

“Yeah, I’m fine. Just a little wheezy.”

“Maybe we’d better call Nabila.”

“No, I’m fine. Sometimes it just takes a minute for the inhaler to kick in. You know what helps sometimes?”

“What?”

“Food.”

“Why do I have trouble believing that?”

“No, really. Well … caffeine helps. It really does; the doctor says it gets the heart pumping faster and that helps dilate the airwaves or something like that. And, actually, I have some tea I want to try. It’s a new kind. It’s organic tea from Unfurlings. Can we try it?”

“Sure, but if it’s organic, it might not have caffeine. Or maybe it does—it’s not like I’m some tea expert.”

“Me, neither, but let’s give it a try. Maybe we can bake some fairy cakes to go with it?”

“That’s a little ambitious right now, given that we need to put your house back together and your room is a complete wreck and the open house is tomorrow, but I’m sure we can find something else to eat.”

*   *   *

“LET’S USE THE
red kettle,” I tell the Stager when we get downstairs. “It has a nicer whistle than the silver one,” which is the one she has just found in the cupboard and put on the stove. I still don’t understand why everything in the kitchen had to be put away—the toaster and the Cuisinarts and the kettles and pretty much everything else. Don’t people want to imagine themselves preparing food?

“I’ll get the teapot ready so we can make enough for Nabila and my dad, once she finds him. My mom told me that you’re supposed to warm it up first with hot water, so that it’s ready when you pour the super-hot water in. I’ll bet they’re back soon. My dad is pretty easy to find. Do you know my dad?”

I can’t find the teapot, either. It seems ridiculous that she’s put everything away while we are still living in the house and trying to do normal things like eat breakfast and have snacks and drink tea. I need to find the tea cozy, too, to keep the pot warm, and I start to dig through the drawer where we keep stuff like tea cozies and aprons and dish towels.