Chapter_5

The house was at the end of a long, gravel driveway, on a little hill. Rosie and Jordan sat in the parked car with their seat belts still buckled, looking at it. It was stone, its roofline dotted with chimneys. Heavy wooden shutters opened to reveal painted window sashes that matched the buttery beige trim. A white clapboard addition on the southeast side caught the light like a cube of sugar. A deck wrapped around the back. Its tidy foundation cut gently into the hillside and matched the wobbly stone walls running around the property and into the woods at obtuse angles.

Their broker pulled up alongside them in an old Volvo station wagon. She wore a ribbed black tank top and jeans tucked into tall rubber boots. “Gotta be careful about ticks out here,” she said, not making eye contact with either of them. She opened her trunk and pushed aside a snow scraper, a box of hand tools, a cooler, and a pair of hiking boots. A barbed wire tattoo encircled her forearm. Jordan nudged Rosie to look at her bumper sticker, which read: The moon is my copilot and we’re cruising for pussy.

She pulled some papers from the trunk and handed Rosie and Jordan a printed copy of the listing. “Really, you’ll want to tuck your pants in,” she said. “Lyme is out of control up here. And you can barely see the ticks sometimes. Last week I found one the size of ground pepper on my dog.” She fumbled with the iron latch and swung open the door. “These old doors are a pain.”

They huddled inside a small entryway. The broker cracked a window with some effort and propped it open with a wooden block. Jordan fanned himself and then Rosie with his printout.

“So, not much to see,” the broker said, “but have a look around.” Rosie laughed before realizing the broker was being serious. She looked at the printout, which said the house was timber-framed and built in 1890. “I think this is the oldest house I’ve ever been in,” she said.

“It’s ancient. And next to nothing has been done in the way of improvements.”

“Did you hear that, Jordan?”

He looked up from the printout. “Hm?”

“Everything is original,” Rosie said.

The broker led them into the living room. Built-ins with small drawers framed a deep fireplace. Light streamed in through the tall windows, falling sharply against the broad, golden floorboards. The nailheads were flat and wide. Most boards spanned the entire floor, but some had been replaced with narrow pieces, like a patchwork quilt. The ceilings were low, with exposed beams. Plush sofas and armchairs draped in sheepskin had been arranged cozily. Everything was askew, but perfectly fitted to the house’s own interior logic. The built-ins and window nooks had a charming specificity, as though they’d been designed by children.

Rosie took photos of everything, preparing to spend that evening staring at them. A landscape painting of the mountains hung above the fireplace in an ornate gold frame. She took a photo of it. “Can you tell us about this?”

The broker shrugged. “The original owner was a painter, I think.”

Rosie waited for her to elaborate. “What was her name?”

“Her name?”

“Yes,” Rosie said, glancing at Jordan. “What was the painter’s name?”

“Lise Bakker, I think?” the broker said, looking at the form in her hand.

Rosie asked for the spelling and typed the name into Google. “Apparently she was part of the Hudson River School,” Rosie said, as though she’d heard of it before.

“Was she famous?” Jordan asked. He leaned in toward the painting. “I wonder how much these go for.”

“I wouldn’t call her ‘famous,’ no,” the broker said. “Maybe to some. Sort of, like, if you know you know.”

“It says here she was underappreciated in her time but popular in small circles of the New York City elite. A student of Durant,” Rosie said, reading from her phone. “She did a lot of ‘plein air’ painting.” She used air quotes around plein air.

“I don’t know what that means,” Jordan said.

“Was this painted here on the property?” Rosie asked, looking between the painting and the broker.

“I think so, yes,” the broker said.

“Shouldn’t it be, like, in a museum or something?” Jordan said. He leaned in so close that his nose almost touched the painting.

The broker barked a laugh. “It’s not like it’s a Picasso.”

Jordan opened and closed several of the built-in drawers, looking inside each. Rosie smiled pointedly at him. “I don’t think we should snoop,” she said, though she was desperate to know what was inside. She turned to apologize to the broker, but she had already made her way into the dining room.

“Really?” Jordan said, removing a petal of peeling paint from the face of the drawer. “I think I disagree. There might be rare coins in there.”

The dining room was simple and spare, with an odd pantry cabinet built into the side of a staircase that separated it from the living room. An amber workbench served as the dining table, its surface covered in appealing marks. Mismatched ladderback chairs surrounded it. Rosie took a photo. “So who are the owners?”

“It’s been in the same family for a few generations. Passed down from kid to kid as a second home. But nobody uses it and the repairs scared them off,” the broker said. “So they’re selling.”

The kitchen had been gutted. Only a few freestanding cabinets with a light, waxy finish remained, framing a soapstone sink. But the room’s focal point and only cooking fixture was a vintage gas stove. Displayed on the wall beside the stove was a row of antique cooking tools: spoons, eggbeaters, and hammered iron ladles.

“You’d have to rip this out, which would be a huge pain in the ass,” the broker said. She tapped the stove with her foot. “And of course you’d need to add storage.” She led them into a space that seemed between a room and a hallway. A red door opened to the wraparound porch. “Careful on these,” she said, walking up a narrow staircase. “Nothing is up to code.” She bounced lightly on a step to show its give. Jordan grabbed the railing, which wobbled. He rocked it back and forth a few times before following her up.

The sight of the bedroom made Rosie’s heart squeeze like a fist. The walls were a pale plaster, almost pink. The bed looked handmade, dressed in warm, drapey linen. An oil lantern sat on the bedside table beside a copy of Leaves of Grass. The floors were painted a deep matte blue. The fireplace shared a chimney with the living room below. It wasn’t a large room, but the shed dormers, which opened up the steep ceiling and let light in, lent it a spaciousness. The bedroom connected to a large bathroom with a clawfoot tub and a yellow enamel sink. A smaller bedroom had a bathroom tucked into what could have been a closet. A peg rail spanned the entire northwest wall. Rosie’s pulse was quick against her neck; she was trying to remember the exact price on the listing, how much they should offer, and how quickly they should act.

“Questions?” The broker clapped her hands once.

Jordan thumbed a piece of peeling wallpaper.

“You’d probably want to be careful with that. This was last painted well before lead was banned.”

“We should test for that,” Jordan said to Rosie. “Especially if...”

“What?”

“Well, I don’t know,” he said. “I think babies tend to lick walls.”

Rosie turned to him. “Does this mean you want to make an offer?”

Jordan squeezed her hand. The broker looked at them skeptically.

Outside, they found a little bench facing the mountains while the broker took a phone call in the field. Rosie shaded her eyes and gazed at the view. She held Jordan’s hand. The distant blue Catskill peaks, the golden sunlight raining down through the cloud cover, the creek winding into the Hudson, the soft green pastures. Each vista layered on top of another, with light bursting through the seams. She opened her phone to look at the photo of the painting. “I’m obsessed! That was painted, what, a hundred years ago? It looks exactly the same!”

“It is cool,” Jordan agreed. “The mountains really don’t move, huh? Looks like even that weird little structure is the same.” He pointed to a crumbling shed in the middle distance. Its low, curved roof sagged, and the siding was weathered and peeling, giving it the speckled appearance of a cranberry bean. Even in its disrepair it was handsome. Rosie could picture it in its original bright colonial red, with a robust garden in front. Their broker rejoined them, pocketing her phone.

“Is that shed part of the property?” Rosie asked.

“For better or for worse, yes,” the broker said. “Originally, it was a storehouse for the farm, but I think the painter also used it as her studio.” Her phone began to ring again, and she held up a finger to them.

From the bench, Rosie could hear the broker’s side of the conversation as she made her way back into the field. Yep. I’m with the couple from the city. I think they might. I know. I don’t know what to tell you. Million-dollar view.

Rosie turned to Jordan. “What do you think?” Her voice shook.

Jordan took her hand. “I think,” he said, choosing his words carefully, “that this is a really expensive view.”

Rosie’s heart sank. “What do you mean? The house is incredible.”

Jordan stood to face the house, shading his eyes. “I’m not entirely sure I see what you see.”

“Maybe I can help you with that,” Rosie said, joining him and wrapping her arms around his waist. “I see us, warm inside on a cold day. Chicken stock simmering on the stove. I see the tiniest handmade sheepskin slippers hanging on the peg rail upstairs.”

“Oh yeah?” Jordan kissed her through a smile. “Hmm. What else do you see?”

“I see you folding perfect, gauzy baby blankets while I pick blackberries,” she continued, “and I see a mobile of whittled animals.”

“Who’s doing the whittling?”

“You, obviously!” Rosie said. “And when your hands get tired, you’ll take the baby on a walk through the woods.” She knew what she was doing; years of canvassing had, if nothing else, made her very good at persuasion.

“Seems like it needs a lot of work,” Jordan said. “I mean, this has to be the least enthusiastic broker I’ve ever encountered.”

“Maybe she thinks she has the sale in the bag.”

“Or she doesn’t believe anyone would buy it.”

“It might be a tactic,” Rosie said. “Reverse psychology.”

“Would it make you happy?”

“Which part?”

“All of it.” Jordan was suddenly serious. “The house. Us, up here.”

“Yes.”

He studied her for a moment. “Then I’m sold.”

“Don’t tease me,” Rosie said.

“Who’s teasing? Let’s do it.”

“Let’s take time to think about it,” Rosie said, not meaning it. “We should be intentional.”

“OK,” Jordan said. He paused briefly. “I’ve thought about it.”

“Really? So you love it?”

“I love you,” Jordan said. He pulled her close to him. “And three months ago, I vowed to do whatever I could to make you happy. I’m not breaking any promises three months into our marriage. Three years, maybe. But not three months.”

“But we could be happy,” Rosie said. “Both of us. I don’t want you to do it just for me. I want you to want it, too.”

Jordan took her hand. “Let’s check out the shed thing. I’ll need a place for my whittling tools, after all.”

The broker waited for them by the outbuilding, her hands clasped behind her back, her face fixed into a smile. “This part of the tour is even more rough-and-tumble,” she said, leading them along a dirt path to the outbuilding. “As you can see.”

Rosie peered in a window but couldn’t see past the dirt. “Can we go inside?”

“At your own risk. If you fall through the floor, remember that you signed a liability waiver.”

Rosie tried the door, but it was stuck with old paint. Jordan appeared next to her. He grabbed the knob and shoved his shoulder against the door. It scraped open.

The inside smelled stale and damp. Some of the wood floorboards were rotting, and a few holes showed bare earth below. Clutter had piled up—boxes, an old bathtub, window shutters, and several doors with peeling paint stacked against the far wall. A fireplace was covered in soot. The walls were gray. Brown stains with darkened edges covered the ceiling like scabs. All the staging effort had clearly gone into the main house. Rosie moved gingerly through the building’s three small rooms, quickly taking photos with her phone. She held her breath in case of mold.

“Jesus,” Jordan said, pulling his T-shirt over his face. “I gotta get outta here.”

“OK, I admit that little place is haunted,” Rosie said, following him back outside. They rejoined the broker on the gravel driveway and started walking back to their cars. “But let’s not let it sway our—”

“Pretty rough, huh,” the broker said. “Honestly, the only saving grace is that there’s plumbing.”

“We’re going to discuss,” Jordan said.

“Listen,” the broker said. She was looking at Jordan, which Rosie found sexist but intuitive. “It needs a lot of work. I mean a lot. There are a few other newer properties around here I could show you.”

“Shouldn’t you be a little more... salesy?” Jordan asked.

The broker winced a smile. “Sorry I’m not chipper enough for you. It’s important you see the full picture.”

Rosie placed a hand on Jordan’s back. “Is there a lot of interest?”

“Honestly? Not really,” the broker said. “Most people barely make it through the tour when they understand the scope of the work. Like I said, there are plenty of other properties that might be a better fit for city folks.”

“I’m sure it’s nothing money can’t fix,” Jordan said. He smiled with his lips pressed together. “We want to make an offer.”