Homecoming

I live in a house that’s almost exactly 100 years old. When we were house hunting, we both had an inkling this was the one we’d fall in love with. Then sure enough, one step into the front entryway was all it took. It sounds a little nuts, but at that point, our tour would have had to reveal something enormously egregious for our hearts to change their minds.

It’s not like the place didn’t need work. Mostly cosmetic, but there were a few things that had likely scared off more sensible previous lookers. A small room off the kitchen was sporting a drop-ceiling—a giant red flag. My husband lifted one of the tiles and said, “Well this thing is surely hiding something, but I’ll deal with whatever it is.” The guest bath was wildly outdated, and not in some cute, quaint way. My husband just shrugged, undaunted.

I didn’t miss the glint in the Realtor’s eye. She was pretty sure she was about to close the deal without much back and forth. She was mistaken. Left up to my husband, she might have been right (when we were newly married, he bought a used truck from a dealership and paid sticker price), but for everything after that initial showing she had to deal with me, and I was not only plenty daunted, but also a much tougher negotiator that the man I married. Suffice it to say that the deal on every vehicle we’ve bought since that first truck has been made by me while my husband sat fairly quietly. Each time we’ve driven off a lot in a new car, my husband has looked over at me and said, “They’ve probably put your picture up on a dartboard in their breakroom.” The thought pleased me to no end, every single time.

There was definitely some weird stuff. The kitchen was painted a bright Disney blue and there were large hand-painted purple flowers over a fair percentage of one wall. The living room was wallpapered with a print that looked to me like the background of most of my elementary school headshots. The living room also had, as the listing boasted, brand-new, high-quality carpeting. But the carpeting was plum. Plum! Plum freaking carpeting. Wall-to-wall, baby. And the primary bedroom had 70s deep shag carpeting and one wall that was covered floor to ceiling in smoky mirrored squares. The only thing missing was a disco ball.

When we went down to check out the basement, two of the concrete posts had been written on by their teenage kids. One sentence caught my eye: “Look out for the lady in the blue dress (A GHOST!)!” If that was meant to scare away a sale, it didn’t work on me. Suddenly I was pretty okay with all the stuff I’d seen on the first and second floors. A ghost! This. House. Would Be. Mine.

A few months after we moved in, we started noticing something odd. Two steps up on the stairway to the second floor, there would sometimes be a distinct odor. Sweet pipe tobacco, quite appealing. If you went another step up, the smell would disappear. If you went back down and stood just before the first step, nothing. It was only on step two, but there, the smell was quite strong. My imagination took hold and the aroma became the presence of a long-ago owner. The man who’d built the house. A man who smoked a pipe. Maybe his wife had a favorite blue dress.

I wanted more. I wanted Mr. Pipe and Mrs. Bluedress to make themselves obvious. To present themselves in wispy form and appear out of and disappear back into our walls.

We’ve lived here for more than 19 years now. I made a tough deal and we got the house for not a single penny over the number I had in my head when we walked out of the initial showing. We’ve fixed all the stuff, pulled rugs and refinished beautiful hardwood floors, removed wallpaper and painted the living room the loveliest shade of green, evicted the brothers Gibb from the primary bedroom, and made the house into what we knew it could be. We love it here.

We never did see the lady in the blue dress, and her husband stopped smoking his pipe on our second step within a year of our arrival. Maybe he was satisfied that the place he’d so lovingly built was again in good hands, so he and the missus moved along.

Maybe all it would take to beckon them home is a few gallons of really ugly paint.

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(GBE Topic #6: Scent)