My father-in-law, a real estate agent who lives in Long Beach, took care of the sale. He made the repairs, staged it nicely, and put it on the market. He handled the closing, while we remained back home in Houston. It’s a nice house in a desirable neighborhood, so it didn’t take long to sell. And now it’s gone. New residents—retirees—who likely don’t have a print hanging in their foyer of naked Kristen Stewarts floating around the cosmos on raw steaks.
I wonder if they know what happened in this house.
I remember when you started house hunting in 2011. We spent hours chatting about the process online. You’d send me listings, I’d scrutinize them, and we’d compare notes.
Me: WOW
that is gorgeous
i love that house
Harris: the problem with that one is no backyard really.
Me: less work for you
Harris: it was owned by a gay dude so it is beautiful
Me: there are still outdoor spaces
Harris: and this next one i truly love and there is this huge backyard where i could do whatever i want. put a pool in, whatever.
but its up a TON of stairs
but look at that insane view
Me: that is a shit ton of stairs
but very pretty
you have traditional taste
like mom
Harris: like in terms of what
what taste do u have?
i mean ignore the furniture
Me: contemporary gay
Harris: i love contemporary gay!
i love that first house
just wish it had more space
Me: the first house is right up my alley
i dont love the brown marble and marble in general on the 2nd one
but again, that’s a taste issue
Harris: i dont either
Me: like, that kitchen omg
Harris: that kitchen is like the kitchen we grew up in
Me: i know exactly!
i was thinking that
mom would love it
The one you eventually settled on sat at the foot of Griffith Park in Los Feliz. It resembled the brick, 1950s ranch-style home we grew up in, one block away from our neighborhood middle school. Three bedrooms, two and a half baths, one story—a modest abode, relatively speaking. Orangish-reddish brick. White trim. Traditional. It could have blended into any residential neighborhood in Houston. You were specifically looking for a house like this, something familiar and cozy in a place that didn’t always feel like those things.
The backyard was of paramount importance to you. It was your favorite spot. I can see you sitting out there on the patio at the round, metal table with the overflowing ashtrays, one knee folded up in the chair, smoking cigarette after cigarette, sending swarms of texts, recording beloved Vines.
We had a table like that in our backyard growing up. In high school, my friends and I would sit out there after Mom and Dad went to bed and chain-smoke our teenage lives away. Ironically, you weren’t much of a smoker back then, which is why your excessive smoking as an adult has always baffled me.
I recently found this picture you drew of us back in high school, depicting our morning car rides. We overlapped one year: you were a freshman; I was senior. In the drawing, Ani DiFranco (my permanent high-school music choice) is blaring through the speakers. The Tae Bo people are these old people who did Tai Chi on the lawn of this Hasidic synagogue that we drove by every morning. I’m smoking. You hated it when I smoked in the car and made the biggest fucking deal about how it was killing you and aggravating your allergies.
In February, when we were in LA packing up your house, Mom and I were surprised to find canvases, art supplies, an easel, and several finished paintings in your guest room. One of them sits in my closet now. I look at it daily. The background is a deep, dark blue with splotches of black. Several stars made of tin foil speckle the sky. A veiny pink and red heart with yellow-gold wings flies up to the heavens. White dots border the top and the sides of the flying heart, while red dots drip off the bottom. The lower portion of the painting depicts the ground, the earth. Black, barren trees sit on a black landscape. There is a large, hollow skull perched in the bottom left corner, also lined with dots. The earth is bleak; the sky is where the heart takes flight.
I had no idea you were painting.
Selling your house depletes me. Just one more piece of evidence that this is really happening.
In addition to selling your house, we’ve also listed ours in Houston. I can’t get out of here fast enough. It’s too small, there’s bad juju, and I’m still scarred from the mold fiasco that left us displaced last year for six weeks and cost $8,000 in repairs, none of which was covered by insurance nor recouped from the previous owners.
Mom’s voice echoes inside my head: “Life isn’t fair, Stephanie.”
Originally, Mike tried to sell the house for $150 and a two-hundred-word essay. The idea was that we’d get enough money from entry fees to cover the cost of the home, someone would get a charming house in a cool neighborhood for $150, and he’d get some decent publicity as a real estate agent. This was necessary because—head’s up—when your wife is consumed with crippling grief and either weeping, sleeping, or generally catatonic, you wind up with lots of extra shit on your plate. He had basically put his career on the back burner since February, and it was time to initiate some sort of resurrection.
Man, if I thought our story was sad…holy fuck. Want to feel better about your life?
