by Flynn, Avery
Dear Mallory,
Don’t feel bad you didn’t know I was about to kick the bucket when you visited last. This life—what a ride! I would change nothing. Now, don’t listen to your dad. My nephew was never a risk-taker like we are. Let’s show everyone you’ve still got some fight left in you.
I miss you and love you right back. Always.
Love,
Aunt Maggie
P.S. The house could use a little love, but I promise, it’ll love you right back if you let it.
A tightness in my lungs has me holding my breath as the tears pool. Damn it. She knew I’d cave to the people in my life. Like I always do. Like I was raised to do.
I shouldn’t be surprised.
Leaving me the house isn’t just an act of kindness; it’s also a dare. The fact of the matter is that I’m not brave like Aunt Maggie or confident or a risk-taker, like she said. I always do what I’m told. The one and only time I did something no one expected was when I demanded a divorce from Karl. And then I lost everything.
Each night this week, I slept under the pink canopy of my childhood bed, shame wrapped around me like a suffocating blanket at the certainty that my still-rebellious seventeen-year-old self would have been aghast at the worn-out doormat I’d become. When did it happen? What decision sent me down this path? How did I turn into the woman who teen me wouldn’t recognize?
This isn’t the life I was supposed to have.
The office door opens, and Thad’s assistant walks in.
“There you are, Grace,” Thad says. “Can you please get Ethan Restor to swing by this afternoon? We’ll need to start the paperwork to get the Huckleberry Hills property on the market. Warn him it’s in rough shape, but the location makes it desirable.”
There’s more back-and-forth, but it all becomes background noise. No one asks me what I want to do. I am dismissed—again—while they just push forward with their own plans. Just like Karl and my dad and every person who has taken one look at me and thought a woman approaching middle-age has no value.
My chest tightens.
“No,” I say, the single word coming out as shaky as a cup of Jell-O in a dinosaur park.
Everyone stops talking and turns to look at me. I don’t move. I’m not sure I could if I wanted to. Meanwhile, my heart has gone into overdrive, making the blood rush through my body like a racehorse doped up on meth.
“What?” Dad asks, the pinched look reappearing around his lips.
I let out a quick breath. “I’m not selling.”
Chapter Three
Oh my God. I said it. Out loud. Each word. My breath comes in and out in fast spurts, and I’m getting light-headed—I might be delusional, too, because I swear I see my mom smile before she looks over at my dad and her expression changes into one of placid neutrality.
Dad glares at me. “You’re being emotional.”
“No.” I’m not hysterical. I’m not PMSing. I’m not speaking out of turn. I just have a little fight left in me after all. “Aunt Maggie willed the house to me. I’m keeping it.”
Tense? Oh, that doesn’t even begin to cover it. While my mom is the epitome of stand-by-your-man-no-matter-what steadfastness, my dad is nearly purple. My mom grabs his angina pills out of her purse and hands one to him. He takes it without a word or a drink of water. Once Dad’s color dials down from murderous to just completely pissed, Thad lets out a nervous chuckle and shuffles the papers on his desk.
“I’m afraid there’s quite a bit more to it than you may realize, Mallory,” Thad says once he finally looks back up from the file marked O’Malley house. “There is a sizable inheritance tax to be paid, as I mentioned already. And although the house was grandfathered into the development when the Huckleberry Hills subdivision was built around it, any exceptions to meeting the architectural and appearance standards of the association do not extend to the new owner. As such, you’d have a maximum of six months to bring it in line with the association’s expectations or lose the house, according to the agreement your great-aunt signed with the association.”
Six months. Half a year. Plenty of time. “I can do that.”
“Mallory Martin Bach, stop being unreasonable.” Dad sits down in his chair with a huff. “You know nothing about renovations. You haven’t even seen the state of the house. Besides, you can’t do this alone. You would need Karl to help you with something of this size.”
I wince at that—how many times have I not done something in my life because Karl told me I need him to help me with it, even though we both knew he had no intention of helping me? Too many to count—but not this time. Aunt Maggie wouldn’t have left me her house if she didn’t think I could handle it, so I am going to handle it. And show my parents—and Karl—that I don’t need him. More, I don’t need anyone.
Thad continues. “I must inform you that it is… Well, a fixer-upper is what I believe the realtors would call it. Remember, your aunt moved into the active-living residence a year before her death. No one has been in it since then. There are currently”—he looks down at a sheet of paper—“forty-seven HOA violations against it. Quite honestly, I believe there are more, but the HOA board took pity on your aunt. Now that it’s yours, my understanding is that they expect the changes to be made quickly or they will sue.”
I swallow. Okay, that doesn’t sound quite as promising. But Aunt Maggie wouldn’t have left me the house if she didn’t believe I could do it.
“And just how are you going to pay the taxes on it?” Dad asks. “You don’t even have a job.”
“I can get a job.” People do it every day—last two months evidence to the contrary, but I don’t mention that.
So what if I went from working for my dad part-time in college to working full-time in Karl’s law practice? I have two and a half years of law school and eleven years of experience running a legal practice. I have skills, just not the ones that people like my dad find important.
Dad throws his arms up in obvious frustration. “What you need to be focused on is getting Karl to take you back.”
I wince. It isn’t something he hasn’t said a dozen times this week, but still, it hurts.
My dad loves me and only wants what’s best for me; I know that. Sure, divorce is a four-letter word in my family, but really, that isn’t why he keeps harping on taking Karl back. I spent the better part of a decade showing everyone that my value began and ended with Karl’s accomplishments rather than my own. Why should I be shocked now that they consider my life worthless without him?
And for a moment—just a moment—I almost give in. I almost give up. On the house. And more importantly, on myself. But then I think about Karl’s smirk when I told him I wanted a divorce, the pitying looks on my parents’ faces when I showed up on their doorstep with three packed suitcases.
And then Aunt Maggie’s words.
Sweat beads at the nape of my neck, tickling my skin as I try to take slow and steady breaths so my stomach stops feeling like I’m skydiving instead of sitting in the probate attorney’s office, taking a stand for the first time in my life.
“I’ll figure it out,” I say, my palms sweaty.
“You need to sell, Mallory. It’s the right move,” Dad says, using the firm tone that means the discussion is over and his judgment rendered. “I know you loved your aunt, but you need to be logical.”
Logical. An interesting term. It’s the word Dad used when I said I wanted to get a Master of Fine Arts in photography. There’s no money in that—be logical, he said. So I went to law school instead and met Karl.
“I’m keeping the house.”
And I’m going to fix it up and fix my life in the process. Period. I can totally do this.
God, I hope so.
Chapter Four
There’s no way in hell I’m going to do this.
Standing on the sidewalk outside of Aunt Maggie�
�s house is like taking a trip down memory lane, but the nightmare version of it.
Where once there was lush, neatly trimmed grass I ran around in barefoot while hopping through the sprinkler, now the grass is nearly a foot tall and strangled with dandelions. The trees and bushes were left to grow hog wild for who knows how long, like the yard is auditioning to be a set piece for Jumanji.
I eye the tall grass and shudder. There are definitely snakes somewhere in there, and I shuffle farther away from the grass onto the driveway that looks like protest art with cracks and crevices everywhere. Piles of leaves from last fall have been pushed up into the corners of the wide porch. And the porch swing Aunt Maggie sat on with me as she drank afternoon gin fizzes while watching the sunset hangs lopsided, swaying listlessly in the spring breeze.
But honestly, what really has me gazing at the house in shock is the giant tree limb currently laying in the vee of what used to be the wide wooden porch. It’s obvious a storm recently ravaged the neighborhood—well, if you look at Aunt Maggie’s house.
I glance around the neighborhood at the perfectly groomed lawns and realize whatever damage anyone else sustained was quickly swept aside and repaired, my aunt’s sad house the only evidence that shit happens in the world no one can control.
I’m not the least surprised that all the houses in Huckleberry Hills are perfect. The grass is cut to just-so height. The landscaping is so tasteful, a weed wouldn’t even consider making an appearance. Each of the two-story Victorian-looking homes with wraparound porches and quirky little details are like an idealized dollhouse that was supersized. The cars parked in the driveways are shiny. The men and women outside now are totally put together. The kids look Instagram-worthy, and their pets are probably all AKC registered.
I slowly turn back to Aunt Maggie’s house and idly wonder how someone didn’t “accidentally” torch this eyesore before now. Hell, I’m half tempted to do it, and I’ve only been standing here for five minutes.
It’s obvious the other homes were built years later around Aunt Maggie’s, which was grand itself when originally built, but now, with peeling paint, the overgrown lawn, and a giant tree in the middle of the porch—well, it needs more than TLC. It needs mouth-to-mouth.
I’m considering getting in my car and going back to…where? My parents’ house? Sweet baby Jesus in the manger, please no.
Okay, I have two choices—give up or get to work. So I need to do a little yard work and cosmetic stuff before I can tackle the requirements in the four-inch-thick HOA bylaws Thad gave me that are now sitting on the front seat of my car. I can handle that. It isn’t like the inside could be worse, right?
Delusional? Me? Probably. But I have to hold on to something.
Walking around the tree limb and across the front porch is like taking my life in my own hands. The boards are splinter city and jagged, and every squeak grows more B-movie-soundtrack ominous the closer to the front door I get.
I haven’t been back to Sutton, New Jersey, in probably twenty years. Surely two decades isn’t enough time for all of this to happen. Why didn’t Aunt Maggie say anything to me when we met up in the city—always in the city—for a show or to gawk at all the shop windows or to take a spin on the ice in Bryant Park?
Yeah, well, why didn’t you mention the fact that you were married to an asshat who made you cry on the regular?
Good point, self.
I take a deep breath, turn the key in the dead bolt, and walk inside.
Holy. Shit.
The place looks like a haunted mansion on acid. The furniture is covered by sheets in eye-searing blues, greens, purples, and pinks. I flip up the corner of one of the sheets and discover the kick-ass vintage stereo system encased in oak is still where it always was. There is a God—and she has great taste in music, because all of Aunt Maggie’s records are in the attached cabinet.
The trip through the dining room and kitchen is pretty much the same. Each room is crowded with knickknacks, piles of books—including five copies of The Joy of Sex—and more furniture than needed, all of it in shades that never once were found in nature, but there’s nothing a little elbow grease won’t fix.
Then I get to the staircase.
It’s built to be wide enough for two people to walk up side by side, but that isn’t gonna happen until all the stuff stacked up on each step has been moved. There are teapots and egg cups, an entire set of encyclopedias, and magazines—so many magazines—from Cosmo to Good Housekeeping to what look like twenty years of Sports Illustrated swimsuit editions. There are rain boots and snow boots and go-go boots. There are industrial-size cans of ketchup and several issues of the Sutton Daily Times, including one dated two years ago that states it was the paper’s final printed edition.
Turning sideways, I make my way up the cramped stairwell that’s wallpapered in old movie posters, total cult classics like Blue Velvet and Rocky Horror Picture Show, then pause at the landing only long enough to count at least fifteen coffee mugs where the only thing that matches is the chips they all have. The second flight leading to the upstairs bedrooms is one-foot-in-front-of-the-other territory.
There are four bedrooms upstairs and two bathrooms. And three of the bedrooms are filled, floor to ceiling.
At the first door, I have to press my shoulder to it and really shove to get it open. It’s like a consignment store the size of my favorite bodega was squashed into a room barely big enough for a twin bed and a chest of drawers. There are shirts and pants and more—is that a wedding dress?—piled almost to the popcorn ceiling. I chicken out before walking in farther. If I get lost, no one will ever find me.
The next room isn’t as hard to get into, but let’s just say I’ve never seen that many VHS tapes in my life. There’s a stack of Chinese takeout fortunes in Ziploc bags, and hanging on the walls are dried flower after dried flower pressed between sheets of wax paper. The third room is home to more chipped china, more magazines, and empty glass bottles of nearly every size, shape, and color imaginable.
By the time I walk down the hall, with its starting-to-fall-down floral wallpaper, to the last bedroom, I’m mentally placing bets on what will be inside. Stuffed animals? Will this be where all the world’s Beanie Babies went? Or maybe I’ll find enough costume jewelry to make a mini crystal palace. The suspense is getting to me—also the fact that I didn’t eat breakfast.
I open the door and find what must have been Aunt Maggie’s bedroom.
The theme, without a doubt, is “go wild.” There are neon zebra-striped curtains, the bedspread is hot pink, and the wallpaper is leopard print—but only if leopards glowed in the dark and probably hung out at a rave held at an abandoned industrial site.
The stacks of stuff aren’t as high in here, but there’s definitely a lot of it. Programs from high school plays, takeout menus, a Thunder Down Under calendar signed by each of the featured dancers. It’s a mishmash of the kinds of things people find at the bottom of their purse or in the pockets of their winter coat when they pull them on for the first snowfall.
But the bed is clear, the pillows fluffy, and the room filled with light. Yeah, I can make this work—at least until I figure out how to remove wallpaper.
How hard can it be?
A thousand YouTube searches on my phone later, I find out that it would be a pain in the ass, because of course it would. By then, my stomach is grumbling, and I know I need to go eat one of the two sandwiches I got at Target on the way here. Doing the side shuffle down the stairs, I go back to the main floor and let out a pent-up breath.
I make my way to the kitchen and start shuffling through drawers, looking for scissors so I can open the little mayo packet that came with my turkey club, and that’s how I find it. Every kitchen has a junk drawer, the place where single batteries, out-of-ink pens, and random USB cords go to die. Well, Aunt Maggie had that—and she also had a nastygram drawer.
It�
�s the drawer right next to the cherry-red fridge covered in magnets from every state in the Union. I open it up, hoping to find scissors or at least a halfway sharp steak knife, and instead find a two-inch-thick stack of HOA violation notices. Driveway violation. Grass height violation. Paint code violation. Upkeep violation. Shutter violation. Garage violation. Some of them are stamped third notice.
Mayo forgotten, I take a bite of my sandwich. The bread is damp and the shaved turkey dry, but it has crunchy pickles, so I take that as a victory.
After I inhale my sandwich and have time to take stock of Aunt Maggie’s pantry—it’s filled with shoeboxes exploding with old receipts but no food—I grab my keys to make a trip to the grocery store for supplies. No one should home renovate without plenty of potato chips. I glance around at the knickknacks on every flat surface and add wine to my mental shopping list. I have my work cut out for me.
Taking my chances, I go out the front door and hold my breath until my Keds hit the cracked sidewalk. As I walk to my car, it’s impossible not to notice the picture-postcard suburbia around me. It could be a movie lot—especially compared to New York, where half the beauty of it is the mix of architectural styles in one city block.
There, the glass-encased skyscrapers are within view of the once–Gilded Age homes that are now museums. Here, it’s all the same, just in different combinations of the HOA-approved color palate. It’s pretty in its own way, but it definitely is not where I saw myself living. Ever.
Across the street, a guy mowing his lawn gives me the once-over. I wave as I open my car door, but he doesn’t return the gesture.
Whew. That’s at least the level of what-the-fuck-are-you-looking-at friendliness I’m used to in the city. It’s kinda comforting, like spotting a rat dragging a slice of pizza down the sidewalk.
I get behind the wheel of the used Ford Focus my parents helped me buy, insert the key in the ignition, and turn it. Nothing happens. I try it again. And again. And again.
