Open House

by Jane Christmas

  We have hung paintings, arranged our familiar belongings into the five rooms and two loos that make up this English home, and yet it feels oddly strange, as if we are not meant to be here. In previous homes it has taken me all of twenty minutes to make a new place feel like home, but not this one. Not yet. Perhaps once the books are unpacked and onto shelves (still to buy) and my desk is set up and arranged with its totems. Maybe when a friend comes to stay.

  There is no spiritual force in the house that has caused this lack of affection; it is just—I do not know—a sense of something missing, or something wanting. I am reluctant to form an attachment to the house. I wonder whether this means that this place is meant to be temporary.

  Both The Husband and I acknowledge this. This house does not feel like home. It looks clean, finally, and modern. The natural light is wonderful, and this alone has immeasurably improved my well-being and mood. The kitchen is my favourite room. It is light, airy; it is possibly the best kitchen I have ever had. Being able to look out from it to the backyard, the greenery in the garden, the changing colours and mood of the sky—rain, snow, sunshine—has been worth the aggravation of the past year. We watch a few seagulls high above our house but cannot hear them: the wonders of double glazing.

  BOOKSHELVES ARRIVE FROM IKEA. The Husband rolls his eyes. It is possible that his dislike for Ikea exceeds his dislike for renovation.

  At first, he shows no interest in helping me put them together, but guilt forces a change of heart. He ends up enjoying the process so much that he assembles them all. I have a theory that if you can put together Ikea furniture, you still have brain cells, and the will and capacity to learn.

  Fifty remaining boxes of books, stacked along the wall in what is to be our study/library, have sat there so long that they look like a permanent piece of furniture or sculpture. Now it is time to empty them. Every single box gets emptied—every last one. Joy of joys, there is room to spare on the shelves so that I can intersperse among the neat rows of books, arranged by subject matter, a small painting, a few African statues collected by The Husband’s parents, a majolica jug from my mother’s collection, a few Royal commemorative mugs, my PEZ collection. It is such a relief to stand back and admire my little library that I call out to The Husband, “We have no more boxes to empty!”

  “Except the fifteen in the shed,” he calls back.

  “Those don’t count.”

  He sighs.

  By December, however, things shift a little. Our lovely sofa that would not fit through our front door suddenly sells online. We order a new one. Comfort and style are important in this new sofa, but its dimensions must supersede all criteria. It has to fit through the front door. I have obsessed over the dimensions of door and sofa, hoping that the sizing provided on the website is truthful. Why did those Victorians make their entranceways so narrow? Two weeks before Christmas, the sofa is delivered—and makes it through the front door with barely an inch to spare.

  The Husband lights the wood stove in the living room; heat and the amber glow envelop us as we snuggle on our new sofa. We watch the flames crackle and spit. It is good that our own crackling and spitting is over. We survived the renovation with our marriage intact. Phew. Now the house begins to feel like home.

  24

  The Cost

  I awake from a bad dream, heart pounding, face damp. Once I reassure myself that it was just that—a bad dream—my heart beat returns to normal. Eyes swivel to the clock on the bedside table: 12:35.

  I ease out of bed so as not to disturb The Husband. The yellow glow from the streetlight illuminates my way out of the bedroom. I softly pull the bedroom door behind me until it almost closes but not quite. Everything returns to dark, the house silent and pitch-black. I stand in the hall to give my eyes time to adjust, but it truly is dark. I grope for the smooth wood of the banister and allow it to guide me down the hall. My hand bumps up against the edge of the first newel, and it is my cue to step down—one, two. When I touch the second newel, I turn the corner and prepare to descend the long stretch of stairs. Light from the street lamp floods through the transom above the front door, aiding my progress. I tread carefully down each step, willing it not to creak. At the newel post at the bottom of the stairs, I turn right, and right again, padding along the floorboards that do not creak. I stretch out one foot slightly to feel the edge of where the floorboards end and where I know there is a step down into the kitchen.

  But I do not step down. My left hand grazes the wall, searching for the two light switches. I press them in unison. A dozen pot lights ignite, and their white brilliance bounces off the white Corian worktops, the glossy oversized grey-taupe porcelain floor tiles, and the sheen of the graphite cabinetry. The graphite metal frames of the windows and patio doors contrast nicely with the white walls, and I notice for the first time how well it echoes the black frames of the pictures that hang on the walls. The old pine table anchors the far end of the room and beckons me over, to pull up a chair, but I do not want to disturb a single thing. I just want to look and take it all in. Just for a moment. In silence. Without anyone around.

  In the bad dream that had awoken me, the kitchen had been completed, or so I had thought, until a wind blew through it and I realized that Francis, the builder, had taken the bifold patio doors with him, and now there were no doors, no protection for the house. To top it off, the building inspector was coming round, and one of the suppliers we had used during the renovation had mixed us up with another client who had not paid, and now they were about to arrive to repossess the kitchen cabinets, and . . .

  A bad dream. Still, it was so vivid that I briefly consider opening the laptop and consulting my renovation spreadsheet to ensure all the boxes under the “Invoices Paid” column have been ticked. But I am tired. It was just a dream. Besides, I feel as if I have paid everyone twice. And anyway, there is no money left. I refuse to let this bother me, and I give my head a shake to dislodge the negativity. Our pensions and the occasional royalty cheque will see us through. Maybe I can find part-time work. Things will sort themselves out. They always do.

  Regrets and what-ifs are pointless after a renovation, though it is easy enough to wallow in them. But right now, at this moment, I am all smiles. The house, this kitchen, looks beautiful. I could hunt down imperfection—I know where it lurks—but all that does is engender a level of obsessive pickiness that will kill you. You have to make a pact with contentment.

  Our street is a good one. We have kind neighbours on either side of us. I chat with Cynthia over tea and over the fence; on the other side where Ali used to live, two thirty-somethings, a brother and sister, have bought the house and are fixing it up. They are having their floors sanded as I write this. We have exchanged veggies and fruit over the fence from the bounty of our respective gardens.

  Someone on the other side of the back-fence line keeps chickens and a rooster, and the clucks and crows are delightful and comforting. I have joined the Pilates class at the community centre, and there is a church around the corner where I offer thanks for my good fortune. The Husband has yet to find the perfect café to patronize, so he patronizes three or four. We have choice here.

  Seagulls are a blessedly rare sight above our backyard, but a magpie frequently flies into our yard to test its authority. I will be seeing to him in due course.

  There are still things that need doing on the house, but those will come when time and bank balance afford. It is not a house to boast about: it is not grand in size or distinctive in architecture, and what we have done to it will not win awards or merit magazine interest; but its history, the tumultuous social and political periods it survived, its neglect and restoration, has earned my respect and appreciation. The fact that nowadays so many struggle financially to find a home makes me feel almost guilty about having one.

  That said, hand on heart, if I was not married, I would be buying, renovating, and selling property all the time. I love it. I love the thrill of the hunt, the pulse-quickening chaos
of the move, the settling in and discovering if, finally, this is the right place. The words “in need of improvement” are clickbait to me. Sometimes I just love peeking inside someone else’s home to see how they live, and what they have envisioned for their home. I might have momentarily reached peak renovation, but not peak move.

  Satisfied that my bad dream was just that, and that nothing has been stolen or repossessed, I turn off the kitchen lights, and retrace on tiptoe the route back to bed.

  “What’s wrong,” The Husband mumbles sleepily.

  “Nothing,” I say. But before I fall back to a contented sleep, I think: Yes, I could—I would—do it all again.

  THERE IS A COST TO ALL THIS, but it is one that cannot be tallied up in pounds and pence. The sense of displacement and dislocation cannot be overstated. Not just for me but for my family.

  The day I left Canada and moved permanently to England, my eldest son, Adam, drove me to the airport. I had repeatedly asked my children if they minded me moving away, and they were swift in their replies: Of course not. Don’t worry about it. Please go! As I mentioned earlier, they were all living in different parts of the country. Adam, however, is the only one of us who continues to live close to the area where he was raised. At the time, he was in his late twenties, had finished school, was working, volunteering, and enjoying his friends. When the day came for him to drive me to the airport, I kept my emotions in check so that I would not be some desperate, wailing mother. But I did tell him I would miss him very much, that I would be back at least twice a year to visit, and that I hoped he would visit us at some point. He waved away my concern for him and his siblings: “Mom, I’m nearly twenty-eight. Don’t worry.” So I shut up and kept the chin trembling to a minimum.

  Two years later, we brought Adam to England to celebrate his thirtieth birthday. It was thrilling to have one of my children in my new home in my newly adopted country. As he and I caught up with one another, our conversation rotated back to that day he drove me to the airport. I congratulated him on his stoicism, and confessed how sad I was about leaving but that I had not wanted to break down in front of him. His reply was unexpected:

  “After I dropped you at the airport that day and began to drive home, it all hit me. On the highway I finally had to pull over onto the shoulder because I was crying so hard. You were gone, Matt and Zoë had moved away, and I realized that I was the only one left. It was like my entire family had vanished. I had no idea where home was. Sure, I had my own place, but where was the family home?”

  And that is the biggest cost of all. My embracing a shallow nomadism has left my children without any sense of Family HQ; of where everyone will gather for Christmas, birthdays, and anniversaries; or where they will go to locate that birth certificate or social insurance card that mothers are so good at filing and retrieving; or where remnants of school artwork and childhood toys can be found; where they can drop in and be corralled into some eye-rolling chore; where, when life goes tits up for them, they can regroup, fall onto their old bed, and be comforted by the familiar smell of their bedding, the cozy fug of their room, and the aroma of cookies or a favourite meal coming out of the oven. As it has turned out, home for my family is a moral construct that requires rigid internal scaffolding to support something achingly familiar and desired but entirely intangible.

  It is a fact of life that children leave home and seek their future, and that they create their own nests. And it is a fact of modern life that they often move far away from home, sometimes halfway around the planet, when opportunities arise. But they never truly leave home, because “home” is a fixed place in their heads and their reality. It is also a fact of life that some of them never leave home, period; or they are forced through economic necessity to boomerang to the parental home.

  I have encountered a stark contrast between British offspring and North American offspring when it comes to home and parental devotion. North American children seldom think twice when circumstances move them across the country or across the world. But young British adults actually turn down jobs if it means living far—and that can mean across town—from their parents. On Friday evenings, a radio station takes calls from listeners sharing how they are spending their weekend, and almost all of them are doing something with their parents or families, whether it is driving to Scotland to visit Mum, or heading to the West Country for Granny’s birthday, or braving bumper-to-bumper traffic through the Midlands to join the clan for a get-together. No one is hanging out with friends; everyone is going home. This strong, passionate tie is curious and unusual to me, with my less family-oriented North American experience. An hour or three with Sis or Dad or Granny, yes, but an entire weekend? That’s how murders start. I would venture so far as to deem the behaviour among adult Britons as a form of arrested development, but then, maybe that’s my envy speaking.

  Of all the homes I have lived in, working on this English home has made me think most deeply about what home is; where I belong, and whether I even have a need to belong anywhere. Maybe belonging is an old-fashioned sentiment designed to anchor us permanently; that the “new belonging” is where we are and with whom we are at that moment in time, and that to cut anchor releases us to explore the world and expand our understanding of it, as is our birthright.

  Having never been the type to make five- or ten-year plans, I have let Life take the lead, and carry me on its current of surprise, chance, and opportunity. Experience has taught that a random encounter, a fleeting comment, or a tragic event can flip everything.

  It does leave me in a bit of a quandary. On one level, all my house moves have made me a little bloodless, without allegiance to country or kin. The past is not meant to be revisited or idealized; it is merely a series of loose chapters that, out of necessity, are scattered to the four winds. It is easy for me to feel that I belong nowhere and to no one. Moving a lot and having people enter and exit my life have muted sentimentality. On another level, however, I work very hard to resist that attitude. I do want to feel rooted. I do want to belong. To feel otherwise does not sit well with me. Still, at this stage I feel stuck somewhere in the middle, and I wonder what it would take for me to topple fully into one camp or the other.

  Despite their obsessive moves and renovations, my parents gave me a foundation upon which to construct a life. It has taken me this long, and with this English home, to understand that our loved ones—partners, children, dear friends—are the vital joists that underpin our lives. Careers and experiences—good and bad—are the interior framework that, like any interior framework, can be altered if you have the vision and desire to do so. Given all my homes and moves, it surprises me that I have only recently recognized the similarity between building a home and building a life. Brick by brick. Experience by experience. We are all individual homes built upon the remains of a previous home, previous settlement, some previous generation. We are all little ruins trying to rebuild and renovate ourselves.

  IT TAKES SEVERAL MONTHS, but I finally locate my long-lost childhood friend Cheryll. It was not via Facebook. Turns out she does not like using it, either, and almost never checks it. I find her online, in a city outside Toronto, her name linked to a charity that raises money for mental health. A phone number and email address are provided on the charity’s website.

  Assuming that the phone number is the organization’s general number, I dial it. My hands tremble as I punch in the long-distance coding for Canada and then the phone number. I rehearse in my head what I will say when I am asked to leave a message. But the female voice that answers does not announce the name of the organization. Instead, she answers with a simple “Hello?” It takes a moment before I cotton on that it is not the charity’s general phone number; it is Cheryll’s direct number. I ask if this is to whom I am speaking. She hesitates before answering, then asks who is calling. I tell her who I am. In seconds we are both sobbing into our phones.

  She has been trying to find me, too, she says, but since I have had so many different surnames it
has proven impossible. I am likely harder to find than Jimmy Hoffa or Lord Lucan. We exchange email addresses and send summaries of our lives. I send her mine; she sends me hers. It is wonderful and at the same time painful: we discover that both of us have experienced rape and continue to be haunted by its sustaining trauma.

  Still, the relief of reconnecting with her, with an integral piece of my past, turns up like the welcome arrival of spring after a hard winter.

  Cheryll mentions in an email that she is coming to England in a few months.

  “You have to stay with us,” I email back. “We have a new home.” But I cannot help myself: without dropping a beat, my inner voice whispers, “For now.”

  Acknowledgements

  Just as it takes many hands to renovate a home, so too does it take many hearts to write a book.

  I would like to thank my family—The Husband, my children and their partners—who provide endless love and encouragement. It is a privilege to make a home with and for them.

  On frequent visits to Canada, Rik and Jeannette Emmett and Paul Maranger and Robert Brown have been the most generous of hosts by opening their homes to me. Each visit reminds me how lucky I am to have them in my life.

  Friends can be unwitting casualties in a house move, and only if you are fortunate do you get the chance to recover that loss. A thread in this book concerns the search for an old friend, and I am grateful to Cheryll Drew for allowing me to recount our subsequent reunion.

  Finally, huge thanks to Patrick Crean for his advice and unstinting enthusiasm, to the folks at HarperCollins for shepherding this book to publication, and to the indefatigable Samantha Haywood and company at Transatlantic Literary Agency for doing what they do so well.