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Helena and Myka have been engaged for exactly one month. In that time, they have looked at forty-one houses in Eagle Rock. They have a real estate agent, Leena Frederic, about whom Myka initially had said, “If she is any relation, then so help me, fate and I are going to have to have a very serious discussion about how much reconciling I can realistically be expected to do.” When the question had been put to Leena, she had answered, “If we’re related, I hope she mentions me in the will.” Which even Helena had to concede was a nonanswer, but Wolcott had recommended her so highly, and Wolcott loved the house she had helped him find… so Helena told Myka that she did not care how much reconciling it took, to sit down and get started, because “I am fairly certain we need all the help we can get, including whatever fate would like to provide.”
As far as Helena is concerned, Leena’s primary qualification for the job, in addition to her ability to find properties, is her patience in wrangling Myka through a house tour. Myka asks endless questions, none of which are ever answered to her complete satisfaction. She quibbles with room sizes, paint colors, window treatments, light fixtures. She examines electrical panels and plumbing, as if she fancies herself some sort of contractor. Helena has watched her measure the length and width of garages with an actual tape measure. “Are you genuinely concerned that our cars won’t fit?” Helena asked on one such occasion.
“No,” Myka had said. “I’m checking to make sure they weren’t lying in the specs. Because if they’ll lie about the size of the garage, who knows what else they’ll lie about?”
The energy efficiency of appliances. The water requirements of the landscaping. The distance to the nearest grocery store; the chain to which the nearest grocery store belongs. The age of the shingles on the roof. The provenance of the grass that makes up the lawn. This last is partially Christina’s fault, for she and Myka now regularly read and retain anything housing-related they can get their eidetic memories on: “Myka!” Christina had exclaimed during one research session. “Did you know that sometimes when they resod golf courses, they dig up the old grass and sell it to contractors to put in people’s yards? And that means your grass is used to all kinds of chemicals and it won’t ever grow right if you just treat it like normal grass?” So now Myka asks about the presence of golf-course grass. To Helena’s surprise, the answer has been “yes” more than once.
The tour of house forty-one takes place at the end of a very long Saturday—a six-house Saturday. They are both exhausted, as is poor Leena, who gets into her own car afterwards and seems to lack even the strength to turn the key.
“Could we table the discussion of this one until later?” Helena requests, and Myka’s yawn in response is all the confirmation she needs.
Eventually, however, “later” does come, when they are in bed that night (in Encino). Myka is reading analyst reports, and Helena is writing emails.
“So could you believe that tile?” Myka says, without looking up.
Helena also does not look up. “You have to concede, at least, that the floor plan made a great deal of sense.”
“It has pink tile in the master bathroom. And I know for a fact that you, my darling fiancée,”—she leans over and kisses Helena’s cheek, as she tends to do when she says “fiancée” and Helena is anywhere near—“hate pink.”
“But consider the size of the kitchen!” Helena protests.
Myka has gone back to her reports. “The tile in the master bathroom is pink.”
“And the landscaping is lovely. No golf course remnants to be found.”
“Pink is the color of that bathroom’s tile.”
“Tile can be replaced!”
Myka says, “That pink tile will haunt that bathroom.”
“We can call in an exorcist.”
“Exorcists are not effective against the ghost of pink tile,” Myka says mildly.
“A druid priestess, then,” Helena tries. “She can burn sage.”
Myka shakes her head. “Listen to yourself.”
“You honestly are telling me to listen to myself.”
Myka shakes her head again, this time stubbornly. “I don’t like that tile.”
“You don’t like any tile in any house,” Helena says. “What happened to ‘there are some nice houses in Eagle Rock’?”
“I said you can’t really tell from the Internet.”
“I will remind you that if we cannot find a house, put in an offer, have it accepted, wait through escrow, take title, and move in within exactly… three months and twenty-nine days, you will be required to live in Encino. For the entire school year.”
“I already practically live in Encino.”
Helena rolls her eyes at that. “And oh, how clear you make it that you find that a burden of nearly unbearable weight.”
“That’s not true!”
“It is entirely true,” Helena says. “I am going to do something to you every time you bemoan the hideousness of the current location of your toothbrush. Shoot you with a water pistol, perhaps.”
“You could kiss me instead,” Myka suggests.
“Then you’d do it on purpose.”
“Pretty high opinion of yourself there, pretty girl.” But she reaches over and runs her hand through Helena’s hair.
“Am I wrong?”
“No. But you do have a pretty high opinion of yourself. I mean, regardless.”
“Says the woman who considered her life absolutely perfect, before,” Helena accuses.
Myka sits back. “Well, that wasn’t me. That was my life.”
“I’m failing to see the distinction.”
“Ha,” Myka says. “And thus failing to justify that high opinion you have of yourself.”
“Well, here. Let me give it one good try.” She closes her laptop, sets it on the table beside her lamp, then turns to Myka and kisses her ear.
“This wouldn’t work…” Myka says, “…if you weren’t so very pretty.”
“Really?” Helena asks. She does like kissing Myka’s ear. And also her neck, right at the bend where neck becomes shoulder. She has to pull Myka’s T-shirt aside to get to that bend, and she likes doing that too.
Myka says, in a voice that is a parody of calm, “To me, anyway. I have no idea how you look to other people.”
“Really?” Helena asks again.
“Mmm. Really. Like, Pete might think you’re hideous.”
This makes Helena sit up. “He does not!”
“Okay, probably not, because you’re female. But maybe he’s just too polite to say.”
“Is there anything under the sun that Pete is too polite to say?”
Myka pretends to consider, then says, “Well, no. You got me.”
“I have got you, and for your information, I am not letting you go. But now I also have to get you to agree that any house at all in Eagle Rock is suitable.”
“Then find one that is.”
And Helena is not entirely certain if she is genuinely irritated or simply putting on irritation for effect as she says, “I have been trying to. But every time we look at a house that satisfies your then-current list of requirements, you realize that there is something you have forgotten to include on that list of requirements. ‘No pink tile in master bath,’ for example. How was I to know?”
“I thought that was on your list.”
Helena sighs. “No, because my list is premised on the valid—yet apparently incomprehensible—assumption that cosmetic features are in fact cosmetic.”
“I just didn’t like it,” Myka admits.
“Then say that. Don’t talk about tile when it isn’t relevant.”
“That’s kind of a good motto to live by.”
“Yes,” Helena agrees. “The next time Christina needs advice about something, I think that’s what we should say.”
Myka, hopefully: “And then sneak away and make out while she’s trying to make sense of it?”
“Sometimes you have very good ideas.”
Myka grins. “Sometimes I do.” She drops her reports to the floor beside the bed and reaches for Helena. “How’s this one? Or do you want to argue about tile some more?”
“Don’t talk about tile when it isn’t relevant,” Helena manages to say.
****
The next morning, Charles is out for brunch with friends, leaving Myka and Christina to cook breakfast, and Helena to watch them do it, “without touching anything, Mom, because I don’t want to keep finding blue stains in new places.” Helena would have liked to be able to defend herself, but it is true that she made an error with the blender some time ago that sent chunks of frozen blueberries into several inconvenient corners. Myka had told her then, “I still love you, and I’m pretty sure Christina does too, but I think we’re all going to be happier if you stick to jobs like using a very dull knife to spread butter on toast.”
Christina had added, “Toast that somebody else has toasted for you.”
Myka nodded and asked, “How exactly have you managed to stay alive this long, anyway?”
Christina and Helena said, at the same time, “Charles.”
Now Helena tells Christina, “We looked at a house yesterday that I personally think we should consider.”
“Did it have any secret passageways?” Christina asks. She is mixing pancake batter.
Helena says, “I don’t believe so.”
“Then I think you should keep looking.”
Myka says, quickly, “Can’t argue with that.”
“I suspect you could, if you really put your mind to it,” Helena tells her. To Christina, she says, “I am not putting ‘secret passageways’ on our ‘must have’ list.”
This sends Christina into a glower. “It’s like you don’t even want us to have a nice house.”
“It is like that,” Myka agrees. “Also, your mom is very into pink tile now.”
“Don’t talk about tile when it isn’t relevant,” Helena warns, and Myka laughs.
“Wow, Mom. Did getting engaged turn you into a completely different person or something?”
Myka says, “My theory is it’s the ring. When she’s not wearing it, she’s her normal self, whatever that means. But when she puts it on, suddenly it’s all pink tile and… what else did she hate, before?”
Christina considers. “You, for a while, Myka.”
“Right,” Myka says. “She puts it on, and suddenly it’s all pink tile and me.”
Helena says, “I assure you, at the moment it is all pink tile.”
“Christina, I think that ring’s malfunctioning. Could you give it a good whack and see if it starts humming again? I paid a lot of money for that thing, and I am going to be extremely upset if it quits working after just a month. It was supposed to be guaranteed for decades.”
“If anyone gives my hand a whack, consequences will ensue,” Helena says.
“Myka, you are on your own.”
Myka sighs. “You are such a fair-weather stepdaughter.”
“We live in southern California,” Helena points out, “so to Christina’s credit, that does cover the vast majority of the time.”
Myka says, “It’s true. You’re pretty high up on the scale of stepkids that are going to be mine, but I might change my mind if I don’t get pancakes soon. What’s taking so long?”
“I put dates in, but they’re in a clump and they won’t mix with the spoon.”
“Blender!” Helena recommends blithely. “I’ll get it!”
Myka leaps for Helena and pushes on her shoulders to keep her in the chair. She shouts, “Christina, you take the pancake batter and save yourself! I’ll hold her down until the kitchen police get here!”
Helena looks up. “You are the very picture of altruism.” Then she looks more closely. “Although I’m not sure I generally picture altruism with flour in its hair.”
“It’s just so I can demonstrate how giving I am,” Myka says. She leans down and rubs her hair against Helena’s.
Helena would say “I love you,” but before she can, the sound of the blender roars through the kitchen. And because it is Christina, not Helena, operating it, pancake batter does not follow suit.
****
Leena sends Helena and Myka to a house that afternoon on their own; she is dealing with a new listing, she says, and will join them later. Helena thinks that what has actually happened is that during yesterday’s marathon, Myka finally managed to push even serene Leena past her breaking point.
The structure and front yard are unassuming; nothing breathtakingly gorgeous, nothing strikingly awful. Even Myka has to concede that it is “reasonable, I guess.”
The first thing Helena sees upon entering the house, however, is that the living room has an accent wall that is papered in a pattern better suited to a psychedelic album cover from the 1970s than to a suburban home—and the featured color of that wallpaper is, of course, a bright bubblegum pink. Every room, as it happens, has a wallpapered accent wall. This includes each bathroom. Only the garage has been spared—and it only because it features, on the wall that one sees as one drives in, a photographic mural of a sunlight-dappled wooded path.
As they get back into the Prius after the tour, Helena braces herself for the inevitable derisive speech regarding people and their choices.
Myka puts her key in the ignition and says, “You’re going to laugh at me, but… I don’t hate it. I mean I hate everything about it, but I don’t hate it. I really don’t. Do you? You probably hated it. Did you hate it?”
“I didn’t hate it,” Helena says cautiously. “I didn’t love it, but I didn’t hate it.”
Myka takes the key out of the ignition. “We should go back and look at it again.”
“Not this second. We should call Charles and ask him to bring Christina, and they should look at it with us.”
“What if they hate it?”
Helena says, “Then it is not the house for us.”
Myka slumps in her seat. “I don’t think it had any secret passageways, so you know Christina won’t approve.”
“Actually, if you think about it the right way,” Helena says, “that attic access panel in the hall closet could be said to be rather secret…” She looks at Myka, who is making very strange noises. “Myka, are you hyperventilating?”
“No,” Myka says, breathing quickly. “Well, maybe… do you have a paper bag?”
And Helena sighs. “The idea is truly that disturbing? If it is, then don’t do this. Just… we’ll wait another year. You can keep your apartment and come to Encino on the weekends. I’m not going to force you into this.”
“No. That’s terrible. Then we’re just back where we were a month ago.”
“No, we’re not. We’re engaged now. That’s a very different thing.” And Helena does believe this to be true. Myka can joke about the ring Helena wears, but it does mean something. In a way, it is all pink tile and Myka.
“You don’t want to be engaged,” Myka says. “You want to live together and you want to be married. And so do I.”
“That’s true. Well, I know my side of it is true, and I believe yours is too. But you need time to get used to ideas. I know that. And it’s one thing to look at real estate listings online and read about school systems, but that isn’t the same thing as buying property. I know. I know, and I love you, and if we need to wait, we’ll wait.”
Myka looks at Helena with very gentle eyes. “This is a nice car that I have here, but I don’t think there’s quite enough room for me to jump you appropriately for what you just said.”
Helena smiles. “I think we could probably demonstrate otherwise, but it’s just as well you think that, given that it is broad daylight and we’re parked in a residential neighborhood. Now, am I calling Charles? Or are we leaving?”
“You didn’t say ‘going home.’”
“No, I didn’t. I’m trying not to think of Encino as home anymore, but it is usually a reflex. I’m rather proud that I managed to quell it that time.”
Myka says, in a voice as soft as her eyes are gentle, “My apartment hasn’t been home for a while now. I love you too. Call Charles.”
“Are you sure?”
She shrugs. “Maybe I’ll get lucky and he’ll hate it.”
“You’ll most likely get lucky in any case,” Helena assures her.
Myka scoffs, “Aren’t you the one who said residential neighborhood? In broad daylight?”
“I didn’t mean this minute.”
“I’d say you’re no fun at all, but then you’d go out of your way to make sure that was true, thus turning this into a true lose-lose situation for me.” She kisses Helena, once, quick and warm. “Call your brother, and I’ll call Leena. She has got to be able to talk them down on that asking price, because I am pretty sure we are the only people crazy enough to walk into that house of horrors and say ‘oh yeah, that’s the one.’”
****
It turns out that they are, in fact, the only people crazy enough to do so, and Leena goes on to negotiate an exceptionally good deal, even for “that house of horrors.”
Myka, Helena, Christina, and Charles are sitting on the floor, among a forest of enormous cardboard boxes, in their (former) living room in Encino; tomorrow, the boxes will be moved to Eagle Rock. They are eating the remnants of food from the refrigerator. “Best dinner ever,” Christina enthuses as she dips week-old stuffed olives into what Helena thinks is extremely dubious sour cream.
“You know how people usually have housewarming parties?” Myka says. She is contemplating an apple that has clearly seen better days. “Well, we are having a house-steaming party. I’m renting every wall steamer I can find, and everybody we know gets all the curry they can eat and all the Kingfisher they can drink, just so long as they pull at least one strip of wallpaper down. And even with all that, you realize we’re still going to be taking wallpaper down when we’re in our eighties, right?”
Helena smiles. “I don’t care.”
Myka smiles back. “Yeah. Turns out I don’t care either.”
“Please don’t take down the garage mural!” Christina says. “Or at least wait until you’re eighty. It’s even better than the secret passageway.”
Myka puts down the apple. “If you want to keep the mural that much, I think we can probably work with that.” She glances at Helena. “Except your mom has a funny look on her face, so maybe I spoke too soon.”
“I am extremely unclear about what to think of the mural at this point,” Helena says. This is just more evidence, as if she needed more, that once Myka becomes accustomed to an idea, everything suddenly becomes fine. Better than fine.
Myka says, “It is a weird thing to think of driving up to every day in the garage. It’s like you’re going the wrong way or something.”
“That’s part of why I love it!” Christina grabs Myka’s discarded apple and bites in. “It’s like you’re driving down the path. There is something poetic about that. Dad Steve says that at museums sometimes, and I don’t know what it means really, but I think it fits.”
Helena tells Charles, “We should keep the wallpaper in your room, too, speaking of poetry. It rhymes with your moustache. In historical-era terms, I mean, not sound… although it is rather loud.” The color of the wallpaper in Charles’s room is orange. It seems meant to mimic, in pattern, an orange shag carpet.
“I would retaliate somehow,” Charles says, “but I’m still trying to get over the wallpaper in your room. I was unaware that ducks were so popular in the 1970s. I was also unaware that so many representations of ducks could be squeezed into so relatively limited a space.”
“I’m not sure I can actually sleep with all those ducks looking at me,” Myka says.
Christina says, “Get Claudia to come and cover them with post-its. Until the house-steaming party.”
“That seems like a terrible waste of paper,” Helena says.
“We can reuse them, Mom. They’re post-its.”
“I don’t know,” Myka says. “Don’t you figure some image of the ducks would persist? Like the shroud of Turin?”
Helena says, smugly. “I knew we’d need that druid priestess at some point.”
Myka sighs. “And to think I was bothered by that pink tile.”
“Christina,” Helena says, “please remind Myka of the golden rule.”
Myka puts her fingers in her ears. Helena moves behind her and pulls on her hands, saying to Christina, “Remind her!”
Charles says, “Christina, it might be time to retrieve dessert items from the refrigerator. The chocolate syrup, perhaps, and those maraschino cherries?”
“Right,” Christina says. “You’ll definitely need my help with those.”
“I am not doing anything,” Helena calls after them, but once they are gone, she puts her arms around Myka. “What’s the rule?” she breathes into her ear.
“Leave the mural up because Christina likes it?”
“Wrong answer. We can do that, but wrong answer.”
“Don’t ask Abigail why the chicken crossed the road?”
“Another important life lesson than everyone should learn. But no.”
“Be a total sap and fall more in love with you every single day?” Myka reaches up and tries to pull Helena down into a kiss, but Helena eludes her lips, moves away.
“I don’t know. It’s closer, but somehow it makes me think of… tile. All sorts and colors… marble, ceramic, patterned, lime-green, pink…” but as she’s saying this, she’s leaning back, because Myka is looming over her. “Travertine,” she says, finally, when Myka’s mouth is an inch from hers.
Myka sits back up. “It’s actually relevant,” she says nonchalantly. “You know we’re going to have to redo every single bathroom in that place.”
Helena tackles her.
END