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After I tell Rhonda I want to make an offer on Red Barn Books, she recommends a local buyer’s agent, Eric Anderson, to represent me. Unwilling to let the place out of my sight, I call him from the parked van while staring at the farmhouse through the windshield. Eric says he’ll email all the documents, that we can discuss everything over the phone, that the only thing he needs me to do before driving back to the city is slip a check for the earnest money through the mail slot of his office. Eric suggests five thousand. Worried about the other showings Rhonda has scheduled, I write it out for ten, then log in to my banking app to move money from my savings so it won’t bounce.
Compared to the fresh upstate air, my apartment feels more suffocating than ever. I settle on the couch with my laptop, then call Eric while looking at the headshot on his website. The face that goes with his baritone voice belongs to a middle-aged white guy with the vaguely handsome look of a former heartthrob gone to seed.
“You got my check?” I ask, jumping right in. “Did Rhonda accept my offer?”
“I think she’s inclined to. She’s expecting a competing cash offer from a couple in LA, but she’s not sure how serious they are about the business. Speaking of which, I looked up Evelyn Cabot’s sales tax certificate. It expired five years ago. According to Rhonda, there’s no inventory of assets or financial records of any kind. What you’re buying, Audrey, is a barn full of books and a name on a sign. It’ll be up to you to register the business.”
“Is that hard?”
“Not really, but you can’t legally sell so much as a paperclip until you register for a Sales Tax Certificate of Authority. I’ve heard the Department of Taxation is behind on processing applications since their employees started working from home.”
I tamp down a twinge of panic by reminding myself I’ll still have my salary from the college to get me through the summer. “I guess that’s all right, Eric.”
“Okay, then, let’s look at the property disclosure.” Eric leads me through it line by line. Because Red Barn Books is held in trust and the house has been vacant for five years, the answer to every question about the condition of the place is “unknown.” How old is the slate roof? Unknown. Are there cracks in the stone foundation? Unknown. Is there asbestos, lead paint, a buried oil tank, an adequate septic field, bacteria in the well water? Unknown, unknown, unknown. Eric advises me to get every inspection imaginable, but I can’t bear the thought of someone snatching up the one thing in all the world that’s giving me life.
“My dad was a contractor,” I say. “I helped him renovate dozens of old houses. I gave the place a thorough going-over while Rhonda showed me around. I don’t think an inspector can tell me anything I couldn’t see for myself.”
“All I can do is advise you, Audrey, but I hope you realize there’s more to a property like this than meets the eye.”
Ignoring his mansplaining, I affix my digital initials to every line, declining all contingencies. “What’s the next step? Is there a mortgage broker you recommend?”
“For a country property like this, I’d normally suggest Farm Credit East. Like I said, though, the business has no discernible value and from what I’m seeing in these listing pictures, the house in its present condition might not appraise high enough to satisfy a lender.”
My father invested in a few flip houses in his time. While declining contingencies was a great way to cut to the head of a line of buyers, cash offers always won out, especially if there was any doubt about financing.
“Can I call you back in a couple of minutes, Eric? I need to look into something.”
“Sure thing, Audrey. Take your time, I’ll be here.”
I open a new window in my browser and start reviewing my finances. When we got married, David and I both agreed it made sense for me to keep all of my assets in my name alone: checking account, retirement savings, the money I inherited from selling Dad’s house. At the time, we were hedging our bets against David’s erratic income and uncertain immigration status. Neither of us factored his dying into the spread.
The college’s contributions to my retirement account are in an annuity I can’t touch, but since my first paycheck, I’ve been maximizing my voluntary withholdings, even though it left us barely enough to live on. Over the past six years, I’ve amassed fifty thousand in savings I can withdraw, provided I’m prepared to pay a penalty. I’ve got a Teachers Credit Union card in my wallet with no balance and a twenty-thousand-dollar cash advance limit. After I sold Dad’s house in Kenosha, I put the proceeds into certificates of deposit that have been compounding interest for eight years. Early withdrawal will cost me another penalty, but using the inheritance of my old life to start over feels fitting. I add it all up. Buying Red Barn Books will wipe me out, cost hundreds in penalties, and leave me saddled with thousands in high-interest debt, but it can be done.
I call Eric back. “Never mind about a loan,” I say. “Tell Rhonda I’ll pay the asking price in cash.”
David wouldn’t recognize me right now. I’d liked it, at first, when he encouraged me to be spontaneous and try new things. After we were married, though, his fun-loving freedom frightened me. I was the one who planned years ahead and saved for the future and said no, not now, not yet. David diagnosed my financial caution as a symptom of my chronic inability to enjoy life. I told him I was protecting myself—protecting both of us—from frittering away today what we might need tomorrow.
Now I know there is no fucking tomorrow. All around the city, sirens sing the anthem of these end times. What difference can it possibly make if I squander every cent I’ve so carefully saved on a bookshop in a barn and a wreck of a house in some upstate village I’ve never heard of before?
Even in the midst of a pandemic lockdown, cash deals with no contingencies happen fast. The next few weeks are a flurry of emails and electronic transfers and Docusigned PDFs. My lease is up at the end of May. I’ll be moving out a few days early, my head still spinning from the speed at which escrow closed.
A one-bedroom apartment with a single closet only holds so much stuff. The few pieces of furniture worth selling are snapped up off Craigslist. The rest I haul down to the sidewalk to be scavenged. Keeping David’s violin would only make me miss the shoulder it rested on; instead, I gift it to a musician friend whose daughter is taking lessons. In a daze of letting go, I recycle his obsolete electronics, give his gear to an arts organization he supported, and stuff his shoes and pants and jackets into a donation box. When it comes to his band tees, though, I balk. They’re tailored to his body, the fabric softened by his skin. Unable to bear the thought of anyone else walking through the world wearing them, I fold them into a plastic tote that I seal up tight.
David’s ashes have yet to be delivered to my door. Instead of providing the funeral home with a forwarding address, I tell them to mail his remains to his parents in Ireland. It will comfort them, I know, to have their prodigal son back in the land of his birth. As for me, I have no need for a bag of crushed bones when I can look to the sky and know all the soft parts of my husband I loved best have risen up as vapor to become one with the clouds.
On my last day in the city, I retrieve David’s van from the garage, park it in a loading zone down the block, and pack it with everything I’ll be taking to Schuywich. After dragging myself up those five flights of stairs for the final time, I take a last look around the empty apartment. Only my messenger bag hangs from its hook in the hall. I remember us seeing the place for the first time, together. Now all that’s left for me to do is walk out the door, alone.
Suddenly, my knees give out. I plop to the floor like a dropped marionette as I fly back in time to the day I arrived in New York. The day I met David.
The bartender asked what’ll I have, and I said whiskey because I was in an Irish bar and if there’s one thing I learned from reading James Joyce’s “The Dead,” it’s that the Irish love their whiskey. The bartender nodded at the glass shelves on which dozens of bottles glowed gold and brown in the smoky light. “Might ya want to narrow that down, miss?”
I’d already gone over thirty hours without a wink of sleep; the decision-making part of my brain clocked out long ago.
“I’m in your hands,” I said, putting down a ten.
He tapped the counter as if taking a bet. “Leave it to me.”
Propping my elbow, I palmed my chin and looked around. Past the bustling bar, beyond the small tables serviced by beleaguered waitstaff, on the far side of the packed dance floor, a four-piece band was crammed on a stage that lifted them a mere foot above the bobbing heads of their audience. The music they were making sounded old and new at the same time, traditional folk with a contemporary twist. What it sounded like, though, wasn’t why I was there.
