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Again, I found myself forced into a position where I had to accept silence as affirmation.
“All right, Marty, could you go upstairs to check on the bedrooms and make sure all the windows are open to let in all that beautiful natural light?” I figured if they were going to stay, I could at least try to separate them. “And Rebecca, check all the bathrooms to make sure the towels are hung nicely.”
“Sure, it’ll be nice to finally have something that’s well hung in this house.”
Rebecca glared at Marty, and I had to fight myself not to laugh. She got himgood.
“Great! Let’s go get started!”
I half expected a growl out of Marty, based on his expression, but he went up the stairs, marching the entire way so that the house shook with every footstep.
Rebecca left to handle her chores with a smug smile of satisfaction on her face.
That gave me a moment to breathe and try and come up with a long-term plan for keeping the two of them busy and separated when people began to arrive. It’s remarkable how much context can affect somebody’s interest in a house. Very few people would admit to believing a house could be haunted, but, at the same time, many people would be afraid of buying a house with a partner if they had the knowledge of just how bad the previous couple living here ended up. As if it was somehow the house’s fault that the two of them hated each other.
I wished I could explain that to Marty and Rebecca – their bickering would lower the value of the house.
That was another funny thing about people at war with each other, though: they didn’t care. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if they wanted the house to sell for less so that their former love would walk away with less money. Vindictiveness often becomes its own punishment.
“He likes me better, Rebecca,” Marty said, his voice traveling straight through the wall into my skull where it planted a seedling that would grow into a full-fledged migrant before the day was through.
“Of course, he does. Because you never spend time with him, so on the rare occasion when you do take a few precious minutes out of your oh-so-busy day for him, he treasures it. He knows it could be days or even weeks before he gets that kind of attention again.”
I immediately felt bad for that poor child, forced into the middle of these two and their constant arguing.
“Maybe I’d have more time to spend with Theo if I wasn’t always working. The way you spend money…”
“You don’t want to go there, Marty,” Rebecca said. It was a warning, and, from the tone of her voice, he might only get one.
And he’d clearly heard that warning before because he dropped that really quickly. “The point is that he loves me more and he’d rather be with me.”
I looked at the clock. Five more minutes until the house was officially open.
“I’m sure your son loves you both,” I said. “In different ways.”
They looked at me, confused.
The oven timer went off. I pressed the cancel button to stop the beeping and opened the oven up, wafting the fresh cookie aroma throughout the kitchen.
“We’re not talking about our son,” Marty said. “Theo is our Boston terrier.”
“I got custody of our son,” Rebecca clarified. “He may have been the only thing we didn’t fight about it.” She looked at Marty. “Why didn’t you fight for Harrison?”
Marty was silent.
“You fought so hard for Theo. Why not for Harrison?”
“That’s what I’m saying,” Marty said. “You got Harrison so I should get Theo. It’s unfair that you got both.”
“Okay,” Rebecca said. “In that case, you can have Harrison.”
“I don’t want Harrison!” He immediately covered his mouth. “That’s not what I meant.”
Rebecca adopted a devilish grin on her face. “I’m going to tell him you said that.”
“You wouldn’t.”
I saw that look in her eyes. She one hundred percent would.
