The first thing she did say, beyond the usual pleasantries, was when we pulled up at the curb in front of the place. “It looks odd somehow,” she said, and I could tell already that she wasn’t going to like it. “Out of balance. Too narrow across the front.”
Prok shut down the ignition and turned to look over his shoulder. “Built to fit a narrow lot,” he said. “But it goes quite a bit deeper, as you’ll see, to make up for it.”
“And the color,” she said, her breath steaming the window, her face drawn down to nothing round the critical oval of her mouth. “Who would ever paint a house mauve — that is mauve, isn’t it?”
“Looks more brown to me,” Prok put in.
“Or blue,” I said.
“I don’t know, I was hoping for something older,” she said, even as Prok was sliding out of the car to pull open the rear door for her. “Made of stone or brick maybe, and with more of a porch.”
“Older? This was built in ’24,” Prok said, “and that’s plenty old enough. Believe me, you do want the modern conveniences. Some of these antique houses, while they may look charming from the street, are nothing but a headache for the homeowner, substandard plumbing, antiquated electric, all sorts of structural problems, buckled floors and the like. No, what you want is something newer, like this. Take my word for it.”
But Iris wouldn’t take his word for it. She was as strong-willed as he was, and while she’d come to feel a real kinship for Mac she never really warmed to Prok, though she was always, or almost always, polite enough, out of her own innate civility and an awareness of the awkwardness of my position, but deep down I think she resented the influence he had over me. Over us. And, of course, there was Corcoran, the whole sad humiliating affair that lay between them like an open wound, Corcoran, always Corcoran.
The owner was an assistant professor in the Chemistry Department who’d been offered a promotion at DePauw and was pulling up his roots. He met us at the door, along with his wife, exchanged a cryptic look with Prok, and invited us in. I saw a gleaming oak staircase and handsome wallpaper in a floral pattern; Iris saw a cramped vestibule and a house aching in its ribs, with rooms like freight cars and windows that opened up on the place next door like a claustrophobe’s nightmare. She wore her disapproving face (eyes sunk back in her head, brow locked in a rigid V, teeth and lips poised as if to spit out some bit of refuse) through the entire circuit of the place, including the lecture in the basement during which Prok and the chemistry professor took turns extolling the virtues of the furnace, and the culinary tête-à-tête with the lady of the house at the narrow table in the tunnel of the kitchen. Prok, the professor and I came back from a tour of the yard and potting shed to find her drinking tea and staring blankly at a platter of gingerbread cookies while the professor’s wife (late twenties, styleless, childless, her face a scroll of anxiety) nattered on about Iris’s condition and what a blessing children were. Or must be.
“Well,” Prok said, “what do you think? Milk? Iris? A tight little ship, wouldn’t you say? And convenient to campus, never underestimate the value of that.”
The chemistry professor, and I suppose I may as well give you an account of him, since I’ve managed to dredge up his wife from the memory banks (he was ten or twelve years older than his spouse, IV-F from the Army during the late war because of a congenital deformity — club foot — and so turgid in his speech he must have bored insensate a whole legion of aspiring chemists), averred that there was no finer house in the world and that he and his wife were deeply conflicted about having to give it up. “I’d even thought of commuting, but then, what with wear and tear on the car—”
“Not to mention the wear and tear on yourself,” the wife put in, glancing up from her teacup with a look of acuity.
“Yes. That’s right. And so we’ve had to put the place up for sale, but reluctantly. It’s just one of those things. Life moves on, right?”
Prok was stationed just behind the wife’s chair, shifting impatiently from foot to foot. His coat hung open, the gloves and soft hat stuffed bulkily in the pockets on either side so that he looked as if he were expanding out of his clothes. “And the price,” he said. “Is that firm?”
I was watching the professor’s face as it went through its permutations. “Within reason,” he supposed. “But there’s always wiggle-room”—that was the term he used, wiggle-room—“if the Milks are really interested and not just here to entertain us with their presence.” He gave a little laugh. “And we are entertained, aren’t we, Dora, to have such a delightful young couple here with us in this festive season and to think that we can be fortunate enough to give them a hand as they start out on the road ahead—?”
“Would you consider ten and a half then?” Prok said. “With fifteen percent down?”
That was when Iris spoke up. “I think I’d like to have a word with my husband,” she said, looking at each of us in succession before letting her eyes come to rest on mine. “If no one minds.”
Oh, no. No, no. No one minded.
In the vestibule, while the others sat round the table at the far end of the house, she spread her feet for balance and lashed into me. “You’re such a fool,” she snapped. “Such a sap. You’re soft, that’s all. Soft.”
“You don’t like it?”
“I despise it. And they’re manipulating you, can’t you see that? Prok, your precious Prok, and the professor and his wife, as if they can’t wait to unload this, this crackerbox. Do you really think I want to spend the rest of my life here? And you. Do you want to? This place stinks. It has no style, nil, zero, nothing. I’d rather stay where we are. Or what — move back to Michigan City, to my parents’ place, and live at the dairy. Milk cows. Anything but this.”
“Can you keep your voice down? What if they hear?”
“What if they do?”
There was a moment during which we both just stood there glaring at each other while the small sounds of the house — groans, creaks, the dwindling patter of rodent feet — ticked round us. “I don’t know,” I said. “I kind of like it.”
“Like it? You’re out of your mind. I won’t even talk to you. Forget it, hear me? Forget it.”
The result was that Prok had to tell the professor and his wife that we would get back to them — Iris wasn’t feeling well, a difficult pregnancy, her first, and that was why she’d had to go out to the car without saying goodbye and thanking them for their kindness and hospitality — and then the two of us slammed into the front seat and Prok started in on her. She was passing up a golden opportunity. There was real value here. Yes, there were other houses in the world, plenty to look at, or some, at any rate, given the postwar housing shortage, and, yes, he had to account for differences in taste, but really, at our level — and here he gave me a significant look over the expanse of the front seat — we couldn’t expect to find anything more practical or economical.
Iris heard him out as we sat there at the curb and Prok preached at her over his shoulder, then finally turned the key in the ignition and brought the Buick to life. And then, in a small but firm voice, she said, “I have an ad here.”
Prok gave her his profile, the hat clamped down over the stiff brush of hair. “An ad?”
“I clipped it from the paper. Listen: ‘Charming three-bedroom farmhouse, kitchen, dining, stone fireplace, indoor plumbing, built solid, 1887’—and it’s less than this place.”
“Eighteen eighty-seven?” Prok was incredulous. “A farmhouse? What would you want with a farmhouse? But wait a minute — where did you say it was?”