WHEN 1 WAS twenty-seven, the month after Simon ‘Tomkvist and 1 broke up, | decided that if { wasn't married by the time I tumed thirty, 1 would buy a house alone. Although I told no one, keeping this idea in the back of my mind provided reassurance; it made my life seem less like something I was waiting for and more like something I was planning. When I drove around Madison, I'd sometimes think, A place lie that. Three bedrooms at the most, a yard but not a large one, on a street with tall trees, Also, not a house ‘on a comer, because those seemed too exposed. As a librarian at Theodora Liess Elementary School, I earned eight hundred and thirty-three dollars a month after taxes, and as soon as Td made my decision, I began to put away two hundred dollars from each paycheck in a savings account; I deposited the money at my neighborhood branch of Wisconsin State Bank & Trust on the last Saturday morning of every month. Tm not sure exactly when I would have called a realtor— the day I tumed thirty? The day after? My plan had never gotten that specific—but it didn’t turn out to be anywhere close, because it was two months before my birthday, in February 1976, that my father died. Like his own father, he had a heart attack, and although my father made it into his fifties—two decades longer than my grandfather had 17.lived—this seemed to me even then to be a dubious reprieve Now, of course, it does not seem like a reprieve at all. It snowed the day of my father’s funeral, and my mother, grandmother, and I all tried, for one another's sakes and because we were Midwestem, to be stoic; my mother either was or pretended to be greatly preoccupied by whether the black crepe dress I had bought at Prange's was warm enough. Back at the house, we visited awkwardly with my mother’s siblings and their spouses, none of whom I'd seen in years. Other members of Calvaty Lutheran dropped by, and my father’s co-workers atthe bank, all of them bearing flowers ot food (mostly casseroles, though the assistant manager brought a whole ham), Then they were gone and a quiet descended, amplified by the snow that had fallen. T needed to drive back to Madison that Sunday evening— Td arranged to have a substitute for three days the previous week, but the next moming, I was due at school again—and my mother walked me to my car, hugging herself against the cold. When I was settled in the driver's seat, she motioned for ‘me to roll down the window and said, “Fasten your seat belt,” and I said, “It’s fastened already.” As I pulled away from her, away from the house where I'd grown up, I was alone at last, and I began to sob. By the time I reached the highvvay, a new snow flurry had started, and though it didn’t accumulate into anything, it was my father’s directions for driving in the snow that I thought of: Go slowly. Stay well behind the car in front of you. If you skid, turn in to the skid. When 1 unlocked the door to my apartment in Madison—I was living then on the second floot of a house on Sproule Street—I could hear the Phone ringing, and when I answered, it was, as Td known it ‘would be, my mother, who'd no doubt been calling every ten minutes for the last hour to see if I'd arrived yet. My upper back, between my shoulders, ached from the tension of the drive and from everything else. In the year and a half since my father's death, I had gone back to Riley most weekends to check in on my mother and 8 grandmother, Usually, I'd pull into the driveway shortly before lunch on Saturday, and I'd once brought them a pizza, but instead of relieving my mother of the burden of cooking, as I'd intended, it appeared to make her agitated. So these days I brought only myself and sometimes some laundry, and the three of us sat in the dining room eating meals that had already started to seem old-fashioned to me: meat loaf and mashed potatoes, shepherd's pie. | always planned to leave on ‘Sunday after church (with no discussion, I had begun attend- ing again after my father’s funeral, though it was for my mother’s sake, and I never went on the weekends | remained in Madison), but then thinking of saying goodbye, picturing them sitting in the living room that evening my mother needlepointing in front of 60 Minutes and my grandmother reading, always made me far too sad and I ended up staying asecond night sleeping again in my old bed. The next mom- ing, if it was during the school year, I'd have to take off around six o'clock to get back to Madison and change clothes before work. Interstate 94 would be dark and mostly empty, me and a bunch of eighteen-wheelers. It was, I suppose, for all these reasons that I had not started looking for a house to buy until the summer of 1977. My realtor tured out to be a woman named Nadine Patora ‘who was lively, zaftig, and over a decade my senior. Given the modesty of the houses I was considering—I'd pay forty thou- sand dollars at the absolute most—she treated me with more patience than I had any right to expect. By early July, we'd Jooked at more than thirty places, and there was only one I'd seriously considered, a little brick one-story in the Nakoma neighborhood, but after thinking it over for a few days, I hadn't made a bid. I wanted a house I really loved, one I'd be happy to stay in forever and sink endless energy into, rather than one that was merely adequate. Otherwise, why not keep renting? “I bet you're just as picky with men," Nadine said, smiling mischievously as we drove one Sunday afternoon to an open house. 119Taughed. “I guess that would explain why I'm still single.” “No, it's good.” Nadine leaned over and patted my knee. ‘She was divorced, with two teenage daughters. “Take it from someone who settled for the first thing that came down the pike.” Most of the houses we looked at sounded quite appealing in the MLS listings Nadine showed me, but I'd know from the minute I stepped into them, and sometimes from the outside, that they weren't right: The windows were too small, or the kitchen cabinets depressed me, or a sour smell hung in the rooms, and I didn’t want to run the risk of assuming it would vanish along with the current owner. And so when Nadine called me the Thursday after the Fourth of July and said, “I've found your new home.” I honestly didn't believe her. It was a two-bedroom bungalow on a street called McKinley, not quite as pretty as where I lived presently, but it was unlikely I could afford to buy in my current neighbor- hood. And McKinley did have a pleasant energy, I thought as soon as Nadine and I tured on to it, passing a man walking a dog, two children in bathing suits darting through a sprink- ler. The house we parked in front of was white-shingled with ‘a narrow porch and, as I saw when we went inside, a living room that had window seats, and a kitchen that was small and old-fashioned but very light. Even before I consciously thought I might like to live in it, I found myself imagining where I'd place various pieces of furniture, wondering whether my round breakfast table would fit in the kitchen, or which wall I'd put my headboard against in the master bed- 100m upstairs. The house was empty—there was a convoluted story I half listened to Nadine tell about the owner having moved to Tennessee six months before but putting the house on the market only this week. I peeked behind the shower curtain and opened all the closets; | walked down to the base- ‘ment. The clincher was a little oak cabinet in the second-floor hallway, shoulder-high, with a clasp that you turned shut. It wwas about the size of a medicine cabinet you'd find behind a 120 bathroom mixror but slightly deeper—too small to keep linens or cleaning supplies or anything truly practical. It seemed a place to store love letters, secret charms or trinkets. Back in Nadine's ca, I said, “I want it.” “aren't we decisive all of a sudden.” “You were right” I said, “I’s perfect.” “all right, then.” Nadine seemed amused, “If you're sure you wouldn't like to sleep on it first, how much are you offer- jing?” “The asking price was thirty-eight thousand, four hundred. “Thiny-seven?” I said uncertainly. She shook her head. “Thirty-two. You'll go up, he'll come down, you'll meet in the middle.” She glanced at her watch— itwas alittle before five on Thursday aftemoon. "You want to give him twenty-four hours? “Are we allowed to make him decide that quickly?” “ifyou'd rather, we can say forty-cight.” *No, twenty-four would be great. I just don't want to be pushy,” In fact, twenty-four hours was preferable; I was dri- ving to Riley on Saturday, and I strongly wished to avoid being on the phone with Nadine in front of my mother or grandmother. [hadn't told them was hoping to buy a place because I was afraid my mother would try to give me money, which I doubted she could afford after my father’s death. My plan was to tell them when it was all finished, when rather than just mentioning the possibility, | could invite them to Madison, show them the actual house, and call it mine, The three of us would sit on the front porch drinking lemonade, I thought—well, assuming I bought some outdoor chairs. *Pushy, my fanny!" Nadine was saying. “You're offering this man money. Now, the likelihood is that negotiations will go through the weekend, but Ill see what 1 can do." She punched my shoulder lightly. "Kind of exciting, huh? Cross your fingers, babycakes.” 121THAT NIGHT, ABOUT twenty minutes after I'd tumed out the light for bed, the phone rang, and I thought immediately that it might be Nadine, with an answer already, but when I picked up the receiver, a far more familiar female voice said, “Don't you dare think of skipping the Hickens’ barbecue *Dena, I thought you had a date tonight, or I'd have called to tell you | made an offer on a house.” “You finally found one that meets your exacting stand- ards? Hot damn—let’s go see it!” “Not now,” I said quickly. "We'd be arrested for prowling.” By this point, I was seated at the kitchen table—the kitchen was where I kept my phone—wearing my white sleeveless, nightgown. Id been sleeping in the living room pretty much, since school had let out in June. It was not yet ten-thiny, 1 noted on the wall clock, which meant I really couldn't scold, Dena for calling late. She already mocked my early bedtime, and my usual defense—that I had to get up in the moming to be at school—wouldn't cut it, given that it was summer. “It's ‘on McKinley Street,” I said, “Maybe we can go by tomorrow, although I don’t want to jinx it before { hear back.” Dena sighed extravagantly. “You have no sense of fun. Speaking of which, | ran into Kathleen Hicken at Eagle, and. she said you told her you're going home this weekend. Alice, you can't make me socialize with those people by myself. Rose Trommler hates me.” “Don't be ridiculous.” “All those women are fat, and their husbands are boring.” “Fuss of all, that’s not true, but if you really fel that way, why are you so intent on going?” “Lhave to," Dena said. “Charlie Blackwell will be there, and I'm planning to seduce him." 1 aughed. “I'm sure you'll be just fine without me.* “Charlie Blackwell, she said, “As in the Blackwell.” “Oh, Dena, do you really want to be mixed up with that family? The Blackwells, as everyone from Wisconsin knew, 122 | hhad made their fortune in meat products. (There were several plants near Milwaukee, and it was said you could now buy a package of Blackwell sausage at any grocery store in the country—not, I thought, that you'd necessarily want to. It was what I'd grown up eating, but as an adult, 1 found it rather ‘sreasy.) Harold Blackwell, this generation’s paterfamilias, had served as Wisconsin’s governor from ’'S9 to ‘67 and then made an unsuccessful presidential bid in ‘68. A week after a rally at UW in which a young woman named Donna Ann Keske, a sophomore from Racine, was paralyzed from the chest down when police used force to break up the demonstration, Governor Blackwell appeared on Face the Nation and called Vietnam protestors “unwashed and uneducated,” thereby demonstrating a tin ear that would have been unfortunate under normal circumstances but was downright callous during a time of such tumult, Though Blackwell was a Republican and from Wisconsin, even my father wouldn't have supported him had he not dropped out of the presiden- tial race after the New Hampshire primary: He had a disdainful air, as if he didn't trust the average person to be smart enough to vote for him. Now he was out of politics—I had the dim sense he was head of some university, though I couldn't have said which—but one of his sons, of whom there were four, had been elected to Congress from Milwaukee the year before. “You know,” I said, “if Charlie is the Blackwell brother I'm thinking of, then Jeanette and Frank tried to set me up with him a couple years ago. But maybe it was a different brother.” “They tried to set you up with him and you said no? Dena sounded incredulous. “Iwas dating Simon.” The truth was that I probably would have declined anyway—money and Republicans and sausage did not strike me as a particularly tempting combination. “Bd is the one who's a congressman, but Charlie's also about to run,” Dena said. “North of here, I think around Houghton, It's still a secret, but Kathleen told me he'll 123