A Really Good Day(32)

Mood: Happy.

Conflict: None.

Sleep: Woke up super early, got up and read, then fell back asleep and slept in.

Work: Productive, though never lost track of time.

Pain: No improvement, but no worse either.





This morning I woke up with a calm appreciation for my life. What is this feeling? It feels too placid for joy, too serene for bliss. Is it contentment?

For the first time since I began the protocol, I slept late, waking only when my husband did. The fog had already burned off when he flung open the blackout curtains and opened the bedroom window. Sun filled the room, and I could smell the earthy musk of the massive redwood tree outside our window. This tree is why we bought this house, or, rather, the ancient rosebush that once twined itself around the trunk and bloomed high in its branches, its white blossoms like fairy lights amidst the dark-green needles.

When I was five months pregnant with our second child, we moved to Berkeley from Los Angeles. We rented a house from a pair of academics on sabbatical in China, figuring that it would take us no more than a couple of months to find a house to buy. The rental house was up the block from where we live now, and the morning after we arrived we wandered down the street and saw the tree. I’d never seen such a thing, flowers blooming hundreds of feet in the air. The rose’s gnarled vine was covered in peely bark and as thick around as my arm, and before climbing the redwood, it swooped over the path to the porch, dipping down so that it almost brushed the top of the head of anyone who walked up the steps. The rest of the yard was wild, thick with undergrowth and piles of dirt.

The house, an old Berkeley brown shingle in the Arts and Crafts style, was under construction. As we stood, staring up at the tree, a workman came out of the front door.

“Excuse me!” I called to him. “Is this house for sale?”

He shook his head and pointed across the street. The man who lived there, he explained, was renovating the house for his sister-in-law.

We continued on our way, only slightly disappointed. Berkeley is full of beautiful old bungalows, redwood trees, and wild rosebushes. We were sure we’d find another one easily enough.

Unfortunately, we arrived in town at the beginning of what became a permanent real-estate boom. We saw dozens of houses, and made three or four offers, our price range creeping higher and higher, into a zone so unrealistic that it seemed pointless to worry about it. We were so far above what we could afford, what difference did another ten thousand make? And yet every house we bid on ended up selling for an amount far more than the ridiculous figure we’d offered.

Meanwhile, my belly was growing, and the professors were due back from China. We were getting desperate. So desperate that we made a flyer, begging for a place to live. We took a photograph of ourselves, me with my big belly, my husband looking pensive, our two-year-old daughter with her mop of ringlets. “Sell us your house!” we scrawled on the photo. We made a hundred copies and slipped them under doors, hung them on the community bulletin boards of taquerías and cafés, and pinned them to lampposts. My husband’s brother, humiliated (their last name is an uncommon one, and he’s popular around town), called us and asked, “Have you two completely lost your minds?” A few years later, when he found himself with a pregnant wife and a rental about to expire, he behaved no less irrationally. Bay Area real estate is far more likely than a bad LSD trip to drive you to psychosis.

All that time, we watched as the renovation of the house down the block progressed. Old plumbing was torn out. Electricians’ vans came and went. Then, one day, our real-estate agent called to tell us that there might be a house in the neighborhood for sale. A man had been renovating a house for his sister-in-law, but she had just been forced to take a job in another city. We met our Realtor at his office, and he walked us around the corner to the house with the crazy rose vine.

When our Realtor called him, the owner of the house wasn’t ready to sell. He wanted to finish the renovation first—call back in a few months, he said. But we didn’t have a few months. We offered more than he asked, more than we could afford. Still he said no. And then, one day, I stood beneath the blooming redwood tree, my shirt riding up over my bulging belly, and burst into tears. I begged him to sell us the house right away, as it was, unfinished. He shifted uncomfortably from foot to foot, he gazed up at the white roses peeking through the needles of the redwood tree, and then, finally, he shrugged his shoulders and agreed. It was hormones that made me cry (and panic), not manipulation, but I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t glad that the tears worked.

We immediately set about finishing the renovation so that we could move in before the professors’ return. The work was supposed to be done before I gave birth, but even though our very considerate baby held on for a full two weeks beyond his due date, the contractors were still finishing the kitchen when I went into labor. In the early stages, my midwife told me and my husband to take a walk to move things along, and we wandered down to the house. I stepped into the kitchen and saw that the workmen had installed not the slab of dark-green granite countertop we’d spent an afternoon carefully selecting at the warehouse but instead something pink and speckled.

“What’re you gonna do?” the contractor said with a shrug. “It’s already in. You’ll get used to it.”

“Are you kidding me?” I said. Then a contraction hit. I crouched down, my belly rippling. I moaned, rocking back and forth. The contractor and his men stared. The contraction passed and I stood up.