And it was only after I had scrolled through two more pages of “new construction, beautifully appointed with nice yard” and then came across the house again that I realized it was actually for sale. Here. In the real world.
My brain started tingling as I read the description and then clicked on the photos of everything we were looking for: family room, storage, bedrooms for everyone, a big yard, an office, a dining room, and an attic. This house even had things we didn’t know we were looking for, like an English fireplace, a chandelier, and wallpaper with birds on it. I clicked through the photos again and again, until a bleary-eyed Bj?rnar appeared in the kitchen.
“Look,” I said, waving him over with a gesture that felt mildly hysterical, “come here! It looks like it came right out of an Astrid Lindgren book!”
And the instant I said those words out loud, I realized they were true. Not Villa Villekulla from Pippi Longstocking. More like the house in Lotta on Troublemaker Street. True, it wasn’t yellow the way Lindgren described it in the books, but it was every bit as crooked and charming and with just as many nooks and crannies and chimneys and a white picket fence and plants in the yard, and yet cleaned up, with nice tile work, modern bathrooms, and wallpaper. And I realized that deep down inside, even after looking at all those minimalist, modernist places, this is what I had always wanted. Because no one describes a family Christmas like Astrid Lindgren. No one could capture the beautiful, intimate moments between siblings, spouses, parents, and children the way she did. No one grasped what it truly meant to create a home the way she did.
Bj?rnar and I read through the description together.
“A showpiece designed by architect Edvard Brochmann, renowned for his dignified homes for those with discerning tastes.”
“A house with a soul,” I said with a sigh. Then, “Birdsong in the city.” (Again.) I turned to Bj?rnar without breathing.
He looked back at me.
“You do understand that that’s not us, right?” he said.
“Not us?” I repeated, confused.
His statement reverberated in my head, until I finally understood what he meant. He meant that a 1919 house was too complicated, too wild, and too much for us to handle. The two of us, who had not mastered practical home repair skills beyond taping and painting. The two of us, who liked to aim horizontally, toward normalcy, routine, and predictability.
The two of us, who had invested everything in not shooting too high or too low.
I knew what he meant.
But this time he was wrong.
“But look at it, would you,” I objected. “Look how nice it is! And a ton of work has already been done on it! Maybe it is us, and we just don’t know it yet? We’re always discovering new facets of ourselves. I mean, for example, I never used to like gjetost cheese, but now I love it!”
He looked at me without saying anything, and I regretted the analogy.
“It’s too risky.”
“But it’s not that expensive. If we got it for the asking price, we’d have a little bit of a buffer, wouldn’t we?”
“Maybe.”
“I mean, we are looking for a house, right? We need something bigger. We do agree on that?”
“Yeah.”
“And there’s never anything available! It’s right where we want to live. Well, almost. And look how great it is! And practical. It has a shower stall and everything!”
He clicked through all the photos one more time. Blue-and-white-patterned Italian tile in the hallway. Wooden ceiling beams painted in light colors. Big bedrooms with wallpaper. There was a ringing in my ears. He was wrong. Despite all the risks and uncertainty this might entail, it was us. We’d just never realized it. We hadn’t known ourselves.
The real us. That’s what this house was pointing to.
“This is a proper home,” I mumbled. “A real one.”
He didn’t respond.
“Surely we can swing by and take a look at it,” I pleaded, “just, you know, go for a walk? Tonight?”
“We’ll see. I have to go now. I have an early meeting. You’ll handle the kids?”
“Of course.”
“I’ll just grab some coffee for the road.”
“Whoops.”
“You didn’t make any coffee?”
“Sorry.”
He buttered a slice of crisp bread, and I used brainpower to make the water boil in record time, waiting for exactly thirty seconds before pushing down the plunger in the French press. Then I filled an insulated travel mug, including maybe a few grounds, and followed him out into the hall.
“I just thought of something,” I said.
“What?”
“If a doppelg?nger comes and takes my place, we probably ought to have a sign.”
“What kind of sign?”
“Here’s the sign: I’ll say, ‘To be or not to be,’ and then you’ll answer—”
“‘That is the question’?”
“Correct.”
“OK, but that’s not a sign. Everyone knows that verse. Anyone else would respond the same way.”
“Incorrect. Most people would just say, ‘Huh?’”
He looked me in the eye and said, “You know we’re not going to buy that house.”
I smiled and handed him the travel mug.
He sighed and shook his head.
“We can talk about it later. I’ll crunch the numbers a little tonight.”
“Great!”
I followed him with my eyes, out into the snowflakes, which had started fluttering down even though it was only October.
“To be or not to be!” I yelled.
He didn’t hear me. Or at any rate there was no response.
I should have realized that even that was a sign.
But I guess I wasn’t really paying attention.
7