The Habit of Art: Best Stories from the Indiana University Fiction Workshop

Dream House

BARBARA BEAN [276] Dream House BARBARA BEAN Tony was a friend of Hank’s. He ran Tony’s Foreign Auto down on Walnut Street where Hank had taken the BMW practically every Friday like a ritual, five hundred more dollars down the drain. Now Julia was left with that car, with its sheepskin seat covers and its smell like crackers laced with sheep and some faint motor smell, more delicate than gasoline. The car was running pretty well now, but when Friday came she took it in to have Tony check the oil and the transmission fluid. Tony was wearing old khakis, grease-stained and baggy, and an unbuttoned cotton shirt. He was sitting in the swivel chair in his office, surrounded by papers and small parts, drinking out of a coffee mug that said “Good morning, sweetheart.” He brought it to his lips just as she came in. Now that Hank was gone, Tony seemed like a good person to call in an emergency. She was running out of money. “Listen, could you by any chance use an assistant? Someone to answer the phone, do the paperwork?” A small wind could have knocked her down. Tony looked at the mess in front of him. “An assistant is exactly what I need,” he said. “Start on Monday.” Julia got back in the car and drove home, out to the fanciest DREAM HOUSE [277] subdivision in this small university town, where she and Hank lived. All the houses on their street had security systems. After Hank left, she had disconnected theirs. It made her nervous. When she pulled into the driveway, there was a young black man in khaki shorts standing on the front porch of the house, ringing the doorbell. Julia felt a wave of embarrassment. It was a huge house with a sun porch, a tower, a music room. “I don’t really live here,” she said, stepping out of Hank’s car. And then she laughed. “Well, I do. But we’re not rich.” “I know what you mean.” He held out his hand and she took it. “I’m Emmett. Collecting for the Citizens’ Action Coalition.” She opened the front door and invited him in for a glass of ice water. “My husband inherited some money and spent it all to build this house. And then some.” Hank was bad with money, and she was worse. She believed all the adages about money. Can’t buy love. Root of all evil. Still, she liked the refrigerator with its ice machine on the door. She fixed herself and Emmett a glass of cold water. The sunny kitchen stretched on forever with its acres of Saltillo tile bearing the paw prints of coyotes who had walked across it while it dried in the Mexican sun. Emmett drained his glass and looked around. “Amazing house,” he said. “I know,” Julia said. “He thought of everything.” Skylights and windows from floor to ceiling in every room. Surround sound. Outlets , phone jacks, stereo wires everywhere. He had hovered over the framers, worrying about light and symmetry. Julia had shivered when he called it his dream house. “Never say that,” she said. “You can’t build a dream house. A dream house is only a dream. It can never be real.” He tried to build a house so perfect that no one would ever want to leave it. But their son Josh left for college. And then Hank left. Julia got out her checkbook. Emmett waved it away. “I understand if you can’t afford it.” “It’s OK,” she said. “I got a job today.” BARBARA BEAN [278] Julia was sitting at the kitchen table. She could see the morning glory vines strangling the bee balm and cone flowers in Hank’s garden. At the edge of the yard where the trees were thick, a brown dog sniffed the grass. The remains of dinner lay sprawled across the table. “What are you looking at?” Luke said, standing up. “Weeds. A brown dog.” “Looks like a chow.”’ Luke was living in the basement. He was a friend of Josh’s who had grown up with him in their old neighborhood of small houses and no sidewalks. He needed a place to stay for the summer and she had plenty of space. On the other side of the yard was the vegetable garden. It seemed important to make sure the gardens...