Our House is Not Our House

What happens when you tear down a fence?

Our house will never be ours. 

This may seem like an odd statement. My husband and I have lived in this three-bedroom house on a quiet street in St. Paul for thirty-four years. Our mortgage is paid off. Utility bills, tax assessments and charity solicitations arrive in our mailbox, addressed to us. We mow the lawn, shovel the snow, and park our vehicles in the garage. It doesn’t matter. Each of the homes on our block is attached to the name of a particular family that occupied it at some point during the last century or so.

The Bushes. The Andersons. They belong to neighborhood lore more than to public records. When newcomers are greeted with, Oh, you live in the Meyers’ place, they learn their status as arrivistes. The Meyers’s place is the one in the middle of the block on the north side with the catalpa tree in front. The exterior may have been painted five times, a second floor added, or a sidewalk ripped up and replaced. It might have burned to the ground and rebuilt. But because the Meyers planted that tree, the property will always be theirs.  

As for the catalpa, neighborhood opinion is mixed. Some love the fragrance, or the white flowers that dot the lawn each spring, like popcorn. Others look at the machete-shaped seed pots and see anarchy. You will hear both opinions, each invoking the Meyers. They’d be thrilled to see it’s still standing. Or, When they fought, he’d threaten to chop it down. She won, every time. And if it finally does come down, the conversation will pivot to, Looks like his ghost finally won that war. You may as well get used to it. It’s the Meyers’ house.

Our own house is tethered to a family I’ll call the Ransoms. Their tenure – twenty years – was, in neighborhood terms, brief. But it gave them permanent ownership. 

Let me explain. 

Our first house, in Minneapolis, comprised 900 square feet. In the seven years we lived there, we’d built cabinets, patched stucco, replaced knob-and-tube wiring, converted a porch to a living room. We fit into it as seamlessly as the paper we’d pasted to the walls. Watching the young couples on “This Old House,” as they struggled with a plumb line or a level, we’d say They can’t even hang a picture. We thought we were pros.

 When our daughter was born, our cozy bubble burst. We learned that, although babies are small, their stuff takes up space. It increases exponentially. We needed a bigger place.

You know the old adage. “Buy the worst house in the best neighborhood you can afford.” We began our search just across the river, in a part of St. Paul near a golf course, close to two private colleges and not far from mansion-lined Summit Avenue. It was, in realtor-speak, a “pill hill,” dense with doctors. Best neighborhood? Probably. Worst house? Maybe. But we’d already renovated one house. A second would be a breeze. 

We looked for a fixer-upper with good bones. I wanted a bay window and a fireplace. We found one, built in 1913, that met these requirements. And it was located at the top of this very Pill Hill. We made an appointment.

Our tour consisted of a brief walk-though. We saw oak ceiling beams – painted, but we’d stripped a lot of wood. Leaded glass, prosceniums, built-in hutches and buffet. We didn’t pull back the curtains to check for broken glass, or peek under pictures to find cracks in the plaster, or stumble on the broken front steps. The water-stained kitchen ceiling escaped our notice. It was April, it was after dark, and the house had a fireplace and a bay window. We signed the closing papers. In July, we moved in.

The knob came loose in my hands as I unlocked the front door. The stench sent us reeling: the carpet was soaked with dog urine. As our friends and family members set our belongings on the wrap-around front porch, they cast us looks of pity. We got on our hands and knees, pulled out tack strips, wrenched off the avocado wall-to-wall and shoved it out the window. It didn’t take long; we were driven by fury and despair. The oak floorboards that gleamed in the dining room were stained nearly black in the living room. We scrubbed them grimly, then put down tarps before we moved our belongings indoors.

There was more.

 Live wires hung from the ceilings. A toilet materialized on a landing above the basement steps. Bedrooms were painted in colors associated more with sweaters than with sleep: eggplant, Kelly green. The front bedroom, with its south-facing windows and charming dormers, was the one we’d chosen for our daughter. Why was it burnt orange? 

We planned to leave her with my mother for a few nights. Grandma didn’t listen. Look, honey! This is your new room! I heard, followed by a loud wail. Our daughter cried all the way downstairs and out to Grandma’s car. I ended the day sobbing under the lukewarm trickle that was all the shower head could produce at full blast.

How oblivious could we have been? The address was the same. The condition of the place could not have changed so drastically between in a mere three months. It was only our dream of what it would become, in our loving, experienced hands, that had been trashed. 

We woke up on a bare mattress on a floor that, blessedly, had been spared from ruin. The sheets were in a box somewhere. Too exhausted to look for them, we’d flopped down, dressed in T-shirts, aching in body and spirit. My husband rolled over, sat up, reached for his jeans.

 “Coffeemaker?” he said. 

“Kitchen.” I’d ground a sack of beans and packed it with the other essentials: two mugs, two glasses, whiskey. We stood  stared morosely out the window. 

A push mower, abandoned in a patch of grass next to a broken concrete slab. Two thorny Russian olives. A pitiful spruce. A horse chestnut, heavy with what looked like spiked green golf balls. It seemed fitting that our dismal back yard should be encircled by a six-foot-high stockade fence, thick boards sharpened at the top.  

“Chainsaw.” Fatigue had reduced our sentences to single words.

“Basement.” There was no garage. Another detail we’d missed. I stared at the dirty linoleum, the grease-spattered walls, silently planning my day. I eyed the boxes labeled “Kitchen.” Where was the Pine-sol? He revved up the saw and began to take down the fence. The dull links and sputtering motor savaged the wood. I joined him outside.

As it turns out, when you cut down a fence, you acquire neighbors. Within half an hour, a crew of supervisors appeared. Three retired guys, one with a better chainsaw. By mid-morning, the fence was a stack of half-rotted timbers piled next to the alley.  

“You bought the Ransom house,” one of the men – Bill, who lived in the Donaldson house – said. “We called it Fort Ransom.” They stood back, contemplating. 

“We always wondered why they needed that fence.” George, from the Campbell house, picked up his chainsaw. “Guess we know why.”

Jim – Govern house – shook his head. “They were always secretive. I felt sorry for the kids. Not the best place to play.”

“Good luck,” Bill said. ”And welcome.” The three men moved on, down the alley. The Ransoms were gone. But not even our arrival, and the removal of that stockade fence, could end the sad and lasting impact of their troubled tenure.

We’ve changed their namesake house to such an extent that they wouldn’t recognize it. In the thirty-four years have that have passed since we moved in, we’ve made it our own. Our daughter and son have moved into the world. I hope the love we poured into this place provided a firm foundation for their success. I hope they never feel the need to build a fortress against a hostile world.

Occasionally I run across some vestige of the Ransom children: a name scratched in the back of a closet, a Beatles card, a Matchbox racer missing a wheel. Sometimes, late at night, a door creaks, a light flickers, a window springs open. I wonder if their spirits travel as they sleep. I wonder about their childhood.

I leave a light on for them.