ERNIE AND ERNESTINA: Searching
Book Two, Chapter Two: Inside Charles Street
This morning I fix Joshua a cup of tea, not realizing the tea bag has torn. He looks at the bits of leaves floating in the tea, lifts the bag by its tag, twirls it over the cup, watches it twirl.
I’m feeling anxious about Charles Street. It’s the twelfth of December, and the deadline to sign the contract extension is the seventeenth. Joshua hasn’t even been inside the house. How can he make a decision on the house if he hasn’t even been inside it?
I don’t want to push my anxiety onto him, but I do.
“Okay, I’ll put in a call to Cindi,” he says. “Maybe she can meet us over there this afternoon.”
A few minutes ago he was twirling the tea bag, looking dazed. Now he sounds normal — the efficient, responsive Joshua.
Cindi, Joshua’s real-estate agent, meets us at the house at three. She leads Joshua through all its rooms. He likes the high ceilings; he’s tall so he likes space. We go down to the basement and up to the attic. He can even stand to his full height in these spaces.
We head back to the dining room.
“That’s a tacky chandelier,” he says, “and what caused the stains on the floor?”
“Pet stains,” Cindi says. “It’s a good oak floor. It will look fine when it’s refinished.”
He returns to the bedroom with its pink carpeting. “And who knows what’s under this carpeting?” he says. “Maybe more pet stains.”
Cindi and I follow as he returns to the living room.
“If you want to make this a two bedroom,” she says, “which will rent more easily, for more money, all you have to do is wall in the dining room and add a closet.”
“Or put up French doors between the rooms so the house still feels open,” he says. He goes back to the dining room to inspect a pair of casement windows. They need wood filler and paint. “What if I did minimal work, then flipped it? What can I expect to get for it?”
“I think the contract says you have to hold onto it for at least six months,” Cindi says.
“Oh, really? The seller gets to delay closing for six months and then tells me I can’t sell the property for another six months? That’s not cool.”
“I’ll double-check the contract to be sure of its wording.”
“Yeah, I’d like to know that.”
He shakes Cindi’s hand. She gives me a hug, wishes us both a merry Christmas, and locks up. Joshua and I head back to my brother Rich’s house.
“It’s rougher inside than I thought it would be,” Joshua says. “Who knows if the cooktop works? Or the oven? And everything needs cleaning. A decade of cigarette smoke covers all the surfaces. We’d have to scrub off that scum before we could even paint.”
Inwardly, I groan. Can years of cigarette smoke even be removed? Do I have the energy to work on Charles Street? Does Joshua? Can we do this?
Joshua doesn’t have to sign another extension of the sales contract. He can still back out of Charles Street.
