Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 104, Nos. 4 & 5. Whole Nos. 633 & 634, October 1994

Perfect in Every Way by Seymour Shubin

© 1994 by Seymour Shubin

Seymour Shubin has made his mark on mystery fiction by combining suspense with a profound interest in social and psychological issues. Like his bestselling first novel, a powerful book against capital punishment, most of his recent books have received international attention...

I don’t know why I had this feeling they would be the ones to buy our house. They were a young couple, in their late twenties, just about the age Melissa and I were when we’d bought it forty-two years ago, only then, the first time we walked in, we had Becky with us, each of us taking turns holding her hand so she wouldn’t run around the house. But it wasn’t just their age that made me feel it, for there had been other couples of about that age; it was the way the wife stood there, just off the foyer in the living room, and looked around with a little smile and a certain look that seemed to say yes, this could be it, let it stay being it as we walk on through it. But even more it was the husband’s look — the look that came after he’d taken those first glances at the living room, the ceiling, the walls, everything; the way he turned to her that seemed to say without words, this is what you want, isn’t it?

Melissa spoke to them first, hand extended. “Hello, I’m Mrs. Phillips, this is my husband,” and my hand went out to first one and then the other. “Please,” she said, “feel free,” which would imply, wouldn’t it, that they could go through the house on their own? Something I mention only because Melissa drifted along with them, and I drifted along too, in back.

Once, Melissa glanced at me with a touch of a smile. It said: See? And it said, too: I’ll just bet you they will.

You see, she had insisted we do it without a real-estate agent so we wouldn’t have to pay a commission. I’d pleaded with her no — all I wanted was to sell it, get out of there. Forty-two years in one house — enough, enough! And so every day for the past four weeks, especially those long, long Sundays, we’d been sitting and waiting, leaping up but trying not to seem overanxious whenever someone showed up. And just today, for maybe the fiftieth time, I had pleaded, “Let’s get an agent, I’m sick of this.”

And now there was her smile.

The woman, who’d introduced herself as Mrs. Williams, said, “This has how many bedrooms?”

Melissa beat me to it. “Four.”

“And bathrooms?”

I took over, fast. “Four. A powder room down here, two upstairs and one in the basement.”

Really a perfect large-small house, I told them. The woman smiled at the term and I went on to explain that it was a small house, basically, in the sense that it wasn’t overwhelming to maintain, far from it, but large in the sense that in addition to the four bedrooms it had a den which they hadn’t seen, and there was a finished basement and an attached two-car garage, and, oh yes, a nicely insulated attic.

“What are the taxes?” he asked.

When I told him, his face expressed delight and astonishment. They were low. The school taxes, too, and sewer and water.

“It’s really been a perfect house for us,” I said. “Perfect.”

Maybe you didn’t notice, I continued, but it’s all stone, solid stone. And the place didn’t take much to heat because of the insulation and the way it stood in relation to the sun. The roof — we’d just put on a new one, just as the owner before us had done. No termites, a perfectly dry basement, central air. And there was a garden that was small enough to take care of by yourself, but large enough so that it wouldn’t be embarrassing to call in a gardener. And the trees — had they seen that fir in front, and the cherry to one side? In back of the house there was a large apple and several oaks, and it had loads of forsythia and hyacinth — you’ll see for yourself.

Melissa said, “Do you have children?”

They had one, Mrs. Williams said, then added with a smile that they’d just learned that another was on the way. Which, Melissa quickly replied, her hand instinctively going out to her, was exactly what we’d had — Becky had been three when we moved in and Katie was born eight months later.

“Where do your children live now?” Mrs. Williams asked.

When Melissa told her that Becky and her husband and two children lived right in the next township, and Katie and her brood were just about a thirty-minute ride away, Mrs. Williams turned to her husband and with a slight intake of breath said, “Wouldn’t Mother and Daddy just love that?” None of her brothers and sisters, she explained to us, lived within five hundred miles of her parents, and one even lived in Australia. “My parents say it all the time, if only one of you lived close. And they say it’s true of all their friends — every one of their children lives far away. You’re very fortunate.”

“And we know it,” Melissa said with a wise nod. “But you have to be very careful you don’t intrude on their lives.”

“I would say, hearing that, they don’t have that problem.”

We walked on through the first floor, Melissa and I taking turns — but almost always in response to their questions — to give other of the house’s attributes. Schools — absolutely great schools — “One of the big reasons I wanted to live in the township was the schools,” Melissa said. “And they’ve kept up. You can talk to anyone around here with children.”

Mrs. Williams nodded at that, for apparently she’d heard too.

“And the children,” Melissa went on, “are in walking distance — what could be nicer than that? And I mean to all the schools, not just grammar, but the middle school, the high school.”

“Now, that’s nice,” Mrs. Williams said with a look at her husband.

What’s also nice, I said as we neared the kitchen, is that though you have all the advantages of a suburb, you can walk to the train to the city. And, oh yes, there’s a playground a few blocks away, and a pond where the kids go ice skating. And the police are very, very nice; and you may have passed it, there’s a fire station only about four blocks down the street.

Walking into the kitchen, Mrs. Williams stopped all at once and looked around and that smile of hers broadened. “Oh, I always wanted a kitchen like this. George, look,” and she pointed at almost everything — the copper pots that overhung the island, the large shiny stove, the refrigerator that released a crackle of ice with a touch, the round breakfast table near the windows overlooking the back garden. And in the midst of this, while nodding and agreeing with her how perfect it was, somewhere Mr. Williams found time to look at me and to say, almost apologetically, “This would be our first house.”

He’d caught me off guard, for during the past few moments, while my face might have been all light and air, I’d been thinking the darkest thoughts, the thing I’d been thinking about for so long — how this house had become a trap for me, how I had to get out, didn’t know what I’d do if I had to stay any longer.

Had said it to Melissa that day, maybe for the millionth time. Who’d given me the look of disdain it always produced.

“I’m sorry,” I said to him, “what did you say?”

“This would be our first home.”

“It was ours, too.” And with this it began to come back — though of late it seemed always at the edge of my consciousness — the little apartment we’d had over a real-estate office in center city. It was an apartment you had to walk up a long flight of narrow, wooden stairs to get to, and where each room was on a separate level. It was so cozy, just right for us. especially in winter when you’d see cars stalled and skidding around in the snow, and we’d feel so good and secure, putting on our boots to go out to eat or to a movie, while the rest of the world struggled with cars and distances. Even my office — a little one-man, storefront ad agency I’d started — was just around the comer.

There was such a sense of freedom living there.

I said to Mr. Williams, “Where do you live now?”

“A little apartment, but it won’t be enough for our needs now.” Still, did I detect a touch of sadness there?

“That was our problem,” Melissa said. “We had an adorable apartment.”

“I really didn’t want to leave,” I said. “It was like... something in Greenwich Village, I guess. But it didn’t serve our purpose anymore. And this place had everything. Has everything.”

I’d talked about moving for years, though this was the first time Melissa’d agreed to put the house up for sale. I’d come close to this point several times, but there was always something, some goddam something that stopped me. Where could you find a house this inexpensive? Where a more temperate climate, where cleaner air, nicer neighbors? Where would you find doctors as caring and tuned in to us as ours? And our medical records, our records! And the girls and the grandchildren, and two sons-in-law you could really talk to and call on for advice. And work — I was retired, but still did consulting, and though I didn’t really need to do it, you never knew, you never knew. And all my clients were in this area.

“This,” Melissa was saying, “was our Becky’s room.”

“Oh, you kept it just like it was,” Mrs. Williams said admiringly, looking at Melissa for confirmation.

“Yes,” Melissa said.

Mrs. Williams was referring to the cork paneling on the wall next to the bed, with old pictures and newspaper clips thumbtacked to it — Becky had been quite an athlete. And now in Katie’s room, there were three of her old teddy bears she deliberately kept here for her children when they visited, and the bunny-rabbit table lamp and the table-hockey game, with the few broken men, she always said she was going to take home.

All part of the trap, too, in a way. You know, don’t you, that memories can be a trap?

How I’d come to hate this house; oh, how I hated it! I’d loved it once, I did, but it had gone a million miles past serving its purpose!

My heart was going fast now, with anxiety. Let me be right about these people, I was thinking, let them—

“You know, George,” Mrs. Williams said, “I think this would be perfect for Gail’s room, and the other would be perfect for the baby. Don’t you think?”

“Yes.” He nodded quickly.

“Let me show you our room,” Melissa said, but she lingered behind for a few moments, gazing into Katie’s old room as though hating to release it.

Although a stranger wouldn’t ever detect it from her manner, she still didn’t want to move. I was sure. I knew her, she hadn’t changed. And it was probably even one of the reasons she didn’t want an agent, was hoping we couldn’t do it.

“Yes, this is a nice large bedroom,” Mrs. Williams said.

“Feel free to open the closets,” Melissa offered.

“Hmm,” Mrs. Williams said, pleased, at each open door.

In my study, Mr. Williams said, “Are you retired? I’ve the feeling you might be.”

“I am. But I still keep my hand in.”

“That’s always a good idea, I would think. What,” he soon asked his wife, “will we do with this room?” and there was such a tone of worry in his voice that I suddenly visualized it all ending here. Here!

I said quickly. “You can turn it back into a bedroom. That’s what it was.”

“Of course, George,” his wife said. “It’ll be an extra bedroom.”

“I mean all those bookcases,” he said. Then to me: “You must have two hundred books in this room alone. Do you have any idea how many you have altogether?”

“Quite a few,” I said.

“It’s really a shame, though,” Mrs. Williams said, “to tear down these beautiful bookcases.” Then she said, “Will you have room for them where you’re moving?”

“No,” Melissa replied. “We’ll have to store them or sell them or give them away.”

Smiling, Mrs. Williams looked at me. “May I ask where you’re moving to?”

“I think,” I said, “we’re going to start off in Spain.”

“What do you mean,” Mr. Williams asked, “by ‘you think’?”

“Oh,” Melissa spoke up, “we’re going to put everything in storage, or just about everything, and just take off. Go with the wind pretty much. Bill has always wanted this,” she said, smiling at me, “and we decided it’s time. Just take off. We have a bunch of brochures. Six months in Spain — travel all around there first, we’ve never been there, we’ve never been to most places — and see where we’d like to put down roots for, say, six months before moving on. I was thinking maybe Valencia first, I’ve heard such nice things — you know, on the Mediterranean?”

“You mean,” Mr. Williams said, “you’re not sure where you’ll be living? You’ll just be... going?”

“Oh, that’s the idea,” Melissa said. “Then we’ll go to Portugal, although we still might go to Portugal first. We’re like two kids.”

“So you have no idea where you’ll be settling down.”

“Oh, that’s the last thing we want to do,” she said. “We’ve had enough of settling down. We’re going to rent here, there, everywhere the wind and our whims take us. That sounds, oh... I guess poetic, but that’s what we’re going to do.”

“Sounds like a dream,” Mr. Williams said with a slight, awed shake of his head.

“The idea,” Melissa said, “is to get away from everything you always assume you have to do, have to have. Live at last for ourselves. No more gardener just because next door has one. No more must have a new car every two years because you don’t want to have the oldest one on the block. No living in fear, like — ‘I can’t do this, I can’t do that because I might break a hip and what’ll I do, who will I call, who’ll care?’ I’m sick of fear. Children, grandchildren — God bless them, but we’ll see them once a year, twice a year. They’ll do fine. I don’t have to spend the rest of my life worrying about will they cross the street safely, will they do this, that, as though living near them is some kind of safety. And this may make me sound hard, but let them worry about us for a change.”

“That’s something,” Mr. Williams said; and meanwhile I was staring over at Melissa in fury, for she was really taking years of my words and throwing them back at me, even embellishing them. And it was everything she’d ridiculed before!

You know, Mr. Williams’s voice cut in, what his dream was?

“I’d really like to live somewhere where it’s always sunny. The beach and shorts and barefoot thing. Really. Well, maybe someday.”

“Honey, someday we will,” his wife said. “You know we’ve talked.”

“What she’s talking about,” Mr. Williams explained to us, “is what I really want some day. Well, some year. A charter fishing boat.” His face was suddenly red, as though he was embarrassed. “You know, move with the seasons to the warm spots.”

It was so idealistic a dream, so corny even, so much a cliché, that I couldn’t believe he had let himself say the words. But almost instantly something strange happened in me. I didn’t know this guy, what he did for a living — though I pictured him in some corporate, somewhat above entry-level job, but he seemed so simpleminded that I felt a rush of warmth toward him, a kind of... love. Like suddenly he was a son I wanted to protect. And what happened next, though it might not seem much, only brought it to a boil.

“We’ll get it one day,” Mrs. Williams said. Then, almost immediately putting an arm through his, “Honey, look at those windows. Do you know what curtains I can see going there?”

We were walking back downstairs soon. I know we went down to the finished basement, then out to the garage; I remember hearing Mrs. Williams admiring how neatly I kept my tools, but that’s about all — my head and heart were pounding. And it was, I think, just when we came back into the living room that Mrs. Williams said, “When could we have possession?”

“Would two months be all right?” Melissa asked.

“Oh fine, that’s just right.”

“Well, the one vital thing we haven’t asked about,” Mr. Williams said, “is price. What are you asking?”

He had turned that simple-minded face to me and was looking at me with a mixture of eagerness and concern. But I’m just guessing at that — the thing was, I could barely see him. There were waves in front of my eyes, sent up by the tumult of my heart.

One-ninety at the most, I’d insisted to Melissa. If not, then the best offer...

“Three hundred thousand.”

It just came out, just like that. And through those waves in my vision I saw Mrs. Williams’s face fall, but his — am I guessing this? am I making this up? — seemed to lift. Then they both turned to Melissa as she exclaimed, “Bill!”

“What’s the matter? It’s what we said.”

She looked at me squarely. Then, quietly, “Yes, I know.”

“Well,” Mr. Williams said after a slow look at his wife, “it’s way too much for us. I should have asked right away. But it is quite a house.”

They were mumbling thanks now, Mrs. Williams almost in tears, and I think I shook hands with them, but the next thing I really remember is standing facing the closed door as though in the silence of a bell jar. I remember a feeling of tremendous elation — more than that, the greatest possible pure joy. I’d saved him! And given it to that little bitch! Not forever, maybe, no one could save anyone forever, but it wouldn’t be me who helped trap him!

I was waiting, my back turned to her, for Melissa to speak up, to taunt, to yell. But nothing. And gradually, aware of it as if for the first time, I felt myself sinking back into it, the trap, the large-toothed trap. Back into the hovering madness.

But this was just that couple! There’d be others!

“You’re crazy,” Melissa’s voice said, very quietly. “You know you’re crazy?”

I didn’t turn around.

“What’ve I told you?” she went on. “You blame me, you blame everyone, you make” — her voice kept getting higher — “every kind of excuse — every kind — it’s this, it’s that, it’s everything but yourself. Yourself”

I leaned my forehead against the door.

“You are crazy.” Her voice came closer. “You know that? You’re crazy!”

I remember thinking: Don’t say that anymore. Please? Please? and I whirled and strode past her without a look.

Now, maybe this is another excuse. But why did she have to follow me? And why did her presence behind me close every path but into the kitchen, with its drawers, its — that beautiful kitchen?