![]() ![]() To our left are two bedrooms, one of which seems to be in decent condition. On the second floor the windows are mostly intact and unboarded, so we can actually see what lies before us. As we walk past the stairwell window, we see tiny holes in the glass, evidence of how the debris came to be. Rocks and glass litter the cracked linoleum steps. We’re cautious on the first few steps, testing them gingerly to see whether they hold. We venture up the staircase, which has the appearance of bad dental work thanks to all the missing and cracked balusters. We don’t even want to step into Karl’s future music room because we fear the water-logged floorboards might collapse under our weight. We use the glow of our iPhones to inspect the dam- age, a little trepidatious to walk through the house. Every window is boarded over, the entire place shrouded in musty darkness punctuated only by the occasional crack of light, dust motes dancing in the stream. For now, though, it is just that: imagination. I hear him playing the jazz standards and rolling blues he’s partial to as I cook dinner using tomatoes and basil grown from an imaginary garden right outside his floor-to-ceiling windows. Karl mentally places his Baldwin grand piano in that room and imagines it bathed in late-summer twilight. We can already imagine our lives inside these walls, despite the peeling Pepto-Bismol pink paint, sagging ceilings, mold-speckled surfaces, and sunroom that is shedding its stucco and letting the wind and rain inside. Let’s be honest: the house could be used as a set for Falling Skies or any other postapocalyptic show. What we have is a pile of bricks with character. Every pipe, every radiator, every wire is stripped. And I don’t mean it’s just missing a toilet or a boiler-there is essentially nothing left inside the walls. The house is a three-thousand-square-foot box of fuckeduped- ness. Karl and I look at each other expectantly, silently hoping the other one is going to do or say the sensible thing. In a town known for its lack of working streetlights-and nearly every other city service-a puddle of gold is forming right outside what could be our window. And then, two signs: first, a giant white tomcat walks across the roof and stares at us, and second, as dusk settles over the city, a streetlight comes on. My hus- band, Karl, looks on skeptically. I impatiently tap my foot, daring the house to answer. The neighbors must think I am crazy or, more likely, just another New Yorker scoping cheap houses in the Motor City. No, I am standing here in the early spring bluster, speaking out loud to a 1914 Georgian Revival that hasn’t seen a better day in many, many days. This is your chance.Īnd I don’t mean I say that in my mind. If you want us to build our lives here, you need to tell me now. It stares back at me, unblinking, through its boarded-up windows. ![]()
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