Catharine Bramkamp - Real Estate Diva 04 - Trash Out (2 page)

Even more
good news is that
while our subcontractors perform for the crowd
, part of their performance piece involves some
actual
work, so a few of
their
antics
actually
result in real repairs.  Plus, we get on the ground reporting by my grandmother,
her friends Pat and Mike
, even
Summer who runs the the
ater across the street calls me
to r
eport on the progress.  After
a month’s worth of hourly
and purported helpful
progress reports I am ready to admit that
maybe we have
t
oo much help. 

Even
Tom Marten, the police chief and former close friend,
apparently pauses on the sidewalk and comments on the roof project
every morning on his way to the station
.  Maybe that’s
good,
maybe that’s why so many shingles were covering the front yard.  I’d have to ask Tom. 

I
park
ed
in the back
of the house that featured
a luxurious two
-
car garage
.
Parking is very important in Claim Jump, you
don’t move to a former gold rush town, circa 1870
,
and not treasure a practical and ahistorical post
-
World War One
garage. 

Bolstered by Carrie’s agreement and Cassandra’s assurances that she’d be delighted to host a big wedding, I tackled my next problem: my grandmother’s decorating help.

First thing
Saturday
morning
, while Ben flogged the troops until moral improved,
I trailed through
Grandmother’s
large
home
on
Marsh Avenue.  We paused before
gilt framed portraits of stern black and white
pioneers
some of whom were related, many of whom were
rescued
from The Antique Affair in Auburn.  She gestured to one particularly
unattractive
woman sporting a severe bun and a matching expression.  I said no out loud.

“
Then maybe you’d like this
wash stand with the porcelain jug and basin
.”  The item in question
rocked
on a
spindly legged
stand
that
built expressively to hold a wash basin and pitcher and did not have any
other
utility than
that of a full-time
basin stand
. Perhaps it could be used for
firewood
.

“This
would look perfect in the front hall.”
  Prue
slowly
moved from room to room
.
I watched
her
carefully, ready to catch her should she
stumble
. To me, she looked as stable as the damn wash stand, but she insisted she was fine, her foot was completely healed and no, she was not over doing things by
hiking
down the hill every day to inspect our new house.

“Okay,” Prue, she prefers Prue to the designation Grandma
.
“No water pitcher,
” she thrust it into my hands.  “You
can use it in guest bath.  How about taking the dining room table?”

“Don’t you need the din
ing room table for dining?”  I followed her
deliberate
progress
into the dining room where the most expressive item
s
of decor
in the small room
were three shrunken heads
strung over the fireplace. 
They were
donated by my uncle, who negotiates with cannibals to secure dive sites
in New Guinea
for very wealthy and foolish people
. Perhaps one of those heads
was
an errant tourist?

“I have the old one in the barn.” 
Prue
explained.

“That
particular
dining table is
really a
pool table covered
by two sheets of
plywood.”
Plywood that was, by now,
water soaked and warped.

“It was very sturdy.” Prue pushed against the more authentic and rather attractive Queen Anne table.  “This requires maintenance.”

“Dusting?”  I asked. 
She rolled her eyes. 

“Have you asked mom?  Maybe she’d like some of this, if you want to get rid of it.”

“I don’t want to get rid of it, I want to give it to you.”

I patted her arm and quickly
retreated from the dining room before the chairs
(at the very least)
could be foisted off on me.

It wasn’t a very successful meeting.
After
forty-
five minutes
and a number of
reassurances
that I wasn’t rejecting her love, just rejecting the parlor love seat, the dis
comfort of which was legendary,
I had to
beg my grandmother to stop.  There wasn’t a single piece of furniture in her house that I could use.  I knew that going in, but Prue insisted on going through the motions.

“Can I call Pat and Mike now?”  I was still holding the pitcher under my arm as if it was a carnival prize.

She waved her hand and slowly headed to the kitchen.  “Fine, do what you want, it’s a shame to spend money on furniture when you have perfectly good things to use right here.”

I stashed the pitcher in an upstairs hall
, covered it with
towel
and
called  Pat and Mike
.
  

“Yes I know you decorated Prue’s house. 
No, I am not interested in authentic, I want comfort.” 

Mike, one half of my Grandmother’s best friends, paused and considered the idea of comfort.

“Ben is a big man,” I opened another closet
thinking I could grab linens for the guest room be
ds. I was assaulted
by
shelves
dripping with
lace
edged
pillow
cases
and scratchy
hand crochet
afghans.  I
hurriedly
shut the door.  “Think Mission, think
C
raftsman.”

“We can probably do comfort.
But you’ll never be on the annual house tour if you take that route
,”
h
e warned.

“
I’ll take that risk.
Think super sized flat paneled television screens. 
Envision
straight white guy.”

“Did you make an appoint
ment
with Donna?”

I glanced at my watch.  “I’m meeting with her next.”

“We’ll put something together
,
”
h
e assured me, once he recovered from the shocking idea that furniture should be used, not just admired
from afar
.

“Thank you.” 

At ten o’clock I ventured back to the house on Main Street.
The roofers had moved to the back of the house and were now sliding spent shingles into the back yard.  I picked up seven more as I walked through our desolate yard.  At least it was a relatively small patch of dirt, most of the houses downtown sat on tiny lots,
we
did not have the large front lawns found in suburbia. 

On Pat and Mike’s recommendation, I
had engaged
a
spiritual cleanser
to come in and smudge the new place.
Donna
Berkowsky
showed up at exactly ten.  A woman
in the throes of
negotiating
being a
certain age
, she wore her middle age figure and gunmetal gray curls with panache
.  She waved at Ben, now perched on the roof like an oversized
gargoyle
,
(and
with just as much attitude
)
and
strolled into
the house.

She greeted me with a firm handshake and
immediately dug into her battered doctor’s bag and retrieved
shells, a lighter and what looked like a handful of dried weeds
.
She handed me her card and began to stroll through the house, her head raised as if she was on high alert.

I
followed her.
I had
done what I could.  I had cleaned out the house twice, the first time to clear it to sell, the second
time as a buyer.
I had
pulled out
the
inexpensive
plates,
and
orange and avocado colored casserole dishes
from the depths of kitchen cupboards
and donated the lot
.  I retrieved all the
stainless
steel
forks and spoons from the kitchen drawers
and pulled out tired coffee makers and mixing bowls
and gave it
all
away to Hospice.
I had
delivered
every quilt in the house to
Summer
who
in turn
hung them like art all along t
he brick theater walls claiming they helped insulate the place – as well they should.  I even cleared out the bizarre baby doll heads from under the floor in the widow’s walk
(no, I never learned who or why, I just wanted the creepy things out of my living space)
. 
All I needed
to do
was to eradicate any lingering malevolence from
poor Penny
Masters
, her mother and
possibly even Lucky Masters himself.
Not even the
members of the
venerable
B
rotherhood
of Cornish Men
argued with me on that
point
.

“
Can you
feel
any
bad energy in the house?”  
I
dogged Donna’s heels as she drifted from room to room.  At least most of the downs
tairs rooms were cleared of the
building material
debris.  Dare I say it?  Except for a lack of
adequate
furnishings
, it was almost ready to be occupied by humans.
 

“Negative vibrations
,
” Donna repeated.  “You know, every electrical
appliance
in the place
emit
s
damaging energy.”  She looked me up and down; I compulsively,
and
unconsciously clutched my phone.  “But I don’t think you’re about to give that up
,” she nodded to my precious phone.  “D
espite the EMF
s
.  No,
I understand
we
just
want to clean the depression.
”
She paused.  “Sadness
,
fear, and anger, definitely anger, you don’t want that in your house.”

At first
I was impressed
with her analysis
.
But then, she
looked like she had lived in Claim Jump for quite some
time,
at the very
least,
she must have heard stories about
the infamous
Lucky
Masters, who didn’t?
Maybe she was just like a carnival
gypsy
intoning that
just from one glance at my palm, she could
tell I was about to meet a
tall, dark stranger. I meet strangers all the time; it’s my job.

“Lucky wasn’t bad.” 
Donna
picked out
a large abalone shell
from the collection
, and piled leaves of sage
(not weeds after all)
into it.  She whipped out
an
antique zippo lighter and set the green leaves to smoke. 
Once armed, she stepped
carefully from room to
room
murmuring
prayers to the goddess.  

She waved the sage and the pungent smell wafted to my nose.  “He was ambitious. You probably want to keep that energy.”  She cocked her head at me.