Published Articles

MOVING IN
by Karen Ackland
So to Speak, A Feminist Journal of Language and Art, George Mason University, Spring 1999

The day my husband moved in, I cried.

There was nothing sudden about the move. Larry and I had talked about it for months and agreed that living together in my house made sense for a number of reasons. We had just finished moving the big lateral file cabinet up the back stairs, breaking one of the steps in the process, when I suddenly felt that I had lost the one safe place I had in the world. I loved my house, at least as much as I loved Larry.

For years I couldn't decide if I should -- or could -- buy a house by myself and, when I finally did, it gave me enormous satisfaction. After I bought it, I put another coat of white paint on the walls, installed Berber carpet and new light fixtures, and was as proud as if my house had been featured in Architectural Digest. There were things I liked about other houses, but like a true lover, I liked my house best and thought everyone should recognize its superiority. After the first year when I worried it would burn down if I stayed away for too long, we settled into a relaxed companionship.

The first time that Larry walked inside my house he exclaimed, "I guess if you live alone you can be eccentric." This is never going to work, I thought. Later he tried to explain that he meant that the painting of palm trees hanging over the bookcase was very large. And he did think that the Dia de los Muertos miniature skeletons in the kitchen greenhouse window were unusual. During that time my friend Doreen would start every conversation with the question, "Are you still going out with that guy from Fremont?" She was really asking, do you have anything in common? I answered, "We're not really going out." I wasn't sure we did have much in common and I didn't want to talk about it.

For months before he moved in, Larry and I discussed how to merge our two households. One late night phone conversation he seemed particularly interested in details I found irrelevant. Did I want any of his spices? Which washing machine should we use? Did I think we'd ever need a lawnmower? (I already had a push mower, but after the last drought I'd dug up the lawn and replaced it with perennials. I used the mower to keep the dryer closed by wedging a broom handle between the mower blades and the dryer door.)

Larry asked where we would keep the wet suits. This might be a reasonable question for some couples but neither of us owned a wet suit or had a reason to get one. I grew increasingly irritated and finally said, "None of this matters. It's not the point."

"Well, what do you think the point is?"

"Are we going to be happy?"

"Of course, we're going to be happy. Why would we get married if we weren't going to be happy?"

I didn't necessarily believe it, but the idea of marrying someone who didn't doubt we'd be happy was surprisingly reassuring.

When I left my first husband, he stayed in our house. He didn't want me to go, but he was having an affair and I couldn't see how I could stay. I didn't believe that the move would be final and took only the things that would fit into the studio apartment I rented. I wanted to leave my mark, but as I took things away the space filled in and the house looked fine without me. We were ready to carry the last load to the truck when two Jehovah's Witnesses came to the open door. In a town where it was almost impossible to find a house to rent, they forgot evangelizing when they saw the packing boxes.

"Is this house now available?" I heard one of them ask. I was too numb to be bothered and left my husband to talk to them. I was surprised to hear him shouting.

"Get out. Can't you see she's leaving?"

I may have remembered this wrong. It wasn't like him to show so much emotion. It is what I had wanted those last months, but it didn't change a thing. He helped me carry my things into the apartment and then had to go. He had a date that night.

I've always found it sad to leave an empty house. The bare, scrubbed rooms seem smaller, more ordinary. How could they have held everything that went on there? The sweaty afternoons in bed with the lover that eventually did not return my phone calls. The place on the carpet where I cut my foot on a piece of broken glass was now just a rust-colored spot. The memories that were so haunting when I lived there suddenly vanished with the furniture.

Moving into an empty house is the opposite. I hurry to stake a claim, make it mine. On the weekend when I moved into my house, with boxes all around, I unpacked my books and made soup. I'd enjoyed meeting the previous owners, but I wanted all traces of them gone. This was my house now.

Larry didn't bring much when he moved in. I had surveyed the collection of early Boy Scout dressers at his house and suggested that he deserved something new. We went shopping for an armoire. Later when I claimed that I made Larry bring his own closet, my mother frowned. My mother has always believed that I have a problem sharing and that, if I'm not careful, I will lose my last chance at happiness.

After Larry moved in he would get up early on Saturday mornings and say, "What should we do today?" I would be drinking coffee in bed and at first I thought, how fun! I thought "What should we do?" meant should we go to the movies or take a walk in the redwoods. I quickly learned that for my husband "What should we do" didn't mean, "Where should we go" but "What should I fix?" A thirty-five cent part at the used appliance store fixed my dryer door. The toilets, which sometimes had to be coaxed to flush by taking the top off the tank, soon worked on a regular basis just by pushing down the handle. I started giving friends a tour of my garage with the new wall of peg boards along one side, storage cabinets along the other, and motion-sensitive light that comes on when I walk through the door. (It also goes off if I spend too much time folding things at the dryer, and I have to wave my arms wildly in the dark to attract the attention of the sensor.)

Larry's compulsion to fix things gives me the impression that he thought my house, and maybe I, were on our last legs when he moved in. I joke about this hoping he will say he didn't mean it that way, but he only confirms my suspicions. "It needed a lot of work. You had termites." Larry looks at me closely to see if there is more I've neglected to disclose.

This spring I took a fresh look around and allowed that there were some things that could be improved. On Saturday mornings after our onion bagels we go to the hardware store. The hallway is now purple. The downstairs bathroom is a greenish-taupe. Neither of these are quite the colors we expected, but I like them fine. An exterminator was called for the termites, and we scrapped up the chipped vinyl flooring in the kitchen and put down ceramic tile.

Larry came home last week and said he'd been wondering. For a half-second I fantasize that he has been wondering if we should quit our jobs and travel, get a dog, or take up ballroom dancing. No, Larry was wondering if we needed all new interior doors.

On our second anniversary I told Larry that I love him more than I love my house.

"Well, we're finally getting it fixed up," he replied.

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