"The other people on the train talk to me," he told her in surprise. "One guy, he remembered my name from one day to the next and we talked about the Knicks. People here are really friendly."
Naomi agreed, thinking about the kindness of the next door neighbors, who helped her when the kitchen caught on fire. She turned to look at the hole in the wall where the fiery oven had been.
"You should have eaten breakfast that day," Ben said, following her gaze. "Eat. Eat a lot," he reminded her, as he kissed her goodbye and left for the train.
Naomi agreed; breakfast, in the abstract, was a good idea. She scanned the line of cereal boxes. Special K, oatmeal, Golden Grahams, Cheerios, and poured a few flakes and o's of each into a bowl. She ate it dry with her fingers as she walked the large rooms of her new house. From the kitchen, stairs led to the second floor. A larger doorway led to the dining room, through a tiny butler's pantry lined with glass-fronted cabinets and a sink. It was this room -- hardly a room, she thought -- that sold her on the house. Naomi loved the past, and fell hard for evidence of its grandeur. A butler's pantry was just that.
She walked into the large dining room, an octagon of a room with a fireplace on one end and windows around three sides. High on the walls near the ceiling, she saw decorative plasterwork, swirls and whirls and bouquets of flowers, barely visible under layers of tan paint. The wood floor had a similar swirl pattern, darker wood among the light, near the edges of the room. She stepped over the iron grate that gave forth heat from the basement's ancient boiler and walked into a parlor.
The house had two parlors, each a mirror image of the other. The fireplaces on either end matched, and cracked mirrors that were part of their brickwork reflected the other room, over and over. Naomi parked her cereal on a mantle, and shoved the moving boxes that filled the rooms to the sides. With a clear space in the middle, she danced -- one half of a waltz -- from fireplace to fireplace. She caught a glimpse of herself, disheveled ponytail and pink pajamas, in the mirror but danced anyway.
It was only in such visions of the past that Naomi felt completely free of the panic that sometimes gripped her. She knew the signs of a panic attack; she recognized the twitching of her hands and feet, the sinking feeling in her stomach, the sudden tightness and lightness in her head. Usually, she was able to thwart the attack by taking action, moving, even chewing gum. Changing positions, even going from hot to cold, or cold to hot, running her hands under water, all these strategies helped her cope with crowds and noise and the inexplicable anxiety that threatened to take over her life. But what worked best was when Naomi could disappear into an imagined past that was far more elegant and graceful that life in greater New York City in 2009. Then she could live on two planes, the imagined life and the harsher reality.
What Naomi needed from the house was a setting for her imagined life story. And she intended to repay the house -- she already begun to think of it as a character -- by renovating the heck out of it, making it the showpiece of Orange Heights. She danced into the kitchen to retrieve the stack of estimates and carried them back into the parlors, flat in front of her, as if she were a butler carrying a tray.
The total of the estimates reached figures that stunned even Ben, who worked in finance and spoke the language of money. Naomi wondered where to begin work. Outside? Perhaps by sanding off the brown paint and choosing colors of the period, making this a true painted lady? Or inside, where the cavity in the kitchen waited to be filled by a new oven?
When Naomi was a senior in college, she learned that her father, a career Naval officer, would shortly be transferred to Oakland. "This is my last Christmas vacation in Hawaii," she told her guidance counselor. "I'm not spending it on college apps. I'm choosing one place, doing early decision, and that's the end of the story." She recalled that she had taken a dozen college brochures into the girls' bathroom, thrown them in the air, and watched them fall. Then first to land on the floor was the college of her choice.
"That worked," she said aloud, and climbed onto a moving box with the estimates in her arms. She tossed them in the air and watched them fall like snow around her.
"You were first," she said to one, climbing down from her box. At the same time, she noticed that the old woman from next door was peering in a front window. Next to her, a little boy gaped, his mouth open in surprise. With effort, Naomi smiled and walked to the front door.
"Hello," she said tentatively. "I was just...I'm sorry that I'm still in pajamas."
"Have you found the dumbwaiter yet?" asked the woman, looking past Naomi into the house. "I'm here to show you the house's secrets," she continued, walking into the hallway.
Naomi backed against the newel post of the stairs. "Um, okay," she said. "Could we get together later, maybe, and we can walk through it together."
"Now is good," said the woman -- was her name Ann? -- brusquely. "I don't have too long and, if you ask me, you're not busy."
The boy and the old woman walked into the house, past Naomi, as if they knew exactly where to go. Naomi stood gaping at them, until the little boy turned and gestured to her to follow.
"Come on," he hissed. "There are 1232 panes of glass in this house. Don't you want to count them too?"
Wordlessly, Naomi nodded and followed her neighbors into the dark basement of her aged house. At the last instant, for reasons she couldn't later explain, she grabbed a broom and a cell phone as if she were traveling to a distant and dirty place.
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