Free Home Free by Marni Jackson Page A

trim. The bed not only had a canopy but flaming electric torches.
    â€œThat’s a lot to live up to,”Brian remarked.
    The little room that would become my office had nothing in it but a harpsichord and a dressmaker’s form wearing a French Empire gown, like a headless Marie Antoinette. The first floor featured an impressive copy of a painting by the 18th-century French painter Fragonard, executed right on the wall. For an extra $20,000, we could keep it. (Think of the resale potential: “Three bdrm semi, hdwd flrs, blt-in Fragonard. . . .”) But we declined. The owner,who wore a bustier and drove a red pickup truck, peeled it off the wall, and took it with her.
    The house was small but theatrical—perfect for family dramas. The kitchen had a working wood stove and doors that opened onto a garden, where the owner had set out a white wrought-iron table for two, with linen napkins and wine glasses. Not my usual workday lunch . . . but it could be, if we bought her house.
    The garden was a lush, feminine affair with pink roses, lilac trees, and a minuscule pond. More of a basin. But with a water feature, I thought, my life could really turn around. A flagstone path also led through the garden to a gate that opened onto the lane. The escape route.
    The house is a narrow, fine-boned Victorian, perfect for one. Casey was 17 when we moved, with bicycles, amplifiers, and skateboards. Brian is over six feet tall; whenever he walks down the main hall the floors bounce slightly, like a suspension bridge. He looks like a sailor on a small craft making his way to the forward deck. The ceilings are high, and the doorbell is 110 years old. Casey’s friends were just across the bridge, in our old neighbourhood, so he was okay with the move.
    But Brian wasn’t convinced.
    â€œWe’re already living in a three-bedroom semi,” he pointed out,“why move to another one?” By then I had looked at 57 properties, from crumbling rectories in Port Hope to time-warp cottages in Mimico. This eccentric house, on a lilac-laden street, was the one for us, I knew. So when Brian continued to come up with more sensible reasons not to buy it, I didn’t argue. I simply went to bed. It wasn’t a calculated sulk; I was just giving up on my pond-worthy future.
    Several days passed.
    â€œWell, I’ll take another look at it,”Brian said.
    We made an offer, and the deal was done. The middle bedroom, we rationalized, would soon become an office for one of us when Casey left for college the following year. This, of course, has not happened, because that was his room when he came home from school for visits. We got used to the close quarters, though. We live in a Victorian sailboat, snug and trim.
    I had visions for the pond and bought a small motorized pump. I wanted to hear gentle plashing whenever I sat out at the wroughtiron table in a French way. I plugged the pump into a long extension cord that snaked through the garden, turned it on, admired the turbulence, and then went to bed.
    But the street is close to a ravine and its wildlife. I had already noticed the evidence of raccoon slumber parties—flattened crop circles—in the peony beds. The next morning, the pond was silent. The raccoons, offended by strange pulsings in their ensuite, had hauled the pump out of the pond and hidden it in the bushes nearby.
    I reinstalled it and turned it back on. Plashing restored, I ate a tomato sandwich at the patio table,with a cloth napkin on my lap.
    Next morning,more silence. This time the raccoons had stashed the motor farther back in the bushes. It was time to get industrial. I sank a device the size of a shoebox into the pond and stepped back from the great gush of water that now rocketed out of the tiny basin. The raccoons were about to be hosed down by the riot police.
    That evening, I watched five of them plumply scuttle along the top of our fence. They gave a wide berth to the pond, churning