A House Without Curtains

An only child in many respects, I have always excelled at enjoying my own company. The house I live in now was once a year-round residence, a farm house; it has since been a building site and my year-round home. An eccentric mix of construction shabbiness (holes where lights should be, the eternal dearth of outlets, a lawn that screams poor white trash) and summer-house sexy (convection oven, the elements and fixtures for heated towel racks), it is three bedrooms, three baths, and has a wrap-around veranda. The latter is being worked on diligently right now, a fact I can monitor even at the library- each hammer stroke peals across the neighborhood.

So it is a large house, an unfinished house- all sawdust, tools, and extension cords. Since I moved out last September great strides in comfort have been made; more plumbing; some more outlets; the staircase is nearly finished. Eventually, (Alison's and my own efforts leading the way) the tools were even consolidated, and the living spaces actually became livable. Bless his heart, the owner even bought genuine couches, ones that need no slip covers. Father William and I have more or less come to terms with one another, and I do have the run of much of the house.

And oh, how I rattle about in it.

Alison moved out for the summer, and the jury is out on whether she will be back this winter; even if she is, she will be traveling for weeks at a time. The summer was so frenetic, allowed so little space for myself, I had been fantasizing about the solitude afforded by the long dark season of winter. Well, here I am in the autumn, and even with Janey back, the evenings are desperately quiet. Make no mistake, I am not saying I spend the hours in quiet desperation. But the house is so cold, no rugs, no drapes, so little furniture- it makes the prospect of a little human warmth seem an appealing one.

When I awoke yesterday, I started straight away making pizza dough for dinner. And I knew I wanted company, but I am dreadfully bad at asking for it. Making initial invitations is even worse in this little world where so many people make their own idiosyncratic schedules, it is nearly impossible to know what- precisely- someone does with their days, their evenings; what their responsibilities and habits are. Would tonight be a bad time? Are you even free to have dinner? Will you even be on-island? Is it too strange for you to have dinner with me? I decided not to ask. And then one of the builders, eternally curious about what it is I am making, noted that pizza is a social food- how could I possibly dine on it alone?

And so when later speaking to the desired dinner-guest, I gathered up all of my assertiveness, and brought the conversation around to "meeting" sometime. To talk about working together, obviously. Five torturous minutes later I had tossed in a dash of single-chef pathos, and we came to a consensus that yes, that very evening would work.

Consequently, I was not condemned to a Tuesday night pizza party for one. I put on tunes, did dishes, and prepped toppings, giddy as hell that I would have someone new to talk to. In fact I was giddy like a school girl, nerves taut as the skin on a timpani. It didn't help that the guest is renowned for being shy. While I find still-waters types fascinating, I always run up against the terror that conversation will not flow. Somewhere in a past life I must have been a champion oyster shucker- my fetish for opening shut-up shells must have some antecedent.

He arrived with Stella Artois in tow, we made small talk over the advent of the hall closet having both a door and a knob, and then moved into the kitchen to get on with the work of getting to know one another. It is not easy when you find yourself blushing, can barely make eye contact, and babble incoherently about inconsequential things. I was so tightly wound and distracted it took me forty-five minutes to put pre-prepped toppings on two pizzas. To my credit, I did not burn them.

And so the hours of the evening unfolded, kitchen to living room, back to kitchen. The conversation ebbed and flowed, and we made it through the silences that said "oh god what else can we possibly have to talk about?" And all the time, I wondered- did anyone see him arrive? The people who overheard us making plans- what must they think? Will he mention this to anyone? Everyone can see I have my porch light on... What must he think, that I invited him over for dinner, just him? And now, now I am single, something I recklessly confessed to him in the third quarter?

And it was just beer, and pizza, and ice cream. With a nice blue-eyed guy, alone and awkward together in my cavernous glass house. Belatedly I realize, given the lack of alternative options, probably those are the ingredients that constitute an island date.