the white house

Many days I drive along Sunset Street on my way home from a work errand.  Driving by, I always admired a small white frame house – vintage 1946 or so – that was set apart from the other houses on the street.   It was a pristine house, very simple and well kept, sitting in the middle of an expanse of grass with no fences, no complicated landscaping - just the house and its clean white color creating a satisfying contrast with the background trees and green grass.

It was for sale for quite awhile.  I told my friend Fran who is looking to buy a home about it.  “You might look at this lovely little house on Sunset,” I told her. To myself, I thought, “The house reminds me of a young girl sitting in the grass with her new dress spread around her at a picnic.”

One day I drove by and the for sale sign was gone and so was the house.  A bulldozer was sitting in the middle of the lot next to an excavated place where the basement had been. A large sign with a well designed logo from a building company or bank was posted inviting inquiries.  Lately several new structures are going up.  They are at this point situated along one side of the property so perhaps new buildings  are to come.  To my eye the spacing is off with these new buildings.  Like too many apples and pears in a still life. There is a kind of “more bang for the buck” feel to it. Today, a red haired man was getting out of a white car as I drove by. He was gazing at the building site as he closed the car door. 

“You never know” I thought.   I’d imagined an identity for the white house, and the for sale sign was part of the story.  Who would buy the house?  Would they landscape?  Remodel?   That it might disappear between one drive and another did not occur to me.   I remember feeling unsettled, the day I drove by and saw the empty lot.  Perhaps I felt that way because the actual story of the house was more true to life than the one I was imagining.  Or perhaps because the new story is not one I had thought up myself.