Coveting Stucco

by Tori Malcangio

Paul is cooking two organic eggs, which are considerably more kind than the nonorganic variety. Something about hens—and any animal with a decent-sized brain stem—needing space to practice self-sufficiency and homemaking. The eggs sizzle and spit. Paul watches, analyzing, perhaps, the human condition in relation to the eggs’—should he turn them into a scramble or let them be over easy? This instead of Mass. Genuflection at the sight of sugar turning to candy, prayer books flipped to Quick Breads—we prefer communion in the company of double boilers and yeast starters. Just when I think he’s going to let the yolks carry on whole, he pierces them both. Yellow mottles white, and white mutes yellow. Paul sighs.

“Might as well go check out that development in Canyon Ranch, the new one they’ve been blasting on the radio nonstop.” Last week, we agreed to spend Sunday in a park or beach, some place without a roof. “Guess they’ve got some huge homes going up.” He pours a glass of mango juice while the eggs cook to an inedible crisp.

Every Sunday we tour model homes. After feeding the baby and hydrating adequately, we allot at least a four-hour window for falling in love. The kind of throbbing, unrequited love based purely on unvested wealth and enormous walk-in closets. First, we fall for the sales people. Their smiles and snugly warmth to “Work with us,” to help us get into the “Home of our dreams.” They gush with niceties about my eyelashes, my baby, my scent. Such pleasant people as a whole, I can’t help but feel moved to fight for their cause and/or fund their children’s educations. Then, the uncracked concrete, smooth as four-week old concrete should be. I remind Paul that eventually, all concrete cracks. It’s the nature of concrete. Never judge a home by its concrete. He says that if you find the best concrete people, concrete doesn’t crack. We will get the best concrete people this time, he says. And the virgin toilets—we’re suckers for the tight seal on top, that white, impenetrable plastic barrier. And the tape securing handle to tank, we love its implied promise: This toilet has never been flushed, not once.

Paul digs through the utensil drawer. “This kitchen is killing me, I can’t find a spatula.” I agree. The potential for organization is clearly dependent on quantity of drawers. Newer, bigger drawers tucked under counter tops with turnstiles and dedicated pull-outs for garbage, lobster pots, and spices we’ll let go rancid.

I dress the baby and secure enough diapers and bottles for a side trip to Buenos Aires. Paul honks from the garage to get us moving or excited, maybe both. This might be it: The One. The one house made for us, built to the specs of our new, growing family in a tight-knit community designed to fortify those dreams of establishing roots in a place built with apple-pie ideals, rich with the kind of civic pride we thought was gone with the eight-track, where what we want tomorrow is being planned today. That’s what the radio ad said.


When we pull up, red, white, and blue balloons are tied to a black metal fence enclosing the three not-so-distinct models. The themed landscaping does help distinguish: the palm-and-sub-tropicscape,
the Old New England-climbing-vines-and-trellises-scape, the desert-scrub-and-itsy-bitsy-rock-scape. I nab the balloon whipping itself most silly in the wind and tie it to my purse for the baby to bat.

The Sales Lady welcomes us and hands us a stack of floor plans, pricing, blah, blah, I don’t hear a word she says, I can already smell new carpet. She’s exceptionally thin, and the jawbreakers on her desk help keep her blood sugar and voice pitched high, her breath fruity. Paul thanks her for the welcome treatment, and we walk through French doors and down cobblestone steps. Music is
hiding in the greenery.

“This one’s it,” Paul yells from downstairs where he’s admiring The Parlor. “Let’s do it, game over. Done and done again. Is the checkbook in the car? Tori, did you hear me? I love this house, hon. Totally, one-hundred-percent love it.”

“Yep, heard you. I’m in too, love. This one’s a no-brainer,” I yell back down from upstairs in Bedroom Four. “Get up here, you have to see this craziness. Who thinks up this shit?”

I’m standing in Bedroom Four; a ten-by-ten room done up in a surfer motif. The light fixture is hung by two surfboard leashes. The mirror is framed in a series of surfboard rudders. The bedspread looks like a shirt Laird Hamilton might wear to a BBQ. Wood-carved letters spelling out Cowabunga hover above the twin bed.

“Paul, seriously, you’ve got to come in here and check this out.” The awe in my voice is compelling. I hear him stomping up the dark wood stairs—Brazilian walnut, I think.

“Where are you?” he yells. The house is big. I look at the spec sheet to confirm its excess: 3,700 square feet. Big enough to put the baby to bed, leave my husband to his own devices with some cake flour and a James Beard Cookbook, and escape to a room—any room—and feel wonderfully, totally abandoned.

He finds me in Bedroom Four with the baby slung on my hip. All three of us stare transfixed by the sheer inventiveness of an interior designer gone apeshit—the rudders, the leashes, the Laird Hamilton chi. We agree on its categorical genius and decide to move on to Bedrooms Two and Three.

“I love the floor plan,” I say. “So open.” On our way to Bedroom Two, we pass the Laundry Room. All the doors are removed, an optical illusion, Paul says, to make everything feel more open. Already I’m feeling duped. I look inside.

“You’ve got to be kidding. This is huge,” I say. “Who needs a laundry room this big?” The tile is pleasant and white and geometric. I take note of it for when we sit down with a designer to choose upgrades.

“You’re going to love it, perfect for doing crafts with the kids.” He’s never used the word crafts before, nor implied my participation in them. A table in the middle of the room, topped with a basket of crayons, paint, rubber cement, and other handpicked props hinting, I think, at the super room’s vast possibilities. Hanging on the wall above the table is a wood-picket fence post scribed with: COLOR YOUR WORLD IN CREATIVITY. We make eye contact, smile insanely, then continue our trek to Bedrooms Two and Three.