Just Listed: Hardwood Floors and a Generous Curse

by Valerie Sirenko

I list the house for just $1.8 million, even though this is the Bay Area. I’ll say it’s because you can hear the highway—just beyond the patio, up a steep hill—but in this market, buyers can’t be picky about something as trivial as highway noise.

The other noises are less trivial.

An hour before the open house, the aroma of baking brownies permeates the kitchen and drifts into the tastefully staged dining room. My target’s husband is a sucker for brownies. For the wife, I make sure the table settings are gold with opal inlays, and I swap out the stock artwork for framed photographs of the Olympic Mountains.

I need the Parks to buy this house.

288 Creekwood Drive has been on the market twelve times in fifteen years. It was vacant for months before I graciously offered to take the listing off my colleague’s hands. Trailer homes sell for half a million in less time than that. Still, I have a reputation for offloading “unusual” properties. It’s all about finding the right buyers.

Lucille Park, a business consultant from Seattle, is here to establish a satellite office for her firm, but it’s clear to me from weeks of scrying that she’s not convinced she needs to live here. When their flight lands at SFO, she posts a shot of the bay on Instagram captioned, Considering a possible change of perspective. She and her husband aren’t even planning to look at houses. We’ll see about that.

I put on a loud, instrumental piece that verges into high, off-pitch notes that could be called avant-garde; it covers the wailing coming from the backyard.

I’m pulling steaming brownies from the oven when a roll of thunder drowns out the buzz of traffic. No, we do not usually get thunderstorms in the Bay. The clouds move in and settle over 288 Creekwood Drive. A light drizzle hits the picture windows.

No one steps through the door for the open house.

When the subdivision was built, zoning laws had to be amended to allow construction this close to the Preserve. There was an ecological study, of course, but no one checked for thunderbird nests. Seven hatchlings were killed. Although—can you call them hatchlings if they were still in their shells?

I thought all I had to do was console the grieving mama thunderbird. Help her process her loss, convince her to move on. Fifteen years is a long time, even for creatures that live centuries.

At first, the thunderbird accepted my offering of seven snapped pine boughs, sticky with sap and wrapped in honeysuckle. She perched on the back fence, her grey head sagging like a crumbling fountain. Her wings had bald spots, and mist sprayed my face in puffs as she lost more feathers.

“They were still in their shells,” I said, stroking her cloudy chest, which dissolved upon my touch to reform moments later. “They felt no pain.”

Rain ran into my eyes, stinging my contacts.

“You don’t have to stay here. You don’t have to grieve what never existed.”

A screech rent the air, drowning out the highway. I pulled my hand back, chest pounding.

I took a breath and tried again. “You can have another clutch.”

Have you ever said the exact wrong thing?

Lightning struck a patio chair, singeing the hairs on my arm. The smell of ozone invaded my nostrils.

I held up my hands. “I’m sorry!”

She brought her hooked beak very close to my face.

My arms trembled. “How long is the mourning period for your kind?”

Her rancid breath struck my cheek as she screamed. Her talons flexed, cracking the fence down its center.

I swallowed. “Take as much time as you need.”

As for the house, I needed a different approach. After weeks of studying the Parks, everything is ready.

The open house is almost over, but I’ve put a hex on the Uber driver picking them up from the airport. A few wrong turns, a casual comment about the views from Laurelwood Park, and they’ll be here momentarily.

The rain has made the ground soggy, and the retaining wall needs structural repair. I hope the Parks don’t look too closely at the inspection report.

A male voice drifts from the entranceway. “Just a quick peek. Smells great.”

“We really don’t have—oh.”

Lucille steps inside. Her eyes drift across the snow-tipped mountains on the walls. Her heels click across the hardwood floor. Her husband, a step behind, glances toward the kitchen.

I bring forth a plate of brownies, smiling wide. “Help yourself.”

Lucille eyes the upstairs landing, which overlooks the foyer. A hallway leads to the master and two bedrooms with an adjoining bath. Her voice goes flat. “We obviously don’t need a third bedroom.”

“Guest room for your mom?” her husband suggests between mouthfuls.

She makes a sound and walks out of the room.

Contrite, he chews his brownie. “How are the schools?” he asks.

My throat tightens. With the music screeching, I’m pretty sure Lucille cannot hear us.

“Fine,” I answer, voice low. “Better than average.”

He swallows. “So…lots of kids in the neighborhood?”

I nod, lips pressed together. Lucille has returned.

She places herself by the floor-to-ceiling windows, rain dripping down the panes. The patio furniture is wet and uninviting.

“Reminds me of home,” she says.

But I know it’s more than that.

Lucille steps toward the patio door. The music has stopped. I am sure she can hear the wailing.

Her husband chuckles. “I thought the Bay Area was supposed to have better weather than Seattle.”

“I like it,” Lucille says. “It’s comforting.”

She grasps the handle and pulls. Raindrops splatter onto the hardwood.

She steps outside into the thunderbird’s grief, and her body relaxes. She turns her face up to the clouds, as if recognizing a familiar face. Rain drenches her eyelids, her mouth, her clothes. Water runs in crooked lines down her bare arms.

The tension in her body eases as she listens to an echo of the grief she has not been able to show the world. Her fingers flutter, pressing against the flat of her stomach. How do you mourn the passing of a cluster of cells?

Lucille comes back inside. Her face is dripping. I hand her a towel, and we get started on the paperwork.

Valerie Sirenko is a speculative fiction writer who lives in the Bay Area, California. She is an alum of Futurescapes, and her scholarship and book reviews have appeared in journals such as American Literature. She received her Ph.D. in English from the University of Texas at Austin, where she taught literature and writing.