WHAT REALLY HAPPENED AT 777 PINE STREET?
WE WALKED INTO THE HOUSE FOR THE FIRST TIME ON AN IMPECCABLE AUTUMN AFTERNOON, the kind where the light takes on the hue of burnished gold. It was October of 2009, and we were looking at homes in a small, appealing town in Pennsylvania’s Lehigh Valley. The place had been staged for our visit, of course, but the red and burnt-yellow leaves falling from an old maple tree in the backyard twirled and waltzed with an unpremeditated perfection. There was a huge hearth and a brick patio and a seven-foot cedar fence surrounding the garden, which at almost an acre was massive for a house in town. Ann and I took this in through two enormous living room windows – like twin IMAX screens projecting visions of some impossibly idyllic domestic life.
The house itself had a heft and audacity that was striking. Built in 1955, the four-bedroom ranch-style home sprawled out and up over 3 000 square feet (278 m2), a funky amalgam of slabs and angles and cantilevered windows. The kitchen, though filled with dated appliances, was roomy and warm, a potential nexus of conversation and aromatic meals. The vast basement was segmented into five rooms; one of them housed a billiards table and featured the word ‘POOL’ in raised letters on the door. The only other home we’d owned had been a creaky 1800s farmhouse that had seemed to tilt in the wind; by contrast, this was a fortress.
On the way out, we stopped by the windows. ‘There’s no way we can afford this,’ Ann said, ‘but it would be such a cool place to have a party.’
Afterwards, we shook off the spell. It was impractical, too big for a family of three. But a few weeks later, the price dropped, and we asked for another look, and began a series of what-ifs and yeah-buts: If we did this, we would need to replace at least part of the roof; the furnace was ancient; and the upstairs… What was the deal with the upstairs? It was seemingly once a buttoned-on in-law apartment, but it was now gutted down to studs and subfloor.
And yet. The house was so big, we could rent out the second floor, which would cover some costs. And what if the roof really wasn’t so bad? What if the furnace held out for a winter or two?
All we knew for sure was that we wanted to live in that house. Years later, I remember that I had tried to talk Ann into it, and she recalls fervently selling me on the idea. Maybe both recollections are true.
The inevitable gut-check moments followed. Our inspector filled a binder with notations that, in the restrained language of his vocation, suggested that we faced some headaches. The seller appeared to have surrendered over the years to a series of systemic complications.
‘Guys,’ our real estate agent cautioned, ‘this place is cool, but there’s a lot of work here. I don’t want you to never be able to go on vacation.’
We listened to all of this and heard none of it. Individually and as a couple, we tended to absorb the conventions of adulthood solely so we could flout them. We quit jobs to travel, embarked on challenging self-guided adventures. We eloped in western Canada. Sure, I was a writer who possessed few home-improvement skills, but Ann liked that sort of thing. The risk was part of the appeal.
The day we closed on 777 Pine Street, we showed friends the empty, echoey upstairs. There were grooves in the floor where walls once stood; a forlorn, half-torn-out section of red carpet was the only sign that anyone had ever lived there. Except that, when you looked closer, there were some curious features. A ladder led up a false chimney; at the top was a submarine-style hatch from which it was possible to poke your head out. During the inspection, we’d discovered a secret compartment: a section of shelving that opened on a hidden hinge when you pressed on it, like something out of a pre-CGI James Bond movie. A series of miniature doors fed into a crawl space that encircled the apartment. And the passageway led past a carpeted room, four feet high and eight feet deep (1.2 m × 2.4 m), with a chain-operated
