It was a strange evening now that I’ve had time to think on it and I wonder if anyone else  felt it.  Maybe strangeness is in the eye, or the mind, of the beholder.  Maybe there’s no such thing.

Last night I helped my friend Tara move into a new home.  As I drove the thirty or so minutes to her house, I tried not to be apprehensive.  It had nothing to do with the work involved.  Among other things, I was wondering what I’d say to her husband.

On Friday, he learned that neighbors had found his father hanging from the rafters in his garage.  He’d used a belt.  When Jay got the call, he was cheering on his 13-year-old son at an out-of-state basketball tournament.  Saturday instead of helping Tara pack, he spent the entire day with his siblings, trying to decide what to do.

I like helping other people move.  Every time I do I get the satisfaction of reminding myself that it’s better them than me; I can throw their junk where they tell me, then get the heck out and leave them to figure out the details.

I never met Jay’s dad but from what Tara’s told me, he wasn’t a good one.  He was mean and demanding and blamed Jay’s mother for ruining his life.  For the past 25 years, since she’d divorced him, he’d been trying to get her back but his spiteful and heavy-handed tactics drove her further away and made his three kids angry.

But she said Jay loved him and tried to keep him in his life. 

Tara and Jay have to move because they’re facing foreclosure.  Some bad luck and some bad business decisions caused them to get behind in their house payments.  They tried to negotiate with the lender but it got them nowhere; the bank raised the monthly payment to a preposterous amount.  They tried to keep up but after a while they couldn’t anymore.  After they’d blown through their savings and retirement and anything else they had, they decided to stop making the payments.  There was no point in trying to sell; she said the house was worth far less than they owed on it.

I loved that house.  I’d spent a lot of time in it and I wasn’t prepared to see it so empty; a bunch of people were already there and they’d gotten the big stuff cleared out.  I have so many happy memories of being in that place, so many good times.  I remembered standing the family room with her while it was being built, breathing in that new house smell and talking about what colors she was going to paint it and where she’d put their furniture.

Now, years later, it was empty again but of course it didn’t have that new house smell anymore.

Not long ago, they had to replace their refrigerator and she bought one of those fancy French door models, with the freezer on the bottom, shiny stainless steel, through-the- door ice and water.  When I walked in Jay and a friend were wrestling the thing onto a dolly, tightening the straps securely around it so they could get it out the door and onto the truck without it coming loose.

Because the new place already has a refrigerator (although not nearly as nice), this one is going in the garage.  How crazy is it that a $3,000 refrigerator is going to sit in a garage to be used as a spare. 

I’d irrationally thought I could somehow avoid Jay but of course he was the first person I ran into; he looked up, saw me, and nodded.  What to say?  Sorry about your dad?  About your house?  About things not working out?  I said the first thing that came to mind.

“That is one fine-looking refrigerator.”

Then I walked out of the room, mentally slapping myself upside of my head as I heard them grunt and wondering if sorry would have been the right word anyway. 

Jay and Tara live in a lovely, upscale neighborhood. You’d think not being able to afford to live here anymore would mean significant downsizing, but no, not in these strange times.  They are moving into a bigger, better house, only a street away.  This made for a very efficient move; you can actually see the new house from the backyard of the old one.

I used to live in this neighborhood.

Tara found the new house on Craigslist.  If I were looking for a gently used sofa, or a ladder, I might go to Craisglist, but I’d never think of looking there for a home, which just goes to show how times have changed.  This particular house was owned by a man from India.  He and his family had lived in it for a couple of years until he was unexpectedly transferred back there. 

He put the house on the market but, no surprise, he couldn’t sell it.  It languished for a long, long time with a For Sale sign in the front yard, until he decided he might as well become a landord.  That’s when Tara found it. 

The house is 3600 square feet of gleaming hardwood, granite countertops, two-story ceilings and a three-car garage. It is much more spacious and luxurious than the home they're ditching and it looks nearly new even though it’s almost a decade old.  In my opinion, it’s the nicest house that particular builder built in this neighborhood, in fact, the nicest floor plan of the three builders who built here.

That’s why I picked it, when I built the same house in this neighborhood, all those years ago after my husband died.  I privately called it my “Fuck you” house although I was never sure for whom that was intended.

I only know the most basic details about Jay and Tara’s financial life but he’s a self-employed personal trainer and masseuse and it’s hard for me to believe business is booming right now. His clients are well-to-do folks who can afford to have someone come to their homes and work with them privately.  Some of them are local athletes; some have chronic physical conditions that he helps alleviate but most are people who want to stay in shape and can pay Jay to help them do it when it’s convenient for them. 

One of the last things in the old house was a big, heavy suitcase-looking thing and I picked it up and started to walk out with it.  Tara stopped me.

“No, leave that.  Jay said not to bring it.” 

“What is it,” I asked.

“It’s his portable massage table.  He said to leave it.”  So I set it down and looked around for something else.

I was hesitant to go to the new house.  She'd described it to me but still, I wondered how close it would look to the one I’d left behind and what might be waiting for me inside.  I needn’t have worried.  It was different enough to almost not be the same house, and the floor plan was the mirror reverse of what mine had been.  I was hugely relieved.

Jay and Tara’s rent will be far lower than their house payment and they won’t have to pay property taxes.  Of course they won’t own it either, but she says they could probably work something out with the owner if, down the road, they decide that’s what they want.  And anyway, as she pointed out, you don’t really own a house until you get out from under the payments.

The property taxes were what did me in.  They went up every year, without fail, until I decided I’d had enough and I kicked free.

In and out we went, all night long, through the garage mostly so we didn’t track dirt in the entryway and I couldn’t help but think of Jay’s father in his own garage.  I wondered if he was thinking the same thing.

I was making up their bed and Debbie, another friend of ours, was sitting on the floor putting their clothes away when Jay came in lugging a heavy chest of drawers.  I was just about finished and ready to head home – it had been a long night - when she said to him, “Jay, Mike and I are so sorry about your father and you know, if there’s anything we can do, anything at all…”

I glanced at him.  His face was flushed and red, probably from the exertion of wrangling that dresser up the stairs by himself.  He’s a big guy but the dresser looked heavy; he should’ve had someone help him with it.

“Yeah,” he said.  “Thanks.”

I’d said those very words before, so many times, but it wasn’t until my husband died and things started to spin out of control that I realized how much I loathed hearing them, the hollowness and utter emptiness behind them.  Which is why I had no intention of saying anything like that to Jay.  And yet, what else is there, when faced with the incomprehensible?  At least the one who’s saying them gets to feel like he has a bit of control; he knows the recipient isn’t going to take him up on his offer.

I had the overpowering urge to kick my friend but she’s one of the sweetest people I know.  She’d been there all weekend long, helping Tara, from early in the morning until late at night. 

No one can ever really know another person completely, or what goes on in his head.  I don’t know Jay well at all; he’s a quiet guy and is rarely around when I’m there, hanging out with Tara.  Debbie’s known him a lot longer than I have and maybe those were exactly the words he needed to hear.

So instead of kicking her, I bent down and gave her a hug while he walked by.  Then I thought about how for the second time that night I’d done the wrong thing but luckily for me, that’s probably not what he was going to remember about the weekend.