Chapter 11: Moving Day

Saturday, August 18, 1984

Mom went all out on breakfast: eggs, bacon, sausage, corned beef hash, fruit (including Angie’s beloved grapefruit), cottage cheese, muesli, juice, milk, toast, and pancakes. There’s no way the four of us could’ve eaten all of the food and we didn’t even try. We did thank her plenty, though!

I knew it was part of her way of saying goodbye. It probably also meant ‘Come back soon! You’re always welcome here!’ She knew we knew that, but there’s a difference between knowing and feeling.

With the stuff we’d left (and especially the furniture) she knew we planned to be back. How often? That was a different question. Thanksgiving and Christmas for sure, but besides that? We didn’t know and couldn’t tell her.

I was certain we wouldn’t move back. Summer would likely be either for traveling or for summer school. It wouldn’t be like my first life, when I had to move out of the dorm every summer until graduate school.

But we’d be back. Jas and Paige would be back. Again, and again, and again. One day with little ones in tow.

One day...

We were on the road only perhaps fifteen minutes later than planned. The Seilers were just as late, and the Nguyens were a bit later still, so we all met in front of the Nguyen house and helped them, then hit the road in a four-car caravan. The Rileys would head up at least an hour later.

I led the way, naturally. None of the parents had driven to College Station in a long time. The route wasn’t hard, and getting within a few blocks of our house involved very few decisions, but the last few blocks certainly could use some guidance, if not that much.

There were more cars today on our little street, and two small U-Haul trucks. I waved to a few of our neighbors, and they waved back, but meeting them would have to wait.

The parents, and the girls, piled out of their cars. The girls started moving boxes, while the parents gathered together at the front of the driveway.

“Wow!” Dad said. “This looks a lot better than the pictures!”

Angie, passing by with a box in her arms, said, “New paint! We didn’t take new pictures after they painted.”

“It looks very nice indeed,” Camille said. “Very... homey.”

Francis nodded along, while Mom said, “It looks big!”

“It is big,” I said. “Two stories — three if you count the finished attic, four if you count the basement. Five apartments plus a guest room. Two living rooms and a sitting area.”

“So it might be strange as a single-family house?” Jean said.

Paige nodded, saying, “Yeah. I mean, if you wanted your kids having a kitchen, it’s fine, but it’s meant for college students.”

Then she headed in, carrying a box. Cammie came out at the same time, waving. She hugged the parents, then me.

“The whole block is the same,” I said, after Cammie had greeted everyone. “All of these houses are apartment conversions, or at least that’s what I’ve heard. This one was the sore thumb until it was redone over the summer.”

Dad nodded. “You have even more apartments, though.”

“Really, the same,” I said. “One less on the second floor, but one more in the basement. Yes, the attic unit is much nicer...”

“It’s amazing!” Cammie said. “It’s night and day better than it was! I think it’s the best apartment in the house, though the master is nice...”

“It’s terrific!” Jas said, grinning.

“ ... and the basement apartment is really nice, if you don’t mind basements,” Cammie finished.

“We’re looking forward to seeing it all,” Dad said.

Tony nodded. “I’ll admit — I had my concerns at first. But this looks incredible. Much better than anything I lived in at college! At least from the outside, anyway.”

“I had a tiny little dorm room when I was at Michigan,” Dad said. “And I had to share it!”

“And your roommate is one of your oldest and best friends,” I said.

Mom laughed. “Both, if you exclude his brothers.”

Dad looked slightly abashed, but also amused.

“Well...” he said, drawing it out. “You do have a point!”

“Shall we head in?” I said, grabbing a box from my car.

“Please!” Mom said, with Camille echoing her.

I led them into the living room. The parents all stopped again, once inside.

“This is so nice!” Mom said. “The pictures didn’t do the floors justice. They’re gorgeous!”

I made a mental note to pick up on that later. The hardwood floors hiding under the carpet in Mom and Dad’s house were every bit as nice as these. If I remembered right, they were even nicer. I’d always wondered if they knew what was under the carpet. Perhaps they never had. Even if they’d had the carpet replaced (and I was pretty sure they had, at least once), they would likely have been out of the house and never looked at the floor.

“And it looks much better repainted,” Jean said.

“You can thank the Richardsons for the nicer furniture,” I said. “We’ve thanked them a few times. The other furniture came with the place.”

“I was wondering,” Camille said, chuckling.

Jas popped her head out of the master bedroom.

“Come look!” she said.

From there, it was each couple showing off their rooms. Mel also got to participate. She, her parents, and Mark and Morty arrived just as the tour made it to the attic.

We all shared doing the honors for the kitchen and basement. Mom and Dad were particularly impressed by the basement, having lived around basements much more than the others.

“This is very well done,” Dad said as we were going upstairs to the kitchen.

“The basement guy moved here from Chicago,” Angie said.

“Figures! Chicagoland to the rescue!” Dad said, chuckling.

We all went upstairs, and then the parents pitched in with the rest of the moving. We’d been taking turns along the way, so there were fewer boxes left to move, and mostly they left climbing the stairs to the kids. Mark, Morty, and I helped out with the second-floor and attic boxes.

While we were hauling boxes, several of the neighbors came by and said hello. None of them were overly memorable, but I tried to catch their names and have some idea of who they were and which houses they belonged to.

Most of them were graduate students, but a few were seniors, and there was one junior. I had to guess the demographics of the other houses were probably similar.

After we’d gotten things as settled as we wanted for now, we joined the parents in the living room. We didn’t have nearly enough seating for this many people, so many of us dragged in chairs from the kitchen or our bedrooms.

Once we were all settled, Dad said, “We all agree: this is really amazing! Great find, kids!”

Angie chuckled. “You would’ve been very skeptical about six months ago.”

“They obviously kept their word and refurbished it very nicely,” Mom said.

“Your scholarships really will pay for this?” Alex Riley asked. I was lucky that he’d given his name. I barely knew the Rileys. Certainly, of my closest friends, they were among the parents I knew the least. Of the really close friends, the only one comparable would be Laura. I’d only very briefly seen her parents, after all.

Angie nodded. “It’s tight, probably, I suppose. The rental prices were fixed back before the renovations when we committed. So far, no one has turned up for the other units, but then they didn’t know until late July if the attic or basement were really going to be attractive options this year. Obviously, they are, but we’ll see if we get other housemates once the deluge of students comes in.”

“We have veto power right now, though,” I said. “That was one of the things we got for committing. We won’t get anyone who won’t fit in.”

Alex nodded thoughtfully, as if that made sense. I felt like it really didn’t, but sometimes the best policy is to tell the truth in a way that sounds like you’re saying something you’re not. Every word of what Angie and I said was true, but none of it said what anyone would think we’d said. We set the rental prices, and so on. We’d have veto power every year, and we had indeed gotten it for committing (to buy the place).

Eventually, I would probably admit to Dad that we owned the house the whole time. Likely that would come in a rush when I also admitted to owning ten percent of a publicly traded corporation.

Likely it would be before it was publicly traded, though. I was starting to feel like we’d never get through the IPO without my name coming out. And, by ‘coming out,’ I mean winding up in the business press.

Which Dad read on a regular basis.

Mom said, “So, you might wind up with some other students living here?”

“We might,” Angie said. “We’ll just have to sit and wait. There’s quite a lot of privacy, and I imagine we’d get along with most people.”

“Besides,” I said, “It’s expensive for student housing with the rates after the renovation. Most likely most undergraduates will look to the much less expensive apartments. Plus, they advertise in the papers all the time. This one’s a bit harder to find.”

As in totally impossible — but, again, they didn’t need to know that.

“The neighborhood is mostly graduate students,” Jas said. “We’re the odd ones out, but we’re hardly the usual freshmen.”

Carol Riley chuckled at that.

“I would say not!” she said.

I suspected she was including the fact that we had three couples but only one boy — but who knew?

Morty said, “I wish we had anything nearly as nice as this! Still, we’re in a fairly nice house just north of campus.”

Mel snickered. “It’s ‘fairly nice’ because Emily balked at the first two.”

Mark said, “She was right to.”

“They stunk,” Morty added.

“Besides, she found the place,” Mark said.

They were still sometimes speaking one shared thought between the two of them. I was glad of that, really.

“Speaking of which, we have a surprise,” Mark said.

“Emily’s coming over here to pick us up tomorrow,” Morty said.

“Saves Mom and Dad a second trip to Austin,” Mark said.

“So she’ll get to drop by,” Morty said.

The logistics of that were interesting. It definitely did save Alex and Carol a bunch of driving, but Emily would drive nearly as much. I suspected some of it was Emily wanting to see us, and some of it was Mark and Morty declaring just a bit more independence.

The parents discussed the house for quite a while, praising this and that, asking questions about costs and rental terms and how things would work for renewing the lease, and so on and so forth. We deflected everything we needed to (and well, I thought). Part of that was that the truth was nearly unimaginable. Would any of them really guess that we’d bought the house, then put a bunch more money into renovations? What freshmen do that? How?