Only the Crazy Fall in Love

The first morning in my new home I woke up to the smell of wet paint and the radiator conspiring against the March cold. That day held all the promise of a new school year. With the residency finished. The house remodeled. About to start work. And Joe… standing out there on that cold morning, about to discover I was the love of his life. I got out of bed and looked around, proudly noticing the blue walls and the antique bedspread. I walked barefoot to the kitchen, admired the countertops and the shiny porcelain sink. I turned on the coffee maker and sighed happily and gratefully. While the coffee was brewing, I rummaged through a still-unpacked box. I found what I was looking for, returned to the kitchen as the coffeemaker emitted its last gurgles, poured myself a cup, sat down, and focused my attention on the object in front of me. An eight-by-ten photograph showed Joe Carpenter silhouetted against the sky, shirtless, as he nailed a board to a roof. The black-and-white photo showcased his perfectly formed arms as he performed this seemingly mundane task, which, in its elegance, seemed pure poetry. He was slightly turned away, but enough of his face was visible to tell how handsome he was. The caption read: The aptly named Joe Carpenter of Eastham is working on the restoration of the Penniman House . How had I gotten that photo? I'd called the newspaper to send it to me, thank you very much. It had appeared in the Boston Globe , and they'd never suspected I wasn't Joe's mother, as I claimed to be. Sometimes having the name of an elderly lady comes in very handy. After all, they wouldn't have believed me if my name had been Heather or Tiffany… Of course, I couldn't have this photo on display, so I saved it for special moments. And this was one of those moments, so I regarded the image with the reverence it deserved. "It all starts today, Joe," I said, feeling rather stupid. Still, I ran my finger over the image of the man I had loved for so long, and the feeling of idiocy dissipated like the fog of first impressions. morning hour–. You're about to fall in love with me. From now on, everything I do will be for you. I resisted the urge to kiss the photo, stood up, and walked around my small house, cup in hand, reveling in simply being there. Owning a house on Cape Cod is quite an accomplishment… one I hadn't had to work hard for. My grandmother had died shortly after Christmas. Reading her will, I discovered, to my great surprise and joy, that she had left her house to me… and only me. The modest house had the Cape's required cedar planks, slightly bleached by the sun and salt air. There was no yard, just a pile of pine needles, sand, and moss. But the house was invaluable because it sat on the protected land of Cape Cod National Seashore Park. That meant they would never build there, they would never have a new neighbor, and it was fairly close to the water (four hundred and fifty yards to be exact, though the ocean was nowhere to be seen). Yet they could hear the lapping of the Atlantic waves, and at night the glow of the Nauset Lighthouse pierced the darkness. For months, I'd been commuting there from Boston to work on the house: sanding the floors, painting the walls, organizing my grandmother's things. And the end result was a pleasing amalgamation of old and new. My grandmother's stool sat next to my glass coffee table, a new bedspread covered her old beige sofa, and a lovely watercolor hung on the wall where John Kennedy used to be shown praying. I stared at the warm yellow I'd chosen for one of the living room walls and decided it looked fantastic. Then I went into the bathroom to admire the pink flamingos my mother and I had stenciled on the pale green walls. "Wait till Joe sees that," I fantasized. "He'll never want to leave." I stuck my head in the bathroom cabinet to see how much space I had. The place still smelled of lemon