Real Estate

The signs were everywhere: "FOR SALE." "FOR RENT." And a number to call. Where I pictured the same woman, drumming her brightly manicured fingernails, waiting for the old rotary to spring to life.

Last time we went to Vermont in search of ghosts; this time we ended up in a ghost town.

Not quite. But Woodstock, my old "almost Mandrake Falls" had seen the sore side of the economy, and while the breakfast diner was hopping, waitresses politely scrambling to refill our coffee and ask how we were doing with that french toast, the rest of the town seemed to be breathing a weary sigh of recession.

My favorite vintage linen and lace shop was still there, women's cloches placed jauntily on mannequins' heads in the window. (I bought two brown wool skirts and a brown wool sweater; the woman behind the counter, apparently impressed with my all-matching selection, threw in a free hat pin and scrap of brown wool that I plan to wear as my winter scarf.)

But there were patches on the town's velvety elbows. Bald spots in the fur coat.

We first noticed the bare windows of a shop on the main stretch of road traveling through town, black and white checkered floors brilliant in the sun.

"Look! For rent! Let's open a shop together."

Then we started to notice shop after empty shop. Vacant windows sat pleading to us. (Come wreck your dreams HERE! Fake your way through a business model in MY back room!) The storefronts seemed to be prime real estate at the height of the foliage tourist season, but the dollars flowed elsewhere. Even the restaurant and pub where we had eaten last year was closed, a real estate sign out front and the paper tablecloths with the scrawl of children's drawings still covering the tables inside, held down by a salt and pepper shaker still full.

"Shall we come live out our lives in a dying town?"

We imagined winter. And snow. So much snow we wouldn't know what to do with ourselves. I hoped this town would see its own spring.

The houses were all marked with the year they were built on little wooden plaques beneath the doorbell. 1808. 1827. Their impressive longevity marked by modern touches: an electric fan idling in the window, political signs in the front yard, three cars out back. Picket fences stretched along the sidewalks, freshly painted, a football helmet and pads sunning itself on a metal chair. Signs of life.

But even the old wooden shutters were half-cocked. A waddling pair of Russian tourist women passed us on their way down Route 4, clutching cigarettes. Their eyes were dim. They shouted to each other in Russian: "just one more shop." They were there, like us, to see the leaves.

And then leave.

© Zan McQuade. All rights reserved.