I pretended to want to buy a house so I could go inside it

Never Done: I pretended to want to buy a house so I could go inside it

In the beginning of Jeff Lipsky's latest film, Twelve Thirty, two teenagers go into an open house, and pretend to be adults shopping for their first home. I responded to a Craigslist ad that sounded promising, and it turned out to be an ad for a brownstone on my block. A brownstone about which I'd been super curious. A brownstone that costs way more than I can afford, because it's on 13th Street, right next to Prospect Park. But when the woman on the phone asked me if I could afford $1.7 million, I mumbled something about it being close to my price range. Yep, I lied. Because I wanted to see the inside of that house. There's a mide (middah) about lying. Actually, it's about Truth: Say nothing unless you are 100% sure it's true. Ummmm.

I guess part of the Mussar practice is to spend some time examining why we don't uphold the mides (middot.) Not necessarily justifying or judging, but examining. In that spirit, I'm going to go ahead and be honest and admit that I was just plain curious. I wanted to see the inside. And it was fascinating. The house has been in the same family since 1927, and I think they've been smoking cigarettes since 1928. Right now, there are three sisters, their cousin, and their uncle living there. Both their parents died recently within 9 weeks of each other. The house felt like the grief that interrupts continuity.

In fact, the house itself had been interrupted for some time. It is set up like an SRO, full of family members. One sister lives in the front room on the ground level. The cousin is squeezed into a rear room on the same floor. The uncle has a little room on the main floor, and two of the sisters each have a room on the third floor. The third floor living room was equipped with twin hospital beds, recently occupied by their parents. They all seem to live, for the most part, behind closed doors. One seems to be a hoarder. Most seem to be depressed. One seems to be holding the whole family together. I would be lying again if I didn't say that it felt like a theater set in which the house was actually the main character of the play.

And as we walked through the house, I became sad that this family has to move out, and yet it also seems like they're ready for the change. I started to wonder what's going to happen to the house itself, which is peeling and dripping and slanted and permeated with smoke. It made me sad to think of the renovations to come -- the granite counter tops and the cherry cabinets that will come in and replace the linoleum and pine. The back yard concrete slab that will be pulled up, and the plantings of native grasses that will go in. And even though all that would make it more beautiful (well, not the granite counter tops; I pretty much hate granite counter tops) I still empathize with this house, which has known just one family for the last 84 years, as it prepares itself for what comes next.