Betty’s house

Betty’s house is an inherited family home in Linfield that Alex Nilsen lives in and repairs after his grandmother’s death. Its worn, distinctive interior carries traces of Betty’s life, while Alex’s attachment to it gives the building practical and emotional weight: it is a place he cannot easily imagine selling, and a possible setting for the future he hopes to build with Poppy.

Inheritance and Physical History

Betty’s house is a funky quad-level built in the early 1960s. Its living room still has the original orange-and-yellow floral wallpaper. Brown carpet covers the hardwood and tile, including the bathroom, because Betty had it installed after she slipped and broke her hip several years earlier. The house therefore records both its age and a particular accommodation to its former occupant: the flooring is not simply an outdated finish, but a response to an accident that changed how Betty moved through her home.

The building’s details sit alongside Poppy’s memories of Betty, whom she met only a few times but loved. Betty was tiny and fierce, devoted to murder mysteries, crocheting, spicy food, and modern art. She told the family how she had fallen in love with a priest who left the priesthood to marry her; eight months later, she said, Alex’s mother was born with Betty’s thick dark hair and a nose like Alex’s grandfather’s. These family stories give the house a human history beyond its wallpaper and carpet. It belongs to a woman remembered through her enthusiasms, her marriage, and the family that followed.

Alex’s Home and the Question of Staying

After Betty dies, she leaves the house to Alex’s father. He wants to sell it, but the property needs work he does not have the time or money to undertake. Alex moves in and begins fixing it up, taking on the labor that makes continued use of the house possible. The inheritance thus passes through Alex’s father, but Alex becomes the person living inside the house and tending to it.

When Poppy asks whether the house is part of Alex’s uncertainty about his future, he says that it is. He loves the place and does not know whether he could bear to sell it. Renting it out is floated as an alternative, but Alex’s practical attachment remains: he says he owes only property taxes. The smallness of that financial obligation contrasts with the difficulty of the decision. The house is not presented as a costly burden that forces him to stay; rather, its value to him makes leaving or selling emotionally consequential.

The house is only one part of Alex’s hesitation about leaving Linfield. He also thinks about his father, brothers, nieces, and nephew, while acknowledging that there may be other things keeping him there. Poppy guesses that one of those things could be a woman, but Alex declines to discuss the subject. The conversation leaves the house within a wider field of attachments, rather than treating it as the sole reason for his indecision.

The Future Alex Wants

In a more forceful conversation with Poppy, Alex makes explicit the kind of life he wants: marriage, children and grandchildren, growing old with his wife, and living in one house long enough for it to smell like the people who inhabit it. He wants to choose furniture and paint colors and take part in the everyday life of Linfield that Poppy has assumed he finds unbearable. He also says he does not want to wait indefinitely, because no one knows how long they have. His declaration makes the house’s renovation more than maintenance. Repairing a family home and imagining new paint colors belong to the ordinary, lasting domestic life he describes wanting.

That desired permanence is tested against the couple’s actual circumstances. After Alex has been living full-time in New York City for five months, Poppy finds that daily life together can feel like a vacation that does not require going home. Yet their weeks include work, grading, lesson planning, laundry, dishes, taxes, dentist appointments, and lost MetroCards. Their shared life is no longer limited to travel, but neither does it erase the question of where they will settle. The couple’s earlier temporary spaces underline the difference: the Desert Rose Apartment Complex is a bright resort setting, while its studio has one open room and only a bathroom door. Betty’s house, by contrast, is a family property that can be worked on and inhabited over time.

Return and Significance

The couple’s plan for the following summer joins travel to a deliberate return. They expect to spend four days in Norway and four in Sweden, without staying at the Icehotel, which they cannot afford. Afterward they will fly directly to Linfield for the rest of Alex’s summer break. They will stay in Betty’s house while Alex continues repairs and Poppy sits on the floor eating Twizzlers and trying to make him blush. Together they plan to strip wallpaper and choose paint colors, then share diet soda dinners with Alex’s father, brothers, nieces, and nephew. They will also sit on the porch with Poppy’s parents and consider how their hometown fits them now.

The return is framed as an experiment rather than a settled verdict: they will try Linfield on again, as they have been trying on New York together, and see where they want to be. Betty’s house gives that question a concrete place and a set of tasks. It is inherited rather than newly chosen, marked by Betty’s tastes and later repairs, but Alex and Poppy imagine adding their own work to it. The plan does not resolve whether Linfield will become their permanent home. Instead, Poppy’s certainty that wherever Alex is will be her favorite place shifts the measure of belonging from a fixed address toward their relationship, even as the house remains a serious possibility. Betty’s house matters because it holds both meanings at once: a real home with family history and a possible setting for a shared future that the couple has not yet decided where to build.