Authors: Jane Smiley
Linda said, “You know, Mr. Nuelle, I am so sorry for the confusion.”
“What’s that?” said Gottfried.
I sneezed, which is probably why I didn’t pay attention to this little exchange. At any rate, by the time I’d blown my nose, Gottfried was sitting forward, staring at Linda Burns, who was plowing ahead, though timidly. “It seems like a small thing,” she said. “A few feet of fence is all, and yet I see it as the finishing touch. I mean, what if I went to the store and bought a birthday cake, and the cake was wonderful and the frosting was all creamy and rich, and it had beautiful red roses on it, but it didn’t have
Happy Birthday
written on it? Or, really, what’s more like it is, it had
Happy Birth
written on it, but you’d left off the
day
part. When I got it home, it couldn’t be used for a birthday, could it? No matter how great it was, no matter how good it tasted, it really couldn’t be used for what I’d intended it for.”
I said, “Maybe that’s not quite an appropriate comparison, Mrs. Burns. The house is completely useful—”
“Well, the analogy is not about usefulness really, Mr. Stratford. It’s about getting what you pay for. About wanting something to be complete before you enter into a contract. I just want everything to be perfect, and I don’t feel that it is.”
“You don’t?” said Gottfried. I knew he was thinking about the floors, the moldings, the kitchen cabinets.
Perfect
was the perfect word for her to use, since he prided himself on perfection.
“No, I don’t. My husband and I spoke about this last night for a long time, and he, of course, was willing to settle, but I just wanted to appeal to you, Mr. Nuelle. I know that Mr. Stratford is being quite uncompromising about this, and holding us to the letter of the contract and all, and I certainly wouldn’t want to lose twenty-five thousand dollars, but I have principles, and I want a split-rail fence along the front edge of the property.”
“Split-rail?” said Gottfried.
“Yes. That’s what seems right to me.”
“Split-rail in front of a Queen Anne?”
“Yes. If I’m going to live there, that’s what it’s going to have to be. I told my husband last night before bed that I would compromise, but I was up all night about it—and about the tile in the powder room.”
“The tile in the powder room?”
“Oh, yes. That’s going to have to come up right away. I can’t even go in there.”
“The tile is off white. Very neutral,” I said.
“It is
shiny
.”
I looked around the table. Gottfried was red in the face, Linda Burns was staring down at the table but pressing ahead, and Marcus Burns was looking at her with an inscrutable half smile. Just then, Mary Lou, the closing officer, came in with the papers, saying “Good morning, Gottfried, Joe. You must be the Burnses. Okay! Everything looks in order here. The mortgage is approved, of course. I spoke to the savings and loan this morning. Shall we—”
Marcus Burns stood up, held out his hand with a ready smile, and said, “Good morning to you! Beautiful morning.”
There was a long pause, and then Linda Burns said, “As I was saying—”
“That’s enough for me,” said Gottfried.
“Oh, good,” said Linda Burns. “Then we’re agreed about the fence. Split rail, along the front. I’m so happy. I think if you get it in there within two weeks, it will be fine. I don’t want to rush you, in spite of the confusion. We’ll just forget about that.” She smiled forgivingly at me. Ah, she was pretty and agreeable-looking, but I don’t think I’d ever had a buyer who seemed to me as crazy as she did at that moment.
Gottfried put his palms down on the surface of the table and pushed his chair back. The closing officer turned to look. I thought I might just not say anything, might just let this deal fall through. The Burnses wanted this house—she wanted it more than he did—and Gottfried had been moaning and complaining about the building loans for months. It was their deal, and each of them stood to get the thing he or she said they wanted. But in about two seconds, Gottfried was going to walk away, handing back the down payment and letting this crazy woman off scot-free. Did I really want to exert myself in these people’s behalf? In the end, what did I care whether she ended up with her dream house or Gottfried got his money? At the moment, my part of the commission didn’t even matter to me, sizable though it would be. But I said it anyway. I said, “Wait a minute, Gottfried. Please?”
“I told you before,” said Gottfried, “about that fence—and you brought me in here? You let this thing go on like this? What do I pay you for, Stratford?”
He paid me for exactly what I was about to do. I said, “If you’ll pardon me for saying so, I don’t see why questions of personal taste would have to be deal killers. I happen to know what you’ve paid to the savings and loan, Gottfried, to keep this house on the market. If we list it again for ten thousand more, it could take longer to find another buyer than that amount would repay you.” Linda Burns was nodding. “Your new house is almost finished. Put that on the market for ten thousand more and get rid of this one. That’s my advice.”
Gottfried’s face was stone at my advice, but at least he wasn’t purple.
Then I said, “I’ll tell you what, Mrs. Burns. This is a house, but it is also a work of craftsmanship and art. If you didn’t think so, you wouldn’t want it. I don’t personally think the analogy of buying something at the grocery store fits here, for several reasons. I have never seen a house that suited one person perfectly suit the next one perfectly. If all you are talking about is a fence and some tile, you have fewer disagreements with Gottfried’s taste than ninety-nine percent of the people I see in a year. But frankly, do you expect to find another house that you like this well? Where there are only two things you want to add or change? Most buyers I see intend to gut the place they are moving into. You are paying top dollar here, but the fact is you will have very little to do. Some people pay top dollar and then top it off with many many more dollars to make it the way they want it.”
Linda Burns wasn’t looking at me, but Marcus was smiling and nodding.
“I don’t know, this may be your second or third house, but I’ve sold lots of houses and I think this is a good match, a very good match. Gottfried is the best builder around. Besides that, I don’t think anyone will be happy if this deal falls through.” The title officer nodded and then raised her eyebrows, just subtly, as if to say, How many times do we have to go through this?
“I can’t get over it,” said Linda Burns.
I spoke soothingly. “What can’t you get over?”
“Well, I can get over the tile, but I can’t get over the fence. I just can’t. I think it should be included.”
I said, “Fine. We’ll make a separate agreement, leaving Gottfried out of it, and I will see to it that the fence is put in.”
“You shouldn’t have to,” said Linda Burns.
“Well, actually, I agree with you, but Gottfried asked me what I get paid for, and I suppose helping the deal go through is it.”
She sniffed. After a few quiet moments, the closing officer began sliding the documents across the table to each of the parties, and then, after another moment, they began to sign. I figured the fence would cost eight hundred bucks. Maybe I would split the cost with Bobby.
The room was quiet for a while. All parties acted chastened and reluctant, but they did sign. And when they were through signing, one by one, they sighed deep relieved sighs, and the whole deal started to look inevitable, the way done deals do.
I got up and went to the bathroom. On my way back, Marcus Burns met me in the hallway and clapped me on the shoulder. He was all smiles. He said, “Hey, man! That was great! I couldn’t believe it. I thought she had him, and we were going to be traipsing around to open houses for another six months. And you know, I’ll tell you something. At every open house she would have said, ‘I’m sorry we missed that other house.’” He shook his head, but affectionately, kindly. “She’s just this way. Once the whole thing is over, she loves it and can’t even remember what the problems were, but getting there puts her in a panic. Her mom’s the same way. Anyway, thanks, man. I owe you.”
I thought I’d done a good job too. As I was driving away, I ruminated pleasantly on my special talents as a Realtor: no, I wasn’t passionate about houses; and, no, I wasn’t quick and instinctive; and, no, I wasn’t a natural salesman like, say, Jack Dorfman at the Century 21 office. Jack had been a linebacker for the Pittsburgh Steelers long long ago. He had gotten out of football and into real estate before turning thirty, but he was rich and also a legend. If a buyer showed the least little interest in a house, he—or she—was guaranteed to have bought it already. Jack Dorfman just put that looker on a train and sent him down the track—next stop, closing. I never knew if it was an instinct for who could buy or subtle bullying, but he never let them off the hook and frequently pointed out at Realtors’ gatherings that if they changed their minds later, there was a whole other sale to be taken care of.
Anyway, I wasn’t like that, but, I told myself as I drove away that afternoon, I was good at shifting the balance when things began to go sour. I was even—well, you might say, eloquent. In short, I was so good at my job, I decided to take the afternoon off. I drove down to the city, where there was good food and music playing that night in about six different bars. I didn’t tell anyone where I was going.
CHAPTER
6
B
Y THE FIRST WEEK
of June, I had three of those townhouses in Phase Four presold, and I arranged to meet the buyers out at the site so they could get a look at how far along things were. Ever since the Burns closing, I had had the golden touch. The Davids, John and Pollock, had closed, and a friend of theirs with more money and more expensive taste was about to sign a contract. I had six new listings and potential buyers for all of them. I knew enough about real estate to recognize the flow of luck. There had been times when I’d done everything except bury voodoo dolls in front of the office just to get some business—that’s what it had been like in the Carter years, with interest rates approaching 14 percent and sellers knocking thousands off the price and me taking a cut in commission just to make a place a little more affordable for the buyer. Now interest rates were down from that high, though not that much—what mortgages were costing now would have killed the market in 1974. I remembered when we used to see all those Vietnamese boat people scrambling to climb onto those rickety boats back in ’79. Well, it still seemed to lots of buyers that the boat was leaving the harbor for the last time; better to get on at any price than wait for rates or prices to go down. Realtors had lots of truisms at their fingertips, about how the price of land sometimes stabilized but never declined, about how you might pay extra for the mortgage or extra for the house but it was always going to be one or the other, about how the supply of (1) good land, (2) lake frontage, (3) prime locations, or (4) terrific older houses (built, always, of finer materials, with better workmanship than available today) was limited. The lesson of every rule was buy now if you possibly can, or buy up, or take a second job. Whatever boat you were trying to get on was steaming away to the promised land, and we Realtors had the tickets.
The buyers of the presold townhouses on Anne and Elizabeth and Mary considered themselves lucky to get in on the ground floor. God only knew what the prices would be like when the places were finished and everyone in the world who wanted in would be banging down the gates.
I hadn’t been out there since April, and Gordon had done just as I suggested: put in some temporary flower beds full of nasturtiums and marigolds, along with some turf. The streets were done, and they looked bright and smooth, the way new pavement does. Gordon had even put flower boxes on the mobile home where he had the office.
I got there early—it was about 9
A.M
. on a breezy June day—and the air was fragrant with the scent of roses and lilacs from across the road along the fence that defined Phase One. The office was locked and I didn’t see Larry, so I went out on my own and took a look at the site. The foundations were in. I stood back on a little rise and looked at the picture they made: the concrete outline of each unit, including the median walls between units. The eye is always deceived by empty foundations—the surrounding landscape makes defined areas look small. But there was something else about these walls that didn’t look right. I stared at them for a moment, then realized that the formed concrete was twelve inches thick, rather than eight, and that about eight inches from the top there was a four-inch setback. The setback ran all along the fronts of the units and also around the chimney foundations. The only explanation was that Gordon had made up his mind to add brick facings up the façades of the units as well as brick chimneys. I looked around. There was no brick in evidence.
I heard the sound of a truck and went around to the mobile home. Larry was just getting out of his Dodge. He was a paunchy, cheerful older guy. He had a clipboard in hand and a Caterpillar cap on his head. He waved happily and came over to meet me.
“Look at this!” he said. “Moving right along. Weather’s been great!”
“I’ve got some buyers coming for the muddy-shoe walk-through.”
“Well, it’s like walking through a damn meadow out here. This is a fucking vacation!”
“Glad to hear you’re happy in your work.”
“I’ve been hounding Gordon to put these units up for three years.”
“What’s the deal with the setback?”
“Well, you know. They got a load of brick from somewhere like Quebec City. Brick out of the street. They’re bringing it down in a couple of days. I don’t know where they’re going to put it. Probably be hell to work with. You know—myself, I like a nice new brick, sharp edges, uniform color, looks great, but Gordon won’t look at a new brick anymore. I showed them some brick I could get for half the cost of these Canadian bricks.”
“Them?”
“You know, him and this other guy.”
“Nathan? One of the poker buddies?”
“Nah. Young guy. Good-looking. Younger than you. I don’t know where he found him, but they’re thick as thieves.”
I knew who he was talking about before he even finished talking. “Well-dressed?”
“Like a Wall Street banker every day.”
“Burns?”
“That’s the one.”
I estimated, depending on the cost of the brick, that the units had just risen in price. I said, “I thought this phase was low-ball all the way, nothing extra.”
“Oh, there’s plenty of extras. They canceled the vinyl-clad windows and ordered some wood-framed windows from this place out in Iowa. And they told me to find the tile guy, because they were changing the kitchen and bathroom flooring from linoleum to some kind of Italian tile.”
“I’ve got brochures at the printer that have certain prices on them.”
“Well, my advice, you’d better stop the presses. These improvements ought to add twenty grand, if you ask me.”
Let me say I was in a good mood that morning. The weather was gorgeous and my luck was flowing in a way that seemed permanent, maybe even a law of the universe. Therefore, while Larry talked, I nodded. No two ways about it, the units were definitely going to be nicer, not just good taste but expensive taste. Looking back, I would have to say that that’s when the eighties began, as far as I was concerned—the first week in June, 1982, when modest housing in our rust-belt state got decked out with Italian tile. The fly in the ointment, I realized, as I heard two cars drive into the gravel parking lot and saw them park next to mine, was that my presold clients were not going to qualify for them. The two-bedrooms I had priced at $49,900, the three-bedrooms at $79,900. That meant about an eleven-thousand-dollar down payment for the one, a fourteen-thousand-dollar down payment for the other, and an income of more than twenty thousand a year to qualify for a mortgage. If Gordon’s new plans added twelve or fifteen thousand to the price of the smaller unit and fifteen or twenty to the price of the larger unit, my clients would have to have an income of just over twenty thousand a year at the old price but almost twenty-five thousand a year at the new price. For the larger unit, a yearly income of twenty-four and a half thousand was sufficient at the lower price, but almost thirty-four thousand was necessary at the higher price. And as they got out of their cars and approached me, big smiles on their faces, I realized that asking almost a hundred thousand dollars for a townhouse unit in a development was an impossibility. Could not be advertised, could not be sold. It was an absurdity. But if Gordon didn’t price them that high, there was no profit to be made. I remember thinking that whatever Marcus Burns was telling Gordon—and why would he be telling Gordon anything to begin with?—between the two of them they clearly had no idea what they were doing with these townhouses. I was sorry. I had been so busy with my own clients and Felicity (and that was a problem too, because obviously I had been avoiding the Baldwins out of guilt), I had failed to do my job for Gordon and make sure he knew what income niche he was in with these units. I wanted to call him right then, but of course here came the DiGenovas and right behind them the Monahans, and I had some explaining to do.
The DiGenovas were young and the Monahans were old. Mrs. DiGenova was carrying a baby on her hip, which Mrs. Monahan moved toward immediately. I saw her lean down and smile at the child and hold out her finger, which the baby grasped. Mrs. DiGenova laughed, then glanced at her husband. Mr. Monahan hung back for a moment. The Monahans didn’t have children of their own. He was a machinist in Portsmouth. Their income was $23,000 per year. I had helped them fudge a bit on their asset-and-debt ratio in order to qualify for the mortgage. Mr. DiGenova taught math at the high school. He made $17,000 per year and supplemented it with summer school teaching, another $5,000. Mrs. DiGenova had a typing service. She made $5,000 a year. They qualified for the old price of the three-bedroom unit, but not the new. They weren’t fudgeable in any way that I could see. As I shook Mr. DiGenova’s hand, I began thinking of other properties I knew that might work better than this one.
The baby had let go of Mrs. Monahan’s finger, and she had begun to walk around inside one of the foundations. She called out, “Oh, this seems so spacious! I can’t believe we could be in by September!”
I saw Larry coming toward me again. I made a little gesture to wave him off and he turned on his heel and went back inside the trailer. In a few minutes, all four of the clients were wandering around, stepping over the foundations, standing in various corners and trying to imagine what the finished product would look like. Pretty soon, Larry came to the door of the trailer again, stood there for a minute, then came over to me. The four of them, who had only asked me where the front doors were, where the back doors were, and where the advertised garden space was, were on him in a second. It was an enlightening encounter. When could they choose the carpet colors? Well, actually, said Larry, there would be a choice of pine floors, hardwood floors, or carpet. There were several pricing options. How were the bathrooms going to be outfitted? Simply, I thought. Pedestal sinks, shower-tub combinations. But no, said Larry. Tiled shower stalls and separate tubs. He-and-she sinks were the newest thing. Everyone was smiling. Tile? In every master bath, he disclosed. “I love tile,” said Mrs. Monahan. “We have linoleum now, but my sister in California has tile all over the place.”
“Holds up over the long run,” said Larry. “These places are going to be real investments.”
Mr. DiGenova took the words right out of my mouth. “Too bad the neighborhood isn’t a little nicer.”
I kept smiling, and I did not let myself nod, but he was exactly right. Phase Three, the expensive phase, was a good ways up the hill from us. Phase Four looked out for the most part on Phase One, in which there might not be a single tile, a single divided light window, a single hardwood floor. Phase Four had been meant to fill in the last bits of the property with some quick moneymaking housing. I’d been a smoker once; now I wished I had a cigarette.
More questions: How about garages? Didn’t look like room for those. No garages, said Larry. The buyers looked disappointed. Tile but no garages, I thought. Wood-framed windows but no garages. He-and-she sinks but no garages. Larry said, “They changed the façade, you know. Bricks from Quebec City, Quebec, up in Canada. Beautiful weathered brick.”
“That will be very nice,” said Mrs. Monahan. “My sister’s place in California is all board-and-batten. You know, it doesn’t matter how much it costs, I always think board-and-batten looks cheap. Brick, especially old brick, looks so nice.”
We walked around for half an hour or more. It did not occur to any of the buyers, man or woman, to ask if prices would remain the same, and I said nothing. I saw them off.
I got in my car and went straight over to Gordon’s. There were five cars in the driveway, four BMWs and a Caddy. Gordon, Betty, Bobby, and either Norton or Leslie. Norton lived in New Jersey, where he managed shore properties. Leslie was the prolific one; she had six kids and her husband was a hospital administrator at East Portsmouth Community Hospital. Through the window of Gordon’s office, I saw they were gathered around the pond in Adirondack chairs. The visitor was Leslie; four of her kids were gamboling in the pond or hanging on the rope swing. Everyone was wearing shorts and light shirts except Marcus Burns, who had on green-gray slacks and a tan sport coat.
Everyone turned as I came down the lawn and shouted friendly greetings. Gordon got up and came to meet me, his hand out to shake mine. Betty got up too, to get me a beer out of the cooler. “Hot, huh?” said Gordon. “What a day. How ya doin’, Joey?” He slapped me on the back. “See? Leslie’s got the kids here! What a crowd. Look at that little Marcy! If she isn’t the spit of our Sally, I don’t know about it.”
A tall slender eight-year-old with blond hair to her shoulders and a sassy look about her paused as she was crossing the lawn and gave me a sideways glance, then ambled on. “She does,” I said. “She does look like Sally.”
Gordon propelled me toward Betty, who exclaimed, “Look at us! We aren’t getting a thing done today! You know Marcus Burns, Joey. Joey is like a son to us,” she said to Marcus. Marcus stood up with a grin, and he, too, took my hand. I felt like I was supposed to be asking someone to marry me. Oh, yeah. Felicity. Ah, Felicity. I kissed Betty on the cheek, wondering if she had once been, or still was, as wanton as Felicity. Why not?
Bobby hadn’t come into the office today, though he’d been back at work for over a week by then, hobbling to showings with a cane. He unwrapped his ankle every morning and displayed it to me, swollen and still a little bruised, though getting better, and now he leaned forward and began to unwrap his Ace bandage. I put my hand on his shoulder. He said, “No, really, it’s interesting. There’s this bump over the outside here that just isn’t going away. I’m sure it’s broken.” He finished unwrapping his foot and dropped the bandage in the grass. “If you touch it in just the right way, and push it, it wiggles back and forth.” He did so.
“I’m telling you,” said Leslie, “you should have insisted on an X ray.”
“I did insist on an X ray, but you know I was delirious with the pain, and maybe I didn’t make sure that they X-rayed that part. I can’t remember a thing at this point. But look at this! Give me your hand.”