Where We Belong (46 page)

I pulled the listing out of my shirt pocket, where it had been for three days, changing shirts when I did. I unfolded it and read it from beginning to end for about the tenth time.

“Doesn’t say.”

“Well, we’ve come this far. We can at least scope it out from a distance.”

There was a realtor’s sign hanging on a wooden post at the intersection of the highway and the driveway. But I couldn’t see a house at all. Just trees. But the trees looked nice. Too nice. It looked like a farm or a ranch, all out in the middle of nowhere and heavenly. Which meant we didn’t belong there.

I was more sure than ever. There had to be a catch.

Paul took two color fliers out of a Plexiglas box mounted on the wood post. Where I never would’ve thought to look.

“Here, take one of these,” he said.

I squinted at it in the sun, and it turned out to be a sheet of information about the property. It gave me a funny feeling in the pit of my stomach. Like I definitely didn’t belong, and the realtor knew it, and the flier knew it, and the sign knew it. Even the post that held up the sign knew I didn’t belong.

“Whoa,” he said. “That
is
cheap. Well. Let’s go see what the catch is.”

We walked down the dirt driveway together until a house peeked out from the trees. When we saw it, we both stopped in our tracks.

“Oh,” I said. “That would be the catch, all right.”

It didn’t even look like a place a person could live. The roof sagged, the porch sagged. The paint was half peeled away. Some of the windows were broken. You could look in and see nobody lived there. Nobody had lived there for quite awhile.

“So much for worrying about disturbing the occupants,” he said.

“I guess we can go now. Sorry I wasted your time.”

“Now wait. Now hold on a minute. Don’t be so quick to run off.”

We just stood there for another minute, looking at it.

Then I said, “Still not looking any better.”

“Well, no. It wouldn’t. The only way it’s going to look any better is if somebody puts hundreds of hours of work into it.”

“Are you saying I should still think about our buying it?”

“I don’t know yet. I don’t know.”

He walked up onto the porch, testing his weight first. I followed him. We looked through the windows. There was nothing inside but a few loose floorboards and a ton of dust.

“That’s a lot of work,” I said.

“I’ll grant you that. But your family has never owned a home before. Sometimes young families get into a first home by taking one nobody else wants, and making it into something with sweat equity.”

“I have no idea what that is.”

“It’s like elbow grease.”

“Excuse me?”

“Work. Good, hard work.”

“Oh. Why didn’t you say so?”

“I did.”

“Oh. Right.”

“You’d have to get a home inspection. Make sure the foundation is in good shape, and the floors are solid. Make sure the termites haven’t eaten most of it away. If the basics are good, the rest is more or less cosmetic. Except you’d need new porch boards. And a new roof.”

“That can’t be cheap.”

“True. So here’s what you do. You go to the real estate agent, and you say, ‘I’m interested in the house, but I’d need to put thousands into a new porch and roof, so you’ll need to come down on the price.’”

“And then she’ll say, ‘Why do you think we priced it so low to begin with?’”

“Maybe. Depends on how long it sits on the market. And whether the seller is in a hurry.”

“You think that might work?”

He peeled a strip of paint off the windowsill and looked closely at the wood underneath. “I think it’s one of those things like whether the fish are biting.”

“Right,” I said. “Got it.”

“I could show you how to replace the panes of glass in a window. That and new door locks and about forty man hours of cleaning, and you could live in it as is until the rains come. Don’t get your hopes up, though. Don’t make the assumption that no one wants it, because it’s ugly. Someone with money could swoop in here and take it for the land. Tear this thing down to its foundation and put up a modern three-story farmhouse in about six months.”

He peered at the flier again.

“Oh, it’s not that big. It’s only two acres. That’s odd. They must have subdivided it and sold off most of the original land. There must be a buffer of farmland and orchards between this place and the neighbors. Because there’s no other house as far as the eye can see.” He cupped his hands around his mouth, tipped his head back, and bellowed, “Hello! Can anybody hear me?”

We waited. But it didn’t seem like anybody could.

“That’s a big plus,” I said.

“Well, yeah. But you saw that coming, right? Isn’t that why you wanted to see the place? Because it was out in the middle of nowhere?”

“Um… no. I couldn’t picture how many neighbors there would be. I wanted to see it because it was so cheap.”

“If you want, we’ll stop by the realty office and get some information about it.”

“Yeah. Thanks.”

I looked up, instead of at the horrible house. Just to give my eyes a break. I thought I saw a few hanging pieces of fruit in some of the trees, but I couldn’t tell what kind of fruit it was.

I thought about how it would feel to go to the realty office with Paul instead of going alone. It made me feel like I would be okay there. Like they had no right to laugh at me or chase me away. Then I realized it wasn’t entirely because I wasn’t even quite seventeen. It was because I was broke, and I figured they would know. That gave me a little glimpse into why my mom stayed away from places like that.

Almost like he was reading my mind, Paul said, “Think you can get your mom to come out and see it?”

“That’s going to be the tough part. She has so much resistance to buying.”

“Because of the credit? The loan?”

“I think so. I think she always feels like she’s a phony, because she doesn’t have good, responsible mom answers to questions about money. So she tries to skate under the radar and not go where anybody might ask questions.”

“And a bank is not such a place. Maybe I could prep her, the way trial lawyers do with their witnesses.”

“I hope so. I hope there’s something you can do to help her. Because we’re really nowhere the way things stand now.”

In fact, the only difference between our current situation and the one we’d been in when we came up to the mountains was about twelve thousand dollars. Which was something. But only if she was willing to spend it on a house. Otherwise, we’d go back to renting, and she’d dip into that money every month, because every month, we’d come up short.

It’s amazing how much time it takes to gather money, and how little time it takes for life to intervene.

“It used to be a working orchard,” I told my mom over dinner. “Except this is only a little piece of it. They used to grow peaches and walnuts. And tomatoes, but all the vines are gone now. Now the trees are old, and they don’t produce much, and the land isn’t worth much for farming. But here’s the good part. It’s more than a mile from the closest farmhouse of the closest neighbor. And the realtor lady says if I’m willing to climb trees, I’d probably get more peaches and walnuts in a year than three people could even eat.”

“I can’t believe you’re making me say this again,” she said.

Sophie started banging her fork on the table, with a little screech on each bang. Sometimes in rhythm, sometimes out of it.

I raised my voice to be heard over her.

“Paul even said he could prep you for the loan application the way trial lawyers do with their witnesses.”

She slapped her napkin down and glared at me in a way that made my face feel hot.

“Well, that’s a little different now, isn’t it? Because all a witness has to do is talk. I have to produce pay stubs and tax returns. And I have to have more than just a down payment and a yes from a bank, which we’ll never get. I’d have to come up with mortgage payments.”

Bang. Screech. Bang. Screech.

“You’ll have to come up with rent, anyway.”

“Kiddo. You’re not listening to me. I don’t make enough money to buy a house. I don’t need a bank to tell me so. Now I’ll thank you to not bring it up again.”

“Well, we’d better start looking,” I said. “Because we may have to go somewhere. Not definitely, but it seems to be going that way. I just thought it would be nice to go someplace we could take Sophie along.”

“I’m looking into a placement for her.”

For a flash of a second, I was filled with fight. I was going to lash out at her, and yell, and accuse her of caring more about her own fear of banks than she did about my sister. I opened my mouth, and the next thing I knew, I was just too tired. It washed over me and left me beached. I thought, What’s the point? Why am I even fighting her? I’ve been fighting her for years. It wastes my energy, and things always turn out the same.

Just when I thought I’d ducked the drama by surrendering, my mom lost it with Sophie.

“Stop doing that!” she screamed. And I really mean screamed.

Sophie held perfectly still for a second or two, and then launched into full keening mode. My mom had to grab her up and carry her down to the car, the way she always did. So she could drive her around until she wailed herself voiceless or fell asleep.

“
That
was a rookie mistake,” I told the door a minute after it slammed.

It was about three weeks after that, right before I turned seventeen, when my mom brought up the car idea. It was morning. I was lying on my bed, reading, and she stuck her head around the divider. Which I never liked. I wanted her to treat that gap like a closed door. She more or less did, but mostly when it suited her.

“I’ve been thinking about your birthday,” she said.

“What about it?”

“How would you feel about having your own car?”

I put the book down. Narrowed my eyes at her. It was a good thing, in theory. Almost too good. Maybe that’s why something felt wrong.

“I’d feel great about it if we could afford that. But we can’t.”

“If you can find a cheap transportation car for two or three thousand, I’ll buy it for your birthday.”

“Out of our down-payment money.”

I watched the look on her face darken. She must have known we’d hit that wall early on. It seemed almost like a setup. An idea for her to break into that money in a way I couldn’t object to, because what teenager says no to a car?

“No,” I said. “I don’t want a car if it’s coming out of our down-payment money. I’d rather drive you to work and borrow the car and buy a house. Hell, I’d rather walk and take the bus everywhere and buy a house.”

“Kiddo, our money is not ‘down-payment money.’ Because we’re not in the market to buy.”

“Okay, then, I don’t want it if it comes out of our savings.”

She pulled in a big breath. For a minute, I thought she was going to light into me. But just then, we heard the honk of Sophie’s Special Ed van.

“I’ll walk her down,” she said. “If you’re going to drive me to work, better get dressed right now.”