by Jane Smiley
The ride through the misty twilight, cool and solitary for a few minutes before the onslaught of Baldwin activity, was very refreshing. I thought I was living a good life, and I looked forward to making a home someday myself, a place where future single guys who lived in condos would feel happy to come.
All the BMWs were lined up in the driveway, and several other cars as well. I looked for Marcus’s Caddy, but I didn’t see it. The house was ablaze with light and the front door was open. I parked and walked toward it, and who should be coming out, a dark figure in the light of the doorway that I recognized immediately, but Felicity. I came up the steps and said, “Hey!” and she barreled toward me and threw her arms around me and pressed her head against my chest. I put my arms around her. Then she looked up at me, her hair dark and unruly around her head, and she said, “Oh, God, I miss you, Joey.” She lifted her face and kissed me on the lips. All of this was hurriedly done, and when she stepped away, I was still startled. She turned back into the house, calling, “Here’s Joey! I’m leaving now!” And she ran down the steps.
Betty was standing in the entryway, a dish towel in her hand. She stepped toward me and put her arm in mine. I said, “Where’s she going?”
“I’m not sure. I was in the kitchen, and then I heard the sound of a quarrel, and when I came out here Felicity was putting on her coat, and she looked upset, but she waved me off when I asked her if there was a problem, and ran out the door. Did she say anything to you?”
“Just—uh, hi.” I heard the sound of one of the BMWs starting up and zooming out the driveway.
“Well, she’s been very prickly all fall. Just not herself at all. I don’t know.” She shrugged. “But she’s a grown-up, and if she isn’t voluntarily going to say anything to me or to Leslie, there’s not much I can do.” She turned and led me down the hall toward the family room. She said, “You know, when Sally was killed, the one I worried the most about was Felicity. I just couldn’t imagine how Felicity was going to make a life without Sally, but she picked herself up and went on, and all these years I’ve been a little relieved that she had the strength to do that. So always when she acts a little funny, or desperate, or unhappy, I go back to that worry, and I think—oh, here it is at last. This is what I’ve been waiting for.” She stopped me and whispered in my ear, “And Hank is the wrong man for her. It’s not his fault, but they are in different universes.”
“I’ve kind of thought that too.”
She continued to whisper. “You should have—” But then she thought better of her remark. We glanced at each other. Then she said, “You were very badly behaved the other night. Very devil-may-care.” She leaned over and kissed me on the cheek. “Nothing wrong with a little of that, dear.”
“Do you think I should send notes of apology?”
She laughed in her Bettyish way and we came into the family room, where the football game was ending and several other things were going on too, including a game of Monopoly around the coffee table that was a chaos of grandchildren and game pieces and beer bottles and chip bowls. She whispered, “Apologies are never a mistake, dear,” then said, “Turkey in ten minutes! I need some helpers!”
I greeted Gordon and Hank and Norton and Bobby and Fern, and then Bobby and I followed Betty into the kitchen, where Leslie was making the gravy and Norton’s wife, Margaret, was browning almonds in butter. Betty had a huge restaurant-style gas stove, and every burner had a simmering pan on it. The turkey was already on its platter, twenty or more pounds. Betty said, “Joey, you can carry that to the table. It took three of us to get it out of the roasting pan.”
“And we dropped it twice,” said Leslie, “but don’t tell anyone. We kind of pushed it back into shape with big spoons.” She glanced at Betty. “Was that Felicity?”
“It was. She left.”
“Where did she go?”
“I don’t even know who she was arguing with. There wasn’t anyone around,” said Betty.
“I told you, Mom. She’s so touchy lately.”
She glanced at me, obviously weighing whether to go on. I said, “Don’t mind me, I’ll just be picking up the bird here.”
“It’s okay. Mom, I think you should take Hank aside and ask him what is going on. Maybe he knows.”
I said, “Maybe he doesn’t.”
Betty gave a rueful smile and said, “Joey’s right. Maybe Hank doesn’t know anything.”
Leslie sighed.
Betty said, “Oh, I’m sure it’s nothing. And it’s her own fault if she misses dinner, because everything’s ready, and we can’t wait for her. She’ll snap out of it. You remember the Cushings? They lived at the end of the street when, until about seven years ago? Frank Cushing had two sisters, and they came to Thanksgiving and Christmas at his house every year—oh, for twenty years or so. And you know what? The sisters weren’t speaking to each other that whole time! What were their names? Oh, Edith and Letitia. Caroline Cushing didn’t dare invite one and not the other one, so they would just come and glare at each other! Frank said a couple of his uncles were the same way. There we go.” She laughed, tossing off this example of human strangeness as if it could have nothing to do with her or her family, I thought.
All this time, she had been dishing things into serving bowls and garnishing them with parsley and chives and sprigs of mint, and now the dishes were ready to be carried into the dining room, and so we did, me leading the way with a very heavy turkey on a very big platter, which I set in front of Gordon, who said, “Didn’t I tell you we should go out? A nice buffet at the Hollister Cafeteria? The kids would have loved it, the way they always have the desserts first.”
Betty laughed and everyone pulled out their chairs. The mothers began setting the children up at a card table in the living room, and it was warm and comfortable. Gordon was smiling, so I knew he didn’t mean it.
It wasn’t until dinner was over, right through the coffee and the After Eight mints, and Norton and Hank and Gordon and I were sitting at one end of the table, next to an open window, having a smoke and gazing down upon the frozen pond and the piled-up, covered lawn chairs that the mood changed. As usual, the changer of the mood was Norton, who said, “I’m telling you, Gordon, now is not the time to be plowing a lot of money into high-end residential property. You look where I am. Now, my area has generations of history as a luxury destination. Ups and downs, maybe, in terms of this group coming in and that group going away, but we got the shore, we got the roads, we got the entertainment infrastructure. A hundred and fifty years, and it’s a barometer. Some years, you can rent out a postage stamp for whatever price you want; other years you got to give away a mansion. Investment flows in and out, almost like the tide; that’s what I say. And when rents are up and money flows in—well, eighteen months down the road everybody’s rich, and when money flows out, eighteen months down the road everybody’s poor. It’s as simple as that. It’s flowing out. Take this summer. I had a place on the market all summer, not a bad place, my worst place but not a bad place taken all in all, and I thought, Norton, the canary is dying here. Everything else was rented, but that one place got me to thinking.”
“So you’re saying that eighteen months down the road—”
“Whatever you have, you won’t be able to give it away.”
Gordon, who was smoking a cigar, took it out of his mouth and looked at the tip.
I said, “But it’s a long-term thing. If there’s a long-term rise, there’re bound to be dips along the way. The vacation rental business always goes up and down. That’s like the car business. But real estate doesn’t lose value just because it isn’t producing income.”
Gordon looked at me.
“What I’m saying,” said Norton, “is that the tide is always high enough to make business in my area, because we’ve got the proximity. Where you-all have that farm, the tide is only high enough to make business once in a while. It’s in the boonies. That’s why those people bought it in the first place. Because they had places in New Yor
k and Paris and wherever, and they needed a place to get away.”
“Mind if I say something?” said Hank, who had moved his seat closer to the window and was not smoking.
“Go ahead,” said Gordon.
“Preserving wild spaces is where the thinking is now. The Nature Conservancy is very big and getting bigger.”
“What’s that?” said Gordon.
“It’s a nonprofit. They buy property and easements in wild areas or preservation areas, and they maintain the integrity of the area for future generations.”
“They don’t pay top dollar,” I said. “And Norton, even though of course you’re right in a lot of ways”—I hadn’t known Norton for twenty-five years without learning that if you disagreed with him you had to placate him—“I don’t think you’re reckoning on the population explosion and the way people want to have something special. Nobody wants to get on the train and go to the shore and stay in a boardinghouse anymore. They want to have a place. I mean, why would they? There’s no hassle like the hassle of having a house two or three hours away that you have to look after. I mean, do you really want to get in the car after every storm and drive to the shore and repair broken windows and water damage? No. But they do it. Why? Because shore property is limited and they aren’t making any more of it. Same with our clubhouse. Places like the farm are few and far between, beautiful and classy and not something you can buy into every day. I mean, whatever you say, Hank—and we’ve had this conversation before—what we’re doing is preservation, because say the farm went to this Nature Conservancy or whatever, or even the state. Are they really going to take care of it? Or won’t it kind of get dusty and old and damp pretty quick? And as soon as a place like that gets old-seeming and loses its feeling of warmth—well, people don’t want to go there and the whole thing deteriorates further.”
“It’s just too far away,” said Norton.
“Well, I beg to differ on that one too, because traffic makes a difference. Suppose you zip out of town and drive for three hours and go two hundred miles, so what? Or you crawl out of town and spend three hours in traffic and get fifty miles—and even when you’re there you’ve got cars and people everywhere. What’s more desirable?”
“It’s a gamble,” said Gordon.
I said, “Look at someplace like Pebble Beach, out in California, or one of those golf resorts in North Carolina. That’s our analogy, not the shore. The people we’re trying to attract want amenities, and we’re planning to give them what they want. A golf course, a swimming pool, a clubhouse restaurant, maybe even a riding center, right by the house. This is a place where people can live together in luxury in a beautiful spot.”
Norton kept shaking his head, and Gordon had gone back to inspecting the tip of his cigar. Norton said unpleasantly, “Look, Gordon. Why don’t you admit you’re in it with Burns up to your ass? This advantage, that advantage, so what? Are you really going to back out of a deal with a guy from the IRS? A guy from the IRS who got you off? At least be honest!”
But Gordon ignored this. After a few moments, he looked out the window and said, “You know, I’m not saying I haven’t had second thoughts, Norton. I’m not saying I haven’t had the feeling from time to time that we’ve bitten off more than we can chew, but every project is a gamble and the property has intrinsic value from its uniqueness.”
“That’s right,” I said, addressing myself to Norton more than anyone else. “Portsmouth Savings has had a tremendous amount of faith in the project. And they’re just giving money away.”
Gordon nodded. “I never asked for so much before, and they didn’t bat an eye. Most of the time, the savings and loan makes sure you know they’re doing you a favor when they make you a loan, but not this time, Norton, not this time. Bart and Crosbie both, they were hot to do it, hot to make this their baby. I remember thinking, They must know something we don’t know. My feeling is, if they could get this merger through, there would be even more dough lying around waiting to be put to good use. Bart keeps calling me and saying how these things take time and everything’s on track and all.”
“Well, Gordon, what does your famous gut tell you?” pressed Norton.
Gordon put the cigar back in his mouth and drew a long breath through it, lighting up the tip. Then he blew out the smoke. He said, “I’ll tell you what. My gut tells me something different every day. Your mother said she didn’t want to hear about it anymore for two days at least, so I guess that’s why you’re hearing about it.”
I said, “You’ve had big projects before, Gordon. You had that development up on the hill for fifteen years, and there was a time last year when I told you those higher-priced garden apartments wouldn’t go, and in the end they went like hot dogs at a picnic. Everything Marcus said was true turned out to be true. You said it yourself to me—people want to live like they do on TV.”
“But do they want to pay for it?” Norton was beginning to sound irritated.
“I think they do,” I said. “What else are they going to spend their money on? Real estate is still the—”
“Well, I guess we’ll find out,” said Norton, and he pushed back his chair and walked out of the room. On the way out, he muttered, “I give the fuck up.”
“Is he mad?” I asked. “We were just having a discussion.”
Gordon shrugged, then smiled at me. “That’s what I’ve always said about you, Joe.”
“What’s that?”
“You have a great ability to just keep negotiating. You keep coming back and coming back and you never get mad. It’s a rare quality.”
“I’m glad you’ve noticed.”
Hank said, “You can be very persistent.” Whereas Norton had walked out in a huff, Hank looked defeated. What had it been, a year since my time with Felicity? And I had found someone new and all, but I still resented his relationship to her. He stood up. “I wonder if Felicity ever showed up.”
“You concerned?” I said this cautiously.
Hank looked me right in the eye. After a moment, he said, “I don’t know. The other day I told Felicity that I didn’t understand her anymore, and then on my way to work I have to say I began to wonder whether I’ve ever understood her. I certainly don’t know what in the hell she’s after these days, and maybe I never knew what she was after. So, yes, I’m concerned, but I don’t know what to do about my concern, either.” Something Felicity had once said crossed my mind—that she felt like she was living in a frat house.
Gordon sighed. I felt a sense of alarm suddenly jolt awake. Felicity! This time last year I would have known everything about what was going on with Felicity. I took a deep breath and said very carefully, “I don’t know Felicity all that well, but she’s always struck me as someone who was able to take care of herself.”
“Really?” said Hank.
“Sure.” I glanced at Gordon to see if he was agreeing with me. He glanced back and gave a little shrug. “Maybe I’m wrong,” I said.
“I wish I knew,” said Hank. “I really wish I knew.” He turned and went out of the room.
Gordon said, “Well, if he doesn’t know, how are the rest of us to know? They are a strange pair, Joey, that’s for sure. Betty and I were talking the other night. Between you and me, we don’t know how we got these kids. We don’t know how any of the folks we know got the kids they got. It’s a mystery to me, that’s what I say.” He put his hands on his knees and stood up. Then he bent down and looked into my face. “What if you put the farm on the market right now?”
“I don’t know. I have to do some comps, look at sales in the last six months. I’m not that up to date right at this minute.”
“Well, let me know.”
I nodded. He turned away from me, but I said, “Hey, Gordon. You know, about Felicity. I’ve always thought she had a kind of ready-for-anything quality. I thought she got it from you.”
“Betty says she’s more like me than the boys are. I don’t know. There’s a lot of women’s lib around these days. Maybe that�
�s what Felicity needs.”
“Are you worried about her?”
“Nah. Well, yeah, in this sense. I used to not worry about anything. Something always turned up, for one thing. I began with luck and I went along being lucky, and I depended on going along being lucky. Then we bought that farm. I thought I was being lucky again. But when I think about old man Thorpe—well, he was never lucky. With all his money, when something had to go one way or another, chances were it went against him rather than for him, all the way to the end, to the way he died on Friday the thirteenth.”
“Well, the stringer from my fence didn’t impale him.”
Gordon laughed. “No, it didn’t. But the kind of luck I want is not the avoiding-disaster kind but the winning-the-jackpot kind.”
“Well, yeah.”
“Anyway, here’s hoping we didn’t buy into his bad luck, you know?”
“I know.”
“Let’s go see what the kids are doing.”
I went home late that night. Felicity never came back.
CHAPTER
27
GOTTFRIED DIDN’T MIND me coming over, especially since his two good houses were getting a lot of lookers, and the lookers were doing a lot of admiring. Over the week of Thanksgiving, four Realtors let me know I could expect to see offers on the one—the farmhouse-style with the huge kitchen—shortly after the holiday was over, and so on the Wednesday after Thanksgiving I called Gottfried and said, “Meet me at the Hopewell Road house at ten to one.” Of course I no longer had an office. And I didn’t have to have Gottfried along, but I wanted him to appreciate what I was doing for him.