by Matthew Batt
“One ounce?” he said. “That’s barely enough to get the glass wet. No wonder you’re so quiet.”
I moved the gummy eggs around my plate and began to tell him euphemistically about our finances, but before I could finish he pushed himself back from the table and loosened his belt.
“I’ve been thinking,” he said. He dropped his napkin on the rest of his eggs and shoved the plate out of his way, toward me, which nearly sent my plate into my lap.
“You’re having a hard time with this loan, I gather,” he said. He brushed a bit of egg from the lapel of his leather blazer.
“Yeah,” I said.
Because he was bringing up the subject, it would be his idea to help, and that meant I wouldn’t have anything to feel bad about. My mom and my grandma had told me all my life this one simple truth: it has to be his idea. You can have anything you want as long as he thinks it’s his idea.
“There’s all this talk of the low rates,” I said, trying to sound savvy and calm. “And it’s supposed to be such a buyer’s market, but if people like me and Jenae can’t get a loan, then who can?”
“That’s right,” he said, not like a cheer but a confirmation of a small bit of logic. He likes it when I try to talk business. He knows I’m not good at it. It’s something he can count on. “The banks sure do like to give money to people who don’t need it, like me,” he said. “Which has got me thinking.”
He tugged at the waistband of his corduroys.
He seemed excited about what he was going to say. It was probably the only thing he could be sure Gram would have wanted him to do and the only meaningful way he could salve whatever guilt or remorse he felt.
“Why don’t I get the loan for you?”
It wasn’t what I thought he was going to say. It was better. Less pathetic than his buying the thing outright; far more desirable than anything we’d be able to do on our own. And we’d be indebted to him for his credit, for a change, and not just his money.
“I’ll talk to my accountant,” he said, his favorite phrase in the English language. “Miss Ricketts is back in Peoria, so it might take a day or two. Meanwhile, I’ve gotta hit the little radiologists’ room.”
Chuck Norris Time
WITH GRANDPA ON BOARD, things were looking up, but thus far in our house-hunting endeavors we had succeeded at nothing. We still had no loan and no home picked out for sure. We had nothing but the shaky promise of my grandfather and the tacit employ of a pseudo-realtor—Sully. Realtor by day, waiter with me at The New Yorker by night, standup Mormon comedian in suburban, nonalcoholic strip-mall nightclubs on the weekends. You know, the usual.
Sully had shown us a ton of houses, but we hated every single one. We said we preferred older houses close to downtown; he showed us mock Tudors in developments adjacent to smorgasbord restaurants. We wanted something with hardwood floors and old double-hung windows; he showed us planned communities with streets named after obscure but famously violent Latter-Day Saints.
A native of Virginia and a father of three, Saul, or Sully as he likes to be called, is a six-foot-three Teutonic blond who would look as convincing in drag as he would in an SS uniform. It’s a little odd, I suppose, for a licensed realtor to be a waiter as well, but until recently, when his wife opened a fancy shoe boutique in downtown Sugarhouse, he struggled to support his family on his lottery-like realty salary.
On any given excursion with Sully, whether it’s to the stockroom to get more linens for a banquet of pharmaceutical reps or to the Marmalade Hill area in his thirdhand, perfunctory white Lexus to check out a promising new listing, we cover all the bases. One moment we’ll be talking APRs and Greenspan’s motivation and the fickle relativity of the tax base, the next we’ll be running odds on whether our manager’s back on cocaine and anonymous men’s room sex, and then we’ll debate the logic of one-firearm-per-daughter investing, the sad state of surfing in Utah, hamster rights, and everything on down that line—all in accents ranging from Gandhi to William Wallace to Hank Hill to Michael Jackson. To know Sully is to love Sully is to hate Sully. He’s pleasantly schizophrenic, and talking to him is like trying to catch a Super Ball in a hall of mirrors.
Before we went with Sully, we thought that realtors could be people too, and had been working with one who was a graduate of the program I was in at school. Her name was Fiona, and she divided her time among realty, skiing, and writing.
“Shop around, you know,” she said. “Take it easy, see what feels right, you know. Give me a call when you want to get together on something.”
Cool, we thought.
We had been house shopping for only a couple of weeks when we found one we liked more than we imagined possible. Everything was right about it. Good street, good street name: Denver. The incidental city of my birth. Last name of modern-day bard and world-champion drinker-and-driver John Denver. The address was a palindrome. It was near a junk store, a coffee shop, a taqueria, a Vietnamese grocery/nail salon/jewelry store, and a great big park. Close enough to green space to keep the spaniel happy, close enough to downtown to keep our street cred.
That Sunday we hurried through an open house and found it nice enough. It needed some paint, the floors were a little scuffed, and it backed up to some kind of medical surplus warehouse, but what the hell. It was The House, we decided. We hadn’t made any official arrangement with Fiona and didn’t actually have her number, so it was by chance that we ran into her at a party that night.
“Guess what!” we said. “We found the one!” We were going to blow our lifetime allotment of exclamation marks on this deal, we knew, but it was going to be worth it!
We told her where it was and what it was like as she nodded. She began to move from mellow attention to a kind of bemused concern. She said she thought she knew the house we were talking about. She’d give us a holler soon and we’d figure things out.
The next day, she called with what she described as “funny news.”
“As it turns out,” Fiona said, “I had seen that house on Denver.” She paused here, trying to figure out how funny the next bit would be to us. “A couple who’s in the program with you at the U actually just had me write up an offer on it.”
Realtors are apparently exempted from the normal space-time continuum. Time, as they experience it, is at once slower and faster—the way the world spins at over a thousand miles an hour but looks still and placid from far enough away. They understand in ways that most buyers and sellers never will that a house for sale is a trifling thing. As monumental as tuna salad, say, if not for all the paperwork.
We liked Fiona. We liked the couple in question. We all were English-major types at the university, and there weren’t many to spare on that side of the Rockies. But it would be a while before we would be liking any of them in an active, let’s-go-for-twist-cones! kind of way.
We needed to start over.
In realty, some agents are the typical coffee-addled, business-card-palming, bright-pennies-in-their-loafers folks. A few are more like anti-agents. Unrealtors. Dealing with them is like trying to get a lifelong beach bum to embrace the subtle but sexless joys of patent law or philately. Their appeal, apparently, is that they are so not going to pressure you into anything. In fact, they are not so much your realtor as they are your bud.
Sully and I had been buddies at work from the day we met. But our relationship took a significant turn the day I said, “Oh, hey, you’re a realtor, right?”
Cue eyebrow. Dramatic pause.
It was a stupid question, because his business cards were everywhere in the restaurant. Taped to the employee lockers in the break room. Stuck on the hostess’s stand next to prominent reservations. Hanging from the wait station’s air conditioning ducts. The card was oriented vertically, and three-quarters of it was taken up with a head shot of Sully doing his Hey!-I’m-Sully-and-you-are? smile, but until he physically gave me one, I thought they were tickets for one of his standup gigs.
When I asked Sully the obvious ques
tion, he didn’t so much consider it as he did morph from Waiter Sully to—shazam!—Realtor Sully. “Why jes, capitán,” he said. “Yo soy realtor. Y tu mamá?”
Sully and I were polishing racks of wine glasses. It was nearly midnight, and I thought we were just making idle banter to get through the rest of the shift. Eight hours later, however, Sully picked me up in his Lexus and chauffeured me around to a dozen or so houses, and we made plans to do the same thing the next day. Having Sully for an agent was like being courted by Superman while he’s between archenemies, so he’s devoted his powers to helping you with more enthusiasm than you really desired.
Practically every day would be an opportunity for his domestic heroism. It wasn’t something you could predict or force; it was spontaneous. You’d be sitting around surfing the Internet for new listings and better interest rates when, out of the blue, your phone would ring. It’s Sully calling from the office, and you can tell he’s very busy because phones and faxes and alarms are ringing in the background and he’s yes-ing and no-ing some assistant. But he’s paying attention, really he is, and he was just wondering what you were doing for lunch, because if you didn’t have any plans, sugar (a Deep South, sweet-tea, slow-fan accent), he’d luuuv to take you for a quick bite and then check out (in his Tom Brokaw Great Plains anchor voice) a promising investment opportunity he found this morning, but it’s “a wee bet south”—and we’re in Scotland now, his voice draped in plaid—“though Eee know it’s farrrtharrr doun than yee want, ’tis a far bet cheepper, what d’ye say, laddee?”
He was hard to resist, unless you were actually Scottish, say, or a Southerner. Otherwise, he has a way of making you feel, well, special. Sully knows that buying a house is about as emotional and traumatic and exciting an endeavor a couple can undertake, just short of getting married and having kids. Sure, some folks would have us believe that buying a house is not that different from buying a used car or a bicycle or a box of donuts. For the rest of us—the ambulatory ones with the ability to fog mirrors—buying a house is the most daunting thing imaginable. Having a kid, well, we’re talking about a freaking miracle, not something that any mortal can truly take full responsibility for. Sure, there are the right schools and college funds and that fine art of knowing when to stop or start the corporal punishment, but the procurement of a kid is the result of—what?—fifteen to twenty seconds of, shall we say, impulsiveness. Getting married is kind of the same. Again, it’s practically a miracle if you can actually find somebody who will not only share a meal with you, but a bed and, my God, a bathroom too. A house, on the other hand, that’s nothing to be impulsive about. Houses are heavy, for one thing. And worse, they don’t say much. Not at first. Not about who they really are. There’s hardly any getting to know a house until you’re fully committed, blindfolded and swan-diving into what might be a very dry pool.
When looking for a house, you’re not looking for mere lumber and plumbing but rather for spirit and community. You’re not looking for a location but a locus, a place that will be your center. A place from which you’ll leave every day, only to return, just before dark, brown bags of sustenance in your arms. The house we pick is the most stationary and permanent fixture of our lives, and it’s not only how others will see us in relation to it, but how we see ourselves. The house where you live literally dictates where you will sleep, where you will walk, where you will eat, where you will love, laugh, and perhaps procreate. The kind of light you see, the hearth you’ll tend, the water you will drink.
Sully, despite his Saturday-morning cartoon antics, knew. Sully also knew that providence plays a lesser role than persistence when it comes to finding The House. Because what The House is, of course, is a decision, an approximation, a negotiation, a concession even.
He tried to tell us, tried to coach us in his best Mr. Miyagi spirit. “Matthew-san, Jenae-san must focus powah.” He jerked his tie from his neck and ceremonially cinched it around my head. “No think in Batt time. Think in house time. Batt time short. House time like karate time. You know, Chuck Norris time. House time long time.”
It was June now, and we were getting a bit tense about the whole process. We were still waiting for our banker in Peoria, Miss Ricketts, to get our financing together. My grandfather kept telling me he trusted us and that we should go ahead and pick a place. We wanted to be in a house by the time our lease was up on August 1, but it was beginning to look bleak.
Early one Tuesday morning, as I waited for Sully to pick me up so we could check out some prospects closer to downtown before we both had to be at work, I was nosing around on a realty website and saw something unusual. There was no picture, but the description of the house, the location, square footage, street name—everything started gaining momentum, and when Sully showed up I said, “I think we need to see this.”
Whenever I’d show him a listing, he’d take a quick, dismissive glance, the way you might take in a dentist’s shoes, and then hand back whatever sheet I gave him and proceed to regale me with how many years that house had been on the market, how many different agents had listed it, and how many times they’d repainted the front door, trying to fool the market into thinking it was a new house. I could tell that Sully was a little hurt by my perusing the Internet, looking at the public Multiple Listing Service hoping to find something his professional, supercharged search engine couldn’t. But the fact is that realtors get new listings only once a week. Chances are, in a good, vibrant market, if a house is priced fairly and in decent shape, it’ll move. If it’s overpriced or shoddily kept up, it’ll rot. So I cruised the websites.
Sully saw right away that what I’d found wasn’t an old listing. It had a new MLS number, and in his years as a realtor he’d never seen it. He knew the street and he knew what kind of money a house on it could pull, and this one was asking about ten grand below that. That probably meant it “Needs Some TLC” (knotty pine) or it is a “Great Starter Home” (really freaking small, so you’d better love each other) or it is “Gorgeous on the Inside” (crack vial mosaics on the steps, nine-millimeter shell-casing wind chimes).
We pulled onto the street to find a quiet, tree-lined affair between a busy eight-lane artery at the far end and a calm, walkin’-my-baby-back-home avenue at the other. A little dissonance could be good, I thought. We cruised the street looking for the telltale realtor’s yardarm. There was none. Sully called the listing agent and briefly did his shop talk (I know! Wants you to drop to five percent? Why not throw in your youngest daughter. Am I right?) while I stared at the house across the street.
It wasn’t the kind of Gone with the Wind deal where the place is so grand you give it a name, as though it were your offspring, but still, it was something. Solid. Nice. White-painted brick with a little driveway and a garage in back. Out front was a huge pine tree, big enough to shade the whole house, including a great wooden porch that was just high enough to let you feel superior to street-level people but not ostentatiously so. Double-hung windows framed the front door on either side, and overall the house looked smallish but well balanced for its square footage compared to a lot of others we’d seen. It was the difference between dressing an adult in a well-tailored suit and shoehorning a fat grownup into a child’s clothes.
“Thar she blows, skipper,” Sully said, but like a drag queen instead of Ahab. “Wanna have a peep?”
He did this talk-show-host, fake tie-straightening thing with the air in front of his silky yellow golf shirt, and in a half-Telemundo, half–Peter Lorre voice he said, “Jou is nehver going to a belief dis, boss. Éste house, jou know? It only arrive on dee market here dis mornin. We here is dee first peoples to have see it.”
With that, he winked and rang the doorbell.
“This is all very good,” he said in his realtor-friend voice. He patted me on the shoulder and we waited for the door to open.
Inside, there was a mommy with a newbie in her arms and a full-size American poodle bounding up and down and all around as though we were made of kibble. T
he smell of apple cobbler wafted out and made me think of my grandma’s from-scratch cinnamon rolls.
It was an old trick, but even Sully had to admit, a nice touch. The lady put her kid in a jogging stroller, harnessed the poodle, and told us to make ourselves at home. She seemed equal parts weepy, giddy, and needy. I can only imagine all the competing emotions and hormones, what with having a baby, getting ready to move, and selling a house. Short of starting a new job on top of it all, could it get more stressful?
Patsy Cline was on the stereo, and as I looked around the cozy, crayon-yellow living room, with its everything-old-is-new-again shag carpeting and overstuffed furniture, the hardwood-floored kitchen, the small but embraceable bedroom and beyond, I thought, I’m here. I’m home.
I called Jenae and told her to drop everything. “Get your maracas over here as soon as possible,” I said.
“Excuse me?” she said. Sully was clearly wearing off on me, and it wasn’t always thrilling for Jenae or anybody else within earshot.
While I poked around, Sully called the selling agent and tried to hype her up and get her ready for an offer. From what I could tell, these folks could easily be the five-years-older version of Jenae and me. They had funky black-and-white photos on the wall—including some semi-nude pregnancy pics I wouldn’t have displayed, never mind how artistic, but still—and lots of chunky, thrift store furniture that spoke as much of savings as it did world view. One small bedroom looked to be a kind of writing office and music studio, replete with a Gibson Les Paul leaning against a Fender Bluesman, an Underwood typewriter hulking like a godfather next to a new Mac laptop. The other little bedroom was a baby room, done in politically savvy, gender-neutral sea-foam greens and pale yellows. The kitchen was a tight but well-designed galley with nice knives, a professional mixer, and a gas stove. The basement featured a small workout space with a yoga mat and weights, and I noticed they had a bunch of backpacking and rock-climbing equipment. Outside, they had a fastidiously kept garden, fully mulched, a great little redwood deck with a pergola, and two cute suspended hammock chairs, perfect for curling up on a summer’s eve to read poesy each to each.