By the Numbers

by Jen Lancaster

  On Mondays my alarm goes off at 4:45 a.m. and I’m at the gym no later than 5:00 a.m. for fifty minutes of full-body work on the strength machines. I shower at the gym, where I grab a protein-packed smoothie and Quest Bar for breakfast, and take the 6:47 a.m. train into the city. I prefer to arrive particularly early on Mondays to jump-start my week. I could get to the office a few minutes earlier were I to take a taxi from the station, but I always hoof it, as new studies have shown that twenty-five minutes of brisk walking a day can add up to seven years to your life span. (Unless I were to be hit by one of the lunatic bicycle messengers in the Loop, in which case, I would be pissed.)

  Because I concentrate on major muscle groups on Monday, Tuesday’s my rest day. Depending on my energy level, I’ll spend some time on the basement elliptical either before or after work. I still catch the 6:47 train whenever possible, but on these days I either go with steel-cut oats and fruit or cold-pressed juice and hard-boiled eggs.

  Wednesday mornings are all about the treadmill, which I find dreadfully boring, so I have to pull out the big guns—that’s right, the Hallmark Movie Channel, my secret shame. If it’s wrong to want to see a cheesy Christmas movie starring Jennifer Love Hewitt in July, then I don’t want to be right. Sometimes a gal just wants a happy ending.

  Thursday starts off with kettlebells and homemade smoothies in the Vitamix, and on Fridays I work with my trainer, Lars, first thing in the morning. I generally drive downtown on Fridays because I don’t get out of the gym early enough to catch an express train. Plus, I like the ride downtown. Instead of using the expressway, I take the back route down Sheridan Road. A few miles south of me, my street jogs and begins to wind past the lakefront. From there on, houses morph into mansions all the way into the city, and the scenery is spectacular. The speed limit’s only thirty miles an hour, but traffic often moves faster on this road than it does on the Edens, and I can still make it to the office by 8:10. Long ago, Vanessa gave up on trying to beat me in to work, so now she shows up sometime between eight thirty and nine o’clock, like everyone else.

  My weekends are a bit more flexible. Sometimes I’ll go to a yoga class on Saturdays or I’ll meet Karin for a walk around the lakefront. And at some point I’ll hit Starbucks for a skim latte. On Sunday I go to church, and afterward, I’ll meet up with Michael and Patrick for brunch, or maybe Judith and Foster.

  Truth? I’m not entirely sure what to do with myself on the weekends. If there’s ever a time I’m going to ruminate or reflect on what’s not right in my life, this is when it will be. But maybe with a change in venue, this won’t be the case.

  I spend an entire week after the wedding getting back into my daily routine, as I don’t want to be too impulsive, but today I’m ready to pull the trigger; Penny 2.0 starts right now. I leave the office early because I’m having the listing agent come here for a walk-through before I sign an agreement.

  At exactly 4:59 p.m., Kathy Kormandy pulls into the drive that’s lined on either side with hearty hostas and daylilies. I’m sure it’s her because she’s in a black S-Class Mercedes, which is what every Realtor on the North Shore drives. On Open House Sundays, I wonder if they don’t all get confused as to which car belongs to whom. Or if it even matters.

  Kathy bounces out of the car and practically skips up the brick walkway, which is bordered with black-eyed Susans, sprays of fountain grass, and wispy lavender Russian sage. She’s casually chic with her swinging black bob and sleeveless white blouse, tucked into satin ankle pants. Jessica would definitely know what kind of purse she’s carrying—but I believe the quilting indicates Chanel. I greet her at the base of the porch steps, and she pumps my hand so hard I sort of want to yell, “Ow!” As we greet each other, a black Maserati cruises past. The driver, who looks a bit like Miguel, honks and waves. Must be Kathy’s friend, because I don’t know anyone with a car like that.

  “Love everything I’m seeing already!” Kathy exclaims. “These fab Queen Annes never come on the market. Especially not this close to the beach. We’re going to sell this place in five minutes, not kidding. Okay, I parked in the drive—is there a garage?”

  I reply, “Yes, if you follow the driveway, there’s a three-car garage around back with a little bonus room above it. There’s a bathroom in there, too, but it’s pretty dated. We never did get around to renovating it.”

  She claps her hands, and her enamel bracelets clack together. “Four minutes. We’ll have this place sold in four minutes.”

  “I appreciate your confidence.”

  “Tell me about this gorgeous property.” We climb the stairs and cross the threshold of the wraparound porch, which spans the whole front of the house. For the wedding, I bought a ton of Boston ferns, arranged in heavy urns. Hot-pink geraniums with flowers the size of softballs spill from oversized pots, framed by verdant ivy and violet-hued lobelia. The plants are so lush and full they almost don’t look real. The wide wooden planks on the porch’s floor sport a fresh coat of dove-gray paint, and there are six new white rocking chairs beckoning for someone to “set a spell.” Everything is crisp and pristine, and the whole scene is reminiscent of an old inn on Mackinac Island. “The porch is to die. Can you feel the lake breezes from here?”

  “Yes.” So why don’t I ever sit out here to enjoy them? I wonder. “Let’s see . . . The place is about a hundred years old, and it was built by a Chicago lumber magnate as a summerhouse. There’s a book about the family inside.”

  “Oooh, a home with history! We’re down to three minutes. Did you do much renovation?”

  “Ha!” I bark, and then I catch myself. “I mean, yes. Extensive. Everything, top to bottom. That was the only reason we were able to buy here. The previous owner intended to do a total rehab. They gutted it, all right, but they lost so much in the market in 1987 that they eventually defaulted on their loan before they could start rebuilding. This place was basically a shell; it was down to the studs. The house was so far gone it wasn’t a ‘tear-down’ so much as it was a ‘fall-down.’”

  Kathy scans the intricate ornamentation on the home’s facade, each exterior bracket, spindle, molding, and gable sanded and refinished in shades of cream and goldenrod and forest green. “You’d never know now.”

  “Thank you. The neighbors were days away from having the place condemned before we bought it. But my ex owns a contracting company and my dad a custom cabinet company, so we made it work. The neighborhood came around because they were glad we were keeping the integrity of the architecture instead of erecting a McMansion. Trust me, though, the first few years in this house were not easy. You know the expression the cobbler’s children have no shoes? Well, the contractor’s children had very few toilets and a roof that leaked.”

  Kathy asks what we paid, and she howls at my response.

  “You didn’t buy this house; you stole it,” she says. “You should be in jail.”

  “You wouldn’t feel that way waking up to a thick blanket of snow on Christmas Day—in the family room,” I reply. “Come on, let me show you around the inside.”

  We step into an open and welcoming entryway, which technically could be a sitting room, but I always liked the drama of the airy and unadorned space, letting the grand oak staircase with hand-carved spindles and one simple table that holds the mail take all the focus.

  “Fabulous! Oh! And that living room! So bright! That must be your favorite room!” Kathy exclaims.

  I grit my teeth in an approximation of a smile and continue the tour. I show her the newly renovated powder room and the freshly beadboard-covered family room walls, having finally done away with the hideous old ducks-in-flight-print wallpaper, per Kelsey’s request. Sure, we started from scratch back in 1988, but a lot of our work became quite dated (the mauve! the peach! the plaid! the chrome!) so there’s not a square foot that hasn’t either been rebuilt, rebrightened, rebleached, rescraped, repainted, or re-power-washed in the past year. Patrick say
s the place looks like a Restoration Hardware catalog exploded all over it; I choose to take this as a compliment.

  The great irony is everything’s now completely done to my taste and I finally live in the house of my dreams . . . which I’m leaving. While I realize this is a great house, I have no business staying here on my own. This home is meant for a family. Kids need to live here. Grandkids ought to spend their holidays here. I’m never going to climb the old apple tree or huddle with a comic book in the cupola on a rainy day. I’m not going to play an ad hoc game of kickball in the elementary school parking lot down the street. Plus, I still want to set the living room on fire because of the unhappy memories, so you can see my dilemma.

  Kathy coos with delight when she spots the fireplace in the master bedroom, having no concept of when Chris and I slept huddled in front of it as it was our only source of heat that first fall. She exclaims over the third-floor bonus area, clueless as to the summer the two of us spent playing mixed doubles up there, only instead of running after tennis balls, we were shooing bats. She snaps copious shots of our Bancroft Custom Kitchen without ever once inquiring about all the years that dinners came from a hot plate or the microwave before this gourmet kitchen with warming drawers and a second dishwasher came to be.

  After the tour, we sit in my office to discuss a proposed asking price. I had an idea of where this number should be when I planned to list before Kelsey got engaged. Given the state of the housing market, I estimate our asking price to be within five percent of this figure.

  Kathy has been making notes on a pad, in addition to snapping pictures. She writes down a sum. “Here’s what I’m thinking.” She tears out the sheet of paper and slides it over to me.

  Is it me, or is this exercise a tad ridiculous?

  Don’t do the slide-y paper business like we’re some kind of mafia kings. We’re here, having a conversation. Just say the number. I’m sitting right across from you. All alone. No one will overhear us. I’m not writing a check, so I don’t need to see the figure written out. Just say it, for crying out loud. I find these theatrics a little silly and somewhat—

  HOLY MERCIFUL MOTHER OF CRAP!

  “This can’t be right,” I say, looking up from the sheet.

  “Oh, yes, it can,” Kathy assures me. “This is exactly what the comps for Queen Annes by the lake are selling for; plus this place is immaculate.”

  “This is three times what I expected.”

  Kathy beams. “Terrific.”

  “I’m not sure you understand. Remember what I told you we paid for this house? This number is that number plus two zeros on the end.”

  “Yes, but you poured a ton of capital into the place.”

  I feel like I can’t wrap my head around this. “True, but not two zeros on the end’s worth.”

  Kathy crosses her legs and sits back in the chair holding up a single finger. “One minute. We are going to sell this place in one flipping minute. And this is what I’m estimating for an asking price. You get buyers in a competitive bidding situation and you could get well over your ask. The house is great, granted, but the land? The old-growth trees? The walkability? The schools? Location, squared? Please. You could not have made a better investment back in the eighties. Microsoft, Target, Home Depot? Nope. Nothing would have paid off like this.”

  “I feel overwhelmed,” I admit.

  “I understand,” Kathy says. “It’s a lot to process. What I’m going to do is leave the listing agreement here. You look it over, you think about it, and if you’re comfortable, you sign. If you’re not, you call me, we talk, and we figure out what you need to be comfortable. This is your home; this is your life. I’m not going to push you into anything. But know that if you do sign, I will sell this place in, like, thirty seconds. Really, just like that.” She snaps her fingers to illustrate her point.

  Kathy gathers up her pad and her phone, placing them in her big quilted bag. “I’m going to head off and leave you with your thoughts. You, Penny, imagine what you might do with that kind of windfall. Travel, invest, maybe a little nip, perhaps a small tuck, so many options! Anyway, thank you for showing me your beautiful home, and I will be in touch!” She gets up, and I show her to the door, and when she exits, the scent of gardenias, vanilla, and myrrh lingers for a moment in her wake.

  I should be celebrating right now, but I can’t stop fixating on Chris. Specifically, on what he gave up, having now seen what our home is worth. He was so specific that the house should go to me and me alone, to the point that his attorney yanked him out of the room by his collar. As angry as I was back then, I didn’t set out to “get even, get everything,” yet that’s exactly what happened.

  He let me have it all without a fight.

  Was he so anxious to be done, to be away from me, that he was willing to forgo a small fortune? Or was he so racked with guilt that he felt he deserved nothing? For the past year and a half, I’ve been assuming the former.

  But seeing how he behaved at the wedding, how he rose to the occasion, now I’m wondering if his actions were based on the latter.

  If so, then truly he worked his whole adult life for nothing, and that seems patently unfair.

  Damn it, why is this house so quiet?

  I don’t want to be alone with my thoughts as this is not a subject I’d like to contemplate. I’m literally willing to do anything to avoid rehashing this in my mind right now.

  Anything.

  I text: You may create a Match.com profile for me if we can meet for dinner—offer good tonight only.

  I type in “Patrick,” “Michael,” “Judith,” and “Karin” and click send.

  Within thirty seconds, I have confirmed dinner plans with three of my four best buddies.

  So there’s that.

  • • • •

  Karin says, “Let’s get started and find you a date!”

  “Whoa, hold up,” I say, throwing my hands up in front of me in a protective gesture. This was a mistake. A huge mistake. A blunder. A slipup. A terrible gaffe. I should have just been subject to my own thoughts. They couldn’t have been that bad, right? I begin to twist my napkin into a rope as I verbally process exactly what a terrible idea this was.

  I yelp, “A date? I don’t want to date yet! Too soon! Can I test out his writing skills first, before we ever get to the spoken word? I mean, what if he’s the kind of guy who doesn’t know ‘y-o-u-r’ from ‘y-o-u apostrophe r-e’? ‘Y-o-u-r the apple of my eye’? I can’t live with that. I can’t receive a love note I want to edit with a red pen!”

  Karin, Michael, and Patrick say nothing as I twist and fret. Or maybe it’s that I don’t give them a chance to interject before I continue. “And then we’d definitely need to chat on the phone first, or Skype or FaceTime long before a date, long before I worry about what to wear or, oh God, what kind of underwear to buy, or how high I should shave. I don’t want to imagine how stringent the standards of grooming are now. When we were in college? Sexy was shaving below the knee. Sexy was baggy Bermuda shorts and a flipped collar. Sexy was powder-blue eye shadow. Shoulder pads were sexy. Cybill Shepherd was sexy. Spiral perms were sexy.”

  “Penny—,” Karin starts to say, but I plow right over her.

  “Like, what if he has a weird verbal tic? I worked with another consultant once, heck of a guy, but he ended almost every sentence saying ‘’n ’at,’ which was somehow short for ‘and that.’ He was from Pittsburgh; I believe it’s a bit of regional dialect.”

  “Penny, it’s just—”

  “Anyway, I liked him plenty, as I said, and he was exceptionally competent, but I can’t build a life with that, or ‘’n ’at.’ I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t. I guess I’d like to take a time-out here and catch my breath for a minute before I go on an actual date.”

  Karin stops me by holding up her iPad and pointing to the screen. “This is literally the first line on
the screen on Match after we enter your e-mail address. I was reading what it says. You’re already fighting this process.”

  I stop twisting my napkin.

  “She is absolutely fighting this process,” Patrick confirms, nodding in a manner I find smug.

  “Mmmf mmmf mmmf mmmf,” Michael replies.

  “Beg your pardon?” Karin says, leaning forward.

  Michael finishes chewing his slice of bread, which he’d drenched in olive oil before sprinkling it with Parmesan cheese. He brushes the crumbs off of his mouth and his shirt. “No, I’m sorry. I said, ‘Give her a chance.’”

  Patrick says, “How are you eating from the breadbasket in front of us? That’s just mean-spirited.”

  Michael places a loving hand on Patrick’s shoulder. “I disagree. You’re being mean-spirited to yourself by trying to maintain your thirty-one-inch waistline. You’re fifty-two, Patrick. What’s the worst thing that will happen if you have to size up? That I would love you less? Never in this or any other lifetime. So have some focaccia—it’s delicious.”

  With some impatience, Karin says, “Yes, yes, we’re all super-concerned about Patrick’s manorexia. You two have been repeating this conversation for twenty years. At this point, I’m sure this is foreplay for you, like those people who have to get dressed in mascot costumes to become aroused.”

  “The Furries,” Patrick confirms.

  “That’s a thing and there’s a name for it?” I ask.

  “Yes,” says Karin. “Ryan dated a girl who was a Furry.”

  “I wish I could unknow that,” I say.

  She ignores me. “But with the two of you, it’s all, ‘I can’t eat the ziti!’ and ‘You must eat the ziti!’ and if that’s what you’re into, if that’s what gets you off, if that’s what keeps it hot and fresh for you both, outstanding and God bless. You wanna be Carbies, go ahead, but not right now. We have what’s probably a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to get Penny on this site, so let’s focus and do this and you guys can get back to your erotic eating disorders next time, capisce?”