by Garth Stein
He handed me a wine tote with six bottles of red wine in it. I took one of the bottles, found a corkscrew in the drawer, and channeled my father—wine corking I’d seen as a child—and uncorked the bottle with a certain deftness that impressed even me.
Richard poured himself a glass. He swirled the wine by holding the base of the glass between his fingers and moving his hand quickly in tight circles. He lifted the glass and examined the wine in the light. He sipped.
“You’re not drinking?” he asked.
“Oh, I’m drinking,” I said. “I’m just—it’s a little early for me.”
“It’s five o’clock somewhere,” Richard said. “Get a glass.”
I got myself a glass, and Richard poured a little wine into it. He showed me how to put my fingers around the base and swirl.
“You want to aerate the wine,” Richard said. “It’s a bit young. You want to open it up. You decant old wines for the sludge. You decant young wines for the aeration.”
He lifted his glass and examined it at eye level. I mimicked his moves.
“See the legs?” Richard asked. “The wine that lingers on the sides of the glass. That gives you an indication of the alcohol content.”
I studied my glass, looking for legs.
“When you drink, you slurp,” he said. “You want that extra aeration. It releases the aroma, which, of course, is how we taste. If you plug your nose, you don’t taste very much at all. Right? If you have a cold.”
“The olfactory senses work in conjunction with the taste buds,” I confirmed. Science. “It’s symbiotic.”
“You know of which I speak. Now take a slurp and tell me what you think.”
I slurped. It tasted like wine.
Not that I’d had a lot of wine. A couple times I’d had it. When my father got drunk at Thanksgiving and poured me a few tablespoons in a jelly jar glass and my mother scowled at him. That was pretty much it. He said I shouldn’t be taught to think alcohol was taboo or I’d start binge drinking in college.
Still, I wasn’t sure my palate was very sophisticated when it came to wine. To me, it tasted red.
“Impressive,” I said.
“Parker gave it a ninety-three,” Richard boasted. “That’s big. Twenty-one bucks a bottle at Pete’s. I got the case discount. Ten percent off. That’s what they do at Pete’s: they give the case discount for half a case. That’s how you get loyal customers, Trevor. Can I call you Trevor?”
“My friends call me Clever,” I said.
“Do they? All right, Clever. It’s about customer loyalty. It’s about the personal relationship. It’s about shaking a man’s hand and looking him in the eye and giving him your word. These lawyers. They’re everywhere. They’re like locusts. My contract with a guy like you, Clever? My contract is here: in my handshake, in my eyes, in my heart.”
“That’s solid,” I said.
“Solid.”
I took another sip of red juice. I slurped to aerate and noticed the approving smile on Richard’s face.
“Richard,” I said.
“What?”
“Just practicing.”
“I know why they call you Clever,” he said, leaning back, taking a sip of wine, and admiring the garnet color as he held the glass to the window so he could examine the clarity; I imitated his moves. “You know what your aunt said to me? She said, ‘Clever is the kid I would have had, if I’d had a kid.’ ”
I thought about it a minute, but not too long. Because it was a compliment, but it also reminded me that I was fourteen and not twenty-three. I would forever be a kid to Serena’s adultness.
“You don’t want kids?” I asked. “I mean, with Serena?”
“I have kids,” he said. “They’re incompetent losers; everything I worked hard to give them is wasted. I spend more money in car insurance and in alimony to that she-wolf mother of theirs than I spent on their education. Adult children are always looking for the first opportunity to force you into a retirement community in Arizona. And, believe me, they’re praying you’ll die quickly so they can have the money you worked hard for but won’t give them.”
I thought about what Richard had said.
“That really depresses me.”
“It’s not what I said, it’s the tannins in the wine that depress you,” he said with a dismissive wave of his hand. “They suppress your proprioceptors. You feel depressed, even though you aren’t.”
“I’m pretty sure I am.”
“Tequila is a good antidote. Maybe you’re too young for tequila. More wine helps; it takes the edge off the despair.”
He poured a little more wine into my glass. And I liked this guy; he treated me like I was just another person and not like I was still wet behind my ears.
“Let’s take a walk,” he said.
We took our wineglasses outside and strolled across the meadow, which was beautiful with its tall dead grass and purple and white wild-flowers and its grasshoppers with their creaky legs. When I was little, I liked to catch grasshoppers and play with them. When I was fourteen, I wouldn’t even touch one; it freaked me out to hold a life in my fingers like that. Maybe I thought that was a part of original sin, too; our banishment from Eden; we no longer feel a connection with insects.
As we strolled across the meadow, I noticed that I could see the very top of a tree that was set back deeply in the woods, but the tree still was much more prominent than the others. I remembered seeing it from the dormer window in the secret room. I glanced back at the house and then to the barn; I was triangulating. I wanted to find that tree.
“Riddell House stands on two hundred four acres,” Richard said, sweeping his hand across the horizon. “That’s sizable acreage for a single-family dwelling. When Elijah built this place, there weren’t any other houses for miles. It had all been clear-cut and nobody wanted it. Elijah had his city house and what he called his north estate—right here—where he entertained the high society of Seattle. It wasn’t until later that the other rich people started to build around Riddell House, hoping some of Elijah’s stature would rub off on them. They used the moniker The North Estate for the gated community. It’s all about marketing.”
“So all those other houses came later?”
“They did. Construction on Riddell House began in the eighteen nineties; The North Estate was developed in the teens and twenties mostly. The developers paid Elijah to let them suggest the properties were connected, but Riddell House is not a part of The North Estate covenant, and therefore this property is not subject to The North Estate zoning restrictions and lot-size rules, et cetera, et cetera. I’m sure you can extrapolate.”
“Extrapolate?”
“Follow the dots. Even when there aren’t any dots to follow.”
“Oh, yeah,” I said.
“There are no covenants or zoning restrictions on this piece of land,” Richard said. “It’s like we’re an Indian reservation. We’re sort of above all laws here. In compensation for being first and all. First Nations. We get some benefits that aren’t afforded to others.”
“But we weren’t the first,” I pointed out. “The Indians were first. Elijah took this land from the Indians.”
“It’s a metaphor,” Richard said. “You can only pick at it so much before it starts to unravel.”
We reached the bluff. I glanced over the edge and shied away. I didn’t like heights then, and I don’t like them now. I moved away from the edge until I felt safe.
“How do you know all this?” I asked Richard to distract myself from my certain demise at the bottom of the cliff. Had he brought me here for a reason? Was he going to kill me? Push me over? “All this history about The North Estate.”
“Research, Clever. Research.”
“You’re a historian?”
“Good question. Yes, I am a historian in a sense. I sell history. I sell houses.”
He said no more, and while I could kind of track his concept, I wanted him to explain it, so I said, “I’m fascinated by
that idea, Richard. I wonder if you wouldn’t mind unpacking it for me.”
I was thinking about Mrs. Friedman, my eighth-grade English teacher, who used that phrase. “Let’s unpack this poem,” she would say.
“I would love to unpack it for you, Clever,” Richard said. “Houses, even if they’re new, have a history. A history of their creators. And, in the case of an old house, the history of its previous owners. Did you know—in the old days more frequently; I’m not sure how much of it you see anymore—the artisans who worked on building a house left pieces of themselves within the walls?”
“How so?”
“A deck of playing cards, or a photograph, or a trinket. When they built walls of lath and plaster, it took real skilled workers. Not like today, when you throw a few drywall screws into a piece of Sheetrock and there you go. When they had to do real work, the craftsmen felt that the house held part of their spirit. They wanted to imbue the house with soul. My job, when I’m selling a house, is to understand that my client isn’t buying a bunch of anonymous rooms glued together in a more or less convenient configuration. My client is buying the history of that house as well.”
“I see,” I said. “Those artisans. The ones who imbue a house with a soul. Is that a permanent condition? I mean, spirits and stuff.”
“There is a history of such occurrences. But you know how difficult it is to prove. As soon as you turn on a camera—”
He made a poof sound and threw up his free hand like a magician revealing that the coin has vanished.
“Do you know what a smudge is?” he asked.
“Like a smear?”
“Not a smear. A smudge. You take a bundle of dried herbs—sage is the most common—you take a bundle of it and you light it so it smolders. Then you wave it in the rooms of the house as you walk through.”
“What does that do?”
“It clears out the dark energy. It’s something you should do when you move into a new house. Gets rid of the bad mojo, if there is any.”
“Bad mojo?”
“Sometimes you have to clear out more than mojo,” he said. “There are people who deal with this stuff all the time. Lights being switched on and off without explanation. Voices.”
“Record players mysteriously turned on,” I said.
He looked up at me quizzically, but I didn’t elaborate. I wondered if Richard had heard voices in Riddell House.
“There are people you can call to purge a house of a lingering soul.”
“Do souls linger?” I asked.
“You’d be surprised,” he said, raising an eyebrow.
“Have you purged the souls at Riddell House?”
Richard looked at me seriously.
“Some souls don’t want to be purged,” he said.
“What do you do then?”
“You level the place and start over. That’s what you do. You bring in bulldozers.”
“What if the souls still stay?” I asked. I could feel my pulse quicken. Maybe Dickie was the right guy to tackle my particular dilemma. “What if they hang around after that? What if the souls are on a mission or something, and they refuse to leave until they finish that mission?”
“At that point, it’s not your problem,” Richard said. “You’ve done all you could. Then it’s the problem of the people who buy the new place. No one said you have to be perfect, they just said you have to give it an honest effort.”
That didn’t sound like a very hopeful or convincing answer to me.
“How many times have you sold a house like that?” I asked.
“A rebuild after a teardown? Not very common. But I’m hopeful. A certain computer technology company went public a few years ago. We’re on the verge of an economic explosion of immense real estate significance. Pretty soon there are going to be a lot of really rich people in Seattle looking to buy really expensive building lots for their new mansions. I think you see where I’m going with this.”
“But I mean, with a lingering soul?” I persisted.
“Oh, yeah. Usually the smudge clears everything up. I had to bring somebody into a house once, you know, a professional. But that was a special situation involving a murder-suicide in the kitchen. It was pretty brutal. I don’t really want to get into it.”
“So you don’t have a lot of experience with a place like this,” I said.
“A redevelopment like this?” Richard practically shouted in mock surprise. “I have a ton of experience with places like this. Why do you think Serena came to me?”
“Um, I don’t know . . . You work together, right?”
“Work together?”
“You know, she works with you. In your office, right?”
“Oh, yeah,” he said guardedly. “Of course.”
“Is she in the same department as you? Is it a big company? What’s it like to work with someone you’re dating?”
“Ah, hmm. It’s a big enough company that we don’t see a lot of each other,” he said. “We sort of have our own things going on, you know, to maintain a sense of professionalism in the workplace.”
“Right,” I said, but I noticed him sneak a nervous glance at me.
“The bottom line is, you’re in good hands with me, friend,” he said, smiling boldly. “This project is right in my wheelhouse.”
He tipped back his glass and emptied it.
“Let’s head back to the house. I seem to be out of wine.”
We left the bluff and started across the meadow.
“Have you thought about taking on a mentor?” Richard asked as we walked together.
“A mentor?”
“You know, a guy who helps with—”
“I know what a mentor is,” I said.
“Have you thought of finding one? You seem to be in need of direction.”
“I am in need of direction, Richard.”
He nodded significantly, and I knew he was talking about himself.
“Will you be my mentor, Richard?” I asked.
“I could do it,” he said. “I think I’m a good fit for you. A balance of real-life experience and the more esoteric, you know . . . things.”
“Concepts?”
“ ‘Cogitations’ is the word I was looking for, I think.”
“I’m willing to give it a try,” I said. “I think we’re vibing.”
“I would need certain commitments,” Richard said after a moment.
“Like what?”
“Truth, honesty, integrity,” he said. “And loyalty. Above and beyond truth, honesty, and integrity, I would demand loyalty. Loyalty above all. You’d have to swear an oath.”
The grasses were so tall in the meadow. It made me think of the antithesis of wild grasses: mowed lawns. Was it better to cultivate our lawns, or let them grow wild?
“I’m afraid I can’t do that, Richard,” I said. “I could never put loyalty above truth, honesty, and integrity. That’s not the way I work.”
Richard nodded to himself.
“Serena said you wouldn’t.”
“But you thought you’d try anyway?”
“Look for the soft spot, Clever,” he said. “You know how it works. Always look for the soft spot.”
“Serena put you up to this?”
Richard stopped and placed his meaty paw on my shoulder.
“Serena is worried about you, Clever. We can’t have any defectors in this family. We all have to work together toward the greater good. You understand that, don’t you?”
“Were you sent to have a talk with me?”
Richard shrugged more or less: yes.
“I’m not the soft spot,” I said.
“So it seems. Forget the mentorship. We’re still friends, right? And friends take care of friends.”
“I can’t commit, Richard. But I’ll take it under advisement.”
“As smart as you are,” he said, “I have to caution you against standing in the way of progress. Things may appear one way to the untrained eye, but I assure you that there is much
going on behind the scenes, and it would be good for you to take that into account before you start stirring a pot of someone else’s stew.”
I thought about it for a minute.
“I’m pretty sure that’s a mixed metaphor,” I said. “I stand cautioned. But don’t demand loyalty over truth. Don’t ever do that.”
Richard chuckled and turned toward the house.
“Serena needs our help,” he said. “It’s almost time for dinner, and, as I’m sure you know, she is very punctual about dinner.”
* * *
Dinner was served in the dining room with formal place settings—lacy linens on the table and crisply ironed cloth napkins and real silver silverware that had to be worth pretty good money. We gathered near one end of the table since the table was absurdly large; thirty people could fit around it at least. Grandpa Samuel explained that when Elijah, and later Abraham, had dinner parties, the whole table would be full of people. The most important people in Seattle. The Stimsons and the Bloedels and the Henrys. They all came to show their respect for Elijah Riddell. I could tell Grandpa Samuel was making most of it up. There’s no way he could have been there for it. But I didn’t say anything because it was fun to listen. He had a melodic voice when he started telling stories; it was almost like he was singing.
No one else paid much attention. My father and I were sitting on opposite sides of the table, and Serena was practically sitting in Richard’s lap; when she wasn’t busing food back and forth with my father, she was cooing in Richard’s ear. I thought their behavior was inappropriate—not because I didn’t like Richard, or because I lusted after Serena. I guess I just didn’t understand Serena’s attraction to him.
“What about the big deal with Pacific Northern Railroad?” I asked as Grandpa Samuel talked about Elijah’s erstwhile immense wealth. He stopped short. “The big merger,” I repeated, having learned about it at the library.
Serena groaned loudly and excused herself with pointed impatience.
“That was a long time ago,” Grandpa Samuel said.