by Richard Ford
Joe, without even offering to greet the owner, goes right into his inspection modality, which he conducts with a brusque and speechless air of military thoroughness. In his smushed-pecker shorts, he takes a quick turn through the living room, which contains mint-condition Fifties couches, sturdy upholstered wing chairs, polished end tables, a sky-blue area rug and some elderly, store-bought prints of bird dogs, parrots in trees and lovers by a peaceful sylvan lake. He leans into the dining room, scans its heavy, polished eight-piece mahogany table-and-chairs ensemble. His beady eyes survey the crown moldings, the chair rails, the swinging kitchen door. He twists the rheostat, brightening then dimming the pink salad-bowl globe, then turns and heads back through the living room and down the central hall, where lights are also on and there’s a security panel with a keypad of oversized cartoon numbers, friendly to older users. With me right behind, Joe strides slappety-slap into each bedroom, takes an unimpressed look around, slides open then closed a closet door, mentally adds up the number of grounded wall sockets, steps to the window, takes in the view, gives each window a little lift to determine if it’s hung correctly or painted shut, then makes for the bathrooms.
In the pink-tiled master bath, he goes for the sink, twists on both taps full blast and waits, assessing the flow, how long the hot takes, how efficiently the drain drains. He flushes the toilet and stares at the bowl to time the “retrieval.” In the “little” bath he raises the thin, new-style Venetian blinds and stares out again at the park-like yard, as though contemplating the peaceful vista he would have après le bain or during another prolonged nature call. (Once a client, an eminent German economist from one of the local think tanks, actually dropped trou and plopped down for a real test.)
During all such inspections, over nearly four months, and with me in attendance, Joe has stopped looking the instant he recorded three major demerits: too few sockets, more than two squishy floorboards, any unrepaired ceiling water stain, any kind of crack or odd wall angle indicating settling or “pulling away.” Customarily he has also spoken very little, making only infrequent, undesignated hums. In one split-level in Pennington, he wondered out loud about the possibility of undetected root damage from an older linden tree planted close to the foundation; another time, in Haddam, he mumbled the words “lead-based paint” as he strode through a daylight basement, checking for seepage. In each case no response was asked from me, since he’d already found plenty not to like, starting with the price, which he later said, in both instances, indicated the owners needed to have their heads uncorked from their asses.
When Joe makes his plunge into the basement (where I’m happy not to go), flipping the light switch on at the top and then off again at the bottom, I take my opportunity to wander back where Phyllis stands with, indeed, Ted Houlihan at the glass door to the back yard. Here, an afterthought rumpus room cum live-in kitchen gives pleasingly onto a neat brick patio surrounded by luau torches, viewable through a big picture window (a neighborhood staple) that also exhibits some seepage discoloration around its frame—a defect Joe won’t miss if he gets this far.
Ted Houlihan is a recently widowed engineer, not long retired from the R & D division of a nearby kitchen appliance firm. He is a sharp-eyed little white-haired seventy-plus-year-old, in faded chinos, penny loafers, an old short-sleeved, nicely frayed blue oxford shirt and a blue-and-red rep tie, and looks like the happiest man in Penns Neck. (He looks, in fact, eerily like the old honey-voiced chorister Fred Waring, who was a favorite of mine in the Fifties but in private was a martinet and a bully despite having an old softy’s reputation.)
Ted gives me a big sincere back-over-his-shoulder smile when I arrive in my REALTOR windbreaker. It is our first meeting, and he would make me happy if he’d take this opportunity to head for Denny’s. Noisy boom, boom, boom racketing has begun below-floors, as if Joe were breaking through the foundation with a sledgehammer.
“I was just about to explain to Mrs. Markham, Mr. Bascombe,” Ted Houlihan says as we shake hands—his is small and tough as a walnut, mine pulpy and for some reason damp. “I’ve been diagnosed with testicular cancer here just last month, and I’ve got a son out in Tucson who’s a surgeon, and he’s going to do the operation himself. I’d sort of been mulling over selling for months, but just decided yesterday enough was enough.” (Which it certainly is.)
Phyllis (and who wouldn’t?) has reacted to this cancer news with a look of pale distress. No doubt it puts her in mind of her own problems—which is reason # fourteen to keep owners miles away from clients: they inevitably heave murky, irresolvable personal issues into the sales arena, often making my job all but impossible.
Though unless I’m way off, Phyllis is already well dazzled and charmed by everything. The back yard is a grassy little mini-Watteau, with carpets of deep-green pachysandra ringing the large trees. Rhodies, wisterias and peonies are set out all over everywhere. A good-size Japanese rock garden containing a little toy maple has been artfully situated under a big dripping oak that looks thoroughly robust and in no danger of falling over into the house. Plus, against the side of the garage is an actual pergola, clustered all over with dense, ropy grapevines and honeysuckle, with a little rustic English-looking iron settee placed underneath like a wedding bower—just the setting for renewing your sacred oaths on a clear late-summer’s evening, followed by some ardent alfresco lovemaking.
“I was just saying to Mr. Houlihan what a lovely yard it is,” Phyllis says, recovering herself and smiling a little dazedly at the thought of the man in front of her having his nuts snipped by his own son. Joe has stopped banging on whatever he was banging on downstairs, though I hear other metal-to-metal scraping and prying coming up through the floorboards.
“I’ve got a bunch of old pictures someplace of the house and the yard back in 1955 when we bought it. My wife thought it was the prettiest place she’d ever seen then. There was a farmer’s field and a big stone silo out back and a cow lot and a milk parlor.” Ted points a leathery finger toward the back property line, where there’s a thick tropical-bamboo stand backed by a high plank fence painted the exact same shade of unnoticeably dark green. The fence continues in both directions behind the next-door neighbors’ houses until it goes out of sight.
“What’s back there, now?” Phyllis says. She has the look of “this is the one, this is the place” written all over her flushed, puffy face. Joe is currently clumping up the basement steps, his excavations and explorings now complete. I picture him as a miner in a metal-cage elevator rising miles and miles out of the deep Pennsylvania earth, his face caked, his eye sockets white, a bunged-up lunch pail under his ham-hock arm and a dim beacon light on his helmet. I am betting the next thing Ted Houlihan says isn’t going to faze Phyllis Markham one iota.
“Oh, the state put its little facility back there,” Ted Houlihan says genially. “Though they’re pretty good neighbors.”
“What kind of facility?” Phyllis says, smiling.
“Mmm. It’s a little minimum security unit,” Ted says. “It’s just one of these country clubs. Nothing serious.”
“For what?” Phyllis says, still happy. “What kind of security?”
“For you and me, I guess,” Ted says, and looks over at me. “Isn’t that right, Mr. Bascombe?”
“It’s the State of New Jersey’s minimum security facility,” I say chummily. “It’s where they put the mayor of Burlington, and bankers, and ordinary people like Ted and me. And Joe.” I smile a little co-conspirator’s smile.
“It’s back there?” Phyllis says. Her eyes find Joe, who has emerged from down under—no coal-dust tan or headlamp or lunch-box, just his flip-flops, jersey shirt and shorts with his wallet stuck in his belt—come in to be cordial. He’s seen some things he likes and is thinking about possibilities. “Did you hear what Frank said?” Her full and curvaceous mouth shows a slight sign of stiffening concern. For some reason she puts her palm flat on top of her bobbed red hair and blinks, as though she were h
olding something down inside her skull.
“I missed it,” Joe says, rubbing his hands together. There is in fact a black dust smudge on his naked shoulder, where he’s been rooting around. He looks happily at the three of us—his first onrecord pleased expression in weeks. He again makes no effort to introduce himself to Ted.
“There’s a prison behind that fence.” Phyllis points out the picture window, across the little spruced-up lawn.
“Is that right?” Joe says, still smiling. He sort of ducks so he can see out the window. “What’s that mean?” He has yet to notice the seepage.
“There’s criminals in cells behind the back yard,” Phyllis says. She looks at Ted Houlihan and tries to seem agreeable, as if this were just an irksome little sticking point to be worked out as a contingency in a contract (“Owner agrees to remove state prison on or before date of closing”). “Isn’t that right,” she asks, her blue eyes larger and intenser than usual.
“Not really cells, per se,” Ted says, thoroughly relaxed. “It’s more like a campus atmosphere—tennis courts, swimming pools, college classes. You can attend classes there yourself. A good many of the residents go home on weekends. I really wouldn’t call it a prison.”
“That’s interesting,” Joe Markham says, nodding out at the bamboo curtain and the green plank wall behind it. “You can’t really see it, can you?”
“Did you know about this?” Phyllis says to me, still agreeable.
“Absolutely,” I say, sorry to be involved. “It’s on the listing sheet.” I scan down my page. “Adjoins state land on north property line.”
“I thought that meant something else,” Phyllis says.
“I’ve actually never even been over there,” Ted Houlihan says, Mr. Upbeat. “They have their own fence behind ours, which you can’t see. And you never hear a sound. Bells or sirens or anything. They do have nice chimes on Christmas Day. I know the gal across the street works there. It’s the biggest employer in Penns Neck.”
“I just think it might be a problem for Sonja,” Phyllis says quietly to everyone.
“I don’t think there’s a threat to anything or anyone,” I say, thinking about Marilyn Monroe across the way, strapping on her hogleg and heading off to work every morning. What must the prisoners think? “I mean, Machine Gun Kelly’s not in there. It’s probably just people we all voted for and will again.” I smile around, thinking this might be a correct time for Ted to walk us through his own security setup.
“We’ve come up quite a bit in value since they built it,” Ted says. “The rest of the area—including Haddam, I should say—has lost some ground. I feel like I’m probably really leaving at the wrong time.” He gives all three of us a sad-but-foxy Fred Waring grin.
“You’re sure leaving a goddamned good house, I’ll just tell you that,” Joe says self-importantly. “I had a look at the floor joists and the sills. They don’t cut ’em that wide anymore, except in Vermont.” He gives Phyllis a narrow-eyed, approving frown meant to announce he’s found a house he likes even if Alcatraz is next door. Joe has turned a corner now—a mysterious transit no man can chart for another. “The pipes and the wiring are all copper. The sockets are all three-prongs. You don’t see that in an older home.” Joe stares at Ted Houlihan almost irritably. I’m sure he would like to dope out the entire house plan in detail.
“My wife liked everything up to code,” Ted says, a little sheepish.
“Where’s she now?” Joe has the listing sheet out and is giving it a good perusing.
“She’s dead,” Ted says, and lets his gaze for an instant slip out to his bosky lawn to glide among the white peonies and yew shrubs, up under the pergola and through the wisterias. A little glistening and chartless passage has been glimpsed open and he’s wandered in, and there is a golden cornfield beyond, and he and the missus are in their wondrous primes. (It is not foreign ground to me, this passage, though under my strict rules of existence it opens but rarely.)
Joe is running his stubby finger and snapping eyes over some listing sheet fine points, undoubtedly pertaining to “extras” and “rm sz,” and “schls.” Noting the “sq ftge” for his new work space. He is house-buying Joe now, death on the scent of a good deal.
“Joe, you asked Mr. Houlihan about his wife, and she’s dead,” Phyllis says.
“Hm?” Joe says.
“She’s lying right there in the kitchen floor, bleeding out her ears, in fact.” I’d like to say this in old reverie-lost Ted’s defense, but I don’t.
“Oh yeah, I know, I’m sorry to know that,” Joe says. He holds the listing sheet down and frowns at Phyllis and me and lastly at Ted Houlihan, as if we’d all been shouting at him “She’s dead, she’s dead, you asshole, she’s dead,” while he’s been sound asleep. “I am, I really am,” he says. “When did this happen?” Joe gives me a look of incredulity.
“Two years ago,” Ted says, back from the past and regarding Joe kindly. His is an honest face of life’s sad dwindling. Joe shakes his head as if there were things in life you just couldn’t explain.
“Let’s see the rest of the house,” Phyllis says, weary with letdown. “I’d still like to see it.”
“You bet,” I say.
“I am very interested in the house,” Joe says to no one. “It’s got a lot of features I like. I really do.”
“I’ll stay with Mr. Markham here,” Ted Houlihan says, still unintroduced. “Let’s go out and have a look at the garage.” He opens the glass door to the sweet, past-besotted yard, while Phyllis and I head moodily back into the house for what, I’m afraid, will now be only a hollow formality.
Phyllis, as expected, takes only polite interest, barely poking her head into the staid little bedrooms and baths, taking pleasant but brief notice of the plastic-decor laundry hampers and pink cotton bath mats, emitting an occasional “I see” or “That’s nice” toward a tub-and-shower that looks brand-new. Once she murmurs, “I haven’t seen that in years,” toward a phone nook built into the end of the hall.
“It’s been taken care of,” she says, standing in the front foyer but stealing a look through to the back to where Joe is now out by the bamboo wall, short arms crossed, listing sheet in hand, jawing with Ted in a pool of midmorning sunlight. She would like to leave. “I liked it so much at first,” she says, turning to gaze out the front, where sexy Marilyn-the-prison-guard’s garbage can waits at the curb.
“My advice is just to think about it,” I say, sounding insipid even to myself. My job, though, is to place a light finger on the scale of judgment when I sense the moment requires, when a potential buyer has a gold-plated chance to make herself happy by becoming an owner. “What I wonder about, Phyllis, when I sell a house is whether a client’s getting his or her money’s worth.” I say this as I feel it—truly. “You might think I’d wonder about whether he or she gets their dream house, or if they get the house they originally wanted. Getting your money’s worth, though, getting value, is frankly more important—particularly in the current economy. When the correction comes, value will be what things stand on. And in this house”—I cast a theatrical look around and up at the ceiling as if that was where value generally staked its pennant—“in this house I think you’ve got the value.” And I do. (My windbreaker is beginning to stoke up inside, but I don’t want to take it off just yet.)
“I don’t want to live next door to a prison,” Phyllis says almost pleadingly, and walks to the screen and looks out, her pudgy hands stuffed in her culotte pockets. (It may be she is attempting one simulated act of ownership—the innocent pause of an everyday to stare out a front door—trying to feel where the “catch” comes and if it comes, the needling thought that somewhere nearby’s a TV-room full of carefree tax cheats, randy priests and scheming pension-fund CEOs who are her leering neighbors, and whether that’s as intolerable as she’s thought.)
Phyllis shakes her head, as if an unsavory taste had just been located. “I always felt I was a liberal. But
I guess I’m not,” she says. “I think there ought to be these types of institutions for certain types of criminals, but I shouldn’t have to live next to one and raise my daughter there.”
“We’re all a little less flexible as we get older,” I say. I should tell her about Clair Devane being murdered in a condo, and me being bopped to the pavement by larking Orientals. A convenient good-neighbor prison wouldn’t be all that bad.
I hear Joe and Ted laugh like Rotarians out back, Joe going “Ho-ho-ho.” A greasy, gassy fragrance has wafted out from the kitchen, supplanting the clean, furniture-wax smell. (I’m surprised Joe could’ve missed it.) Ted and his wife may have mooned around here half gassed and happy as goats for decades, never knowing quite why.
“What do you do about your testicles? Is that bad?” Phyllis says, still solemn.
“I’m not much of an expert,” I say. I need to haul Phyllis back from life’s darker corridor, where she seems to be venturing, and push us on to the more positive aspects of close-by prison living.
“I was just thinking about getting old.” Phyllis gives her little mushroom top a one-finger scratching. “And how fucked up it is.” She, for this moment, is seeing all God’s children as a dying breed (possibly the gas leak is responsible), killed off not by disease but by MRIs, biopsies, sonograms and cold, blunt instruments unsoothingly entered into our most unwelcoming recesses. “I guess I have to have a hysterectomy,” she says, facing the front yard but speaking serenely. “I haven’t even told Joe yet.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” I say, unclear whether that’s the correct and wished-for sympathy.
“Yeah. So. Ho-hum,” she says sadly, her wide backside to me. She may be dousing tears. But I’m frozen in my saddle. A less advertised part of the realtor’s job is overcoming natural client morbidity—the quickening, queasy realization that by buying a house you’re taking over someone else’s decays and lurking problems, troubles you’ll be responsible for till doomsday and that do nothing more than replace troubles of your own, old ones you’ve finally gotten used to. There are tricks of the trade to deal with this sort of recoil: stressing value (I just did it); stressing workmanship (Joe did that); stressing an older home’s longevity, its being finished with settling pains, blah, blah, blah (Ted did exactly that); stressing general economic insecurity (I did that in my editorial this morning and will see that Phyllis gets a copy by sundown).