Local Knowledge

by Liza Gyllenhaal

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Acknowledgements

  Part One

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Part Two

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Part Three

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Part Four

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Part Five

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Part Six

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Part Seven

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Part Eight

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Part Nine

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  CONVERSATION GUIDE

  A CONVERSATION WITH LIZA GYLLENHAAL

  QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION

  Praise for Local Knowledge

  “Gripping and deeply perceptive, this powerful debut novel reveals the pleasures and struggles of true friendship and the painful decisions we often make for acceptance and love. Small-town life and work are rendered in vivid detail, as are the memorable characters who come alive in the hands of a gifted new writer.”—Ben Sherwood, author of The Death and Life of Charlie St. Cloud

  “A powerful and deeply moving novel about the lies we tell ourselves, the moral corners we cut, and the loved ones we betray to get what we want. Gyllenhaal has X-ray vision into the human heart and a sharp eye for contemporary mores and social maneuvering. She knows women and men and children, and pins them to the page with some of the most dazzling prose I’ve read in a long time.”

  —Ellen Feldman, author of Lucy, The Boy Who Loved Anne Frank, and Scottsboro

  “Liza Gyllenhaal’s new novel invites instant immersion. Local Knowledge delves into the inner lives of the residents of a small town where the native families struggle with a failing economy and the loss of their land; the newcomers buy up the land and build lavish houses; and those in the middle profit and suffer at the hands of both. With insight and sensitivity Liza Gyllenhaal deftly draws the reader of Local Knowledge down through the layers and layers of intimate entanglements her characters have with each other, the land, and the new and old ways of life. I highly recommend Local Knowledge to anyone who loves good writing, a good story, and hopes to come away from a book with a deeper understanding of others’ lives and choices.”

  —Tina Welling, author of Crybaby Ranch and Fairy Tale Blues

  Written by today’s freshest new talents and selected by New American Library, NAL Accent novels touch on subjects close to a woman’s heart, from friendship to family to finding our place in the world. The Conversation Guides included in each book are intended to enrich the individual reading experience, as well as encourage us to explore these topics together—because books, and life, are meant for sharing.

  Visit us online at www.penguin.com.

  NAL Accent

  Published by New American Library,

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  First published by NAL Accent, an imprint of New American Library,

  a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  First Printing, January 2009

  Copyright © Liza Gyllenhaal, 2009

  Conversation Guide copyright © Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 2009

  All rights reserved

  REGISTERED TRADEMARK—MARCA REGISTRADA

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA:

  Gyllenhaal, Liza.

  Local knowledge./Liza Gyllenhaal.

  p. cm.

  Conversation guide included.

  eISBN : 978-1-440-65612-5

  1. Women real estate agents—Fiction. 2. New York (State)—Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3607.Y53L63 2009

  813’6—dc22 2008016473

  Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  PUBLISHER’S NOTE

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party Web sites or their content.

  The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

  http://us.penguingroup.com

  In memory of

  Elizabeth Genevieve Aakre

  1988-2006

  And for W.E.B.,

  as always

  Acknowledgments

  I’m indebted to Scott Wilton and Bonnie Benson for sharing their memories of growing up in a place not unlike Red River. I’m deeply grateful to: Ellen Feldman, my adopted older sister and ever-generous mentor, for her wisdom and wit; Julian Muller for his advice, affection, and unqualified support; Susan Cohen, friend and agent, for making it all fun; Tracy Bernstein, for her smart, incisive editing; and, not least, to my husband, William Bennett, for being my first reader, sharpest eye, toughest critic, and staunchest ally.

  Part One

  1

  It’s a beautiful part of the world. You tend to forget that when you’ve lived here all your life. I was thinking about that on the drive over. How you stop seeing things after a while. Things and people. Even those you love. Maybe especially those you love.

  Along the banks of Evers Creek, running high with the last of the snow-melt, bright yellow coltsfoot flowered among the ro
ck rubble and mud. The underbrush was thickening with a reddish haze. And there, in the middle of the long pasture that had once been part of the Thornsteins’ farm, two eager robins pecked at the soggy field. All harbingers of spring. New beginnings. I realized I was looking at things differently that afternoon. Through the eyes of the Zeller family, who were driving up from Manhattan to meet me at the house on Maple Rise. Primarily from Mrs. Zeller’s point of view, I suppose, as it tends to be the women who decide these things. Anne Zeller. As usual, Nana’s notes were detailed and precise.

  It must have been the first or second week of daylight savings time. I remember how strong the sun seemed at five o’clock. I turned the visor down against the glare and caught a glimpse of myself in the clip-on mirror. I was nervous. Of course I was. This was my first big break. A chance to prove I could be trusted with more than the quarter-acre in-towns or the condos at Silver Acres. Though I knew it wasn’t a question of what I was selling—but to whom. Nana’s agency was booming because of the influx of city people in the market for weekend places, second homes. She’d opened up shop after 9/11 and hadn’t stopped growing since. But I’d been taken on because I was born and raised in the area. The only one in the office who knew the difference between Paxter Hill Road and Paxter Mountain Road—or that there even was one. And I’d been groomed primarily to handle the local clientele, even though Red River Realty doesn’t have much interest in that end of things. The low end. Nana made the papers here when she sold the county’s first $3 million home six months back.

  “Allergies. I can barely breathe,” she told me when she phoned in sick that morning. “Is Heather in yet?”

  “No. She just called. She’s on her way to Boston. Her mom took a turn for the worse. She’s not sure how long she’ll be away.”

  “Damn. And Linda has the Meyerhauser closing. Okay, sweetie, it’s going to have to be you. The Zellers are expecting to be shown the Maple Rise house this afternoon at five thirty. The file’s somewhere on my desk. Call Frank and get the plans from him. And don’t let him give you a copy. It’s much more impressive to whip out a full-sized blueprint. Get him to prime you, or better yet, ask Paul to drop by for lunch and go over all the details. And take notes. You’ll want to have this stuff in your head, or at least at your fingertips. The asking’s $775,000, though Frank told me he and Nicky would settle for $725,000. But for God’s sake don’t let them know that!”

  “Nana, please,” I told her. “I’m not an idiot.” I could tell from the way she was talking that she was worried about me taking this on. My biggest sale up to that point had been a $250,000 Colonial in the new development in Harringdale. And that was to a second cousin of Paul’s who’d gotten a job at Walco Propane. The Zellers were Nana’s kind of people. Wealthy. Professional. Upper East Siders. He was a management consultant. She, something creative in advertising. The requisite two children. That was the only part of their résumé I knew anything about. Kids. I have three girls. And I know from experience that if all else fails you can usually warm up even the most forbidding female by getting her going about her offspring. I had definitely put together a mental picture of what I was going to be dealing with. I met Paul at home for lunch to go over the specs and change into my best pantsuit; it has velvet-covered buttons and sateen piping on the collar and sleeves. But it was black on black, what I figured were the national colors of Manhattan.

  I hadn’t seen the house finished, though I’d been hearing about it from Paul for over a year. He had been foreman on the job, and it was one of Frank Miles’s extravaganzas: an enormous teak contemporary with wraparound decks and balconies jutting from the upper floors, five bedrooms, pink travertine marble in the bathrooms, a Jacuzzi in the master suite—all your luxury bells and whistles. It was too big for the sloping hillside and looked something like the Titanic, atilt and about to go under; that was Paul’s take on the final result. But by then, of course, he’d been through hell over its construction. Paul’s the first one to admit that every new house has its own unique set of problems, but the Maple Rise place had taken more than the usual out of my husband. Some of which I knew about. The rest I only got to sense, like sudden cold eddies, beneath the deceptively smooth and temperate surface he presents to the world.

  River Road meets Maple Rise at the old graveyard, a weedy hillock of cracked headstones and sunken graves, once the final resting place for the Barnett and Hughes families, the earliest English settlers in the territory. It’s hidden behind a lichen-covered stone wall and obscured most of the year either by snow or the shade of the ancient maple trees that line the roadway. Today, though, the little cemetery was quite visible in the late-afternoon sun, and, as the land’s subdivision had put more than half of it inside the Maple Rise property, I knew I had to be ready to sell its somewhat spooky charms to the Zellers. But that would be easy compared to trying to explain what I passed on my right as I made the switchback up the steep hill. I glanced down at the bizarre landscape, and then back to the graveled road ahead of me. Soft-pedal it, I told myself. Make it an inside joke, a humorous anecdote. They won’t even see it by early May when the trees leaf out.

  I’d given myself half an hour before the Zellers were due to open the house and get acquainted with the interior. But when I crested the top of the hill, I saw I wasn’t going to have a chance to get my bearings after all. A white Lexus SUV was already parked in front of the two-car garage. A woman and two children were perched on the back bumper, their heads turned westward toward the sun, eyes closed. They roused themselves at the sound of my car. The kids—a boy and a girl, roughly five and three, the ages of my two youngest—hopped off the bumper and fell against each other, laughing, as I pulled up. The woman uncrossed her arms and slid her hands into the back pockets of slim-fitting black jeans. She was wearing cowboy-style boots and a well-worn leather bomber jacket. She looked towheaded like her kids, though as she came up to the car I realized that her short-cropped hair was actually prematurely white. I rolled down the window, but she started talking before I had a chance to say a word.

  “Hey there. We got up here a lot faster than we thought we would. The Taconic was absolutely beautiful, by the way. Fantastic. We’ve just been sitting here soaking up these incredible views. This is Max and Katie. Come on, guys, stop that, and say hello.” She had the husky voice of an adolescent boy, and a rapid-fire, near monotone delivery. I felt like I was on some sort of remote video delay, understanding what she was saying about half a beat after she’d said it.

  “Hello, Katie and Max,” I replied. I reached behind me to get the plans and files.

  “Oh, great,” she said, when I climbed out of the car with the blueprint under my arm. “That will make Richard’s day. He’s in the car on his cell phone, of course. I think eventually he’ll just have the thing surgically attached to his head. By the way, I’m Anne. And you’re … Nana Osserman?” There was something in her tone that let me know she suspected I wasn’t. I immediately assumed it was my overly dressy outfit. Of course, I should have known better. I looked exactly like what I felt: ill at ease and trying too hard.

  “No, I’m sorry, I thought Nana called your husband to tell him. She’s sick today and asked me to show you around for her.”

  “Oh, thank God!” She laughed, nudging me with her elbow as we walked side by side back toward the Zellers’ car. She lowered her voice. “I’ve met Daniel Osserman, but not her. He’s got to be at least in his midseventies. And I have this weird, totally non-politically correct bias against May-December unions. It must be some sort of automatic self-defense system that kicks in with women over a certain age, do you know what I mean? And Nana probably did talk to Richard on the way up. He’s been on his cell since Poughkeepsie without coming up for air. Let’s get him off.” She stopped by the driver’s side and knocked on the window. We waited. She knocked again and began to make funny faces, finally smooching her face up against the glass. Her children started laughing, and I realized I was smiling. My real smile, not m
y professional one.

  Richard Zeller was still talking into his phone as he got out of the car and slammed the door.

  “… So we fly from Cleveland to San Francisco Tuesday afternoon. What’s the problem? No, I don’t mind teleconferencing Greensboro in. It’s just the plant, right? They don’t give a damn what we’re trying to do anyway. Listen, I got to go. I’m at the place. Yeah. Just make it work.” He clicked off and then started scrolling through his messages, frowning.

  “Richard?” Anne said. “You are totally missing the magnificent sunset here.”

  “Right,” he said, flipping his cell shut. He was tall and heavyset, his unwieldy bulk encased in a beautifully cut dark blue suit. His face was fleshy, the eyes pouched, but the gaze that took me in was avid and quick. He didn’t hold out his hand.

  “Dan Osserman and I go back about a million years,” he said. “Nana’s the only one to see up here, I’m told.”

  “I’m sorry she couldn’t be here to do this personally, but—”

  “Yeah. I know, we talked,” he said, finally turning around to take in the fading sun and distant hills. “Okay, let’s see what we’ve got. You know the acreage?”

  “Nine-plus,” I said. “Woods on all four sides so you’re totally protected. In the summer, the trees will screen out a great deal. Though, of course, it’s up to you if you want to do some more selective cutting. The possible views are quite stunning, obviously.”