Local Knowledge

by Liza Gyllenhaal

  “Yes, hello, this is Anne Zeller. We were shown a lovely house up there this past Friday and my husband has a few questions that he’s asked me to handle since he’s on a business trip. Unfortunately, the woman who showed us the place never told me her name, as far as I can remember. And I don’t think she gave us her card. In any case I couldn’t find it in the paperwork she gave us. So, could someone double-check which Realtor showed us that house—it was, let me see, on Maple Rise? And have her call me back at my office. The number here is …”

  I felt a lift hearing her voice again—it had a compelling intimacy about it, as though she was whispering a secret in my ear. I played the message again, jotted down Anne’s name and number on one of our pink While You Were Out slips, and took it in to Nana’s office. As usual, she was on the phone. But when she saw who the message was from she gave me a toothy grin and a thumbs-up signal with her free hand, and then I went back to my desk, taking with me the stack of paperwork Nana had left in her out-box. I’m able to do most of the routine filing and word processing by rote now, freeing up my thoughts.

  “What was that about Luke?” Paul had asked me when I hung up the phone after speaking to Nana on Friday night. We’d been in the kitchen when she called, finishing up dinner. The girls had retreated into the living room to watch television and Paul had quietly started to rinse the plates and load them into the dishwasher. I could sense him listening to me, weighing my tone of voice, the direction of the conversation. He knew how much the showing meant to me, how important it was for me to do a credible job. Paul wants me to succeed at Red River Realty as much as I do; he’s my biggest supporter, as I am his. I think this comes from us having been so close to the abyss during our early years together. We’ve been pulling each other back from an edge only we can see—and know is still there—for longer than I care to remember.

  “The client commented on Luke’s place. He called it an eyesore.”

  “Christ, Maddie. I hope this isn’t going to turn into a real problem.”

  “You mean any more than it already is? I don’t know. They’ll be weekenders, if they buy the place. I doubt they’ll have the time or interest to get too involved with neighbors.”

  “From your lips … ,” he said, as I started to brush past him with the garbage bag, but he pulled me into his arms. We held each other for a long time without talking. But in that silence I couldn’t help thinking about Luke. And Paul. And me. If only I could rewind the tape of our life together. If only we could start over again. What wouldn’t I give not to have Luke’s shadow hovering over us! Not so much coming between us as forcing us to see each other through his eyes. Though I’ve tried to banish him from my thoughts for many months now, it seems that I’ve allowed him—or some imagined form of him—to assume a kind of mythic stature in my mind.

  The intercom buzzed. Nana asked me to come into her office.

  “I’m losing it, sweetie. Time to put me out on an ice floe,” she told me as she waved me into one of the chairs that face her desk. She did look tired, I thought, and irritated about something.

  “You say that at least twice a week,” I reminded her.

  “Do I? Well, this time I really mean it. I very nearly blew that call. I can’t believe it! That was Anne Zeller. I called her back. She’s at Freiling and McDuffy, by the way, the ad agency. In my day, a very hot creative shop. I had to go through two assistants before getting through to her. So, she’s something in her own right, okay? By the time we finally connected, I was in full selling mode. I know these kinds of women. You don’t get to where she is by being a softy. But she seemed surprised that I’d called.”

  “That’s weird. I heard the message.”

  “No, that I had called her. I explained that I was the principal owner of this agency. I was calling mano a mano, so to speak. She asked me who you were, what your name was. I told her, of course, then asked what her questions were, how I could help. But she seemed reluctant to get into it. She’s got this breathy voice—and she was literally kind of humming to herself, not a good sign. I’m such an idiot! Finally, I asked her if something was wrong, you know, if perhaps this wasn’t such a good time to talk. And then she came right out with it.”

  Nana leaned back, threw her arms up in the air, and cried, “Take me now, God, before I do any more harm! She wants to work with you. She likes you. What? So the two of you bonded the other night? You could have had the decency to tell me, sweetie, before I made such an utter fool of myself.”

  “I’m so sorry, Nana. I didn’t know. I mean, I liked her. A lot. But I would never take a client of yours—”

  “You’re damned right you wouldn’t,” Nana cut me off. “But I understand now that this is a special situation. I was thinking about what you said about the husband, Richard. That he doesn’t like to feel hustled. I think he’s pushing this off on his wife for that reason. He wants it, but he doesn’t want to have to get down there and hondle. So he wants her to do it—but she, who knows?—for some reason she feels more comfortable dealing with you. Thinks I’d put on the pressure or something. So, here’s what we’re going to do. You’re going to handle it. Call her back. Get her list of concerns. Love her up. And make her feel good about choosing you over me, okay? You’re best friends, or whatever. Then you come to me and I help you every step of the way on this.”

  “Nana, that’s—so kind of you. So generous.”

  “And we split the commission fifty-fifty.”

  3

  “I’m sorry. She’s in a meeting. Who’s calling, please?” It was the gum-chewing assistant, the junior one; the other one already recognized my voice.

  “Maddie Alden from Red Riv—”

  “Oh, sure, wait. She told me to put you right through. Hold on, please.” Jazz—the real thing, not Cool 100—briefly filled my ear. Then Anne picked up, though she was in the middle of a conversation with someone else in the room: “… let them try, as far as I’m concerned. It’s total bull. Right, exactly. He’s just hoping to score off the situation, do you know what I mean? Sure. Thanks. See you at the meeting. Okay, what have you got? Maddie, are you still there?”

  “Yes, sorry. I have the soil suitability assessment and Northridge Land Design’s Test Pits and Perc Testing reports. It’s—let’s see—about eight pages altogether. Do you want me to fax it?”

  “That was fast. God, you’re terrific. What I really want is for you to come down and reorganize this damned office. I have a couple of total idiots working for me right now. I’d give anything to have someone like you here. Trippers and askers surround me. That was Whitman, I think. I used to know him by heart. What happened to all that wonderful, useless knowledge that seemed so all-important to us in college? This place is a total mad-house today, in case you couldn’t tell. Everything adds up?”

  I was getting used to Anne’s way of jumping from one subject to another without apparent logic, though I was beginning to see certain patterns in her thinking. Like a cat, she preferred to reach her destination indirectly, taking her time and the long way around to land, suddenly and unexpectedly, exactly where she intended to from the start.

  “Yes. The readings are fine. Frank wouldn’t have sited the house there otherwise. He’s totally reliable.”

  “Oh, of course. I’m sure you’re right. As I already told you, this is all just an exercise in pandering to my husband. He adores paperwork, busywork, forcing people to run around in little circles for him. You would not believe the hoops he’s making our bank jump through before he deigns to allow them to give us a mortgage. It’s embarrassing. For me, at any rate. Richard claims people like to be pushed. That’s fine for him to say, but I’m the one who’s having to do the pushing.”

  “Actually, these are exactly the sorts of things you should be asking about. I’m still working on the school tax question. I’ve a call into the board commissioner, but it might take another day or—”

  “That’s fine. What’s it like up there this morning? This city is an abso
lute sauna. No, that’s too kind an image. It’s more like an open cauldron. The streets are already getting that kind of slimy look they get in the summer—and the smell? God, wouldn’t it be wonderful to be up on that deck with you right now, having a glass of iced tea?”

  She’d done this to me a few times over the past few weeks: suggesting that, once the Zellers bought the house, the two of us would naturally become friends. Of course, it wasn’t going to happen. She was making all sorts of assumptions about me—that I’d been to college, for starters—that I wasn’t about to correct while we were still hammering out the details of the sale. Still, I was hoping that we could at least stay friendly. That we’d chat for a moment or two when we ran into each other at the post office or general store. So many of the weekenders stare right through me and Paul or, much worse, treat us with overly polite condescension. Sometimes I wonder how they seem to know automatically that we’re locals, which to most of them means the same thing as hired help.

  “Live with it,” Paul tells me when I get upset that some client has called him on a Saturday night to come over and fix a sliding door to the deck. Or broken light dimmer. Or—and this was my favorite—door handle to the utility closet. On the weekend!

  “So, they’re not thinking about me, about us. They’re only up for a day or two and want it taken care of. You can’t take this stuff so personally, Maddie.”

  But Anne wasn’t like that at all. She would actually bend over backward to thank me for things that were just a routine part of my job and then compliment me on my speed and efficiency. But it wasn’t just that; from the beginning she acted as though—and made me believe that—we shared a special kind of understanding. She seemed to enjoy talking to me, lingering on the phone long after we’d finished the business part of our conversation.

  “You like working in real estate, don’t you?” she asked me at one point. “I could tell that when you took us through the house. Like it was yours—and you were so proud to show us around. I wish I could feel that in my job. That kind of ownership—that joy. Listen, Maddie, the truth is”—her voice sinking lower—“I think maybe I’m reaching a kind of burnout here. There’s this continual push for something new, something different. If I hear one more time, ‘I don’t know what I want. Surprise me!’ I’ll have to kill someone. These people don’t seem to realize that there’s a limited number of creative approaches you can take to selling sporting equipment, do you know what I mean?”

  “Honestly, I don’t know that much about advertising. What does a”—I had her card taped to the inside of the file on the desk in front of me—“Senior Creative Director actually do?”

  “You mean besides prostituting her artistic and moral integrity in order to stimulate consumer interest in some shoddily made and overpriced pair of in-line skates?” she asked with her throaty, adolescent boy’s laugh and then, perhaps realizing that I was serious, she hesitated for a moment and then went on: “I conceptualize. That is, I try to think of extraordinarily fascinating ways to strengthen Haverford Athletics’ flabby bottom line and anemic public image. I’m also in the middle of a pitch right now for a new line of cookware supposedly designed and regularly used by Lucinda d’Annuzio—you know, that Italian chef on the cable food network? Although, since we’ve only been able to see prototypes and the stuff is being produced somewhere in Malaysia, I doubt that Lucinda herself has done much actual cooking with it. But these days, none of that matters. These pots and pans could be made out of aluminum foil for all that quality matters. It’s about branding. Name recognition. God, I sound so cynical, don’t I? What a pathetic cliché—a disillusioned advertising executive! At least you get to sell something valuable, Maddie, something quantifiable.”

  “Yes, I guess you’re right,” I said, looking around my crowded little cubicle and imagining the view that someone in Anne’s position enjoyed. The Freiling & McDuffy offices were on Hudson Street. I’d looked the address up on MapQuest. It’s about ten blocks north of Ground Zero in the midst of some of the most desirable residential real estate in the world. The agency was probably in one of those renovated cast-iron buildings. A floor-through loft with exposed brick and ductwork, eighteen-foot-high ceilings, views of the Hudson River or a resurgent downtown. Nothing special to someone like Anne Zeller. But for me, who has been to the city only three times in my life, a world as exotic and foreign as a Turkish seraglio. When Anne said that about wanting me to come down there and reorganize things, although I knew she was kidding, I still felt a little flutter in my stomach. Like when I was pregnant and the baby would kick me. Without warning, there it was: a glimpse into another dimension, a new way of seeing the possible.

  “I had to arrange the meeting with the engineer for eleven Saturday morning, by the way,” she told me then. “I tried to make it earlier, but that’s the best he could do. I hope that won’t be a problem for you.”

  “No,” I said, though it was. I was going to have to let the Zellers into the house at the same time I was supposed to be taking Rachel into Northridge to see my gynecologist. She’d been complaining about cramps during her period for the last few months. It would be her first visit to an ob-gyn. This was not something I could ask Paul to handle for me. And I knew I couldn’t easily reschedule; it was tough enough getting the Saturday morning appointment. On the other hand, I didn’t want to turn the Zellers over to Nana or anyone else. I’d put a lot of time and effort into the Maple Rise sale over the past few weeks. And though the Zellers’ offer had been accepted, Nana warned me that things often went wrong on the bigger deals at the last moment.

  “Don’t let anything slip,” she said. “Get them answers before they even know they have questions. Remember the kids’ names. Keep in mind every last little like and dislike you know they have. Let him alone, as we agreed. But her? Stick to her like glue. You’re her biggest fan. Her best buddy, okay?”

  “Margaret says they put this flashlight up you.” Rachel was nibbling the edge of the rilled round of paper, the only thing left of the cranberry walnut muffin we’d gotten for her at the general store when I picked up the newspapers. Sometime during my first year with Nana, I started getting the New York Times as well as our local paper. I told Paul it’s because they have good real estate coverage, which is only partially the truth. To me, it automatically confers a kind of status, and I enjoy tossing it into the backseat of the car when a client gets in on the passenger side. I was pleased to see that Rachel had it in her lap, and I realized that was because I imagined Anne might see it there when we drove up and think—what? Better of Rachel than she already deserved?

  “No, honey, I’ve never heard of that,” I said, glancing over at her. She has my hair, though she wears it much longer: dark blond and thick as a horse’s mane, a beautiful burden that takes her half an hour to blow-dry every morning. Today she had it partially up in what we used to call a Mary Jane, the velvet scrunchie already listing under the weight of the heavy swags. Her upturned Alden nose was slick with humidity and adolescence. Her right knee pumped. Though I’d instigated several conversations about her sexual development, she remained prim and painfully modest about her changing body. We’d given her the upstairs guest bathroom to use as her own after she banned first me, then her younger sisters, from seeing her in the nude.

  “When Dr. Orlanuk examines me,” I told her, “he uses this kind of forceps thing to—”

  “Oh, stop it! Just stop. I actually don’t want to know. I’ll be finding out soon enough on my own.”

  “Okay,” I said, turning on the blinker as we neared the turnoff to Maple Rise. “But it’s not that bad, I promise you. Just think how many women Dr. Orlanuk has examined over the course of his professional career. He probably thinks about it the same way a mechanic does looking under the hood of a car. It’s nothing to—”

  “Mo-om, please.” Rachel sighed. She turned to look out the passenger window as we passed Luke’s place, and we both fell silent. How much did she know about what had happened be
tween Luke and Paul and me? Up until a year or so ago he’d been a part of our family—an infrequent visitor, true, but nonetheless beloved by my three daughters with far more abandon than they’d ever displayed to any of their often-seen uncles. It seemed to me that their nascent femininity was drawn to his hardened separateness, that lone wolf wariness that has made so many women want to tame him, comfort him, draw him inside the circle of domestic life. To be fair, he’d been unfailingly attentive to each of my daughters, recognizing their differences in a way that touched my heart as little else about him could. He was forthright and inquisitive with Rachel. Gentle and protective of Beanie. A willing playmate for Lia. My cynical side said—of course—they’re girls, after all, and he knows exactly how to appeal to them.

  Another part of me knew that he must have loved them then and missed them now. I felt a guilty surge of triumph at the thought. All the things Luke didn’t have, that I did. Paul. My three lovely daughters. Our home. A job that was giving me a new and growing sense of self and well-being. And, I admit it, all these successes were made sweeter to me by the fact that Luke, once so superior and aloof, had seen his own life fail in so many fundamental ways.

  If Rachel was thinking about Luke, too, she showed no sign of it as I downshifted on my way up the curving driveway, and his property disappeared behind a wall of green.

  I was pleased to see the Zellers’ Lexus was already parked in the turnaround next to a white van that I recognized as belonging to Eric Benson, a building inspector who does a lot of work on properties Nana has brokered and who serves with Paul on the town planning board. Richard and Eric emerged from the woods as I parked.

  “This won’t take a minute,” I told Rachel as I climbed out of the car.

  “Maddie, how’re you doing?” Eric asked, holding out his hand when we all met on the front path. “How’s Paul?”

  “We’re great,” I told him. “And you guys?” I turned to Richard, but he was staring past me down the hill.