Local Knowledge

by Liza Gyllenhaal

  “Oh, yes. Very much. You know our house is just eight minutes down the road from here.”

  “Ah, so you timed it? Very practical. Terrific. Yes, I think Nicky told me that you’ve lived around here most of your life. So you know the county pretty well. That’s really fabulous. The three of us are still driving around with maps open in our laps half the time, getting lost on all these rutted back dirt roads. And you know people? You would hear if someone is interested in selling or buying? Or, God forbid, if somebody dies.”

  “Yes, Mrs. Osserman. I think I can say that I know pretty much everything that happens around here.”

  “It’s Nana, sweetie. I’m Nana to you. To just about everybody.”

  I’m not saying it was easy, especially in the beginning. I was nervous and shy, easily hurt. I’d never worked in an office before, let alone one so fast-paced and hectic. And I was worried, initially, that Heather and Linda didn’t really like me. That Nana felt she’d been too hasty taking me on. She must have assumed that all the endless problems I was coping with for the first time—changing copier ink cartridges, unjamming the fax machine, handling three or four phone calls at once—were essentially routine for me. I kept waiting for one of the women to realize how insecure I actually was; how I covered what seemed to me endless blunders with little excuses. But nobody seemed to notice how much I was, literally, learning on the job. They barely said hello to me in the mornings before they were immersed in their calls, tapping on their keyboards, running out the door, tossing client agreements, contracts, and ad listings on my desk to proofread or file, type up or print out.

  The first morning I was there, Linda took me through the Promatch tutorial. Paul went over it again with me a couple of times later that night and during the week at home, and showed me how to find my way around Yahoo, Google, MapQuest, and other Internet tools he thought might be useful. It made it easier for me that Linda worked from her apartment in Manhattan two days a week and, even when she came in was, like Nana and Heather, actually out of the office for so much of the time. This allowed me to call Paul on his cell and ask him to help me troubleshoot a printing problem, or teach me how to send a file as an e-mail attachment. He’s always loved computers and had long tried to interest me in them. Now that I needed to know, I was a quick learner. I actually surprised myself by how much I was able to pick up even in those first few bewilderingly busy weeks. And not just about the job.

  “I can’t deal with this right now, Mom,” I heard Heather tell her mother one afternoon. I’d taken several messages already that day from the quavery-voiced Mrs. Duffy when Heather was on other calls. “I’ll phone Reena and try to sort this out tonight, okay? I’m sure she didn’t mean to shortchange you. Yes, I know, but we’re only talking about a dollar or two, right? Yes. Yes, I know, every penny …”

  It didn’t take me long to realize how much time Heather, a divorced single mom who’d relocated a few years ago from Cambridge, spent dealing with her own mother’s problems, both real and imagined. In pretty short order, because I was frequently the only one around for her to vent at, I, too, got to know Mrs. Duffy and her many trials and tribulations. I also became friendly with Linda Cassini’s teenaged daughter, Jeri, who, when I first started working for Red River Realty, was waiting to hear back from the many colleges she’d applied to. She usually called in around four thirty, when she got home from school and had sorted through the mail.

  “Sorry, she’s out, Jeri. Did you try her cell?”

  “Yeah, she’s not picking up. Not that she’ll really want to hear my news.”

  “Oh? Smith?”

  “No, Vassar. My mother’s fucking alma mater!”

  “Well, come on. You were accepted at Bard and Purchase, right?”

  “Yeah, but they were my safties. They don’t count. I’m totally fucked.”

  Besides Luke, whose upbringing had been so dysfunctional, this was my first direct exposure to people whose backgrounds and status were so different from my own. Heather was probably the closest to me in terms of economic level, but only because she had recently been bumped down the ladder several rungs. I learned she had earned an MFA and had lived, when married, in a three-story Victorian mansion. But a nasty divorce had depleted her resources both financially and emotionally. She had custody of her ten-year-old daughter, while her husband had managed to keep her thirteen-year-old-son—and most of his sizable income as a dermatologist. She handled commercial sales for the agency with a blunt, take-it-or-leave-it attitude that seemed to work well in the business sector. Though I believe she was only in her midthirties, she already had permanent frown lines and a marked slump, as if she was actually toting her bag of woes around with her. She was so terse with me in the beginning that I just assumed she resented my presence in the cluttered office I shared with her and Linda.

  “Your mom called while you out,” I told her about a month after I’d started the job. “Three times.”

  “You don’t have to keep track, Maddie. I kind of just assume she’s called. And you don’t have to chat with her the way you do. I know how much she repeats herself.”

  “I don’t mind at all.”

  “Oh, please. You are such a Pollyanna!”

  Linda, on the other hand, was eager to share the ongoing drama of her life with anyone who would listen. I’m not sure if she’d been this forthcoming before my arrival, because Heather always pointedly picked up the phone as soon as Linda began to talk. In any case, whenever Linda was in the office, we received regular updates about how her husband’s career was starting to take off at Time Warner, that her brilliant daughter, Jeri, was torn between Ivy League colleges, why she loved her “double life” in the city and the small weekend place in Oakdale she used during the three days she was in the office. Her short-cropped dark hair had a flare of white at the right temple. She dressed with understated elegance in muted flowing tunics and large, striking necklaces and dangling earrings. Like Nana, she seemed to talk a mile a minute. And she made the same sort of assumptions Nana seemed to about my experience and background.

  “So Jeri’s decided on Purchase of all places! I know that seems so odd considering her choices. But apparently they have a really fabulous drama department there—and, who knew? She wants to get into the thee-a-tah! Not acting, thank God. I love my little lamb, but she has my big fat nose and little nasally voice. No, she’s thinking about lighting. Isn’t that interesting? She wants to be the next Jennifer Tipton or whatever. Well, I think Tipton’s a genius, don’t you? Did you see what she did this season for that new Paul Taylor piece?”

  “It’s great that Jeri already knows what she might want to do,” I said, deflecting her questions. I was learning not to panic when I thought my ignorance might be exposed. I was getting good at skirting the truth, lying by omission. “I think so many kids probably go into college totally clueless about why they’re there. And it’s a pretty pricey way to try to find yourself.”

  “Absolutely. I’m really so proud of her.”

  Gradually, I got myself accepted, too. In many ways, my personality was cut right out for office life. I was so willing to please. I longed to fit in. I worked hard. I never complained. I molded myself to the needs of the moment, to whomever I was dealing with or talking to. I made myself indispensable to Nana. I organized her chaotic filing system. I helped keep her calendar, reminded her of appointments, and eventually started setting up showings for her. She was eager to teach me about the business, though her lesson plans were usually constructed around some variation on the theme of her own phenomenal success.

  “Never forget that the client always comes first,” Nana told me one evening when I’d put a call from her husband through to her before that of a client.

  “Yes, but it was Mr. Osserman… .”

  “Exactly. I could have called him back. But Jay Crandell is one tiny little push away from putting in a bid. It’s precisely the moment when a call like this could make all the difference. The reason I’ve done
so well is that I never forget that this is primarily a job of selling. Not showing. But selling, marketing, putting the best possible spin on whatever property is under consideration. And how do you go about doing that? Service, sweetie. That’s the secret. Sales and service; they’re really just flip sides of the same coin.” She punched in a number while she was speaking, and without missing a beat, cried: “Jay, sweetie! I’m so sorry we got cut off. This is your cell phone, right? Hmmm … yes … I’m here for you twenty-four-seven—you know that. Of course, I totally understand …”

  Within my first few weeks of working for her, my initial negative impression of Nana had faded away. Or, perhaps more to the point, I was able to get her in a better perspective. Yes, she was loud, but it no longer bothered me. After all, she had something to say. And she was outspoken in her praise for me. I was turning out to be a “godsend.” Without being fully aware of it, I let go of my reservations and inhibitions and allowed Nana to disarm me with her energy and enthusiasm and sweep me up in her cyclonic orbit. And, finally, she began to push me to be more ambitious. More positive. Assertive. More like her.

  “Anyone heard of a Roxley Lane in West Bairnbrook?” Nana asked as she entered the room Linda, Heather, and I shared. It was about three months after I started, an unusual morning as all four of us were actually in the office at the same time.

  “I’ve never even heard of Bairnbrook,” Linda said, turning in her chair to face Nana. “Let alone West whatever. What’s there?”

  “I just got a call from a couple who wants to sell,” Nana said. “Though they’d like an estimate first, of course. I don’t know, he sounded a little evasive. He didn’t give me much to go on. Just the street address.”

  “West Bairnbrook’s a suburb of Harringdale,” I said. “It used to be a pretty nice area when the Untermeyer Paper Mill was still in operation. Now, though? I don’t know. Harringdale’s in a kind of transitional period. Hold on, and I’ll look it up for you.” I knew as soon as I clicked in for a close-up on the MapQuest site what the problem was. Roxley Lane was a tiny street off a series of short streets that formed a little constellation around what had once been a light industry site. I realized now that I’d passed through the neighborhood several times fairly recently; it was part of the shortcut I’d found on my way up to see Paul in the hospital.

  “It’s in a trailer park,” I said, looking up from my computer. I saw the expression of horror that crossed Nana’s face. Heather laughed out loud.

  “Thank you, sweetie,” Nana said. “You’ve spared me a totally unproductive afternoon.”

  “But what I would have given to see your face when you pulled up to that trailer!” Linda said. “Can you imagine? People actually living in one of those things?”

  “I see them up in the woods around here,” Heather said. “They mostly look abandoned, though, as far as I can tell.”

  “A lot of them are used by hunters,” I said. “In the fall.”

  “And that’s another thing I simply cannot conceive of,” Linda went on. “People still hunting in this day and age. I don’t know. It just seems so barbaric to me. Neanderthal.”

  “Oh, well,” Nana said, crumpling up the pink message slip. “I thought it was too good to be true: a brand-new listing drifting in from nowhere.”

  I felt myself automatically sharing in Nana’s disappointment. Exclusive listings, the lifeblood of every Realtor, were becoming harder and harder to come by. And no self-respecting broker would want to handle a house trailer, for heaven’s sake! No wonder the man on Roxley Lane had sounded evasive. How embarrassing for Nana if she’d actually driven all the way up there, I thought. I felt a little flush of irritation that anyone would have thought Red River Realty might be interested in such a low-end property. That was how fast and far I’d come. That I would identify with Nana, Linda, and Heather so thoroughly, that I’d see the situation through their eyes, rather than my own. I, who had spent some of the happiest months of my life in an Elcona single-wide. Can you imagine people actually living in one of those things? At that moment, honestly, I really couldn’t. I was halfway to believing that I actually was who the others imagined me to be: a local, yes, but someone really not too different from themselves. Educated, smart, experienced, a go-getter. The person I wanted to be.

  So, yes, I longed to be something more, someone better. It often seemed to me that I’d spent my whole life looking behind me, worrying that the past was catching up. Deep down, I still lived with the fear that at any moment, someone might look at me and say: oh, that Maddie Alden. On some level, I knew that I would always have to hide who I really was. I would always need to pretend. But that didn’t make my wanting to succeed any less imperative. It made it more so. And I saw that I could do this. I was quick and bright. Even Heather had softened toward me. She’d told me a few days earlier that she was pretty sure her mother was in the early stages of Alzheimer’s; I’d confided to her about our problems with Clara. I felt a part of things now. And I loved the busyness of office life, the juggling of phones and messages, talking and typing at the same time, learning and doing. Planning ahead. Nana saw it before I did. How well the job suited me. Showing and selling. I was a pleaser. I was a people person. Clients first. Sales and service, 24/7.

  32

  Paul and I were both so busy now, I don’t know what we would have done without Kathy and the new day-care center she started up that spring. I wouldn’t normally have felt comfortable allowing my babies to be out of the house for so much of the day, but the farm was really like a second home to my daughters. Also, Lia was so confident and self-reliant. And Kathy was sensitive to Beanie’s shyness; she knew when to let her just go and play on her own. Rachel now got off the school bus at the drop near the farm and hung out with Kathy and the younger children until I picked them all up after work. It was about this time that I began to appreciate what a sweet, responsible person my oldest daughter was turning out to be. Kathy noticed it, too.

  “Rachel’s so good with the kids,” Kathy told me one night when two of her little charges ended up staying past their usual pickup times. “And they just love her! Look at Nate—he’s that redhead over there. He’s a total devil with me, but she’s got him eating out of the palm of her hand. I’m going to advertise and try to expand some this summer. Do you think Rachel would want to help out? I’ll pay her something, of course.”

  “I’m sure she’ll want to. And I’m really happy to hear you’re going to keep this going! It’s gotten so busy at the office. I’ll probably have to start going in on weekends now that we’re heading into the really active selling season. And I want to start paying you for taking Lia and Beanie. You’ve been so great, Kath. But this is above and beyond the call of duty.”

  “I would never think of you or the girls as being a duty. You know that.”

  Paul agreed that we should start paying Kathy the going rate. We talked about it after dinner a few days later when I was doing the bills. I had the invoices, envelopes, and checkbook spread out on one end of the kitchen table. Paul had his own paperwork, including minutes from the various town select committees, in front of him.

  “Oh, Christ,” he said.

  “What?”

  “It’s Rick’s treasury report. I wasn’t able to make the last meeting, but I heard something about this. The town’s got three properties in tax title. They’re planning on putting liens on them for unpaid back taxes. Guess who’s on the list?”

  “Don’t tell me.” Paul and I sometimes speculated about Luke’s financial situation. We simply could not believe that he would be able to live off his meager earnings from selling his art pieces. The “sculpture garden” in front of his house rarely seemed to change, except when he added a new bizarre offering to the mix. Had his mother or another wealthy Barnett relation set up a small trust fund for him? Or did he just scrimp and save, living essentially off the grid, growing his own vegetables in the summer, cutting his own hair?

  “Yeah, damn it. And I don�
�t think he has any idea how serious this is. Do you know, if he doesn’t pay this off in one year, the town can assume ownership of the property and put it up for sale? And they have every legal right to do it. But I can already hear Luke on this one, can’t you?”

  “Oh, yes. ‘Why should I have to pay rent on something I already own?’ Isn’t that what he said last time this came up? So maybe it’s not about the money, maybe it’s just a matter of principle.”

  “There’s no just a matter of principle with Luke, you know that. Principles are everything. I’m going to have to talk to him about this.”

  We fell silent then for a few moments, though Luke and his problems, as was so often the case, hung in the air between us.

  “Do you think—” he began.

  “If you need—” I said at the same time. We both laughed. We knew each other so well.

  “How much do you think it is?” I asked.

  “Well, my guess is a couple thousand maybe. He’s been grousing about the tax increases ever since they went into effect—when was that? Almost a year ago now? I bet he hasn’t paid anything since then.”

  “I think we could swing it, if we don’t pay down the home equity line for a while,” I said, looking over our bills. “Especially if Luke works out some kind of a payment schedule with the town, and we can help out in monthly increments. Rick and the committee will go for that, don’t you think?”

  “Yeah. But it’s not them I’m worried about.”

  We decided to wrap the bitter pill inside the sweetest excuse we could think of. We often included Luke in the girls’ birthday celebrations, and Beanie was turning three that coming weekend. Kathy, Bob, and the kids would be coming, too, though they tended to head home pretty early. Bob still kept farmer’s hours, despite the fact that he had less and less real reason to do so.