Local Knowledge

by Liza Gyllenhaal

  Luke looked down at his hands, clenched in his lap, and said, “Why don’t you and Maddie do that together, okay? Let me know what you think when you’ve had a look. Maddie knows where to find me.”

  And that was that. Luke got up and shook Nana’s hand. I walked him out to the Oldsmobile.

  “Thank you for coming to me with this,” I said to him as he opened the car door. “It means a lot to me.”

  “You mean I’ll be a feather in your cap?”

  “That, yes. If everything works out. But also that you would trust me—and Nana—to handle the sale for you. I know what a hard thing this must be for you, Luke.”

  “Do you?” he asked, looking up at me as he turned the key in the ignition. He left the question hanging as he backed around and drove out of the parking lot.

  Nana and I took my secondhand Forrester and spent most of the afternoon exploring the Barnett property, starting with the mansion, which was literally starting to fall in over our heads.

  “Good God, what happened here?” Nana asked as we made our way gingerly through the grand front rooms. The grandeur had more than faded. The place had been stripped bare. Luke had scavenged whatever wasn’t too heavy to lift: Delft tiles had been jimmied from the fireplace, chandeliers picked clean of their crystal, vintage sconces torn out of the walls, even the inlaid molding from around the ceilings had been pried off. I looked upward from the foot of the double staircase and saw a ragged patch of sky above me.

  “In the beginning, Luke put together most of those art pieces he creates from bits and pieces he found here,” I told Nana. “I think it was his way of making some kind of ironic comment about the glory of the past.”

  “Ah, yes. I see. Like Ozymandias,” Nana said. “Your friend certainly is an interesting character. But, I’ll tell you, I don’t think this place can be salvaged. I mean, maybe if all the beautiful original detailing was still in place, but even then I wouldn’t count on it. People want new. Big. Designer-built. I’ll have a reconstruction expert come by, but I seriously doubt it.”

  “The land is valuable, though, isn’t it?” I asked her a little while later as we drove back down from the northern woods, where Luke and Paul had built the underground marijuana farm. That quarter-acre clearing was grown over now, maples and spruce sprouting up in what looked like nothing more noteworthy than a sunny meadow gone to seed.

  “Oh, yes. I really think so. I’ll want to talk to Frank and Nicky about it, of course, but I see this as a truly exclusive luxury development. Ten to fifteen acres per site. Fabulous homes. Top-of-the-line and fully loaded when we bring them to market. The potential is just enormous. And we owe it all to your initiative, Maddie.”

  It all happened pretty quickly. Nana, Nicky, and Frank Miles mapped out a tentative blueprint for subdividing Luke’s fifty acres into six separate building parcels. They had a professional surveyor create a draft plan. Then they ran that by the Red River planning subcommittee that Paul now served on, and got an initial go-ahead. Nana suggested that I be the one to talk to Luke about the offer. “I get the feeling that he wants to keep this informal, just between friends,” she told me. I invited Luke over that night. Paul took the girls up to bed, allowing me the chance to go over the preliminary survey with Luke alone. The computerized drawing looked like one of those constellation charts: an abstraction of iron pipe and rod settings, dotted-line streams and daisy-chain stone walls. I really couldn’t tell much by looking at it, except that the plan clearly showed demarcations for six variously sized building sites. Luke and I were standing at the kitchen, where I’d spread out the vellum copy on the table.

  “The smallest lot is seven acres. Right here,” I told Luke, pointing to a squarish shape, about the size of a piece of toast, on the paper in front of us.

  “You’ve gone to a lot of trouble,” Luke said. “But I guess I don’t really understand what this means. You plan to sell these individual lots? And what—I get paid as you make each sale?”

  “No. Red River Development Partners—that is Nana, my boss; Nicky Polanski, who Paul works for; and Frank Miles the architect—intend to buy all the land from you at one time. Now. Then, over the next year or so they’ll put their own money—the partnership’s making a killing from the Tucker Hill project—into building spec houses. I think the plan is to start with two places and see how they move. But whatever happens, the point is this: they’re not going to subdivide the land into dozens of little quarter-acre plots. These are all generous, well-thought-out sites, as you can see. And they’re so spaced out; you probably won’t even know they’re there.”

  “Yes, I can see that, I guess,” Luke said. “Though, honestly, I can’t really imagine it. I’ve a feeling, even when these are built, that I won’t be able to totally conceive of it. You know, my family used to own the area that’s now called Cedar Grove?” Luke was referring to a neighborhood of mostly classic Colonial-style houses east of town. “My mom and I had to sell the land after my father died. But I’ll drive by these days and not really be able to take in what’s there. In my mind’s eye it’s all still the woods and fields I remember as a child.”

  “Well, these will be far more upscale than Cedar Grove,” I assured Luke. “They’ll be truly luxurious, really magnificent houses—more like the Tucker Hill places that Paul’s working on.”

  “Oh, God, not those enormous things that are going up? You can’t honestly tell me you think they’re magnificent, Maddie! I thought you and I at least agreed on how really awful they are.”

  “I guess I’ve been seeing things a little differently since I started working for Nana,” I told him. But he was right. And a big part of me still did agree with him. For a moment I thought I’d lost him. And in the end I might have, except Nana’s offer just bowled him over.

  “You’ve got to be kidding. That’s a fortune.”

  “No. She’s serious. The partnership sees a lot of potential in this project.”

  Luke laughed and shook his head.

  “Well, I guess if I’m going to sell my soul, I might as well get good money for it.”

  “So? You think you might want to go ahead then?”

  “Jesus, yes! Let’s hurry. Before everybody comes to their senses.”

  “Well, you’ve got to hire a lawyer. Have someone look over the deed and get some feedback on the overall deal. This is a valuable piece of property, Luke. You’ll want to make sure you’re fully protected.”

  “And some high-priced lawyer’s going to do that for me?” I remembered how much Luke distrusted the legal system. Between his father’s law firm and his own checkered past, he’d built up an animosity to lawyers that was bordering on the pathological.

  “Come on, Luke. Don’t be penny-wise. You need someone to read through all the fine print, who understands the ins and outs of the selling process.”

  But in the end Luke didn’t make any changes to the deed. And on the day of the closing, he arrived alone at the Red River Realty offices, where we’d arranged to have the signing.

  “My guy couldn’t make it,” he said when Nana asked when his lawyer was arriving. “I’ll be my own counsel.”

  “Oh, dear,” Nana said, turning to Kenneth Firbank, who represented Red River Development Partners. “Isn’t this a little bit … unusual?”

  “Well, honestly, I’ve never—” Firbank began before Luke cut him off.

  “It’s what I want, okay? Take it or leave it. Now let’s get this whole thing over with.”

  It turned out to be, according to Nana, one of the smoothest sales she’d ever been involved with. It was all over in less than fifteen minutes.

  “Who’d like some champagne?” Nana asked, as Nicky, Frank Miles, and Luke finished signing the papers.

  “Not me,” Luke said. “I’ve got to go. Thanks, anyway.”

  Ken, Frank, and Nicky begged off, as well. So Nana insisted that Linda and Heather join us, instead. We sat around Nana’s desk and she popped the cork and poured the smoking champagne
into four flutes.

  “I’d like to propose a toast,” Nana said, holding up her glass.

  “It’s your party,” Linda said.

  “Okay, then.” Nana turned to me with a smile and said, “To our new sales associate!”

  Like almost every job, I suppose, I discovered that there really isn’t a whole lot of mystery involved in learning how to sell real estate. The bonus Nana gave me for bringing Luke to the table helped pay for the three-day intensive course I took at the end of October up in the Harringdale high school auditorium. I’d already been studying a number of how-to books and test-prep guides that Nana had recommended. It helped a lot that Nana began to let me sit in on the weekly listing meeting, when she, Heather, and Linda went over the status of Red River Realty’s exclusives and reviewed the current Multiple Listing Service postings for the area. I found that I already knew a lot about the basics of the business—title checks, loan applications and approvals, pest inspections—things I’d picked up naturally by helping Nana every day. My only real worry about taking the test was the math portion, but Linda sat down with me a couple of times and went over the fine points of calculating percentages and commissions, figuring monthly mortgage payments, and working out estimated closing costs. In the end, the actual test was something of a letdown. Nobody but me was the least bit surprised that I passed it the first time out. Paul framed the certificate that stated I had “successfully completed the requirements as a Real Estate Salesperson,” and I hung it proudly on the wall above my desk.

  Then the real work began. I was still the office manager, receptionist, and Nana’s assistant. Now, too, though, I had to put in “floor time”—four-hour shifts at least twice a week when I was expected to handle any walk-in clients or phone inquiries. I also had to make myself better acquainted with the properties we handled, a process that meant driving around with Paul whenever we could for a couple of hours after work, at a time when we were both exhausted and short-tempered. But, frankly, all of these new challenges were easy compared to finding clients of my own. It didn’t help my efforts that Red River Realty was considered by most of the locals as an agency that catered primarily to the upscale, second-home market. If you grew up in the area and wanted to sell or look around, you’d probably call Charlie Lowry at Millennium or Nancy Sanders over at North County. With Paul’s help, I worked up a letter and mailed it to everybody I could think of. Paul did an e-mailing about me to his extensive list of friends and acquaintances. But escalating property values had already locked a lot of the people we knew out of the market. All the action and sales were being generated by buyers from Boston and New York. I was beginning to feel that I’d wasted my time, as well as Nana’s.

  Then, all at once, I got three active leads: from Paul’s second cousin, who’d gotten a new job at Walco Propane and needed to relocate to Harringdale; from a walk-in I’d been wooing off and on for at least a month who finally decided he wanted me to “show him what I had”; and from a Marge Patterson, a good friend of my sister-in-law Louise.

  “We’ve never done this before,” Marge confided to me. “Gary’s brother sold us the house we live in now when he relocated to Chicago, so it was all handled in a pretty informal way. And, between you and me, Gary gets his back up real easily about feeling cheated or taken advantage of. So it’s been something of a struggle even getting him this far, to the talking stage.”

  “What are we talking about exactly, Marge? Do you have a sort of dream house in mind?” I asked. Friendly. Helpful. No pressure. Though I’d never thought it through before that moment, I knew right away that this was how I wanted to sound, how I intended to approach the whole thing.

  “Yes. I want something classic, you know, like a big white clapboard farmhouse, or a Colonial. Only fairly new and in good condition. We have a ranch style now, and, frankly, I hate it. I want a house that looks like a home, you know? On some water, too, a little brook or a pond. Four bedrooms, three baths. Maybe two or three acres.”

  “That’s great. A really good start,” I told her. “Let me put some ideas together, okay? I’d like to make a date with you and Gary now, if I could. My calendar starts getting so filled up at the end of the week.”

  It didn’t take off all at once. But things began to pick up. The alphabetical hanging file folders I’d set up for “prospects” and “active clients” were no longer empty. I was finally able to start a “closed transaction” file when I sold one of the condos over in Silver Acres to the grandparents of one of Kathy’s day-care kids. What with liability insurance, office expenses, and splitting the commission with Nana, I was just about breaking even. It didn’t matter. For the first time in my life, I felt I was finally getting somewhere. I was making my way. Nana seemed pleased. She called me her “baby broker.” I basked in her approval. More than the sales and commissions, that was what thrilled me.

  And then, in early April, when the earth began to soften, Red River Development Partners began logging and clearing the land for the first of the three spec houses they were building on the property that had, for as long as anyone could remember, belonged to the Barnett family.

  34

  “We’ve got a real problem here, Maddie.” It was Paul, calling me at the office. Though it was officially spring, we’d had a flurry earlier that morning and snow still clung to trees that were just beginning to leaf out. Paul’s tone was so grim that I immediately thought something had happened to him—or one of the girls.

  “What? Where are you?” I stood up at my desk, ready to run to wherever I was needed.

  “I’m up at the new site. Luke’s here. We’re—we have to talk. I need you to get up here. Can you do that?”

  “What’s happened? Is something wrong with Luke?”

  “Maddie? Can you just come?” I realized then that Luke was right there, listening, and that Paul didn’t want to discuss whatever the problem was in front of him. This was odd; Paul didn’t hold much back from Luke.

  Nana wasn’t in yet. Heather was out on a call, and it was one of Linda’s days to work from the city. I put the phone system on auto-answer and left a note for Nana. I made it sound as though I was meeting a client, which was not that far from the truth. The sun came out on the drive over, and the snow began melting away, exposing the stubble of greening fields, the pools of standing water in the lowlying meadows. I slowed down as I passed Luke’s place, looking for the entrance to the construction site. Though I knew Nana had visited when the logging stage was complete, I hadn’t yet been there. Paul’s crew had only gone up for the first time the day before. He hadn’t said much about it, just that he thought it was ironic that Red River Development was titling this building lot “Maple Rise,” as the loggers had cleared at least an acre of hardwood trees, a great many of them sugar maples. I saw the mud tracks on the roadway before I saw the drive: it curved up through the woods behind Luke’s cottage and then made a switchback up the hill. Though they’d laid down plenty of gravel, the surface was already heavily rutted, mud sucking in the rock. Even in my all-wheel drive, I felt the Forrester lose traction and churn on the softening curves.

  A tableau of men and trucks awaited me at the top of the rise. There were four pickups, a small backhoe, and a much larger earthmover, its long neck suspended about fifteen feet above the cab and its shovel half open like the mouth of a dinosaur, the metal teeth streaked with dirt.

  Paul and Luke stood apart from the half dozen men who were grouped together, talking and smoking, by a couple of newly unearthed boulders. I still blame myself that I didn’t grasp what the problem was immediately. I think I imagined that Luke might be objecting to the noise, or the muddied highway. Under my parka, I was wearing one of my work outfits: a navy blue pantsuit and a pair of black leather boots that I was still breaking in. As I picked my way across the lot toward Paul and Luke, I remember feeling irritated that the heels of my new boots were sinking so deeply into the muck.

  “What’s going on?” I asked as I came up to them. Paul ha
d the working plans wedged under his right arm.

  “You tell me,” Luke said, looking from me to Paul. “You see? She doesn’t get it! I can’t fucking believe that she doesn’t—”

  “Hold on,” Paul said. “Just hold on. Maddie, turn around, okay? You see where the earthmover is? That’s where the new house is sited to go in. Did you know that? I mean, I thought you and Luke went over these plans together.”

  “We went over the subdivision blueprint,” I said, turning back and looking down the hill. From where we stood, facing south, with so many of the trees down, Luke’s cottage was directly in our line of vision. “I haven’t seen the actual building plans. Why would I? You know as well as I do that Frank only finished the designs this winter—months after Luke sold them the land.” We were already starting to parcel out the blame, the two of us.

  “Well, this just can’t happen,” Luke said. “I knew I should have come up here sooner. I should have walked up when the logging began. But I was just so fucking sick at heart to see all those stripped trunks being hauled away. And the noise! I kept telling myself it had to be farther up. That the hills just amplified the sound. But look at this disaster area. It’s like a tornado came through.”

  “Frank was up here earlier and went over things with me,” Paul said. “This is definitely where he intends the site to be. What can we do?” He turned to me with the question, but I knew he was asking himself the same thing.

  “Who’s this Frank?” Luke asked.

  “The architect,” Paul told him. “Frank Miles. One of the partners.”

  “You met him at the closing,” I said.

  “Well, he’s just going to have to rethink things,” Luke said. “Didn’t he see that my place is right down there? That this monstrosity will be looming over my house? Jesus Christ, Maddie, I remember you telling me that I wouldn’t even know any of these houses were back here. What was that? Total bullshit? Your little way of getting me to agree to all this? Well, I’ll tell you right now: I didn’t sell my land to have this happen. It’s got to be fixed. And, if you two won’t help me, I’ll—”