Sunshine State

by Sarah Gerard

  “Renata, you know about the exercise room,” says the Realtor, stepping back to let Renata inside. “I’m not an exercise person.”

  “Does the house come with the fitness center?” asks my husband.

  “You can ask him,” she says. “It’s all depending on the negotiated price. He’s willing to leave it all. He’ll leave anything here that you want.”

  “Is that a tanning bed?” I ask.

  “Yeah, it’s a professional one, too,” says Renata.

  My husband lifts the lid. “Is there anyone in here? Maybe you could finally get a tan,” he says to me.

  “I’d fry in there.”

  “You could come in here, work out, and then go to the next room and do your work, and never leave the house!” says the Realtor, motioning toward the study next door.

  “Sounds great,” I say.

  I loved the days when we’d go to the Bayou Club as a family. We began going immediately after joining Amway, when I was in second grade. The development was new, still under construction. There was space between the houses and the far stretch of the golf course undulating luxuriously around them. Model homes rose from the landscape like castles, bigger than any houses I’d ever seen—and vacant. Never occupied. Empty dreams, waiting to be filled.

  As a child, I found the pleasure of being inside a big house to be endless. Future ownership had come to feel like a guarantee, so I took to imagining what life would be like in each one we visited. In this model of a girl’s bedroom with its shelf of figurines, canopy bed with lace cover, pink painted chest, and carved mirror, contentment felt within reach. This room was assurance I’d never be lonely or bored; that I would always have something lovely to look at, and lovely things to say, and other children near me to validate my worth. I felt special, included.

  Imagine watching movies in this home theater. Imagine riding an elevator up to my dream bedroom. Imagine swimming in this pool each afternoon. Eating meals in this dining room under an opulent chandelier.

  Imagine having a whole closet just for pool toys. Imagine having a room just for getting dressed. Imagine having a refrigerator twice as big as ours. And an island counter. A bay window. A golf cart. A motorized walk-in closet.

  Our house on Twelfth Avenue had three bedrooms; I wanted four. A house with four bedrooms came to seem normal; I wanted five. I wanted a library. I wanted a hot tub. I wanted a spiral staircase with a wrought iron banister, and a playroom, and a whirlpool bathtub, and a room just for practicing ballet, and a fitness center, and a poolside bar.

  Sometimes we brought along a camera and took pictures of one another walking around the houses. We saw two or three in a day and then took the film to be developed. Back in our three-bedroom, we looked at the photos together, then stored them in fresh albums. In the photos, we wore the same outfits while the houses around us changed. We were the proud owners of three beautiful homes, the photos said—or this was one big home. One monstrous behemoth of a home comprised of three mansions smashed together.

  Limitation on ownership was not a concept I was familiar with as a middle-class child—everything could be mine. I had never experienced a feeling of lack. I never wanted for anything I needed. I was never told we couldn’t afford something I asked for. While the thing I asked for might be denied me, money was never given as the reason. “Spoiled” was a word I heard often from family and friends, and I was proud of it. I thought I deserved to be spoiled—I was fully ignorant of the negative connotations of the word. By the very fact of being me, I believed I deserved material things.

  My mother grew up in a family that didn’t have money: six siblings, and later three stepsiblings, with one working parent, the other a drunk. She loves to take me shopping. This was always reflected beneath our Christmas tree—but also throughout the year. She wanted her daughter to have things she never had.

  Shortly after we left Amway, I remember asking my mother for bell-bottom jeans. It couldn’t wait. I had to have them immediately. She was not in the mood to go shopping that day. Just wasn’t in the mood. But finally, I convinced her.

  I ran my mouth as we left the house, leaping down from the porch as I shut the front door. “I get all I want!” I sang.

  I’m shocked by this.

  My mother stopped in her tracks and ordered me back inside. The look on her face still brings me shame.

  I wish I could say the story ends there, but it doesn’t. A few minutes later, and after many apologies, we went to the mall.

  The house is outfitted with an elaborate security system. A small room on the second floor holds the bank of monitors. There are cameras on every corner of the house, and at every outside door, and several around the pool. Three rapid beeps signal a door’s opening. Even though Feather Sound is a very safe neighborhood, Renata says, and she never heard of any home invasions while she was growing up here, people are very particular.

  “This would make a good nursery,”37 says my husband, stepping into the room with the monitors.

  I chuckle.

  “Is it cooking?” asks the Realtor, glancing toward my stomach.

  “Not yet,” I say. “We’re trying.”

  “Don’t worry. It will happen.”

  “It’s—”

  “I know, it’s hard not to worry,” she says.

  She has mentioned my parents’ proximity to this home several times on our tour. We’ve told her we’re moving back from New Orleans to be near them as we start our own family. It turns out her daughter now lives in New Orleans.

  “She’s a writer,” the Realtor says. “She’s a blogger and she works for me and a couple other people. She writes blogs, and manages our social media, and any other part-time job she can find. She says, ‘Mom, we’re all college-educated people, we just do different things! It’s just so freeing!’ And I’m like, ‘What about a career?’”

  “‘Don’t you want to buy a house?’” my husband adds.

  “Yeah, she does want to buy a house,” says the Realtor. “And I’m like, ‘I’m not buying you that house!’”

  We follow her down the staircase.

  Outside on the pool deck, the rush of waterfalls drowns out conversation. We’re forced to yell over it.

  “Now, this is really a retention pond,” she says, pointing to the body of water at the edge of the yard. “It’s not a lake or anything.”

  “No watercraft?” says my husband. She shakes her head. “Not even a canoe?”

  “Maybe a canoe,” she says.

  He walks past the sculpted concrete wall separating the yard from the water and to the end of the wooden dock with his hands in his Dockers pockets. The Realtor turns away from watching him to stare at me, likely searching my face for an expression of wifely pride. Finding none, she says, “There’s a fire pit back here.”

  “Oh?” I say.

  “And the Feather Sound Country Club is right across the street. You would have to join the club to be able to play golf. There are several clubs in the area.”

  “Yes, we’ve been looking into some,” I say. “Like the Bayou Club.”

  “What’s that?” says my husband, returning from the dock. “I like the seawall,” he says to the Realtor. “Looks like it’s steel-reinforced.”

  “Well, this is a unique little area,” she says, ignoring his observation. “You’ve got your most expensive homes here. Most people like it because of its close proximity to Tampa and to St. Petersburg. If you’re commuting to either place, it’s pretty easy. Do you know where you’re working?”

  We tell her we both work from home.

  “Are you a blogger?” she jokes as we follow her back inside. The noise of the pool is quieted by the shutting of the French doors. Renata is waiting for us in the foyer.

  “We don’t show a lot anymore for security reasons,” the Realtor says over her shoulder. “The world is just not what it used to be.”

  “No, it’s not,” says Renata.

  “I thought you might enjoy talking to Renata be
cause she probably knows things you’d be interested in, in the area.”

  Renata opens the front door, to three beeps. We step back out to the front walk, leading down to the driveway. It’s begun to rain lightly, polka-dotting the terra-cotta paving stones.

  “I think International is the nicest mall in the area,” Renata says, following the Realtor’s suggestion. “You have Neiman Marcus, Nordstrom’s, you have Free People—”

  “J.Crew?” asks my husband.

  “J.Crew,” she says. “You have all the normal plus some specialties.”

  “I think I’d put a basketball hoop in right here,” says my husband, regarding a patch of grass.

  “How are you going to get into the garage?” Renata asks.

  “Might have to add a few more garages,” he jokes. “I’ve got a bunch of cars.”

  “You know, it’s hard to find more than a three-car garage around here,” says the Realtor, appearing behind us.

  “We can keep some in the driveway,” he says. “Get rid of some. We’re only two people.” He puts his arm around my waist.

  “Just put the lifts in,” says Renata. “That’s what the people across from my mom’s house do—it’s really common, actually. Really common.”

  Cross opens Amway with the testimonies of Amway distributors from around the world. There is no country in the world where Rich DeVos’s Compassionate Capitalism does not work, Cross says. “Listen to Alcimon and Marie-Chantale Colas.”38

  “Listen to Sevgi Corapci.”39

  “Listen to Nilufer and Merih Bolukbasi.”

  Listen to them. Listen to them. Listen.

  “I was a salaried man working in a company for eight years,”40 says Kaoru Nakajima, Japan’s first Amway Crown Ambassador. “Now I am my own boss. Now I am free. Now I am selling products that make me proud. Now I am helping people in five different countries to build their own businesses. When I see so many people getting more abundant lives, I feel really excited.”

  Listen to Wu Dao-liang, an “old man” who joined Amway after retiring, rather than spending his days reading the newspaper and playing mah-jongg: “At the beginning when I started my Amway business, my family was worried that I could not handle it physically. But during these two years, they noticed I became more optimistic and more healthy.”41

  Listen to Rosemarie and Otto Steiner-Lang,42 who joined Amway in the hope of funding their own construction company and now run their Amway business full-time: “We have found in Amway the independence we were looking for. This business is a doable and affordable solution for the problems in the labor market today. Amway, which represents free enterprise perfectly, postulates and promotes the initiative of the individual, reducing the burden on the public social system.”

  There are more than enough reasons to join Amway, it seems: the promise of being your own boss, the possibility of helping others, of making human connections, finding existential purpose, beating boredom and passivity, spending more time with family, earning the admiration of others.43

  Unfulfilled in your current job? Feeling trapped? Amway frees you.

  Shy introvert? Learn to be more outgoing with Amway.

  Bored with your life? Feeling adrift? Amway gives you purpose.

  Live an overall happier, healthier lifestyle, with a low commitment and the potential to accrue massive wealth—for only the up-front cost of a training manual.

  A housewife can do it.44 A retiree can do it. The physically enfeebled can do it.45 Those who have only known poverty can do it. Families can do it together.

  In the roughly two hundred pages of Cross’s book, however, there is virtually no discussion of how Amway actually works. Among entire chapters dedicated to Amway’s state-of-the-art manufacturing facilities and its pioneering move onto the World Wide Web,46 the “Amway Distributor Profile,”47 its “Bootstraps Philosophy,”48 and Amway’s foreign expansion strategy,49 the closest Cross comes to summarizing Amway’s business plan is in this passage:

  Attaining goals for greater success and profitability depends on each distributor’s ability to sponsor other distributors, who comprise their “downline.” Patience is a characteristic much required in this step because a distributor can advance in profitability and standing only to the extent that the downline distributors actually sell products and keep on generating volume.50

  How do they sell those products? Not in retail stores51—Amway distributors can only sell their products directly to the public,* or to other Amway distributors.52 This may not seem so bad until one considers that the price point for many Amway products has been reported to be about twice that of similar products found in retail stores. Or that in blind tests, Amway products often score poorly.53

  So, how is it that Amway continues to profit? Cross quotes James W. Robinson, author of Empire of Freedom: The Amway Story:

  The export lifeblood of some countries is oil, for others it is cars, or diamonds, or food. . . . America’s most precious export is not a commodity, natural resource, or manufactured product, but an idea: putting free enterprise in the hands of the common man and woman.54

  Let us not underestimate the power of ideas. Cross provides examples of distributors who let nothing stand in their way. Just listen to the story of the Upchurch family, who persisted in Amway, making any sacrifices necessary, even after Hurricane Fran destroyed their home.55 Or the Janzes, who were desperately poor new parents with another child on the way when they learned that Amway was bigger than making money; it was a way to overhaul your lifestyle and live your dreams.56 Or Dexter Yager,*57 who didn’t let a stroke stop him from achieving success with Amway and continued to operate his business at the same level even as he was learning to walk and speak again.58

  Listen to the story of Ed Johnson. Ed’s family lost everything when the recession hit San Antonio in the 1980s. Ed’s son showed him The Plan in 1992, and after some initial resistance from Ed’s wife, soon the whole family was working hard to achieve their dreams the American way.

  Then tragedy struck. Just as he was qualifying for Diamond, Ed had to undergo emergency surgery to remove a brain tumor. Then he had to undergo radiation therapy. Did Ed let this stop him? Of course he didn’t. He “showed his mettle” and his “desire to get on with his life” by prospecting three doctors and six nurses while he was in the hospital recovering from brain cancer treatment—enabling the Johnsons to go Diamond sixty-two months after joining Amway.

  “Although Ed’s challenges would have devastated most families, the Johnsons saw them as an opportunity to pull together,” Cross says.

  “There are no excuses,” he quotes Ed as saying, “just performance.”59

  Bullard Drive, Clearwater, FL 33762

  9 bed, 8 bath, 9,498 sq. ft.

  $2,002,000

  We’ve gone Diamond, we tell the Realtor. We’re buying a house in Feather Sound. We’re starting a family.

  This one sits on a double executive lot. An artificial creek snakes around the yard. Flashes of yellow and orange spotted koi pass beneath our feet as we approach from the brick walkway. The house is split-level with two wings, a custom pool with cascading waterfall, billiard room, media room, workout room, steam room, six-car garage, state-of-the-art workshop, custom built-in bar, loft for quiet relaxation, hurricane shutters, large views of the golf course—and two bedrooms above the garage sequestered for the help.

  “It’s very dark,” I observe. We’ve begun in the middle: a room with wood paneling, shellacked stone floors and walls, and a recessed circular area for entertaining, carpeted in emerald. Behind me, a pool table occupies most of a Turkish rug annexing the area beneath the open-style second-floor balcony. The Realtor stands near a grand piano and a stone planter housing ferns.

  “Tastewise, it may not be your taste,” she says.60 She is wary of us—I can hear it in her tone. “Or it may, depending. But this is a blank canvas, you know. If you really wanted to make your own touch, you can certainly do that.”

  “I’m not going
to want to remodel a house while I’m pregnant,” I say to my husband. “Or with a new baby.”

  “Let’s take a look,” he says. “No harm in that.”

  “It’s too big,” I say.

  “Let’s take a look.”

  He takes my arm. The Realtor smiles.

  “The house is divided into two parts,” she says. “This side over here is the original part of the house.” She indicates the area behind us. “On this side, there’s five bedrooms. And then there’s this middle area, which is a big entertainment space. And then on the other side, you’ve got a very, very large master suite and another bedroom.”

  She leads us toward the original wing, descending three carpeted stairs, and proceeds down a narrow wood-paneled hallway, pausing at the entrance of each bedroom to invite us inside. The windows are covered with wooden shutters blocking out the light. A musty smell rises from the linens. We wander silently in and out of rooms.

  “Seems like it’s been a while since anyone did anything with the place,” I say, pausing before a marble-patterned dresser built into the wall.

  “Particleboard,” says my husband from the bathroom.

  “Well, back in the day . . .” says the Realtor.

  “See, open this up,” I say, unlatching the shutters. Light pours across the bedspread and a shelf of porcelain dolls. “Isn’t that better? Why would you want to close it off?”

  My husband appears in the doorway. “They don’t like the light here,” he says.

  “You know, I had some friends who came out of New Orleans after Katrina,” says the Realtor, leading us suddenly back toward the front. “It’s funny, we go out and we have dinner with them and it still comes up.”

  We follow her into the kitchen. A set of wooden cabinets hangs above the island counter. Others wrap around the walls, enclosing the space. Each of the glass doors is etched in the corners with flowers. My husband flicks a light switch, only dimly illuminating the countertops.

  “It has a sort of ski lodge vibe,” he says. The breakfast nook is decorated with white-and-green floral wallpaper and a white crocheted tablecloth. “You could throw some parties here,” he says with a smirk.