If You Were Here: A Novel

by Jen Lancaster

  Mac speaks up before I get the chance. “She watched John Stossel do a report on them on 20/20. Once.”

  “And yet my books about the Amish have done well enough to buy you this Benz,” I calmly respond. I wonder what Mr. Stephenie Meyer drives. Probably a flying fucking car.

  Mac’s grinning when he glances at me in the rearview mirror. “Maybe if you knew a little more I could have upgraded to the big engine.”

  I know he’s teasing me, but this still grates a little. I choose not to explain—again—how my books really aren’t about being Amish or the undead eating flesh. Rather, they’re about what it’s like to be a teenager. I want kids to read my books and feel like I did when I watched The Breakfast Club; I want them to know that like John Hughes, I’m quite aware of what they’re going through.33

  The Amish bit is really just a device for a couple of reasons. I like to write about stolen glances and clandestine feelings rather than big, blown-out, fully articulated sex scenes. The buildup to a first kiss can be every bit as riveting as a couple yanking each other’s pants off, sometimes even more so.

  I’ve gotten decidedly more modest as I’ve aged. At twenty-two, fresh out of college and four years of playing I Never at fraternity parties, I’d have had no problem going on and on about my character’s o-r-g-a . . .34 But I’m a proper35 married lady now, and writing explicit scenes just doesn’t sit right with me. I’m not judging anyone else who puts out racy novels—and I’ll probably even read them—but writing them isn’t for me. Plus, there’s something very satisfying about keeping my characters innocent.

  I’ve chosen to write about the Amish because their stories aren’t going to get bogged down with technology, either. I don’t want my writing to get all cloudy and convoluted because I didn’t realize that Tumblr is the new Facebook which is the new Myspace.

  Also, if I had to deal with characters that ran around spouting text message–speak like, “OMGWTFBBQ!” I’d probably want to kick a lung out of myself. Sure, the technology, lingo, and costumes change from generation to generation, but the pressure of being trapped somewhere between childhood and adulthood is universal.

  In other words, the point isn’t about getting sparkly in the sun, Stephenie.

  While I pout in the backseat, we get to the next house. We’re a little farther east in the Cambs, and the trees in this neighborhood are more mature, forming what’s got to be a spectacular canopy over the street when the leaves fill in. That’s the one downside of new construction in a subdivision. Sure, you might get a fancy community clubhouse and wide, smooth streets covered in fresh blacktop, and a brand-new roof, but unless the builder spends a mint on landscaping, the tiny little trees are dwarfed by whatever house they’re placed next to, no matter how modest. Given the choice, I’d prefer a house that’s older, maybe in a more established neighborhood.

  The driveway is way longer than the last one, and under the snow I detect the sound of crushed shells. The house is solid brick, not just a brick facade, like where we live now, and the yard is substantially larger than the last. Homes in this neighborhood are set farther apart, and if you squint just right, it almost looks like an estate. This is a promising start.

  Our promising start comes to a screeching halt the second we step inside.

  “What’s that smell?” I ask, pulling my wooly scarf over my nose and mouth. I’m assaulted by an aroma that stings my eyes and burns my throat. My lungs instantly feel like there’s a steel vise around them.

  Liz breathes into her gloved hand while consulting her MLS listing. “It says here they had a tiny problem with mold.”

  Mac points to an enormous black bloom on the far wall in the kitchen. “Had mold? Ladies, that ain’t modern art. More like has mold.”

  “Do we even need to look at this one?” I ask.

  “Been there, done that, burned the T-shirt,” Mac replies.

  We dash back outdoors and gasp for fresh air. “No wonder it was in our price range.”

  To start this process, we ran our financials past our banker again. We’d been approved for a generous amount before, but with my recent book sales, we wondered if that would alter our budget. Turns out our bank is very enthusiastic about teenage Amish zombies in love and they increased our preapproval amount substantially.36 We’re not ready to spend our self-imposed limit, but we did allocate more funds to the search.

  With this sum, we could get a spectacular home anywhere in the whole Chicagoland area . . . except here. Since this is such an elite enclave, prices are ridiculously inflated compared to other suburbs. A sane person would simply go where he got the most bang for his buck, but come on, this is Shermer! I’ve waited my whole life to live here!

  We load back up into the car and drive another mile due east.Yay, east! From what I’ve read, the farther east you live in the Cambs, the better. Apparently there’s a whole east side/west side rivalry raging up here. The west side is where Pretty in Pink’s Andie lived, and the east side is where the sad-little-rich-boy-Blane-who-was-conflicted-about-liking-her (and-who-was-not-in-fact-a-major-appliance) was from. What John Hughes couldn’t have predicted back then is that twenty years later, even Andie’s teardown would be worth half a mil.

  We pull into the circular drive of the third house. “Circular drive!” I exclaim. “All the best homes on the lake have circular drives! I feel good about this place!”

  The house has an interesting footprint—from the front, it looks like a modest ranch, but in the back it balloons up to two and a half stories. The entire south wall is made of glass and it looks out onto acres and acres of forest preserve. I’m already mentally leashing up the dogs and taking them on long, luxurious, woodsy walks where I don’t have to worry about them stepping on glass or trying to eat a syringe or a cigarette. Once while we were out walking, I had to wrestle a chicken wing out of Daisy’s mouth. Seriously.

  Liz punches in the code to get the key and we step out of our shoes and into the flannel booties. We’re prepared to be wowed. The ceilings inside are low and sloped, and there’s nothing but pale wood planks everywhere we look. There’s wood on the walls, wood on the countertops, a wood-covered refrigerator, wood paneling over the dishwasher, and wood on the slanted ceilings. The only place in our line of sight that’s not decked out in wood is the sunken living room. It appears to be about a foot lower than the rest of the house, but the carpet is so shaggy it’s more like six inches. I sort of want to do the Nestea plunge onto it.

  “What do you call this architecture style?” Mac asks.

  Liz scans her sheet.“The listing says it’s‘ Colorado contemporary.’ ”

  “The listing should say, ‘Mork and Mindy’s house,’”I correct.

  The decor doesn’t get any more contemporary37 as we move past the entry. We notice the living room contains nothing but one of those big egg-shaped chairs and a curved chrome lamp.

  “Suddenly I have the urge to sit in here wearing my hiking boots, listening to Dan Fogelberg on my eight-track while I read Jonathan Livingston Seagull,” Mac says.

  “While feathering your hair with your enormous plastic pocket comb,” Liz adds.

  I chime in, “In rainbow suspenders. While smoking an enormous doob.”

  There are three different spiral staircases leading to oddly angled nooks upstairs, and every bedroom has either a water bed or access to a hot tub or both. And wood. So very, very much wood.

  “Anyone else get the feeling this place was a porn set?” Mac asks.

  I nod gravely. “So very, very much porn.”

  We continue the tour, mostly because it’s funny.

  “Who would buy this place?” I ask.

  Liz consults a column of dates on the second page of the listing. “It’s been on the market for a year. You know, the construction is solid and someone obviously spent a lot of money on the paneling, but design like this can’t be fixed without a bulldozer. Unless they drop their asking price several hundred thousand dollars—”

  �
�Or find Pam Dawber,” I interject.

  “Or find Pam Dawber, no one will buy this place.”

  We bid good-bye to Porn House and move on to the next listing. We’re there before I can even locate the place on the map. We park in front of a sagging colonial bordered by a couple of scruffy trees. “Okay, here we go,” Liz says. “This is it, 613 Maple Knoll Road.”

  Hmm. Why does this address sound familiar? Have I been here before? No, today’s pretty much my first foray into anything other than the Cambs’ McDonald’s. And yet this address rings a bell.Why?

  “Have you mentioned this place to us before?” I ask Liz.

  “Not that I know of,” she replies.

  “Mac, does this seem at all familiar to you?”

  Whenever Mac really needs to concentrate, he squints and puts his hand to his mouth. He finally opens his eyes and says, “The place looks a little like a down-market version of my grandparents’ house, I guess?”

  “No, no, that’s not it. But the address, it’s right on the edge of my subconscious. What is it? What could it be?” I stomp around the porch, shaking snow off my clogs. I notice a lady walk by with a dog and I smile and wave. In return, she scowls. Okay, what was that about?

  The lock is sticking, so we have a couple more moments to cool our heels before we enter. I continue to try to jog my memory. “Maple Knoll, Maple Knoll, Maple Knoll . . . ” And then I notice the street address in big brass numbers on the mailbox and it comes to me. “I’ve got it! I know how I know this house!”

  “Yeah? How’s that?” Liz asks. “Have you been here before? I just showed a place to a couple, and in the middle of the tour, the wife exclaimed, ‘I threw up in these bushes!’ I guess she’d been to a party there once in high school.”

  “That’s hilarious, but we didn’t grow up in Illinois—we’re from Indiana. We only moved up here after college. But I remember why I know this address! A child molester lived here!”

  At the same time, Mac and Liz exclaim, “What?”

  “I cross-referenced the MLS with the Illinois Sex Offender Database.” Both Liz and Mac stare at me incredulously.38

  Liz looks worried as she works the locks. “Was it one of those situations where the guy was nineteen and the girl was seventeen and it was more of a parent thing and less of a sex crime?”

  “Oh, no,” I exclaim. “This guy was a full-on perv. Child pornography. Videotaping and shit. Don’t even worry about the lock, because we can’t live here. Too much terrible karma.”

  Mac quickly agrees. “You’re right. The neighbors might not know we were the new people and we’d be ostracized.”

  I nod. “I guess that explains why the woman who just walked by here was staring daggers at us. Also? I’d hate to get a pedophile’s mail.”

  We quickly leave and spend the rest of the afternoon trolling around the west side of Abington Cambs. What’s really unfortunate is that the Porn House and the Perv House are the highlights of the day. Everything we see next is small or chopped up or completely overpriced or full of questionable wiring and a hundred layers of hideous wallpaper and totally not worth removing our shoes. Mac and I are both really frustrated that we may not be able to find a decent place up here.

  “Hey, is anyone thirsty?” Mac asks. “We should find a 7-Eleven or a Starbucks or something.”

  I’m quick to help. “Let me see what I can locate on my trusty map.”

  Exasperated by our lack of success, he runs his hand through his hair. “Okay, seriously, enough with the frigging map. You’re using what’s essentially a child’s place mat from a seafood restaurant, and you keep telling us to turn left into bodies of water so we can avoid pirates while we search for the goddamn buried treasure! This is like driving around with Homer Simpson. I guarantee you there’s no place to get a hot beverage on that thing, so please stop barking commands and let me see what I can find.”

  I cross my arms and lean back into my seat. If my navigational skills aren’t wanted, then I’ll keep them to myself.

  We cruise up and down Whitefish Bay Road for fifteen minutes, passing the oddly placed green barn no less than five times.

  At no point do I mention that that’s the McDonald’s . . . which is clearly marked on my map.

  Chapter Four

  THE REAL HOUSEWIVES OF LAKE COUNTY

  “No luck yet?”

  I’m sitting at a window table at Lulu’s with Tracey and our mutual bestie, Kara. Our schedules have been so hectic that this is the first time we’ve had a chance to get together in almost a month. “Oh, no,” I say, stabbing a hunk of feta cheese, “we’ve found a place. In fact, we’ve found a bunch of places. We just can’t buy any of them.”

  Tracey smirks. “I’m so sorry to hear that.” Tracey hasn’t quite been behind our move to the suburbs. She thinks we should simply find a house here in the city, but unless we colonize Grant Park, we’re not going to get all the land, lake, and privacy that we want. Every time I recount an unsuccessful real estate outing, Tracey cheers, “Team City!”

  Kara’s from the Cambs and her mom’s still a practicing ob-gyn up there, so she’s been far more supportive of Team Suburbs. Plus, if she comes to see us, she has the option to tack on a visit to the’rents, too. “What’s going on?” Kara asks sympathetically, pushing a big hank of black hair back from her face. Her stacked, intricately carved gold bracelets clink merrily with the movement. Her jewelry’s the one nod to her Indian culture. “My parents said there are ten houses for sale in their subdivision.”

  “Hey, I love their house! All those pretty trees and winding drives! You know, I should look at places in your parents’ neighborhood,” I say.

  Kara shudders. “Please don’t. I’ll never be allowed to see you if I don’t swing by their place, too, and I already see them plenty. Plenty. I’m begging you as a friend to buy on the east, north, or south side.”

  I’ve met Kara’s parents many times and they’re sweet and kind and adorable . . . and absolutely merciless when it comes to their opinions on Kara’s life. As I’m sort of charmed by my overbearing family, sometimes I don’t realize that others frown on being told what to do quite so much.

  “Oh, honey, I’m sorry; I forgot.”

  The last time we got together, Kara shared her latest story about a mandatory parental fix-up. Not only was her date forty and still living at home, but he spent the whole evening lecturing Kara on the evils of high-fructose corn syrup and liquor after she ordered a rum and Coke. As she saw it, her only course of action was to drink more. So she did. But then she had to endure a hangover-tinged lecture the next morning from her mom after getting a “bad report”39 from her date.

  “She’s right; it’s a bloodbath up there,” I agree. “Just about everything in our price range is either a short sale or in foreclosure.”

  “Short sales are tricky,”Tracey adds. “Lenders are really hesitant to allow owners to sell properties at a loss, especially now.”

  I add, “We’re finding that the problem with buying a short sale is that the seller’s bank has to approve our offer, and in a lot of cases we’re dealing with a third-party negotiator who won’t give us any idea of what we’re bidding against so we know what to offer. On the one hand, we don’t want to strong-arm anyone out of their family home with a superaggressive bid, but on the other, we question the wisdom of paying full price in this market. Every time we’ve guessed at an equitable price, we’ve been shut out.”

  I take a bite from my feta plate before I continue. “We fell in love with one house with a big pool and an enormous wooded lot with hiking trails—”

  “You don’t hike,”Tracey interjects.

  “I might if I had my own trail,” I argue. “Plus there was a fourcar garage—”

  Tracey interrupts, “You have two cars.”

  “I’m aware of that. But the storage would be nice, and Mac could have used part of the garage as a workshop. And there was a fab sunroom and a sweet media room, but it doesn’t matter, because t
here’s a third party involved and our bank won’t work with them and we lost out. Then we saw a house that we completely loved, but the taxes alone would add almost three thousand dollars to our monthly mortgage payment and we just couldn’t.”40

  Tracey stirs raw sugar into her iced tea and remarks, “You’re paying for their amazing school system, which ... Oh, I’m sorry. Remind me again which of your offspring will be attending Abington Cambs Country Day. Daisy? Agent Jack Bauer?”

  I purse my lips at her41 and continue. “Then on Sunday, we found the frigging promised land. Our banker called us and told us about a foreclosure. It was light-years beyond the top of our comfort level in terms of price, but he said the word on the street was that their bank would take any offer.”

  Mac and I were dying when we pulled down the private lane and saw the house. We were looking at an estate with towers and everything, and there was no squinting involved.42 We could not believe our luck as we passed under the wisteria-vined arbor and down the winding bluestone path. “No way!” we kept exclaiming to each other. “No way!” Right as we got to the door, a family of deer dashed across the lawn. What timing! It was as though a film crew were right offstage shouting, “Cue the deer! Cue the deer!”

  Liz was doing an open house that day, so she couldn’t come with us. Instead, she arranged for us to meet with the Realtor who was working with the bank.

  Mac and I walked around with our jaws slack. Not only was it eleventy thousand square feet,43 but the original owner was a builder and this place was his baby. Every detail was pitch-perfect, from the custom millwork to the library with the mahogany built-ins to the eight-jetted steam shower. And the home gym with the rubber matting and the ballet bar and mirrored walls? My God, I’ve belonged to health clubs that weren’t as nice. Or big.

  This was our better-than-our-wildest-dreams house! And according to our inside source, it was in our budget! We were ready to write a check on the spot until we climbed up into the south tower.