I laughed and my heart lightened about fifty degrees.
Saturday, August 2
I didn’t sleep much last night. I tossed and turned and yanked the covers away from Jake approximately every ten minutes. Possessed by the crazy-wife demon, I became irrationally angry when he had the nerve to breathe heavily, so I huffed and puffed as loudly as possible, hoping he would wake up. But thankfully, he stayed asleep.
I just about drifted off sometime after four o’clock when a high-pitched yelp jolted me awake.
“Jake!” I said, and poked him in the leg.
“Hsmissss,” he mumbled, and turned over.
“Jake! Get up!”
Nothing.
“JAKE!” I gave him another ninja poke.
“WHAT?” he said, and sat straight up in bed.
“I heard something in the hallway outside. Go check it out,” I said.
“It’s fine,” he said, and lay back down.
“Fine. I’ll go check it out. It’s probably an axe murderer awaiting his next victim and I’m going to get hacked into little pieces, but that’s OK because you don’t—”
“Jesus, I’m going, I’m going,” he said as he swung his legs out of bed. He stumbled around in the darkness for a few seconds and tried to put a pair of jeans on. He threw a T-shirt over his head and shuffled out of the bedroom.
I didn’t hear anything for a few minutes and I wondered if I should go and check on him, but I was scared the escaped mental patient outside had killed him and I didn’t want Sara to be an orphan.
He walked into the bedroom chuckling.
“Did the serial killer tell you a joke or something before he decapitated someone?” I said.
“Not exactly.” He laughed as he unbuttoned his jeans.
I stared at him as he lay back down in bed and closed his eyes.
“So what’s so funny?”
“It was Champagne Wayne.”
“Oh God. What was he doing?”
“More like who was he doing?”
“What?”
“Yep.”
“Are you seriously telling me our neighbor is having sex right now outside in the hallway?”
“I’m pretty sure that’s what it was, unless he bent that girl over to do a body cavity search. With his body parts.”
“EW! We are so moving. I’m calling the Realtor tomorrow.”
“Fine,” he mumbled.
“Jake?” I said after five minutes.
“What?” he said, half-asleep.
“Do you think STDs can become airborne?”
Sunday, August 3
After I heard our skanky neighbor bone some hooker in the hallway last night, the search for suitable housing has become priority number one. I mean, I enjoy the low, low cost of rent, but I don’t think Sara should have to live next to Mr. Walking Venereal Disease so Mommy and Daddy can save a few bucks.
So, I called a Realtor this morning, Rory Moonschmidt, my parents’ friend. I was standing in the kitchen, holding Sara, whom I entertained by pointing to pictures in my new US Weekly. Just as Rory described how many bathrooms and bedrooms Jake and I could afford as I gestured toward a picture of Britney Spears eating a cheeseburger, Sara farted. She didn’t just make a cute little baby fart. It was a reverberating, frat boy after eating White Castle and drinking beer fart. It was more like a boat’s foghorn or a locomotive chugging to a stop.
Rory stopped talking in mid-sentence.
“Oh, that was, no, that wasn’t, um, that. Uh, my baby. That was my baby,” I sputtered as I felt my face turn crimson.
“Oh. OK,” Rory said.
I looked at Sara and quickly tried to tickle her while making funny faces, trying to will her to make another noise, any noise so Rory would know she was there. I even tried to push on her stomach a little so she would fart again. But nothing. Abso-freaking-lutely nothing. That kid was silent for the first time in her life.
In fact, she remained silent the entire time I was on the phone, not even making one gurgle.
I’m sure Rory thinks I have some kind of intestinal problem. Great. She’s probably going to start showing Jake and me houses with five bathrooms and soundproof walls.
Saturday, August 9
There’s nothing like coming home and seeing a drunk husband with his loser friend, equally drunk and somewhat stoned, sitting on the couch with two cans of Miller High Life to burst one’s faux imaginary real estate bubble.
Today, I came home with an armful of groceries and spotted Bill-Until-Two-Months-Ago-I-Still-Lived-with-My-Parents. He came over to watch some college football game with Jake and the two of them wound up completely tanked by the end of it. Sara, thankfully, was asleep the whole time. I interrupted a debate over whether Tiffani-Amber Thiessen was hotter during her Saved by the Bell or 90210 days. It was a Valerie versus Kelly argument. I’m so glad they found something academic to discuss. (Although I can’t really give Jake shit about it. Three years ago, Julie and I got into a “heated debate” over who was the hotter Corey: Haim or Feldman? A couple thousand drinks may or may not have been involved also.)
I wrestled the Boppy away from Jake, who had it around his waist as a place to rest his tall boy, and gave him an evil look.
“You know what you need, Clare?” Bill asked me.
“What?” I said.
“More cowbell!” He dissolved into hysterical, high-pitched laughter.
“Is he stoned again?” I asked Jake.
Jake shrugged but quickly kicked Bill out.
“Clare, I’m sor—,” Jake started to say as he closed the front door after Bill left.
“Don’t.” I held up my hand. “I just—,” I started to say as I felt the well of frustration beginning to surge inside. But I knew laying into Jake wouldn’t help anything. So I dropped my hand back down to my side and exhaled. “I know.” I sat down on the couch and kicked my shoes off. “I’m just tired.”
Jake sat down next to me. “I’m sorry. I know my idiot friends are the last thing you want to deal with right now,” he said quietly.
I shook my head. “It’s OK. Like I said, I’m just tired. Work’s been crazy lately.” I silently wished that I were the slightly inebriated one on the couch, not stressing about the golf outing, worrying about my mom, or wondering if I missed Sara doing anything new at day care this week.
“Anything I can do?” Jake asked as he leaned back against the couch.
I shook my head again slightly. “No. I’ll be fine. I just need a good night’s sleep.”
“I’m on it,” he said as he leaned forward, grabbed my arm, and pulled me against his chest. “Tomorrow morning, I’ve got Sara. Before we go to any open houses. You sleep in.”
“Deal,” I said as I buried my face into his T-shirt. I closed my eyes for a moment and whispered, “Oh, and Jake?”
“Yeah?” he said.
“I’m still telling the Internet about this.”
Sunday, August 10
10:00 A.M.
I just got off the phone with Rory. She e-mailed over a list of three houses for Jake and me to check out today. According to her, they’re “nice,” “roomy,” and, most important, aren’t so far from the city that they might as well be in Iowa.
Judging from the pictures and the description, I just know one of these houses is the One.
4:00 P.M.
The One? Not exactly.
We pulled up to the first house, which looked even cuter than the picture online. It had white wood siding and navy blue shutters with beautiful pink impatiens in flower boxes resting on the windowsills.
I grabbed Jake’s arm. “Oh my God! I love it. Let’s get it!”
“Are you sure?” he said, and pointed to the house next door. The lawn looked like a rummage sale for plastic lawn ornaments and lawn jockeys. Pink flamingos, a family of deer, and a Santa statue encircled a giant wood cutout of a sleigh.
“Um, ya. Let’s go in,” I said. I figured it would be easy to give the pizza guy direc
tions: The house next to the one with all the shit in the yard.
The interior was beautiful. It was perfect. The only problem was that we needed to breathe, oh, occasionally.
Not only did the owners appear to be very heavy smokers, as evidenced by the yellow ceilings, ashtrays in every room, and general odor of a dive bar, but they also had a cat. More than one, probably. Who all must be on strike from their litter box, as the entire place reeked of cat urine. I only stayed inside with Sara for about five minutes, as I wasn’t sure what excessive exposure to cat piss would do to her still-developing wee brain. Now, I’m not one to complain about animals, seeing as how our cat is as well behaved as Stewie from Family Guy, but I don’t think Jake and I have the funds to purchase enough gas masks to hand out to visitors before they even set foot through the door.
House Number One? Not the One.
We journeyed on to House Number Two.
This house was another equally gorgeous, redbrick colonial with white windows. It even had a garden tub in the master bathroom. Of course, it was decorated hideously, since a seven-foot-tall mural of a naked Indian carrying a dead white woman isn’t exactly my taste, but it wasn’t anything several gallons of paint couldn’t fix. The shrine in the basement to Tupac Shakur didn’t even deter me.
The ten thousand dollars a year in taxes did.
Apparently, when they built this subdivision, a onetime assessment was levied on each house to do general infrastructure work like road paving. People had the choice of either paying it upfront or rolling it into their yearly taxes. Guess which one these owners chose?
Moving on.
House Number Three was an old farmhouse from the 1800s. It was in an amazing location, one Jake and I thought we’d never be able to get near. It would be a huge investment opportunity and our property value would surely shoot up year after year.
The problem with House Number Three was location and nostalgic charm were about the only pluses. Now, I love old houses and their quirks, but living in this house would literally be like living in the 1800s. No air-conditioning, one bathroom—on the first floor—narrow staircases, and no closets. Apparently, back in the good ole days, taxes were calculated per the number of rooms in a house. Closets were considered rooms. So, to save money, nobody built closets. Their gain? Our loss.
Also, the dirt floor cellar really creeped me out. And that’s where the washer and dryer were located. I figured it would be a good excuse to never do laundry again, but the fuses (yes, fuses, not circuit breakers) were down there, too, and if the power ever went out and Jake wasn’t home, Sara and I would be stuck in the darkness with no electricity (again, like the 1800s) until he came home.
And the no AC thing really wouldn’t jive during the summer, when my hair expands to three times its normal size when it comes into contact with so much as a drop of humidity.
So, sadly, Jake and I aren’t going to buy the Money Pit. My dad reminded us that we’d only seen three houses, it’s a buyer’s market, we have tons of time, blah, blah, blah. The problem is I’m already starting to panic. See, we can afford like 1 percent of what’s on the market right now, buyer’s advantage or not.
It didn’t help when Marianne said, “Of course you’re going to put at least thirty percent down, right?” and when I told her no, we didn’t have extra tens of thousands of dollars saved up but that we were planning on making a modest down payment, she said: “Then you’d be at risk for foreclosure and default. You don’t want to lose your house, do you?”
I started to freak out when Jake reminded me we hadn’t even bought a house yet and I should probably wait until we find one and move before I start Googling what house foreclosure does to one’s credit. But, looking at the spec sheets in front of me, I’m starting to worry if we even want to live anywhere we can afford. Not to mention, I’m afraid to look at more expensive houses, since I don’t want to hamstring my decisions at this point.
So, today was pretty much a bust. Except I did discover Realtors give out free things, like juice and cookies at open houses. I think I’m going to go drown my sorrows in one of the oatmeal-raisins stuffed into my purse.
Monday, August 18
As if my working mom guilt needed another kick in the teeth, I was, once again, the last person to arrive in the office. I still arrived by 8:30 a.m., but it was clear that everyone else had already been working for at least an hour.
I collected a few things at my desk and left to go to Greg’s office to drop off some golf shirt samples for the outing. Every golfer receives a collared shirt as part of the giveaway, and I needed Greg to choose between the lovely white waffle-weave cotton and the light blue nylon version.
Thrilling, I know.
I planned on dropping the shirts off with his secretary and sending him a follow-up e-mail, which was why I purposely stopped in around lunchtime. But, true to my luck, he had just gotten back from his lunch meeting.
“Clare! Come on in!” Greg said as he waved in from the reception area of the Thompson & Thompson, LLC, law firm.
I stood up and grabbed my bag. Except, out of nowhere, my ankle wobbled in my slingback shoe. My hands went toward the heavens and about a thousand pieces of paper, two golf shirt samples, and some miniature golf tees all scattered through the air like caps on graduation day.
“Oh!” I shrieked as my hands flailed through the air like a Dancing with the Stars contestant.
“Are you OK?” Greg said as he rushed to steady my elbow.
“I’m fine, I’m fine,” I said as I fixed my errant shoe strap and surveyed the contents of my bag, which now littered the reception area. “Er, lemme just—” I kind of awkwardly half-crouched, half leaned over, and tried to pick up the hundreds of golf tees one by one.
“Here, let me help you.” Greg bent down in his expensive suit and helped me corral all of the materials. He chuckled as he handed me the golf shirts.
“Thanks,” I muttered under my breath. I looked over at him and laughed.
Golf outing paraphernalia shoved back into my bag, we stood up.
“My office is this way. Try not to break anything,” Greg said, and pointed me down the hallway. “You sure your ankle is all right?” he asked as we walked down the oak-paneled corridor, past expansive offices with panoramic views of Lake Michigan.
“It’s fine.” I smiled at him despite the humiliation burning through me.
“Right here.” Greg pointed to an office dripping with dark cherry bookcases, an enormous empty desk, and a pretty kick-ass computer monitor. It looked like a NASA command station.
So this was how he could afford that condo. Although I’ll never admit it to anyone, I Googled Greg’s name and found the property record for a condo he bought a year ago.
The sale price was more money than Jake and I will make in about five years. Either litigation was going well or Greg had a cocaine empire I was unaware of. (And if the latter is true, I’d be open to reading the business plan, as I’d like to live in a house that has indoor plumbing and is not located in a neighborhood consistently featured on America’s Most Wanted. Just a request.)
“So here’s the samples,” I said, and slid the shirts across the desk.
“Oh, right,” Greg said as he sat down across from me in his leather chair. He picked them up and studied them.
I looked around his office, his success evident in the fixtures. My office is littered with newspaper clippings of event coverage, the lamp on my desk is from IKEA rather than Tiffany, and I was excited to get a computer that had Microsoft 2003 on it earlier this year. Looking at Greg’s computer, I’m sure he has Microsoft Armageddon on it, or whatever the upgrade is called.
“This one looks good,” Greg finally said. He pointed to the blue nylon shirt.
“Great! I’ll place the order,” I said as I shoved both shirts back into my Bag of Death.
“Sounds good. Anything else I can do at this point?” Greg leaned back in his chair.
I shook my head. “Nope. Everyth
ing’s under control and running smoothly.” I stood up and glanced down at his desk while I rose. A photo caught my eye. “Hey! Is this from New Year’s?” Before I could stop myself, my arm darted out and landed on the black-framed photo. I lifted it and brought it closer.
A photo of about twenty people, mostly his friends, from his fraternity house’s annual New Year’s party, freshman year. My eyes zeroed in on one person in the center. Looking happy. Like she was having fun. Like she got more than an average of four hours of sleep at night.
Me.
All of us smiling into the camera, cheering in the new year. Cheering to what we knew would be an amazing future. Or, at least, an amazing night until the beer ran out.
I remembered how nervous I was to go to the party. How I looked forever for a dress. How I didn’t really know anyone there. How I awkwardly went to the bathroom every time Greg did, so I wouldn’t be stuck standing there by myself.
How, when Jake and I started dating, I’d arrive at parties before he even got there and feel completely comfortable and welcome.
“Oh, sorry! Ignore that—I normally don’t have old photos on my desk, but it got mixed in with a box from my home office,” Greg said quickly. He looked embarrassed. “Not very professional.”
I set the picture back down on his desk and smiled. “It’s OK. I won’t tell. Fun night, though.”
Greg nodded as he quickly put the photo into a desk drawer. We stood silently for a moment until his cell phone began to chirp.
“Well! Thanks for everything and I’ll be in touch!” I said quickly, and started toward the door.
“Thanks again, Clare,” Greg called from his office as I walked down the hallway.
I drove back to my office in a fog.
I’ve come so far beyond that girl with too much eye makeup, too-high heels, and a mere shred of confidence. But despite all of that, I still felt spooked. Spooked because, despite my emotional growth, I felt something else as I stared at that picture.
Envy.
Envy for that girl’s life. For her naïve view of the world. For her carefree attitude. For her self-allowances to make mistakes because, man, she had her whole life ahead of her. And she could be whatever she wanted.
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