What Happens in Suburbia… (Red Dress Ink Novels)

by Wendy Markham

  Jack is not amused.

  “Come on, Jack, you know I was talking about handyman stuff.”

  “I wouldn’t say I stink at it. I just haven’t had much practice.”

  Pssst. Trust me. El Stinko. Do you know how long it took him to put together a cardboard CD cabinet he bought at Wal-Mart?

  “Well,” I tell him brightly, “just think—if we buy this house you’ll get plenty of practice.”

  “I don’t think I should practice on an actual house, Tracey. Shouldn’t I start small? Like maybe a birdhouse?”

  “Stop kidding around, Jack. I’m dead serious here.”

  “I’m serious, too. I have no idea how to knock down a wall. Or build a bookshelf, for that matter.”

  “How hard can it be to knock down a wall?” I mean, seriously, don’t you just get a sledgehammer and start swinging? “Anyway, we can hire someone.”

  “What, did you preauthorize us for a handyman, too?”

  “Jack, stop fooling around.”

  “I’m sorry. It’s just that I don’t want you to set your heart on this place and get your hopes up, and then be disappointed.”

  “Why do I have to be disappointed? It’s not like the house isn’t for sale…it’s listed. And it’s not like we can’t afford it, because we can. All we have to do is pay the asking price, and it’s ours!”

  “You make it sound so simple.”

  “It is simple. You make it sound like I’m trying to sprout fairy wings and fly.”

  “That, I’d love to see.” He pauses to smile, then the smile fades and he says, “I’ve barely had time to get used to the idea of moving, and all of a sudden here we are, looking at houses.”

  “If I waited for you to want to move, some other couple will already have celebrated their golden anniversary in this house.”

  Note that he doesn’t argue with me there.

  “Jack, the thing is, I know how you are. You hate change.”

  Note that he doesn’t argue with me there, either.

  “And you know how I am. I love change. I thrive on it. I crave it, Jack.”

  He sighs.

  “I think we should make an offer for the house,” I say firmly. “We’ll just offer the asking price and see what happens.”

  “Nobody offers the asking price.”

  “Sure they do.”

  “Who does?”

  “People who want to make sure they get the house,” I explain with exaggerated patience. “Which we do. Don’t we?”

  “Regardless of whether we want it, Tracey, the owner sets the price higher than he expects to get so that there’s room for bargaining. Trust me. I deal with this on a daily basis.”

  “What are you talking about? You’ve never bought a house in your life.”

  “No, but I’m in media, remember? I decide how clients should spend millions of dollars.”

  Oh. True. Too bad we don’t have millions of those dollars at our own disposal. Then we could write out a check on the spot and hire someone else to knock down walls to our heart’s content.

  Or even buy some other house, one that’s in perfect condition, so that knocking down walls isn’t even necessary.

  But you know what?

  Even if we had more money, I don’t think I’d want another house.

  This one has character, and it’s a happy house. You can’t put a price on that.

  “Let’s go through the house again,” I tell Jack. “One more time. Okay?”

  “Okay.”

  So we do. And this time, I fall even more in love with the place, quirks and all. I love the uneven floorboards in the hall outside the downstairs bathroom, the painted bedroom doors with china knobs, the high ceilings, the baseboards and crown moldings.

  Back in the kitchen, I lace my fingers through Jack’s and lean my head on his shoulder. “Well?”

  “It is a pretty great old house. It reminds me a lot of my grandmother’s house.”

  “Then let’s make an offer, Jack. Please? You decide how much…as long as you don’t lowball it.”

  “I don’t know…”

  “Jack, someday we can be old and gray here together, watching the deer frolic outside the window. Don’t you want that?”

  “Old and gray?” he asks dubiously. “Not particularly. And the deer aren’t exactly frolicking, and anyway, about the deer—”

  In the next room, the door opens again. Verna’s back.

  Jack whispers to me, “Listen, we’ll talk about this later. Don’t let on to her that we’re interested.”

  “She already knows,” I whisper back. “So shouldn’t we just—”

  “No, we shouldn’t.”

  “Sorry about that.” Verna appears in the doorway, tucking her phone back into her pocket. “So, what do you think?”

  “Thanks so much for your time,” Jack says smoothly. “We definitely got a good sense of what’s available here in our price range.”

  Is it just me, or is he making it sound as if our work here is done?

  Verna doesn’t seem surprised, or all that disappointed as she says, “Okay, then, let’s head back to the office. Or can I show you something else?”

  “No, I think we’re all set,” Jack says, like a restaurant patron turning down a dessert menu.

  I give the house one last longing look from the front seat of Verna’s car as we drive away.

  I really hope Jack knows what he’s doing.

  Back at the office, Verna gives us her business card and tells us to be in touch. We tell her that we will, and go our separate ways.

  I wait until we’re back in Jack’s mother’s car and pulling out onto the street to ask, “So are we going to make an offer, or aren’t we?”

  “We have to talk about it.”

  “I know. So let’s talk. Oh, but,” I add, remembering, “first we have to stop off and get the pie, so look for a parking spot down there.”

  “The pie?”

  How can he be so clueless?

  “The key lime pie from that bakery. Remember?”

  “Oh, right.” He still sounds clueless. “Okay.”

  We drive along looking for a parking space.

  There aren’t any, but we do pass quite a few cars with turn signals flashing, pulled alongside occupied spots that have drivers loading in bags or just getting behind the wheel.

  I wonder if one of the stores is having a big sale today, or something, because it seems pretty busy.

  “No spots,” Jack says as we arrive at the end of the main drag.

  “There have to be spots.”

  “Did you see any?”

  “No. Go around the block and try again,” I tell him.

  He does. More of the same.

  “There must be something going on down here today,” I tell him.

  “Like what?”

  “I don’t know…some kind of festival, or something.”

  “A festival?” he echoes dubiously, and looks around. “I don’t see a festival.”

  “Maybe it’s an indoor festival. Go around one more time.”

  “You like key lime pie that much?”

  “Yes.”

  No. But for some reason, I really want that pie.

  “Why don’t we get it next time we’re here?” he asks, checking the dashboard clock.

  “You mean, when we come back up tomorrow to make our offer? Because they only make key lime at this time of year, for Saint Patrick’s Day. If we’re not coming back tomorrow, we should get a pie now.”

  He just sighs and shakes his head. “Trace, by the time we find a place to park, get the pie, get back to my mother’s and then catch a train to Manhattan, it’s going to be late enough as it is.”

  “Fine. We’ll just miss out on the pie. Kind of like the house.”

  He sighs again.

  “Come on, Jack. If we can’t buy the house, can we at least buy the pie?”

  “I didn’t say we couldn’t buy the house.”

  “We’re going to make an
offer?” I ask him.

  “We really qualified for that much mortgage?” he asks me in return.

  “We really did, between our two salaries and our savings, without even taking your future inheritance into consideration.”

  “Possible future inheritance,” he cautions. “Let’s talk about this back at home, where we can concentrate. Okay?”

  “Okay. Forget the pie then. Let’s just get home.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Positive.”

  Jack nods thoughtfully, eyes focused on the street beyond the rain-spattered windshield as we drive on.

  “You know what?” he says.

  “What?”

  “It would be nice to live this close to my mother. Was it just me, or did she seem kind of frail this morning?”

  “It was just you,” I tell him. Wilma seemed the same as always to me—beautiful and capable and utterly put together, even if she was just wearing a bathrobe. Which she called a “dressing gown,” in her elegant Wilma way. Just like she calls a couch a sofa and a porch a veranda. Speaking of which…

  “Maybe we shouldn’t jump into anything,” I tell Jack, deciding to use a little reverse psychology on him. It’s worked in the past.

  Jack’s head snaps toward me. “You changed your mind?”

  “No! I just don’t want to push you into anything you’re not ready to do.”

  “If you didn’t push me into anything, we wouldn’t be married.”

  “Jack! That’s so…”

  Okay, it’s so true. Yet unromantic.

  “I don’t mean it in a bad way, Trace,” he says. “Sometimes I just need a little nudge. Let’s go drive by the house again, one last time, okay?”

  “Sure,” I say, not sure how I feel about that. Or anything.

  Until, of course, I see the damn house and fall madly in love with it all over again.

  “We have to get this house,” I tell Jack. “And you know what’s going to be the first thing we do when we get it?”

  Not that I said when, and not if. I’ve always been a strong believer in making things happen through positive thinking and brainwashing Jack.

  “I don’t know,” he says. “Let me guess…knock down a wall?”

  “No, get some rocking chairs!”

  “First thing?” he asks, heading back to the main road again. “I know you said we’d be old and gray there, but don’t you think the rocking chairs can wait awhile?”

  “They’re for the porch. The rocking-chair porch. Remember?”

  “Remember what?” he asks. “Seriously. You lost me.”

  “Did you not read the listing sheet?”

  “Sure I did.”

  “Did you not notice the rocking-chair-porch part?”

  “I did not notice that part. Should I have?”

  “Yes. Want to see it?” I fish in my purse for the listing sheet.

  “That’s okay, I’ll take your word for it. I can’t read and drive at the same time.”

  As we head down the street, I notice a bunch of blue Mylar balloons tied to a mailbox in front of a small Victorian-looking house. “Look,” I tell Jack. “One of our neighbors just had a baby.”

  He just shakes his head. “Do I turn at the end of this block or the next one to get back to Bedford?”

  “The next one.”

  “Are you sure?”

  I look up, check the intersection. A sign at the side of the road reads Bedford 4.

  “Yup, this is it,” I tell him, thinking again how great it will be to live four miles from my mother-in-law.

  No, I’m not off my front-porch rocker; I totally mean it. Wilma is not your average meddling mother-in-law. I adore her, and I’m sure it’s mutual. We’ve always gotten along great, aside from one minor little blip when I was afraid she was trying to commandeer our wedding plans.

  But I’m sure I was being overly sensitive, and anyway, that’s ancient history.

  As we leave Glenhaven Park behind, I tell it, We’ll be back. I promise.

  CHAPTER 5

  Walking up the path toward Wilma’s condo, I’m eager to tell her all about the house.

  “Don’t tell my mother about the house,” says Jack, who can be quite the annoying little mind reader when he wants to.

  “Why not?”

  “What if we don’t get the house? Hey—is that a For Sale sign?” he asks, pointing at the unit two doors down from his mother’s.

  “It is, but no way are we moving to Harvest Haven Estates. It’s a retirement community.”

  “Not officially. They can’t officially keep young people from living here,” he says defiantly.

  I’m not sure that they can’t, and anyway, I can’t imagine that legions of hipsters are barnstorming the sales office, eager to partake in the daily canasta tournaments and power Bunco games. Then again, there’s a pool, tennis courts and golf course…

  That gives me momentary pause.

  Then I spot the front draperies parting in Wilma’s next-door neighbor’s picture window, and something that looks like an oversize Q-tip wearing glasses peers out through the crack. Ah, that would be Wilma’s nosy neighbor, Bonnie.

  Judge Judy must have gone to a commercial.

  Harvest Haven Estates is chock-full of Bonnies.

  “Jack, we so cannot live here,” I tell him firmly.

  “Why not?”

  “Because we’re not Hume Cronyn and Jessica Tandy, that’s why not.”

  “Aren’t they dead?”

  Oops. Are they?

  They must be. “Yes, and that’s my point. Listen, if it’ll make you feel better, I’ll host a weekly bingo game at our new place.”

  He grins. “With prizes?”

  “You bet your sweet bifocals.”

  “You’re the best, Trace.”

  “I just really want us to get that house in Glenhaven Park.”

  “I know you do.”

  “And you want it, too, right?”

  “Yeah. I do. If we can get it.”

  I wish he sounded more confident.

  “Look, I promise that after I watch the game we’ll sit down at home and figure out if we can afford the house and how much to offer. Okay?”

  “Okay. And we can afford it. Remember? I pre—”

  “Qualified. I know. But the bank doesn’t know everything about us.”

  I hate to break it to him, but they pretty much do. Now, anyway.

  We let ourselves into Wilma’s condo, which is very nice, but always makes me feel a little sad. The place is crammed with her take in the divorce settlement: elegant furniture, art and antiques that once graced their Bedford mansion. It all looks slightly out of place here. Kind of like my friend Kate looked out of place in Target when I once dragged her there, clad in head-to-toe Chanel, on a day trip to Jersey.

  Per unspoken house rules, Jack and I take off our shoes by the door and leave them on the mat alongside a pair of adorable pink sneakers and a pair of crummy mud-encrusted loafers that can only mean one thing: our nieces Ashley (adorable pink shoes to match her adorable pink name and adorable face) and Beatrice (crummy…you get the idea) are around here somewhere.

  Quelle surprise.

  The twins belong to Jack’s ridiculously fragile sister Kathleen, a stay-at-home-mom with a full-time live-in nanny who takes to her bed at the slightest hint of a hangnail or PMS. I mean Kathleen, not the nanny, who has never suffered a minute of PMS as he’s actually a manny. Mannies are all the rage in Kathleen’s monkey-see-monkey-(well-to-)do pocket of suburbia.

  When she hired the manny—whose name is Sam—Kathleen kept talking about how enriched the girls will be, having a male role model.

  Which begs the question, Hey, Kathleen, what’s your husband, Bob—chopped liver?

  And begs a second question, Kathleen, is it true that you fired your last nanny, Lupe, because she was drop-dead gorgeous and liked to iron in the nude?

  (Don’t ask me how I know this. I just do, okay?)

  The g
ood news is that for all his ho-humness, my brother-in-law, Bob St. James, is a loving, loyal husband who would never, ever, in a gazillion years have a steamy fling with a sizzling nude-ironing señorita under his own recently replaced slate roof that cost upwards of fifty dollars per square foot.

  (I’ll tell you how I know this. Bob told me. In mind-numbing, minute detail.)

  Anyway, anyone can see that Bob is still crazy about Kathleen after all these years, and they’re meant to be together. Anyone other than Kathleen, anyway. Not only is she insecure, but she’s convinced that she’s married to a hot studmuffin no woman can resist.

  Kathleen is the anti-Connie Spadolini. My mother is the ultimate housewife.

  Kathleen is…well, not. Despite not working and employing a live-in manny, she’s always dumping the seven-year-old twins off on her mother’s doorstep.

  To be fair, Wilma doesn’t seem to mind. She dotes on the girls, whom she likes to parade around the condo complex and introduce as her “two sweet peas in a pod.” Never mind that they’re sweet as lemongrass and look nothing alike.

  To be even more fair, the girls never had a chance.

  Well, Ashley may have had a chance. She was actually named after one of the Olsen sisters (I always thought Jack was kidding about that—but, sadly, he was not) and could have popped out of a Full House rerun: a blue-eyed blonde, pretty, and with that same freakishly large head. Thanks to her overbearing, indulgent parents, Ashley is vain, bossy and spoiled rotten.

  Beatrice is dour, demanding and equally spoiled, and not only has to deal with limp hair and a cruel overbite (soon to be corrected by expensive orthodonture), but was not named after the other Olsen twin—but after a childhood paper-route customer of Kathleen’s husband, Bob. The first Beatrice, a reclusive and bitter old spinster, somehow amassed and hoarded a small fortune, which she left to be equally divided among Bob the Former Paperboy and her seven cats.

  No, by “equally,” I don’t mean Bob got half and the cats got the other half. Bob was bequeathed exactly one eighth of Dead Beatrice’s estate, with the remaining seven shares divided among Fluffy, Fifi and the gang who are presumably living out their golden years in some upscale feline version of Harvest Haven Estates.

  In any case, the windfall was obviously significant enough for Bob and Kathleen to not only buy and perpetually remodel a house in Westchester—sans mortgage—but to saddle not-Mary-Kate with a name that, sadly, really does suit her.