aims it at the CD player and presses a couple of buttons. Alicia Keys gives way to U2’s “With or Without You.”
Which happens to be a major aphrodisiac—at least for me.
Go ahead, try it—listen to that song and see if it doesn’t instantly put you in the mood.
The opening bass is enough to do it for me, every time—and Jack knows it.
“How about a dry run on the family-starting thing, so to speak?”
I loop my arms around his neck. “I’m game…if you’re game for a dry run on the house-hunting circuit next weekend.”
Jack tilts his head.
I kiss his neck.
Bono sings.
We are so there.
3
“Let’s take a drive through the village first, shall we?” asks Verna Treeby, slipping behind the wheel of her silver Mercedes.
Yes, we shall, because Verna Treeby of Houlihan Lawrence Real Estate is calling all the shots today here in suburbia on this cold, gray Sunday.
Jack settles himself into the backseat, and I climb into the front. I was thinking maybe he’d be the one to sit up here, but he made such an immediate beeline for the back that I’d swear someone must have said they’re giving away cold Heinekens and Fritos back there.
Alas, the air has that leathery new-car smell mingling with Verna’s designer perfume; nary a hint of Fritos.
“And we’re off,” Verna says cheerfully, pulling out of the real-estate office parking lot and onto Main Street in Glenhaven Park.
I cast a quick glance over my shoulder to make sure Jack is paying attention.
He’s looking out the window, as he should be. So far, so good. Unless he’s staring off into space, wondering why he’s here.
Frankly, there might be a teensy chance of that.
Because even though we agreed last Sunday to spend this Sunday looking at houses, I’m thinking he’s either been in weeklong denial, or had no intention of honoring his promise to me.
The biggest indicator: when Mitch asked us last night—while the three of us were walking home from a late movie—if we wanted to hang out today and watch the basketball playoffs, and Jack said yes.
“We can’t, we have other plans,” I said to both of them, and wound up feeling like the mean mommy who doesn’t allow Super Soakers or sweetened cereal.
“What kind of plans?” Mitch asked nosily.
All right, maybe not nosily. Maybe just curiously.
Maybe I’m just pretty damn sick of Mitch and his questions and his hanging out.
Of course Jack hedged, so I was the one who had to break it to Mitch that we’re probably moving to the suburbs.
Mitch didn’t say much in response. Mostly he just gave Jack a reproachful look, and me the silent treatment as we covered the remaining half block to his building.
After we left him off, I said to Jack, “I guess he’s going to miss us when we move, huh? Or you, anyway.”
“Not just me. He loves you, Tracey.”
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Mitch loves me. If he loves me, he’ll set me free.
“Anyway, it’s not like we’re moving tomorrow,” Jack says, “so…”
That pause seemed ominous to me.
I found myself wondering how he was going to complete that thought.
So Mitch will have plenty of time to get used to the idea?
Or…
So Mitch will have plenty of time to convince our future suburban next-door neighbors to sell their place to him?
I probably should have asked Jack to finish the sentence, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it.
Anyway, here we are, embarking on a new adventure as future home owners, and I don’t want anything to put a damper on this day because so far, it’s going well.
I was pleasantly surprised by Verna, the listing agent on a bunch of houses whose ads caught my eye. Not surprised by the fact that she’s sporting a Palm Beach tan in mid-March and has a fresh-from-the-country-club preppy pink sweater, gold jewelry, blond pageboy caught back in a black headband. I was more surprised that she’s treating us so well when most of the listing pages taped in the window of Houlihan Lawrence run upward of a million dollars.
But when I called Verna earlier in the week and answered a few questions—including the dreaded “What price range are you looking in?”—she didn’t tell me to try the outer reaches of New Jersey. She said, “Sure, come on up!”
The thing is, anywhere else, our price range—half a million bucks, give or take a hundred grand—would buy a mansion. In my hometown on the opposite end of New York State, I don’t think houses that expensive even exist. But here in the tristate area, that’s the lower end of the housing market, and I’m thinking Jack and I will be lucky if we find something.
Glenhaven Park is the first town we’re visiting as we launch our official house hunt here in Westchester County. We chose it—well, I chose it—because Jack and I have driven through it a few times while we were up here visiting his mother, and I think it’s charming.
It has always struck me as one of those old-fashioned small-town movie sets. You know: leafy streets lined with sidewalks that attract strolling pedestrians and kids on bikes; flag-flying Victorian houses with blooming gardens; redbrick schools and white church steeples. In the business district, turn-of-the-century storefronts line the brick sidewalks. Running through the center of it all is a grassy commons where cobblestone paths meander among ancient shade trees, lampposts, benches and statues.
Beyond the village proper, some of the surrounding roads are unpaved and lined with crumbling old stone walls. That’s where the horse farms and country estates are.
Here in the heart of town, there are plenty of expensive homes, too—as in a million dollars and well on up. But I circled ads for a bunch of houses in our price range, so I’m excited to see what our money can buy.
We could definitely afford a two- or even three-bedroom condo in the complex perched on a hill above the town, but I’m tired of sharing walls, a ceiling or a floor with strangers. I want a regular house, with a basement and an attic. I want a garage and a driveway and a car to park there. I want a dome-topped mailbox on a pole, the kind where you put the red flag up for outgoing mail, and I want a yard with trees and a swing set (eventually) and yes, a septic tank. I want to step out my back door on a hot August afternoon to pick fresh tomatoes and basil for a salad, and cut an armload of bright-colored zinnias to put in a vase on the dinner table, just the way my mother always did on hot August afternoons back in Brookside.
I want my future children to grow up the way I did,
