women describe. Turns out, trying to move to another state is one big migraine, complete with blinding pain and the urge to curl up quietly in the fetal position.
During my initial meeting with the real-estate agent, the day after I’d called Lindsay for his number, the man had informed me that if I would just add a half bath at the front of the house, we could dramatically increase both the chances of selling it quickly and the asking price. Skipping over my skepticism that there was sufficient space for another room, no matter how small, I patiently explained that I had neither the money nor the time to worry about plumbing renovations.
We hustled the house onto the market, stipulating in the paperwork that I had two small children and a dog, so interested parties and their agents needed to call ahead before coming to look. Two nights later, my Realtor let himself in with his lockbox key on an unannounced visit to show the house to a middle-aged couple with a teenage son. Toys were strewn all over, the dinner dishes were still sitting on the kitchen counter, and Sara and I were having a heated discussion about her decision to “improve” her room by coloring flowers on the wall with a marker. Gretchen was so unnerved by the sudden appearance of strangers that she’d thrown up—a crackerjack watchdog, that one. Worse, since I hadn’t had time to prepare Sara for the walk-through, she’d decided that these invasive strangers were the problem, that they wanted to take away her home. She’d commanded them to stay out of her room and punctuated the order by slamming a door.
Why the man who actually worked for me didn’t understand that the call-ahead commandment applied to him as well as outside Realtors, I have no idea. It would have given me a great deal of temporary satisfaction to fire him, but then I’d have to pay listing fees out of pocket now instead of them coming from his six-percent commission after the sale. I had nothing out of pocket. I barely had pockets.
In the week and a half since, we’d only had a handful of viewers, and none of them had called back. My ever-helpful real-estate agent seemed to think that getting someone to fall in love with the house would be easier if the kids and I weren’t actually here when people came to see it. So we were living in a DEFCON four state, diaper bag always at the ready so we could leave on a moment’s notice. Oddly enough, my mother-in-law’s increasingly enthusiastic, near-daily calls to see if we had found a buyer yet weren’t helping. Nor was Sara’s anxiety over Halloween. While doing some sort of holiday creative-writing unit at school, my daughter had become fixated with the idea that our move might prevent her from trick-or-treating. I promised her, repeatedly, that no matter what state we were living in at the end of the month, she would be in costume and begging door-to-door for candy.
At least I knew we could stay with Rose while I house hunted in Boston, a daunting task. I was due to be there the fourth week of October to start my new job. In other words, I had nine days. Dianne, with her typical graciousness, had spent a lot of time here over the past couple of weeks, helping me repaint over crayon marks and grubby handprints. I was trying not to think about her shipping out tomorrow afternoon. Saying goodbye to the person who had helped me cope with the most devastating change of my life was far more daunting than moving to another state.
Other than some minor house maintenance, I had hardly rounded up all the boxes I would need, much less begun packing. Martin had promised I’d receive half pay during the transitional, out-of-work interim between my positions. Thank God, or we’d be living in boxes instead of labeling them Bedroom, Kitchen and Kids. Apparently, preparing for the move, working full-time during the office’s last week before shutdown and trying to calm Sara out of hyperventilating every fifteen minutes wasn’t a full enough schedule for me. Because I’d also decided to go in with Mrs. Winslow and throw a “jewelry party.”
She’d recently rediscovered her inner entrepreneur but lacked a good-sized living room for cramming in a semicircle of attendees. So, we’d invited the little old ladies of the neighborhood to my house for chips and dip and the chance to watch us model jewelry manufactured by Mrs. Winslow’s parent company, ZirStone. She and I would each get a cut from any sales. It just so happened she’d mentioned the business deal to me on the same day I’d been getting cost estimates from moving companies, catching me in a weak moment when I’d been contemplating hocking the television and VCR for cash.
Today was the party. I’d bribed Sara with a rented video I was allowing the kids to watch in my room. Ben was viewing the movie from inside the comfort of his playpen, accompanied by a few of his favorite toys. Now, if I could just get someone from the neighborhood interested in some of the quality synthetic gemstones we had available, perhaps I could justify losing half a Saturday of potential packing. But fifteen minutes into my sales pitch, a real-estate agent called wanting to show the house.
“I wanted to know if this afternoon would be good,” he said.
I peeked around the corner of the kitchen, where Mrs. Winslow was opening a gray box of earrings with a flourish Vanna White would have envied. “Approximately what time were you thinking?”
“We’re looking at a place the next subdivision over, so about ten minutes.”
“Ten minutes?” I could barely get both children properly strapped into their respective car seat and booster in that amount of time, much less empty the living room of guests.
Following my shrieked question, the buzz of conversation in the next room stopped abruptly.
There was also silence on the other end of the phone, but the man recovered quickly, sounding a tad defensive. “Look, if you don’t want prospective buyers to come see your house—”
“No, it’s not that.” I couldn’t afford to turn them away. How could I possibly make two monthly house payments? The mere thought prompted me to plead, “Please bring them by. But you have to understand that I wasn’t expecting to show the house today.”
“Oh, so there haven’t been many visitors?” Oh, so there’s not much interest and we can whittle down the asking price?
“Plenty! Just none scheduled for today,” I clarified. “I have a few people over, and you didn’t give us much notice—”
“We don’t want to disturb anyone,” he interrupted, back to the smoothly polished salesman’s voice with which he’d started the conversation. “We’ll have a quiet look around, and you and your guests will hardly notice we’re there.”
I got off the phone wondering how much of his estimated ten minutes were left and whether or not I should try to shoo the ladies out of the house. But they weren’t exactly in an age demographic known for speed and agility. Besides, it would look odder for people to view the house with empty folding chairs in the living room and a sideboard of half-eaten snacks than for them to just walk through while we concluded the jewelry show. Heck, if the potential buyers didn’t want the house, maybe I could still talk them into a faux black pearl bracelet.
I quickly updated the ladies, letting them know visitors would be walking through but that we should carry on as scheduled. I didn’t have to worry about wrangling the dog outside because I’d already let her into the sunroom before the jewelry shindig, but I did rush back to my room to check on the kids. God bless ’em, they were behaving perfectly. Ben was sitting in his play area flipping through a board book about fire trucks, while Sara was cuddled with Ellie on my bed, focused on her movie.
She barely glanced in my direction. “Is your party over, Mommy?”
“Not yet, but there are some people coming to see the house.”
“Do we have to leave again?” She did look at me then, annoyance clear on her young features. “I haven’t watched my favorite song yet.”
Though
