slowly pulled back the curtain of the window closest to the voice and was face-to-face with a meticulously made up elderly woman who was peering intently into the house. She had on lavender-tinted glasses and was wearing a long cotton nightgown and slippers. With her bright red nail polish contrasting with flashy gold rings and bracelets, she reminded me of an aging Hollywood legend padding around the grounds of her mansion. She tapped on the window with a well-manicured index finger. “Oh, hello there!” she said and unsteadily weaved her way toward the backyard.
I’m ashamed to admit that I briefly considered grabbing my bat before I ventured outside to investigate. Sure, she appeared to be a sweet little old lady, but she was wiry, and those polished nails looked sharp. What the hell was wrong with me? I needed to cool it with the security measures. I went outside—unarmed—and introduced myself.
It turned out to be Rich and Berniece’s mom, out for a drive with a friend. They had stopped to look at the purple and yellow irises blooming in the yard. I gave them a tour of the house and told them my plans. I mentioned that I had gone to grade school at Saint Mary’s, and I could tell that the connection meant something to Rich’s mom. It was her parish. Before she left, she gave me a hug in the front yard. “You woot be happy if you came back home,” she whispered to me.
Once again, I was in the front yard waving goodbye, this time as my two unexpected visitors drove away. A shirtless guy down the street saw me, waved back, and made a beeline down the block. I considered hustling into the house to avoid the encounter, but he was fast. “My man, you have to help me out,” he said, rubbing his head with one hand and imploring me with the other. “I just got robbed. You know what it’s like to get robbed on your birthday? That shit is messed up!”
I was used to being panhandled in San Francisco, but it had never happened in my front yard before. Rich had warned me to never give anyone change in the neighborhood, but I didn’t want to be too harsh with this guy since he knew where I lived. “Happy birthday,” I said, trying to sound firm yet friendly. “I don’t have any money.”
“Come on, man!” he said, taking a step toward me, suddenly angry. His face was inches from mine.
“Sorry, but I can’t help you out,” I said, getting a little pissed off myself and regretting the decision to leave my bat in the house.
“Cheap-ass muthafucka,” he yelled before abruptly turning, crossing the street, and cutting through the parking lot behind the Durant-Dort building, no doubt covering the same ground that GM’s creator, Billy Durant, had traversed numerous times about a hundred years earlier.
I took a deep breath, found a shady spot on my front steps, took out my phone, and called Traci in San Francisco. She reported that our cat, Sergio, had invaded the neighbor’s house again, peeing in their basement, then sacking out on one of their beds and refusing to leave. He was relentless in his quest to acquire new territory, an impulse I was beginning to understand. The previous night Traci had gone to a party filled with other writers and reporters that had degenerated into the typical group lament over dwindling jobs, bad editors, and low pay—the sort of unrestrained bitching that often defined our lives as journalists.
I tried to explain how one day in Flint contrasted with the cold, superficial friendliness of San Francisco, where I sometimes felt like I could go long stretches without making a real connection with anyone besides her. I’d already been fretted over by Berniece; confronted, scrutinized, and ultimately accepted by Rebecca and Nathan; embraced by Rich’s mom; and called a muthafucka by the birthday boy. It was all a visceral reminder that the anonymity of big-city life in San Francisco and the stereotypical laid-back character of California had their drawbacks. If you weren’t careful, you could float along on a sheen of lovely views and trendy pop culture distractions. Ironic roller derby matches at the Kezar Pavilion, graffiti masquerading as art in the Mission, and the mesmerizing fog rolling over Twin Peaks. At the risk of sounding like a touchy-feely Californian, somehow Flint felt more real, like I had permanent ties here that I could never make in San Francisco. This must have come off as an overly enthusiastic endorsement, because Traci cautioned me to give Flint a few weeks before I came to any big conclusions. “I miss you,” she said before we hung up. “The house seems empty without you.”
I lingered on the front porch, resisting the urge to go inside and needlessly rearrange my belongings. There was nowhere I needed to be. I tried to sit back and appreciate the fact that after all the planning, worrying, and soul searching, I was really in Flint, well on my way to buying a house. But I couldn’t quite silence the small voice in the back of my head whispering that this was a very bad idea.
2
Bottom-Feeders
Looking back, the desire to own property in Flint was rooted in my decision to buy a house in San Francisco. Despite the yawning economic, geographic, and meteorological gap between the two places, they were united by one thing: I didn’t have any business owning property in either place. By nature, I am deeply skeptical when it comes to most things that involve spending money. A few friends have jokingly used terms of endearment like “cheap bastard” and “tightwad” to describe me. (At least I think they’re joking.) But my frugality seems to disappear when it comes to real estate.
Traci discovered this six months after we gave up our respective apartments and moved in together in 2003. We had a nice two-bedroom flat up a steep flight of stairs on the western slope of Bernal Heights, with built-in bookshelves, an elegant nonfunctioning fireplace, and a back deck, all set to a soundtrack of muffled salsa music that drifted up from the bars on nearby Mission Street. At $1,850 a month, it was reasonably priced by the outrageous local standards. We were happy. We were in love. Why mess with this arrangement?
Well, I couldn’t help thinking about all the money I’d handed over to the landlord of my previous apartment on Potrero Hill, roughly $130,000 in rent over a decade. And I’d always felt a little like a visitor to San Francisco. I liked the idea of Traci and me becoming official residents with a real stake in the city. I was in my forties, and I wanted to be a homeowner. I foolishly believed that by combining the meager incomes of two journalists we might have a shot at owning in one of the world’s most expensive markets. Our household income was around $90,000. Starter homes in the San Francisco neighborhoods we found acceptable started at around $500,000. Neither of us did that well in math back in school. We were writers, after all.
Our friendly landlord at the time, Michelle, was a real-estate agent who was, of course, very encouraging. She thought my plan was brilliant, especially since we wanted her to be our agent. Her husband was a lawyer who grew up in Muskegon and wore U of M T-shirts, so there was a Michigan connection. Already I was basing housing decisions on extraneous emotional attachments.
In the spring of 2004, Michelle put us in touch with a mortgage broker named Ralph, who called to set up a meeting after we’d submitted our financial information. He was a calm, conservative-looking guy with a brush cut, a mustache, and a suit. After congratulating us for having good credit scores and living entirely debt-free, he politely said he couldn’t imagine how we’d ever be able to afford anything in the city. He half-heartedly said a studio condo might be a possibility. That’s right, one room for me, Traci, and our two cats—Sergio and Purdy. “I can’t see you getting a loan big enough for anything larger, and even if you got it the payments would eat up more than half your take-home pay every month,” Ralph said in a sympathetic but firm tone. “Now’s just not the time for you to buy.”
I had an instant flashback to my grandfather sitting at the wooden desk in the corner of his dining room back in Flint. He was a real-estate agent, and he would often work from home when he wasn’t at the office, making calls on the hulking black rotary phone and filling out paperwork while my grandmother and I watched TV in the living
