Matt Frei - Only in America

That America is a melting pot is a myth. If anything, this country is a vast archipelago of exclusive neighbourhoods surviving in an ocean of no-go zones. Washington, DC, boasts the U Street Corridor, which is a growing island of prosperity in a swamp of grinding poverty. We live in the so-called ‘Northwest Corridor’. It is green, leafy, predominantly white and overwhelmingly middle class. The majority of parents send their children to private schools, which is why 80 per cent of the students at the state primary school opposite our house are bussed in from the poor black neighbourhoods of Southeast Washington on the other side of town.

Many would disagree that the civic spirit is alive and well in America, even if only in bubbles across the country. The influential social historian Robert Putnam believes that civic America has been killed off with the passing of the generation that grew up during the Great Depression and World War II. Television, the internet, social mobility and social insularity have all conspired to keep the American family cooped up at home or in their cars, unable or unwilling to interact with each other. Perhaps. But on Tilden Street, Barbara made sure that we would be the exception.

Things didn’t always go smoothly. Civic spirit bristles at the unnecessarily unseemly and on that front the Freis have a problem. It comes in the shape of the three cars that we bought in our first year. In Europe these days three cars would be seen as an obscene overindulgence, a guarantee of social ostracism, an indelible black mark as big as your carbon footprint. That, however, is not the problem we have on Tilden Street. Most of the families in our neighbourhood have two or three cars. The issue is the state of our cars, their physical appearance, their roadworthiness and the kind of milieu they reflect. If America is having a love affair with the car then we have neglected our lovers to an extent that can only reflect badly on us. The convertible BMW, which is almost thirty years old and blotchy grey, has a black canvas roof so lacerated and threadbare that it looks as if it has been mauled by a tiger. The grotesque people carrier, used to ferry our four children to and from three different schools, appears to have been involved in several minor collisions. Whenever its doors are opened, a large quantity of sweet wrappers, empty bottles, broken toys, stray gloves and stale sandwiches spill out onto the road.

And then there’s the offensively red Dodge Neon, a car that looks as if it was designed for hobbits but hasn’t been driven anywhere in three years, thanks to its irredeemably illegal status. The red car is seeping slowly into the tarmac of our drive in a state of decomposition. It looks so downtrodden and crestfallen it might well be atoning for the sins of all the other gas-guzzling vehicles of America. The Frei cars are an exhibition of neglect that not even our British otherness will explain away. First they asked: ‘Are you ever gonna drive that car?’ Then: ‘Are you ever gonna sell that car?’ Now they have stopped asking. The red car has become permanently established as a mouldy fixture on our street. I could have it scrapped or ‘disappeared’, but since the car was never registered in my name that would be legally complicated and costly.

If Tilden Street offers an insight into the intrusive yet reassuring nature of American neighbourliness the purchase of our house was an early lesson in the excessive rituals of real estate. As an alien with no credit history in the US it took me a whole year before I became worthy of a credit card in this country. But I had no trouble finding a bank that was prepared to lend me a king’s ransom immediately to buy a house. Like most of the other hopefuls in the Washington real estate market my wife and I attended the ‘open houses’ that take place every Sunday afternoon; never in the morning because that clashes with church. Since we did not experience this scheduling issue ourselves we spent Sunday mornings snooping round the neighbourhoods, casing the houses before they flung their doors open in the afternoon.

Would anyone find out that we hadn’t been to church? Would they care? Perhaps they would only sell to a good Christian? Paranoid? No, as it happens. We are always being approached by Americans who want to know which church we belong to. And we are still working on an answer.

At first an open house seems a lot like a drinks party. Invitations are issued in the newspapers and at the realtors’ offices. Dressed as immaculately as Georgetown hostesses, the agents, with names like Clarissa and Mary-Lou, greet the guests as if they are old friends. In fact if you have done your homework and read the blurb you would know about Clarissa’s likes and dislikes. Likes: snowboarding, hiking, riding and baking. Dislikes: being late, traffic jams, air and noise pollution. With hair that has been blow dried to a new gravity-defying dimension and a face that has seen the careful attention of at least one plastic surgeon, Clarissa, who must be in her late forties, looks like a gently fading movie star. Her picture and profile give her celebrity status. And amid all this it’s quite easy to forget that she is an estate agent and her mission is to sell you a house and not sign an autograph. But America respects the individual, celebrates him or her, gives everyone – well, almost everyone – their shot at stardom. As the man selling me a tie at Saks said after I successfully completed the purchase and he shook my hand as if he had just agreed to let me marry his only daughter: ‘Matt, it was great working with you!’

Clarissa has done a fabulous job in turning the house into the kind of place you can imagine yourself living in. There is virtually no trace of the real people who still actually live here with their three children. The dining room table is adorned with a beautiful bunch of seasonal flowers. All evidence of the current inhabitants has been clinically removed by teams of sweepers who have left the house like a blank canvas onto which the buyer can paint his own fantasies. Mozart, Schumann, or some suitably soothing mood music seeps inoffensively from the stereo and if there is a fireplace a fire will be burning in it, even in summer. All that’s missing are the drinks, the nibbles and the customary bonhomie among the guests.

But this is one party where there is no eye contact, no handshakes, no back slapping. Prospective buyers size up the house furtively, orbiting each other like repellent moons before bidding a gracious farewell to the hostess and running to the car to hit the phones and call in the bids. The owners are nowhere to be seen and the highest bid doesn’t always land you the house. I had to write a grovelling letter to ‘Dear Mr Tupling’ about how I could ‘imagine my family thriving in your wonderful, inspiring home!’

It worked. We bought the house even though the agent informed us that we had offered less than the other contestants. At first I thought she was trying to make us feel better. Then I realized she was probably telling the truth. Americans pride themselves on the constitutional protection of the individual. But when it comes to personal finances the open market and culture of competition subject them to serial indiscretion. The actual sales price of every house in our neighbourhood, including ours, is frequently advertised by local estate agents. The size of my mortgage and my monthly payments seem to be in the public domain judging from the number of letters I get from rival mortgage companies advertising. ‘Matt, don’t you want to save money? Don’t you want to enjoy the lifestyle you KNOW you can afford? So why pay X Dollars a month on a X Dollar mortgage, when we can offer you X Dollars a month?’ Why indeed? I could practically feel the mortgage consultant’s hot conspiratorial breath in my ear. But none of that bothered us too much. We had signed the deeds. We, or rather Acacia Federal Savings Bank of Illinois, now owned another tiny slice of America. It was to time to turn the Tupling house into a Frei home. A week later a team of Ecuadorean construction thugs ripped the walls apart, tore out the fusty old bathrooms, obliterated the kitchen and started to eradicate every possible trace of the dear old Tupling home. When we finally sell up I will also demand such a letter as the one I wrote and expect my taste to be trampled on. But it’s all worth it. There is something curiously satisfying about owning a piece of the world’s most powerful real estate, however small.