Matthew Thomas - We Are Not Ourselves

“Connell said you flipped out on him.”

“I lost my temper.”

“He’s just a kid, Ed.”

“That’s not going to happen again.”

“It had better not. I don’t give a damn what your father did to you. That boy’s not him.”

• • •

She parked a few blocks away and walked to the realty office on the chance that the agent hadn’t seen her car the first time. The ruse would be exposed eventually, but she liked being taken seriously as a contender for these places. It was like when she was younger and would ask that a certain item be placed on hold at a store. The cashier would write her name on a slip of paper, and she would be granted time for consideration. The mere idea of possessing it in that allotted limbo was sufficient to quench the desire for it and she would almost never come back to complete the purchase. Perhaps it could be like that with the expensive houses; a few minutes in them could inoculate her against the need to live in them.

The office was in the center of Bronxville, and though it was sandwiched between two boutique shops, it had the feel of an old dentist’s office. There was paneling on the walls, a thin blue carpet, and a few worn desks on either side of an aisle that ran through the center. The desk chairs didn’t have wheels. The office made Eileen feel she was not completely out of her realm. One other agent talked quietly in the corner.

Gloria wore her brown hair cut short, like a politician’s. There were ghostly remains of blond in it. She wore a navy business suit with what looked like a silk blouse. Her teeth were bright white, and level and straight enough that they could have been caps. She was around Eileen’s height.

Once again, Gloria extended both hands in greeting. Eileen wondered whether this was something she had learned in a real estate textbook. And yet, she found herself succumbing to it as she had to the potpourri. They sat at the desk.

“Why don’t we start by talking about what kind of house you’re looking to see? Is there a style you’re particularly interested in?”

Eileen had no real grasp on the terms of art that governed houses. Colonial? Edwardian? Tudor? These were terms she’d heard. As much as she’d always wanted a house in the suburbs, it was an abstract desire. It was about what the house represented: polish, grandeur, seclusion, permanency.

“I liked the house I saw last week quite a lot,” she said.

Gloria looked surprised. “I thought it hadn’t appealed to you.”

“Well, yes, that’s true. In some ways it didn’t. But in many ways it was a perfect house.”

Gloria looked like she was weighing whether to let her off the hook or not. Then she smiled. “It has to be a perfect house in every way,” she said. “That’s what I want for you.”

“Thank you.”

“If you don’t mind my asking, was it a matter of price?”

“Not at all,” Eileen said. “Money wasn’t the issue.”

Gloria raised her brows. “Okay,” she said, clicking her pen into action. “Well, if I’m going to find your future home, I’m going to need certain guidelines.”

“Of course,” Eileen said.

“Why don’t we just start from the top, Eileen. It’s Leary, right?”

“Yes.”

“And you live in the city, you said?”

“We do.”

“Which part?”

“Queens.”

“Parts of Queens are so lovely, aren’t they? I actually have a brother in Douglaston.”

Douglaston was another world entirely. Eileen paused. “We’re in Jackson Heights,” she said.

“One of the garden co-ops?” Gloria asked, raising her brows again in what looked like a hopeful manner. “I hear they’re quite beautiful.”

“We own a house,” she said. “A three-family house.”

“Okay.” She was writing things down. “And you’re looking to move to Bronxville specifically? Or is it this general vicinity you’re interested in?”

“Bronxville.”

She looked up from the pad, beaming. “Isn’t Bronxville just beautiful? When my husband moved us here I thought I’d died and gone to heaven.”

“I used to work at Lawrence Hospital,” she said. “Years ago. I remembered loving it.”

“So you liked the house you saw. What did you like most about it?”

“The size.”

“How many bedrooms do you want? Three? Four? Five?”

“At least four,” Eileen said, feeling like a drunk picking the figure in the middle.

“Okay! That’s a start. Now, what’s your price range?”

Eileen thought for a minute. “It depends,” she said, “on whether you’re asking me or my husband.”

Gloria laughed. “But that’s why we love them, isn’t it? Men will lay their heads anywhere. I’m always trying to get my husband to consider moving to a bigger house, to tell you the truth. There’s nothing wrong with living up to your means. Does your husband work on Wall Street? The train ride down is so easy.”

“He’s a college professor.”

Another silence ensued, another appraisal from Gloria.

“So, four bedroom. Close to the train, or no? Does he teach in the city? NYU? Columbia?”

“We’ll both be driving,” she said flatly. “He teaches at Bronx Community College.”

“Do you want to be in the school district?”

“It’s not necessary. My son Connell will be going to school in the city.” She paused for effect, then added, “To Regis,” expecting the revelation to inflate a protective balloon of prestige around her, and indeed the agent raised her brows.

“Well!” Gloria said. “He must be a bright young man!” Then she punctured the balloon. “My husband went there. It’s all he ever talks about. I get tired of hearing about it. I have all girls, but if I’d had a son, I would have sent him there myself.”

Eileen had to fight to suppress her urge to correct the woman. You didn’t “send” your son to Regis: your son took the scholarship exam in November and you prayed for a letter inviting him to the interview round; then, after the interview, you prayed again that he’d aced it — actually prayed, no figure of speech, even if you never prayed otherwise. Then you gathered around your son as he sat at the dining room table and opened the letter that informed him he’d been admitted, and when he said he didn’t want to go to an all-boys’ school that was full of nerds, you told him he was going and that he’d thank you later, and you saw a little grin flash across his face, though he was trying to pretend to be annoyed. And when you said, “Your grandparents would have been so proud,” you felt something in your spirit lift, because you had a responsibility to them that you’d carried for years, and now you could hand off part of it to him. And you saw that he understood somehow what it meant for this to have happened, that he wasn’t the only person involved. You imagined your father looking over your shoulder, nodding silently, and your mother, that enigma, was there too, and you could almost see her smile at the thought of what might become of the boy, of all of them, the living and the dead.

“So what’s a comfortable range? Over a million? Under a million?”

She had been thinking she could afford as much as four hundred thousand. Once they sold the Jackson Heights house and paid down the taxes and commissions, they’d have enough for a good down payment, but four hundred thousand was the upper limit. It was a long way off from “under a million,” but that was her reply.

“Anything else I can work with?”

“I want a house that makes an impression from the street,” Eileen said. “A house that almost pulls you up into it. A big, impressive house.”

• • •

Sunday after Mass, instead of taking to the couch, Ed packed a picnic lunch for the three of them and drove them to their spot near LaGuardia. She spread the blanket and they ate the strangely spartan sandwiches he’d prepared: turkey on bread, no mayo, no mustard, no lettuce or tomato; they weren’t even cut in half.