Jen Lancaster - If You Were Here

Exasperated by our lack of success, he runs his hand through his hair. “Okay, seriously, enough with the frigging map. You’re using what’s essentially a child’s place mat from a seafood restaurant, and you keep telling us to turn left into bodies of water so we can avoid pirates while we search for the goddamn buried treasure! This is like driving around with Homer Simpson. I guarantee you there’s no place to get a hot beverage on that thing, so please stop barking commands and let me see what I can find.”

I cross my arms and lean back into my seat. If my navigational skills aren’t wanted, then I’ll keep them to myself.

We cruise up and down Whitefish Bay Road for fifteen minutes, passing the oddly placed green barn no less than five times.

At no point do I mention that that’s the McDonald’s. . which is clearly marked on my map.

“No luck yet?”

I’m sitting at a window table at Lulu’s with Tracey and our mutual bestie, Kara. Our schedules have been so hectic that this is the first time we’ve had a chance to get together in almost a month. “Oh, no,” I say, stabbing a hunk of feta cheese, “we’ve found a place. In fact, we’ve found a bunch of places. We just can’t buy any of them.”

Tracey smirks. “I’m so sorry to hear that.” Tracey hasn’t quite been behind our move to the suburbs. She thinks we should simply find a house here in the city, but unless we colonize Grant Park, we’re not going to get all the land, lake, and privacy that we want. Every time I recount an unsuccessful real estate outing, Tracey cheers, “Team City!”

Kara’s from the Cambs and her mom’s still a practicing ob-gyn up there, so she’s been far more supportive of Team Suburbs. Plus, if she comes to see us, she has the option to tack on a visit to the’rents, too. “What’s going on?” Kara asks sympathetically, pushing a big hank of black hair back from her face. Her stacked, intricately carved gold bracelets clink merrily with the movement. Her jewelry’s the one nod to her Indian culture. “My parents said there are ten houses for sale in their subdivision.”

“Hey, I love their house! All those pretty trees and winding drives! You know, I should look at places in your parents’ neighborhood,” I say.

Kara shudders. “Please don’t. I’ll never be allowed to see you if I don’t swing by their place, too, and I already see them plenty. Plenty . I’m begging you as a friend to buy on the east, north, or south side.”

I’ve met Kara’s parents many times and they’re sweet and kind and adorable. . and absolutely merciless when it comes to their opinions on Kara’s life. As I’m sort of charmed by my overbearing family, sometimes I don’t realize that others frown on being told what to do quite so much.

“Oh, honey, I’m sorry; I forgot.”

The last time we got together, Kara shared her latest story about a mandatory parental fix-up. Not only was her date forty and still living at home, but he spent the whole evening lecturing Kara on the evils of high-fructose corn syrup and liquor after she ordered a rum and Coke. As she saw it, her only course of action was to drink more. So she did. But then she had to endure a hangover-tinged lecture the next morning from her mom after getting a “bad report” 39from her date.

“She’s right; it’s a bloodbath up there,” I agree. “Just about everything in our price range is either a short sale or in foreclosure.”

“Short sales are tricky,”Tracey adds. “Lenders are really hesitant to allow owners to sell properties at a loss, especially now.”

I add, “We’re finding that the problem with buying a short sale is that the seller’s bank has to approve our offer, and in a lot of cases we’re dealing with a third-party negotiator who won’t give us any idea of what we’re bidding against so we know what to offer. On the one hand, we don’t want to strong-arm anyone out of their family home with a superaggressive bid, but on the other, we question the wisdom of paying full price in this market. Every time we’ve guessed at an equitable price, we’ve been shut out.”

I take a bite from my feta plate before I continue. “We fell in love with one house with a big pool and an enormous wooded lot with hiking trails—”

“You don’t hike,”Tracey interjects.

“I might if I had my own trail,” I argue. “Plus there was a fourcar garage—”

Tracey interrupts, “You have two cars.”

“I’m aware of that. But the storage would be nice, and Mac could have used part of the garage as a workshop. And there was a fab sunroom and a sweet media room, but it doesn’t matter, because there’s a third party involved and our bank won’t work with them and we lost out. Then we saw a house that we completely loved, but the taxes alone would add almost three thousand dollars to our monthly mortgage payment and we just couldn’t .” 40

Tracey stirs raw sugar into her iced tea and remarks, “You’re paying for their amazing school system, which… Oh, I’m sorry. Remind me again which of your offspring will be attending Abington Cambs Country Day. Daisy? Agent Jack Bauer?”

I purse my lips at her 41and continue. “Then on Sunday, we found the frigging promised land. Our banker called us and told us about a foreclosure. It was light-years beyond the top of our comfort level in terms of price, but he said the word on the street was that their bank would take any offer.”

Mac and I were dying when we pulled down the private lane and saw the house. We were looking at an estate with towers and everything, and there was no squinting involved. 42We could not believe our luck as we passed under the wisteria-vined arbor and down the winding bluestone path. “No way!” we kept exclaiming to each other. “No way!” Right as we got to the door, a family of deer dashed across the lawn. What timing! It was as though a film crew were right offstage shouting, “Cue the deer! Cue the deer!”

Liz was doing an open house that day, so she couldn’t come with us. Instead, she arranged for us to meet with the Realtor who was working with the bank.

Mac and I walked around with our jaws slack. Not only was it eleventy thousand square feet, 43but the original owner was a builder and this place was his baby. Every detail was pitch-perfect, from the custom millwork to the library with the mahogany built-ins to the eight-jetted steam shower. And the home gym with the rubber matting and the ballet bar and mirrored walls? My God, I’ve belonged to health clubs that weren’t as nice. Or big.

This was our better-than-our-wildest-dreams house! And according to our inside source, it was in our budget! We were ready to write a check on the spot until we climbed up into the south tower.

“The place was insane,” I tell them. “But then we ran into the owner’s teenage daughter up in the third-floor library loft, working on her computer. The Realtor congratulated her on the nice job she’d been doing, which Mac and I didn’t understand.

“As soon as we got down to the second level, the Realtor leaned in to us all conspiratorially and mentioned that the daughter had been industriously listing the family’s possessions on Craigslist and eBay. Turns out the bank was allowing the foreclosed family to live in the house until they found a buyer, and the kid was trying to raise cash to help with moving expenses.”

Kara inadvertently clutches her chest. “Oh, God .”

“Yeah,” I continue. “What was I supposed to say? ‘Yo, kid, sorry your dad lost his empire. Pack up all your gymnastic medals and shit, because I’ma keep my Barbie collection in your room!’ I mean, maybe we’re fools for not jumping on the opportunity, but we couldn’t do it.”