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Authors: Richard Ford
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matters and specifically so far as the Markhams are concerned has been to make perfectly clear who pays my salary (the seller) and that my job is to familiarize them with our area, let them decide if they want to settle here, and then use my accumulated goodwill to sell them, in fact, a house. I’ve also impressed on them that I go about selling houses the way I’d want one sold to me: by not being a realty wind sock; by not advertising views I don’t mostly believe in; by not showing clients a house they’ve already said they won’t like by pretending the subject never came up; by not saying a house is “interesting” or “has potential” if I think it’s a dump; and finally by not trying to make people believe in me (not that I’m untrustworthy—I simply don’t invite trust) but by asking them to believe in whatever they hold dearest—themselves, money, God, permanence, progress, or just a house they see and like and decide to live in—and to act accordingly.
All told today, the Markhams have looked at forty-five houses—dragging more and more grimly down from and back to Vermont—though many of these listings were seen only from the window of my car as we rolled slowly along the curbside. “I wouldn’t live in that particular shithole,” Joe would say, fuming out at a house where I’d made an appointment. “Don’t waste your time here, Frank,” Phyllis would offer, and away we’d go. Or Phyllis would observe from the back seat: “Joe can’t stand stucco construction. He doesn’t want to be the one to say so, so I’ll just make it easier. He grew up in a stucco house in Aliquippa. Also, we’d rather not share a driveway.”
And these weren’t bad houses. There wasn’t a certifiable “fixer-upper,” “handyman special,” or a “just needs love” in the lot (Haddam doesn’t have these anyway). I haven’t shown them one yet that the three of them couldn’t have made a damn good fresh start in with a little elbow grease, a limited renovation budget and some spatial imagination.
Since March, though, the Markhams have yet to make a purchase, tender an offer, write an earnest-money check or even see a house twice, and consequently have become despondent as we’ve entered the dog days of midsummer. In my own life during this period, I’ve made eight satisfactory home sales, shown a hundred other houses to thirty different people, gone to the Shore or off with my kids any number of weekends, watched (from my bed) the Final 4, opening day at Wrigley, the French Open and three rounds of Wimbledon; and on the more somber side, I’ve watched the presidential campaigns grind on in disheartening fashion, observed my forty-fourth birthday, and sensed my son gradually become a source of worry and pain to himself and me. There have also been, in this time frame, two fiery jetliner crashes far from our shores; Iraq has poisoned many Kurdish villagers, President Reagan has visited Russia; there’s been a coup in Haiti, drought has crippled the country’s midsection and the Lakers have won the NBA crown. Life, as noted, has gone on.
Meanwhile, the Markhams have begun “eating into their down” from the movie producer now living in their dream house and, Joe believes, producing porn movies using local teens. Likewise Joe’s severance pay at Vermont Social Services has come and gone, and he’s nearing the end of his piled-up vacation money. Phyllis, to her dismay, has begun suffering painful and possibly ominous female problems that have required midweek trips to Burlington for testing, plus two biopsies and a discussion of surgery. Their Saab has started overheating and sputtering on the daily commutes Phyllis makes to Sonja’s dance class in Craftsbury. And as if that weren’t enough, their friends are now home from their geological vacation to the Great Slave Lake, so that Joe and Phyllis are having to give thought to moving into the original and long-abandoned “home place” on their
All told today, the Markhams have looked at forty-five houses—dragging more and more grimly down from and back to Vermont—though many of these listings were seen only from the window of my car as we rolled slowly along the curbside. “I wouldn’t live in that particular shithole,” Joe would say, fuming out at a house where I’d made an appointment. “Don’t waste your time here, Frank,” Phyllis would offer, and away we’d go. Or Phyllis would observe from the back seat: “Joe can’t stand stucco construction. He doesn’t want to be the one to say so, so I’ll just make it easier. He grew up in a stucco house in Aliquippa. Also, we’d rather not share a driveway.”
And these weren’t bad houses. There wasn’t a certifiable “fixer-upper,” “handyman special,” or a “just needs love” in the lot (Haddam doesn’t have these anyway). I haven’t shown them one yet that the three of them couldn’t have made a damn good fresh start in with a little elbow grease, a limited renovation budget and some spatial imagination.
Since March, though, the Markhams have yet to make a purchase, tender an offer, write an earnest-money check or even see a house twice, and consequently have become despondent as we’ve entered the dog days of midsummer. In my own life during this period, I’ve made eight satisfactory home sales, shown a hundred other houses to thirty different people, gone to the Shore or off with my kids any number of weekends, watched (from my bed) the Final 4, opening day at Wrigley, the French Open and three rounds of Wimbledon; and on the more somber side, I’ve watched the presidential campaigns grind on in disheartening fashion, observed my forty-fourth birthday, and sensed my son gradually become a source of worry and pain to himself and me. There have also been, in this time frame, two fiery jetliner crashes far from our shores; Iraq has poisoned many Kurdish villagers, President Reagan has visited Russia; there’s been a coup in Haiti, drought has crippled the country’s midsection and the Lakers have won the NBA crown. Life, as noted, has gone on.
Meanwhile, the Markhams have begun “eating into their down” from the movie producer now living in their dream house and, Joe believes, producing porn movies using local teens. Likewise Joe’s severance pay at Vermont Social Services has come and gone, and he’s nearing the end of his piled-up vacation money. Phyllis, to her dismay, has begun suffering painful and possibly ominous female problems that have required midweek trips to Burlington for testing, plus two biopsies and a discussion of surgery. Their Saab has started overheating and sputtering on the daily commutes Phyllis makes to Sonja’s dance class in Craftsbury. And as if that weren’t enough, their friends are now home from their geological vacation to the Great Slave Lake, so that Joe and Phyllis are having to give thought to moving into the original and long-abandoned “home place” on their
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