Mother clapped her hands like a little girl. “I’m so delighted, Georgie Ann!”
“Are you delighted enough to call Jack off the insurance agent so I can collect my money and set about finding another place to live?”
She was. She did. And, miracle of miracles, not only did I collect from my renter’s policy, but the owner of the building had coverage also, and I ended up with a quite tidy little sum.
Why, I thought, I could buy a place. I could become, within my modest means, a homeowner.
Mother wasn’t crazy about the idea, but she did suggest a Realtor for me to call, one C. Burton Wylie. I was certain that Mr. Wylie would be single or about-to-be-single, so I phoned Charlotte Dillon.
I’d known her since grammar school. “Charlotte,” I said, “it’s Georgie Ann Bailey. I’m looking for a little house, nothing fancy, close into town. Something with some privacy.”
Charlotte didn’t skip a beat. She didn’t say, “Where the hell have you been the past five years?” but rather, “Give me a couple of days.”
And she was as good as her word. “Meet me at my office at ten,” she said two days later. “I have four or five things I think you might like.”
I was as excited as a new pup. Got all dressed up, the way I used to for men. Well, after all, I told myself, this was a first date. Between me and my new home.
Imagine my dismay when I walked into Charlotte’s office to be greeted by one Alexander Persoff. Tall. Lean. Dark. Black eyes flashing with fire. Ruby-lipped. The man was something one of those romance writers would have dreamed up. In any case, Alexander Persoff was far too handsome to be taking my hand and telling me that Charlotte had fallen down her stairs this morning and would be out of commission for at least a week.
“But I’ll be delighted to help you,” he said. He was a tenor, surprising in a man his size, but the voice was hardly unpleasant.
“No,” I said, back-pedaling, putting one black pump neatly behind the other. “I don’t think so. No. Not.”
“But, Ms. Bailey, I’m sure….”
I didn’t wait to hear what he was sure of, for I was certain that Mother had had a hand in this. Charlotte had no more somersaulted down her stairs than she’d grown two extra toes. Well, good luck to them and hallelujah. Charlotte Dillon and Alexander Persoff were not the only two Realtors in Nashville.
Five minutes later I was stopped at a traffic light, muttering to myself.
Granted, some of my decisions might seem eccentric to other folks. But so what? It’s none of their beeswax
. Just then, a long black car pulled up beside me, with Alexander Persoff behind the wheel. The next thing I knew, he was leaning into my window.
“Ms. Bailey,” he began, “you must tell me how I’ve offended you.”
“Mr. Persoff, you are going to get run over.”
“No, please, I insist. I must know.” Then the light changed. Horns bleated behind us. Alexander Persoff, down on one knee on the pavement, ignored them. “You must give me another chance.”
“Oh, for Pete’s sakes. Get up and pull over there.” I pointed to a parking lot.
Watching Alexander disembark from his car was like witnessing a mighty oak growing in fast-forward. Do you know the tree I mean, the kind that grows down in Louisiana, a noble king of a tree, but a kindly king you’re just dying to climb, with cozy places you’d love to snuggle into?
If you were interested in trees or men that is.
I was only interested in the former.
Alexander, fully unfolded, stood, the toes of his soft brown loafers edging on the white line between our cars, close but not too close. He must have sensed that if he crowded me, I would jump back into my car and be gone.
I stared up at him. But it was my nose that took him in, for suddenly there was something citrusy in the morning air. Lemons, fresh lemons, heated by the sun. I blinked, and I was standing on a high and rocky coast. The dark sea crashed into the pebbly beach below. Back from the lacy edge of the water, a man and a woman lay on a straw mat, their bronze arms entwined. Their legs. Unfamiliar desire tugged between my own. I willed it to be gone.
Meanwhile, Alexander waited silently for me to speak. He would stand there for eons, I could feel that. He had the tenacity of Penelope, warding off suitors while Ulysses wandered the earth. Patience was not one of my strong suits, though I admired it in others.
“You don’t look like a Realtor,” I said finally.
“I’m not, really.”
I stepped back. I didn’t want to get entangled in his smile, bright with invitation and promise.
“Then why are you posing as a Realtor?” I demanded. “My mother called you, didn’t she?”
Alexander frowned, and I heard the crash of boulders rolling down a steep peak, somewhere in the Caucasus. If he were truly angry, I thought, the avalanche of his unhappiness would burst my eardrums.
“Your mother?” he said. “I don’t know your mother. What I meant was, I sell real estate to keep body and soul together, but my passion is my painting. Portraiture is my true love.”
“Ah.” I felt more than a little foolish.
“So. Will you let me show you some houses? Charlotte said that you were very much in need of a home.”
Yes. Yes, I was. And before I knew what was happening, I had allowed Alexander to seat me in his black chariot, and he was driving me to a house he was certain I would love.
On the way, he told me that his father had been a portrait painter, as had his grandfather who’d escaped from St. Petersburg with a greatcoat, its lining stuffed with the family silver. We Southerners are pushovers for stories that involve sterling flatware. Many of us eat off forks our great-great-grandmothers had hidden from the Yankees.
I sallied forth. I told him about the fire in my apartment, how I’d grabbed my own Grand Imperial along with the cat.
“You don’t say! That’s my family’s pattern, too. What a coincidence.”
Then, in my mind’s eye, I could see a long table set for twenty-four, Alexander’s silver and mine intermingling. Wedding cake would taste the same from both.
But then a bright red flag of danger unfurled. For, it warned, this was not only a man, but a handsome man, and a Realtor to boot. Worse than lawyers. More devious than used car salesmen. Lower than pond scum, lower even than architects.
I stared out at bowered Whitland Avenue, flush with fine old homes. “Let’s go back,” I said. “This neighborhood is far too rich for my blood.”
Alexander raised his right hand from the wheel and held it out like a traffic cop. “Wait,” he said, then pulled into a driveway which opened through a tall green wall of hedge like a secret door.
A long looping drive cut through grass which grew ankle-high, old grass, sedge, grass that had never been cleared by the bulldozer, never plowed, ungrazed native grass, grass that had been here before the first English settlers. The apple trees were more than a century old. Plums. Pears. And, at the end of the drive, a stone house which looked as if it, like the grass, had simply sprung from the earth.
“What is this place?” I wondered.
“It was part of a farm.” Alexander pointed with long arms in either direction. “All the rest of it was sold off, but this has remained, the house and three acres. The owner died a few months ago, one year shy of a hundred. The place needs work, of course, but it has very good bones. Shall we go inside?”
I couldn’t. Out of the car, I plopped down on a stone step, oblivious of my good black skirt. I was dizzy with longing and damp with fear.
This could not be good, the voice inside me said. You didn’t emerge from your cocoon after five years, simply say
I want,
and then have your heart’s desire handed to you on a plate by a Russian portrait painter, no less, with a cleft in his chin into which your little finger would fit perfectly.
“Are you all right?” Alexander frowned with concern.
“I’m overcome.”
“Ah,” he sighed and sat down beside me. “I thought you’d love the house. What are you afraid of? Tell me.”
Well, now. That was the question, wasn’t it?
I was afraid of love. I had loved William and lost him. I had loved my apartment, and it had burned. I had loved Mother, and she had tossed me like a throw pillow through her many marriages. If I allowed myself to fall in love with this house, and something were to happen to it, well, I didn’t think I could go on. I simply couldn’t. Even now, I could hear Father’s rifle racking like distant thunder.
Finally, Alexander broke my long silence. “Do you tango?”
“What?”
“I bet you do.”
He stood and drew me to my feet, placed a hand at the small of my back, and, humming a familiar Latin tune in my ear, danced me into the house of my heart’s delight.
*
I couldn’t afford The House. The asking price was exactly twice my budget, twice what I’d received from the insurance company.
Alexander said, “You don’t have to pay cash for the whole amount, you know. All you need is a down payment. We’ll get you a mortgage.”
“Well, that’s a grand idea,” said Jack, Stepfather Number Five, “if you can make the payments.”
“What do you mean? Isn’t it like rent?”
It was, except it was considerably more, my rent having been a pittance. Besides, what bank was going to give a mortgage to an unemployed hermit?
“We could lend you the money,” said Mother, “though if you went back to work, you could easily qualify on your own.”
“I wasn’t planning on that, Mother.”
I can hear you thinking, What a lazy woman. But it wasn’t indolence. I just couldn’t. I wasn’t yet ready to go back into the world.
“Welllll,” Mother drawled. “We’d love to help you, you know….”
I hated it when she used that tone. My anger got the best of me and I flung words at her. “Alexander said I could get a mortgage, so I’m sure I can.”
“Alexander?” Mother’s ears perked like a collie’s.
“Alexander Persoff, my Realtor.”
“Alexander Persoff, the portrait painter? The one who did Mimsie Stovall’s portrait? And Sally Touchstone’s?”
“Probably,” I allowed.
“Oh, Georgie Ann.” Mother swooned. “He’s everyone’s favorite extra man.
Very
handsome, I understand.”
“I suppose,” I said. “But why did he lie to me about getting a mortgage?”
Confronted, Alexander said, “I didn’t quite understand that you’re not employed. And now I see that the income from your investments is not really enough. But don’t worry, Georgie Ann. We’ll find you another house.”
I didn’t want another house. I wanted the stone house hidden behind the tall hedge, The House Alexander had tangoed me into. The House with the center hall, the big square living room off to the right, behind it a mullion-windowed dining room. I could close my eyes and see the silver dully glinting. Behind that stood a kitchen that needed a Godawful amount of work. On the other side of the hall were a library, two tiny bedrooms, one bath. You had to climb the steep-pitched stairs to see the best part. The whole second floor comprised the master suite. I’d replace the fixtures in the bathroom, tear out the mingy closets, make a dressing room. And there was a huge skylight on the north side.
The old lady who’d owned it had been a painter, according to Alexander. Yes, I sniffed, there was still a hint of turpentine in the air.
I wanted this house, oh, how I wanted it. It was meant to be mine. I could feel that in my bones.
Nevertheless, a’house-hunting Alexander and I went. Suddenly, Georgie Ann the recluse was out and about every day. Alexander and I looked at tiny split-timber Tudors, redwood ranches, a dozen white bungalows with green shutters. We trod scores of sagging porches, inspected rows of sad little fixer-uppers. I became familiar with every nook and cranny of Nashville, with zoning, with the ebb and flow of neighborhoods, with furnaces and air-conditioning and basements and easements.
But all of it was bootless. For I was not a child who could be placated with a cherry-flavored lollipop when my heart was set upon a hot fudge sundae. At the end of each day, I sank into my own personal Slough of Despond. Then Alexander would cock an eyebrow. “Shall we?”
“Oh, yes!” I implored.
And then, we’d fly through Music City’s streets and make that quick turn through the tall hedge like fleeing bank robbers. We’d jump from the car, tango down the walk, onto the front porch, through the door, and up the stairs where we would circle through the master suite before settling down to my portrait.
What portrait?
The portrait of me that Alexander was painting, of course.
The notion had come to him that very first day as the two of us wheeled around that glorious second-story suite.
“I
love
this north light,” he’d said. “And it loves you. Be still, yes, there, just for a moment. Let me look. Oh, yes, it’s a match made in heaven, this light and you. If I could just capture what I see, I know my life would be forever changed.”
Who could say no?
So I posed for him under that wonderful north light two or three afternoons a week. He stashed the portrait in one of the dark closets upstairs. None of the other Realtors ever found it.
For that, I was very glad.