The House (18 page)

She ran down the steps of her building at eleven-thirty, stopped at Starbucks, and met Marjorie promptly at noon at the first address. They started on Russian Hill, and Sarah didn't like it. Marjorie was right. It was a converted garage that had been made into a house, and it just didn't work for her. Neither did the ones in Pacific Heights, all three of which were apartments, but none of them seemed warm and welcoming to her. They were cold and small and cramped. For half a million dollars she wanted to buy something that had soul and that she loved. She was disappointed, but Marjorie told her not to be discouraged. There were going to be lots more on the market before the end of the year. And after Christmas, there would be even more. People didn't want to be bothered selling their houses over the holidays, she explained to Sarah. This was a whole new world for her. She was discovering the horizons Stanley had alluded to in his letter. She was doing just what he had urged her and the others to do. He had opened an important door for her.

She and Marjorie talked about a house again, as they walked back to their cars at the last address. Sarah still thought it would be too much for her. It might turn out to be depressing to have too much space and no one to share it with. Marjorie smiled at what she said.

“You're not going to be alone forever, Sarah. You're still very young.” Compared to the real estate broker, she was. She looked like a child to Marjorie, but Sarah shook her head.

“I'm thirty-eight. That's not so young. I want something I'll be comfortable in by myself.” Those were, after all, the realities of her life.

“We'll work on it,” Marjorie promised her. “And we'll find exactly the right thing. Houses and apartments are like romance. When you see the right one, you know it, and everything else falls into place. You don't have to beg, plead, push, or force it to work.” Sarah nodded, thinking of Phil. She had done a lot of begging, pleading, and pushing in the last four years, and it was starting to hurt. She hadn't heard from him in two days. He obviously wasn't pushing himself, or even thinking of her.

He finally called her late that night, after she went to a movie by herself. The movie was lousy and the popcorn was stale. When the phone rang, she was lying on her bed, still dressed, feeling sorry for herself.

“Hi, babe, how are you? I tried to get you earlier, but your cell phone was off. Where were you?”

“I was at a movie. It sucked. It was one of those stupid foreign films where nothing happens, and people snore in the audience so loud you can't hear the movie.” He laughed at her description, and sounded like he was in a great mood. He said he was having fun with his kids. “Thanks for the call on Thanksgiving,” she said acidly. If she was miserable, she thought he should be, too. It was irritating to hear him so happy, especially when she wasn't included.

“I'm sorry, babe. I meant to call. It got late. I was at some disco up here with the kids till two in the morning. I forgot my cell phone in the room, and by the time we got back it was too late to call you. How was Thanksgiving?”

“Fine. My grandmother and I talked about some interesting stuff, about her childhood. That's rare for her. It was nice.”

“What did you do today?” He sounded as though he were calling one of his children, not a woman he was in love with. And the reference to the disco he'd been to on Thanksgiving night wasn't wasted on her either. She didn't feel like part of his life, not an important part in any case. It sounded almost like a duty call, and she was too depressed to enjoy it. It just depressed her more, for everything it wasn't, and probably never would be. She was just a woman he spent weekends with. She wanted more than that. He didn't. It was the same deal it always was with him.

“I looked at apartments. Condos actually,” she said in a dead voice.

“What brought that on?” He sounded startled. It was unlike her to think about where she lived. And condos were expensive. She was obviously doing better than he thought. He was momentarily impressed.

“Actually, my couch and my dead plants brought it on,” she said, and then laughed at herself.

“You can get a new couch and throw the plants out instead of buying a condo. That's a pretty radical solution for a couple of dead plants.”

“I thought it might be fun to look,” she said honestly.

“Was it?”

“Actually, no. It depressed the hell out of me. But I decided I really want to move. The broker says we'll probably find something after Christmas.”

“Christ, leave you alone for a couple of days, and you get into all kinds of mischief.” He was teasing her, and she didn't bother correcting him. It hadn't been “a couple of days.” She hadn't seen him in two days shy of two weeks, between the holiday and his trip to Tahoe with his kids, where she couldn't be included, his week in New York before that for depositions, and their insane policy of only seeing each other on weekends. And it would be yet another week before she saw him again. Hell, why not make it a month? she wanted to say, but didn't. It was almost as though he were trying to prove something, except he wasn't. He was just being Phil. “Well, don't move before I get back. I've got to go check on the kids. They're downstairs in the hot tub with a bunch of college boys.” And who was he in the hot tub with? She couldn't help but wonder. It didn't matter really. All that mattered was that he was not in the hot tub with her, or anywhere else for that matter. They were living in separate worlds, and she was tired of it. It was too lonely here without him, particularly over a holiday weekend.

She slept fitfully that night and woke up at six o'clock the next morning, forgot that it was Saturday, and started to get ready to go to work. And then she remembered what day it was, and went back to bed. She had two more days of the weekend to get through before she could escape into her work at the office. She had finished all the files she'd brought home with her. She had checked the newspaper for condos, had seen all the movies she wanted to. She called her grandmother, who was busy all weekend, and she didn't want to see her mother. Calling her married friends would just depress her. They were busy with husbands and kids she didn't have. What had happened to her life? Had all she accomplished for the past ten years been work, lose track of friends, and find a weekend boyfriend? She had no idea what to do with herself with spare time on her hands. She needed a project. She decided to go to a museum, and drove by the house on Scott Street on her way. She hadn't done it on purpose, she had just turned, and there it was as she drove past it. It was even more meaningful to her now that she knew it had been built by her great-grandfather, and her grandmother had been a child there. She couldn't help wondering who would buy it, and hoped they'd love it, as the house deserved.

She found herself thinking of the two architects Marjorie had introduced her to, and wondered if they were having fun in Venice and Paris. She started to think about taking a trip. Maybe she should go to Europe herself. She hadn't been in years. She didn't like traveling by herself. She wondered if maybe for something like that, Phil would join her. She was suddenly trying to fill in the gaps in her life, to make it all make sense, and give her life some meaning and movement. Somewhere, sometime, somehow, she felt as though the engine of her life had died. She was trying to jump-start it and had no idea how.

She wandered around the museum aimlessly, looked at paintings she didn't care about, and then drove slowly home, still pondering a trip to Europe, and without thinking, she found herself driving past Stanley's house again. She stopped the car, got out, and stood staring up at it. The idea that had just come to her was the craziest she'd ever had. It wasn't just crazy. It was more than that. It made no sense whatsoever. Phil was right for once. Instead of buying a new couch and throwing out her plants, she was thinking of buying a condo. She could claim that was an investment at least. But this, this was a money pit. It would not only eat up the money Stanley had so unexpectedly left her, it would eat up everything else she had saved. But if what Marjorie said was true, an ordinary little Pacific Heights house would cost her just as much, and this was a piece of history, her own history. Her great-grandfather had built it, her grandmother had been born there. A man she had loved and respected had lived tucked away in the attic. And if what she needed was a project, this was the project to end all projects.

“No!” she said to herself out loud, as she reached into her bag, found the keys, walked up the front steps, looked at the heavy bronze and glass door, and unlocked it. It was as though something more powerful than she was forcing her to move forward and step inside. She felt suddenly as though she had been picked up by a riptide in a rushing river with no free will of her own. She walked slowly into the main hallway.

As Marjorie had promised, it was immaculate. The floors gleamed, the chandeliers sparkled in the afternoon light, and the white marble staircase shone. The ugly old carpet had vanished, although the bronze rods were still there. The banisters had been polished to perfection. The house was clean, but all its problems were still there, the ancient electrical wires, the plumbing that hadn't been replaced in years. The kitchen that had to be moved to another floor, the furnace that had to be replaced with a more modern system. The elevator was roughly eighty years old. There was almost nothing in the house, except the floors and boiseries, that didn't require some kind of attention. Jeff Parker had said it could be done for half a million dollars by someone who did some of the work themselves and kept a careful eye on the budget. But she knew nothing about how to restore a house. She lived in a two-room apartment, and she couldn't even take care of that. What was she thinking? She stood there wondering if she had gone totally insane. Maybe loneliness had done that to her, or arguing with Phil about how much time he would spend with her, or too much work, or losing Stanley, or inheriting too much money. But all she could think of now was if she paid them two million for the house and put two hundred thousand down for the mortgage, she would have five hundred and fifty thousand of Stanley's dollars left to restore the house.

“Oh my God,” she said out loud, as she put her hands over her mouth and stood there. “I must be crazy.” But the oddest thing was she didn't feel it. She felt totally sane, completely clear, and suddenly she was laughing and looking up at the gigantic chandelier. “Oh my God!” she said louder still.… “Stanley, I'm going to do it!!!” She danced around the hallway then, like a child, ran back to the front door, exited, locked it, and dashed back to her car. She called Marjorie from her cell phone, sitting in her car.

“Don't be discouraged, Sarah. We'll find you something,” Marjorie reassured her instantly, anticipating what she was going to say.

“I think we just did,” Sarah said in barely more than a whisper. She was shaking. She had never been so terrified or so excited in her entire life. Passing the bar had been nothing compared to this.

“Did you see something today? If you give me the address, I can check the listing. It may be one of ours.”

“It is,” Sarah said with a crazed giggle. She felt giddy.

“Where is it?” Marjorie thought she sounded strange, and wondered if she'd been drinking. It wouldn't have surprised her. Sarah had looked depressed to her the day before.

“Cancel the broker's open.”

“What?”

“Cancel the broker's open house.”

“Is something wrong? Why?”

“I think I just went insane. I'm going to buy it. I want to make the heirs an offer.” She had already figured out the exact amount, and they had already told her they would accept the first offer they got, no matter what it was. She could have offered less but she didn't think it was right to do that. “I want to offer them one point nine million. That gives each of the heirs a hundred thousand dollars.”

“Are you serious?” Marjorie asked, sounding dumbstruck. She had never expected Sarah to do anything remotely like it. She had said only hours before that she wanted an apartment, not a house. And what on earth was she going to do with a thirty-thousand-square-foot house that needed two years and close to a million dollars' worth of work? “Are you sure?” Marjorie sounded stunned.

“I am. I just found out yesterday that my great-grandfather built it. My great-grandmother was the Lilli who ran away.”

“Good Lord, you never mentioned anything about the connection.”

“I didn't know it. I knew I'd seen that photograph somewhere before. I saw it yesterday on top of my grandmother's chest of drawers in her bedroom. Lilli was her mother. She never saw her again after she left.”

“What an amazing story. If you're serious about this, Sarah, I'll draw up the papers, and we'll make an offer on Monday.”

“Do it. It sounds crazy, but I know it's right. I think it was fate that this house came into my life. And Stanley left me the money to buy it. He didn't know he was doing that, but he left me a bequest that will allow me to buy and restore the house. If I do it the way Jeff Parker suggested, doing a lot of the work myself, and watching every penny.” She knew she sounded like a madwoman as she raced through all of it. But suddenly it was as though new vistas had opened up and everything she saw on the horizon was beautiful and alive. More than ever before in her life. Overnight, Stanley's house had become her dream. “I'm sorry to sound so crazed, Marjorie. I'm just so excited. I've never done anything like this in my life.”

“What? Buy a ninety-year-old thirty-thousand-square-foot house in need of total overhaul and restoration? No kidding? I thought you did this every day.” They were both laughing as she said it. “Well, I'm glad we didn't make any offers on the piddly stuff I showed you yesterday.”

“Me too,” Sarah said happily. “This is it for me.”

“Okay, kiddo. I'll bring you the offer to look over tomorrow. Will you be home?”

“I will. I'm going to be throwing all my belongings into the garbage.”

“I wouldn't want you to be hasty or anything.” Marjorie smiled, shaking her head. “You can sign the papers tomorrow, if they look okay to you.”