Carry Me Home (38 page)

Coleman cut him off. “San Martin’s desirable because we don’t have a bunch of ticky-tack. You bring that trash in here ...”

On the other side of the table stocky Lisa Fonari was baiting Tom Houghton, using her impressive cleavage to befuddle him. “I’d strike too if they sprayed that poison stuff on me while I was working,” she said.

“It’s harmless and it controls the weeds. Those sixteen in Tulare ...”

“They sprayed it to kill bugs, not weeds.”

“I think it was that 2,4,5-T stuff. Weed killer.”

“If it’s bad enough for them to ban it, they shouldn’t spray it. They should destroy the remaining stock ...”

“... I think they got sick from food poisoning. They leave their lunch bags in the sun ...”

“Yeah. That’s what the growers want you to believe. Ya-di ya-di ya.”

Beside Bobby, Red conversed with Peter Wilcox. “Really, I think it would be wonderful to live in San Francisco. In the Marina. I love it there.”

He patted her hand. “Then you should go for it,” he said.

“Or maybe Sausalito,” Red added. “I think that would be exciting.”

“There’s nothing holding you back.” Peter looked deeply into her face, smiled his perfect smile.

Bobby glanced over the unsigned deposit receipt he’d prepared for John and Joan Pierce, but he did not read it. “Okay, people,” Peter began. The conversations spurted as the salespeople attempted to get in their last phrases. “Come on, quiet down. We’ve got a lot to cover.” Bobby glanced past Jane Boswell to Dan Coleman. For a week he’d been meaning to ask Dan if anyone in the office was going to run the Dipsea. “Let’s go over the status of our listings.” Peter began with the standard agenda. Over and over again the listers lamented, “No action,” or “Not even shown,” or “I could use some help on this one.”

“Listen people,” Wilcox finally said. “I know there’s a lot of talk about the recession reaching us but don’t believe it. You bring in a deal and I guarantee you we’ll get the financing.” Wilcox eyed each salesperson. “You’ve got to realize we’re in the demand path. People have to buy. People have to sell. When they can’t buy in Marin they come up here or go to the East Bay. Great! Send them there. Set it up with Concord or Danville or Livermore. But put it through Concord. The central office has to know for you to receive your referral. You all know how it works, right?”

Red raised a shy hand, one finger extended, about two inches above the table. “I don’t,” she said sweetly.

“Lisa—” Peter Wilcox turned to Fonari who screwed her eyes up toward the chandelier, “will you go over that with Red?”

Lisa clicked her tongue. “Why not?” She smiled, waved an arm bedecked with bracelets at Red. “Don’t get frazzled over it, honey.”

“Look, people,” Peter continued, “we should be in a warm-weather blitz. Into the home stretch before school starts. People
are
moving. We’re better priced than Marin. We’re closer in than Sonoma. First-home buyers can’t buy into Marin. Nor can people who need bigger homes. Get em up here. Sell em on San Martin. Let the San Rafael office list their home. Twenty percent referral. Twelve hundred and five homes sold in our area last year. We did twenty-one percent of that. But, damn it, this year, of five hundred seventeen closings we haven’t even been a part of ninety. Eighty-seven for thirteen salespeople! That’s less than seven each in seven months! Jon, can you live on six thousand a year?” Jon Ross lowered his eyes. Wilcox fixed his eyes on Liza Caldicott. “What about you?”

“Henry makes enough for us to get by.” Her voice was loud, miffed.

Wilcox gasped. “Some of you aren’t even paying for your desk space.”

“Pete—” Al Bartecchi challenged the office manager, “cool it.”

“Damn it, Al. You guys have got to sell. Sell! Sell! Maybe you, Dan and Ernie are doing okay but I want you all to be rich. Money!” Wilcox rapped the table. “Money! Money! Money makes the world go round. Listen people, I’ll get your buyers financing. Just bring in somethin reasonable. We’ll make it fly. Okay?” No one answered. Red nodded. “Okay, that’s that. Anybody have anything else?”

No one spoke up. Those with pads and pens began gathering them. A few comments wafted between the salespeople.

“Ah—” Bobby Wapinski stuttered. He wasn’t certain if he, the new guy, should ask, should change the subject. “What’s going on up at the reservoirs? I’ve heard the town’s going to open them up for development.”

“Who’d you hear that from?” The question shot from Ernest Schnell’s mouth.

“No way!” Lisa Fonari squawked. Then she laughed. “My great grandfather would roll over in his grave.”

“There’s been rumors about that for years,” Peter Wilcox said. “Just talk. By the way, did the Pierces sign the deposit receipt on that Golden Vista place?”

“No.” Bobby picked his pad and pen from the table. “His father drew the limit at six thousand. They’re asking her mother for four more.”

Peter collared Bobby. The others cleared the room. “I’ve got an old client up there who’s been thinking of selling. If I can get them to put the house up, say for forty-four—”

“Pheew! I’m stretching them at forty-two five....”

“But listen. If it’s our listing, there’s a twenty-six hundred and forty dollar commission ... let’s see, that’s about eight hundred to Concord ... that’d let us give them back eighteen hundred as a hidden second. Particularly if the sales price is forty-two thou but we get Hinderman at S. M. S. & L. to appraise it at forty-four. We can make this thing fly.”

“You mean ...”

“Yeah. The extra two grand covers their closing costs, plus they get our eighteen hundred. At twelve percent.”

“I don’t know if they’d go for that. They’re pretty straitlaced.”

“See me on it tomorrow, Bob. I’ll make a few calls. Tell em the other place—who’s got it, Everest?—tell the Pierces Everest took a deposit on it.”

He had not expected any of it: the charge card bills, the articles, the letters, the magic brownies, his own bizarre reaction. It was a bright, clear, beautiful mid-September morning. Sun rays filtered through the sheer curtains Red had bought—“but they were on sale”—and hung over the large window. Wapinski was preoccupied, serious, exhausted, attempting to work through it. He sat at the new table in the single-wide trailer in Bahia de Martin Mobile Home Park. Sunlight bathed the bill box and personal financial files Bobby had spread out. He’d ignored so much the past few months it was imperative he take the day off, re-entrench.

Since July he had sold and closed two more homes, and had listed and had sold by others three. His commissions to date totaled $6,930, a yearly rate, if he could keep it up, of nearly $17,000. And he had thus far managed to avoid—on the advice of both Coleman and Bartecchi—the pitfalls of taking commissions as hidden second mortgage notes, or helping buyers create financing beyond their means. Unfortunately he had not avoided the pitfalls of preferring the comfort of self-deception to the anguish of truth.

Wapinski sorted the stack of bills. On the back of an envelope he listed each: rent, Red’s car payment, auto insurance, medical insurance. When he came to the credit cards he listed total balance and minimum due—thinking it would be best to pay the minimum due, except that the mortgage company might pick up unpaid balances—still $125 to the Emporium ... What the—? What’d she buy? He pulled the statement from the household receipt file: Estée Lauder—$43.58; women’s undergarments—$56.40; cutlery—$37.50. He pulled the BankAmericard statement: Le France Boutique—$109; Mitchell’s Jeans and Tops—$86.50. Crocker Master Charge: Sausalito Food Factory—$36.80; S. L. Davis European Design Furniture—$266.67. Goddamn it! We’re supposed to be saving!!! He bit his lip, fumed beneath his breath. “Necessities!” He growled. He wrote out minimum checks, filed the receipts, suppressed his anger.

Red was out shopping, again. She was no longer associated with Great Homes, no longer in the real estate business.

“That bastard,” she’d seethed one August evening.

“Who?” Bobby’d asked.

“Wilcox,” she’d stammered. “He told me I could make twenty thousand a year. That’s like forty sales. More than three a month! Nobody can do that! I bet even Schnell doesn’t make that.” Bobby had been silent, empathetic. “I can’t even close one every other month.” Red had plopped down on their study-work-reading mattress. “And once you do sell one, it’s over for five years.”

“Well, you build up a clien—” he had begun.

“I’m going to sell insurance. I talked to the most wonderful man. At least in insurance the commission comes in every time people renew.
And
you get a base salary.”

It was her fourth job in ten months. Red was now training across the bay in Richmond with People’s Life and Casualty. By October she’d be working out of the Larkspur branch office, fifteen miles south. Today, however, she was playing hookey, out shopping—out, Bobby prayed, only window shopping—for items for their “maybe-new-home.”

Bobby rose, poured himself another cup of coffee. Dishes from breakfast, from last night, the night before, were all in the sink. The trailer needed vacuuming, dusting, a general pickup. It seemed to him the more time Red spent in the trailer, the messier the place became.

In July Bobby had listed a fixer-upper at 506 Deepwoods Drive in Martinwood Estates for $29,900. For a month he’d held open houses, advertised, prodded other salespeople to show it. He’d even offered a fifty-dollar bill—on Peter Wilcox’s suggestion—to any agent bringing in an offer. “The owner’s old,” he’d told all during an office meeting. “Eighty-two. She’s not in good health. And she needs the proceeds to get into a nursing home. She really needs help.”

“My heart bleeds,” came Lisa Fonari’s brassy retort. “Tell her to clean the place up.”

“She doesn’t have the money,” Bobby had countered.

“Tell her I’ll clean it. She can pay me in escrow.”

“Sure,” Liza Caldicott charged. “You’ll clean her out.”

“I get along well with old people,” Lisa had snapped back.

“People!” Wilcox had stopped them. “Let’s move on.”

In August Bobby had himself offered Mrs. Angelina Tomassino full price if she was willing to sell VA—that is, to pay the points and other Veterans Administration required fees (almost $2,000), and to put up with the uncertainty and potential problems of VA appraisal and structural inspection. She reminded him of his grandmother—and of his grandfather, living alone, widowed, who would be entering his eighty-second year in one week. Bobby wanted to help, wanted to be fair. And he wanted out of the flimsy trailer. Mrs. Tomassino had accepted. To avoid potential repair costs, Bobby and Dan Coleman had done an informal termite inspection and Bobby returned, cleaned, replaced and repaired every bit of damage he suspected might be called. Now, in mid-September, with no word from the mortgage company except to verify receipt of his certificate of eligibility, it was a matter of waiting, hoping the VA approval would arrive
before
the loan points rose further.

Bobby took out the vacuum cleaner he’d purchased secondhand. Quickly he ran the machine over the gold shag of the aislelike living room, then through the bedroom. Strands of Josh’s finest hair floated and glittered in the sun. He put the machine away, grabbed the broom, swept the galley kitchen. Most of the pile of dirt was mud Josh had dragged in. He pushed it into the dust pan, opened the back door, dumped it on the gravel under the trailer. Josh was out, roaming. Cars were zipping down the off-ramp. Bobby bit his inner lip. If the Deepwoods home came through, he’d be able, he thought, to let Josh run in the grass and glades of South Peak.

Bobby returned to the kitchen. He washed the dishes, the sink, the countertop. There was something wrong, he thought, living the way they did. Not just he and Red. There were things there, too, but he was thinking more about Bahia de Martin and all the eastside developments and even much of Martinwood and Golden Vista—something wrong with living
on
the land versus
with
the land as one does when one lives in the hills. All the subdivisions were on cleared and leveled land—decent farmland. Developers with big cats had come in, stripped the land bare, removed the topsoil, poured concrete slabs on the denuded clay. Houses had risen as if they were not even part of the earth. Then the developers had sold the topsoil back to the new homeowners who could afford it. Flatlanders, Bobby thought. Versus hill dwellers. But even that wasn’t true because these people weren’t flatlanders in the traditional sense of the flatland farmer, but simply people who never touched the earth because they went from house to paved walk to paved drive to car to roll on air-filled rubber balloons over paved streets with concrete curbs to concrete freeways to concrete offices and shopping malls and suddenly Bobby wanted to walk the path around the pond at High Meadow, to descend into the gap and rise to the old Indian trail and walk through the cathedral of virgin eastern hemlocks. He could see it, feel it. He wanted to sit with his grandfather.

The Res, the upper creek, the Upper Res, Dong Ap Bia, A Shau—hills, valleys, mountains—he’d grown up in the hills. He belonged in the hills—even in Viet Nam he’d been comfortable with the mountains of I Corps. Now he bit his lip hard enough to hurt, hard enough to chase the thought away. Gotta eat. Gotta pay the rent—soon, hopefully, the mortgage on 506 Deepwoods Drive—506, his old battalion number, near Highway 101, his old division. The numbers were special to him.

Bobby returned to the table, closed the bill box, opened the newspaper. He had established a real estate “farm” in Martinwood, a block of 336 homes to which he mailed a monthly newsletter and in which he’d managed to knock on every door twice, first leaving a plastic litter bag with his name and the Great Homes logo, then leaving refrigerator magnets. He needed to compose his next letter, bring it to Gloria Spencer, the office secretary, for typing, then to the copy center. But first he wanted to read the newspaper, something he seldom did anymore. He skimmed the headlines. He rose, emptied the last of the coffee into his cup, saw Josh bouncing happily up the street between Mrs. Lewis’ and Mrs. Stewart’s perfectly maintained, rock-gardened double-wides. Bobby went to the back door, whistled his specific signal. Josh came scampering around, one furry side coated in mud, the other full of foxtails. “C’mon, little brother,” Bobby whispered. “C’mere.” He grabbed Josh by the collar, slipped a MilkBone between his lips, hooked him to his chain. “Can’t go in like that. I’ll bring the paper out.”