"I'll think about it."
"That's all I'm asking. Maybe we can join a gym and get a family discount." I looked over at my son. "Drop and give me twenty, mister!" I got a burp in response.
"We'll see.", said Marilyn.
We met the broker, Andrea Greene, in the parking lot behind John Steiner's office. After the routine greetings, she said she had three ideas for us. "The first is a fairly standard garden apartment, two bedrooms, one bath, probably similar to what you had down south. The other two are different. Why rent an apartment? Why not rent a house?"
I opened my mouth to protest, but stopped. It wasn't what I had asked for, but why not? "Uh, okay. I guess we could look at that." I turned to face Marilyn, but she had kind of a blank look on her face as well. She hadn't thought of it either. "As long as somebody else mows the lawn."
Andrea offered to load us all up in her Cadillac to drive around in, but Charlie had his car seat and that's a nightmare to move in and out. We decided to follow her on her rounds.
She first drove us over to an apartment complex off Padonia Road, on the east side of Timonium. It was a lot like what we had left in Fayetteville. It would certainly be adequate, but otherwise it was very boring. It wasn't any different than what we had just moved out of. Next we drove into a small development off of Ridgely. The homes here were nice single family units, separate houses on small lots, a little smaller and a few years newer than the one I had grown up in. It was a three bedroom house, but it had small bedrooms and was only a bath and a half. I remained noncommittal, but Marilyn didn't seem to like it.
Andrea picked up on that. Her final selection was about fifteen minutes away, in a townhouse development in Cockeysville. When I was a little kid, Cockeysville was where the country started, and very rural, but that was changing. Now it was seeing suburbs and townhouses, as people moved up I-83 towards the northern end of the county. This place was off of Shawan Road, about a mile from the Hunt Valley interchange.
I was rather taken by it almost from the moment we got out of the car. It was much newer than the other two places, maybe a couple of years old at most. The town houses were in odd shaped three or four house clumps on winding streets. As we pulled in I noticed a van belonging to a yard maintenance company that was hauling a trailer with a couple of large platform mowers. At the place in Ridgely I'd either have to buy a lawn mower or pay somebody; here it seemed it was part of the amenities.
Way back when, on my first trip through, when I was 14 I had my own lawn business. I mowed five lawns every week, one a day, and made decent money for a kid. I also learned I detested mowing lawns! The following year I gave the business to Hamilton, who promptly ran it into the ground and went out of business.
Andrea took us to an end unit and let us inside. It was very new and clean and white. The only problem was that it had multiple levels. You walked into the living room level on one side. To the left and down half a level was the kitchen and dining room, to the left and up half a level were two bedrooms and a bath, and up another half level, over the living room, was the master suite. In the long run my knee was going to be an issue, but for a year, we could handle it. "I thought these places were like condos, you had to buy them?", I asked.
Andrea said, "Eh, yes and no. There's usually a few units available for rent, or with a lease arrangement. I think the idea is that you move in, fall in love, and decide to buy at some point down the road. Do you like it?"
"Give us a few minutes." With my wife carrying Charlie, we went from floor to floor and looked it over. Up in the master bedroom, which was fairly roomy, I asked Marilyn, "What do you think?"
"I like it, but what about your leg?"
"Unless it gets really bad, I'll be fine. I wouldn't want to live here forever, but we can hack it until we get something else.", I answered.
Marilyn asked, "How long will that be?"
I shrugged. I had never built in Maryland before, but I had built homes for customers in New York. "Probably a year. Let's ask. Could you see yourself living here?"
She nodded. "Yes, at least until we build a place of our own."
"Keep thinking about that. Let's ask."
We headed back down the stairs to find Andrea in the living room, smiling. I don't know if she had heard us, or just could read our expressions. "I get the funny feeling you like it.", she said.
"Yes, actually we do. What's the rent going to be like?" The rent proved to be a couple of hundred higher than anything else we had looked at, but this was partly because of 'homeowner's association expenses'; the cost of having the lawns mowed and maintenance fees. Otherwise it was still a bit on the high side, but not outlandishly so. It was also larger than the other two places.
Marilyn asked how long it would take to build a home. She knew something about homes, but only because Big Bob sold trailers. What we were planning wasn't a trailer!
Andrea answered, "Well, first we have to find you a piece of land. There's at least thirty days before we could close on it, what with title searches and financing and escrow..."
"No financing. This will be a pure cash purchase. The same goes towards construction.", I interjected.
Andrea didn't bat an eye. "That certainly simplifies things. We'll run the escrow through the agency in any case. Anyway, after the land clears, you'll need an engineer or architect to sign off on the plans, and then the contractor can get a building permit." She kept on with some different steps, all of which I was familiar with. The bottom line was that we could probably move in sometime next year, in the spring of 1983.
This was rather disheartening to Marilyn, but quite natural to me. I took her hand and squeezed it reassuringly. "This is nothing I wasn't expecting, honey. I'll make a deal with you. We'll take this place, I'll look for land with Andrea, you tell the movers where to put everything, and then we take a nice vacation."
"You're going to look for land and I'm going to move furniture! That sounds like a really lousy deal!", she said, laughing.
I bent down and whispered in her ear, "I bet I can make the bed move!"
That got a squawk and a smack to the arm, but Marilyn smiled. For the next few minutes we were tied up in paperwork, signing some papers Andrea had in her briefcase. Some were for the townhouse and some were for a brokerage agreement to buy property. As per my instructions, she had run everything through John Steiner ahead of time, and I could see his initials on several of the pages. More time was taken when Charlie decided to fill his diaper, drink a bottle of formula, use up a second diaper, and then throw up his formula. It just wasn't his day!
We concluded the day by agreeing to meet Andrea on Monday to look for properties. Then we went back to the Holiday Inn, where I called the moving company and gave them our new address.
Sunday we went over to Tusker and Tessa's place for dinner and a chance to play with Bucky. We made sure to stop at a ToysRUs and picked him up a few toys. They were still in their little apartment that they had moved into back before they got married. All of their money had gone into school and their business.
Tessa opened the door for us and immediately took possession of Charlie. (Now, if I could only figure out how to do that for the next 18 years or so... ) "It is so good to see you again! I'm so sorry we couldn't talk the other day!", she said.