Lauren said, “Is this paddock winterized?”
“It feels pretty winterized,” said Peta, losing patience. “I’m warm, Lauren. Are you?”
“Check and make sure. This horse looks sick. I wouldn’t want my horse getting sick out here.”
“Do you own a horse?”
“No, but if I did the poor thing could freeze to death out here in this drafty paddock.”
Locomotion flicked its tail.
“Lauren,” Peta said. “May I make an observation? I think we’re going at this backwards. Heated paddocks, bridle paths, gazebos — that’s crossing t’s and dotting i’s, fine tuning. That’s detail, Lauren, and detail should come last.”
“What comes first?” Lauren asked.
“The dream. We’re searching for a home, Lauren. Home, I know, is a loaded concept for people of our generation, us feminists in particular, given the historic subjugation of the female in the domestic scheme, as you were explaining to me last week, but on the other hand, it’s just a goddamn building. And I know, as we’ve discussed, that in many ways the quest, the journey home, is more important than the destination, but on the other hand, Lauren, you are supposed to buy something eventually. Commit and post your earnest money, move to closing—”
Lauren turned away. “You know I hate that word. You’re rushing me. I thought you were my friend and here you’re rushing me.”
“I’m speaking as a friend. Listen to me, Lauren. The search for home must begin in dreams — one dream, one constant dream, not all this compulsive running around. Face it, darling: you are rich. You can have anything you want, housewise. All you need to do is tell me what you want. Don’t cry, baby — it’s all right. You are Odysseus, trying to get home, and I am, I don’t know, his real estate agent.”
Lauren took the Kleenex Peta offered, blew her nose resoundingly. She said, “Lately I’ve been thinking about lighthouses. Can we look at some lighthouses?”
“No more of that,” said Peta, firmly now. “I’m afraid it’s time for drastic measures.”
It always came to this with the Mrs. — illionaires, the woman lying on the couch, Peta standing by the door, dimming the lights. As a realtor, Peta rarely used hypnosis, preferring less invasive means of clarifying what her clients needed in a home. When Mitzi Hindenberg was “blocked,” Peta used aromatherapy. Mitzi, sniffing almond oil, had a sudden vision of a fifty-eight-room Tudor on the beach. Peta, armed with Mitzi’s vision, found the place exactly as described; it was kind of eerie actually. Peta tried everything on her toughest clients — inkblots, bong hits, long runs, sometimes even prayer. Chappie Xing said the Act of Contrition with Peta (who, being a Boyle, knew the Act backwards and forwards, God our Lord the to me for—this was backwards). They prayed and said amen, and Chappie drew a picture of a Georgian mansion with cathedral ceilings surrounded by these little squiggles, like 3s on their sides. The squiggles puzzled Peta (they had seen several Georgian mansions with cathedral ceilings and Chappie didn’t bite). Then Peta realized that the sideways 3s were dream-symbol water and that what Chappie deeply needed was an island of her own. Again Peta found the place exactly as dreamed of, the old Honus Steadman house on what was now Xing Island. The moment Chappie stepped over the gunwales of the longboat and saw the house up in the rocks, she collapsed in Peta’s arms, saying, “Oh Peta, oh Pet, you have brought me home.” There was much for Jens to sneer at here, but some human feeling too, and Peta was happy for the Xings.
Lauren was lying on the couch in the game room. Peta dimmed the lights, took a CD from her purse, split the case, and handled the bright object. The CD was called Voices of the Rain Forest, Vol. III, Peta’s headache music. She fed a string through the doughnut hole (the string was carried for this purpose), blew on the shiny data side, and wiped it on her blouse cuff.
Lauren said, “This couch is less comfortable than you might imagine.”
“Never mind the couch,” said Peta.
“I can’t be hypnotized. A doctor told me that. He said I’m in the five percent that can’t be—”
“Just relax. Watch the CD, Lauren. It’s swinging back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. Your eyelids are growing heavy, heavy, heavy.”
Soon Lauren Czoll was very, very hypnotized.
“Lauren, do you hear me?”
“Yes.”
“You are standing on the lawn of your dream house. The home of your dreams and inner peace. Do you see it, Lauren?”
Lauren nodded tentatively.
“Tell me what you see.”
Lauren spoke in a deeper voice. “Light,” she said. “Airiness.”
People needed urging. Peta said, “Go on.”
“Space and line and form. A sense of—”
“Yes?”
“Destination. Old and new in balance. A stately Greek Revival with up-to-date conveniences.”
Greek Revival — this was good. Peta made a mental note.
“Turf, trees, wet bricks, a self-mulching garden. But through the windows — sea. Light abundant. Not just that. No, abundant change. Each room dapples differently. Winter is a tone. Easter, a tone. I watch the gales roll in. I see my children growing up — I look forward to nostalgia, a parent’s job well done. This is mine. This is mine. Time is not an arrow.”
“Does it have a garage?”
“I see the neighbor’s house.”
“Let’s stick with your house for the moment. Are you seeing a garage?”
“I’m standing on my lawn looking at the neighbor’s house across a lake or bay. There’s a party going on, show people and a dance band. I see a green light on a dock. I see a hooker and some Dutch sailors. They’ve come for the orgy too.”
“It’s probably a rental,” Peta said. “Now turn around on the lawn. Are you turning, Lauren?”
“Yes.”
“Now go in your house. Tell me what you see.”
“A music room upstairs, a glass conservatory. Fretted ironwork, a cage for a singing bird. A chest of drawers with room for all my keepsakes. I see Jerzy in the driveway with our daughter. I’m standing at the window, looking down. The year is twenty years from now. They hug. The car is packed. Our daughter is beautiful and golden-haired and Jerzy is so pleased. She’s going off to college, off to Yale. No, wait — she’s going off to Wheaton. She got dinged by Yale and wait-listed by Wellesley.”
“Breathe deeply, Lauren. Good. Just tell me what you see.”
“Jerzy’s hugging her goodbye and — wait, that’s not our daughter. Why’s he kissing her?”
“The house, Lauren, come back to the house.”
“I see a chest of drawers. Room for all my pretty things. I keep a gun in there. I go down and teach that tramp a lesson on the lawn.”
Motherhood was pressure (Kai would live on chewy sticks if Peta didn’t nark him every minute of the day); marriage was pressure, watching Jens slip off the edge, Peta feeling helpless, saying nothing; and then there was her job at Moss Properties, which used to be so fun, like being paid to shop with other peoples’ money.
Coming up I-95, Peta felt a headache hatching in the swivel of her eyeballs. She found a bottle of Excedrin in her purse and chewed a pill dry-mouthed as she drove. Peta had two jobs at her company, and this was the problem — she was spread too thin. Noel Moss, the dapper laird and heir at Moss Properties, marveled at her talent for the million-dollar sale. He said the way she had steered crazy Mitzi Hindenberg to a closing on the Tudor was a masterful performance, like a seasoned pilot landing a crippled jumbo jet on an icy runway, and he could only doff his cap in admiration. Noel called her the Realtrix, a play on dominatrix, a playful play Peta knew because Noel was more or less openly gay and certainly not flirting. Noel was grooming her for partnership, which Peta wanted badly, but the elder Mosses — Noel’s father, grandfather, and three uncles, hardshell Yankees to a man — were against it. Peta was a crack mansion-mover, they admitted, but she had never worked the other side of the family’s business, the lucrative if dreary realm of building management. The Mosses owned or managed under contract a healthy coastal empire of retail/office space, ten strip malls, six office blocks, a quarter million square feet of light industrial. The agents at these properties advertised the vacancies, dealt with bitchy tenants, got the carpets cleaned, rode herd on the supers, a succession of small pesterings for which the building agent received nothing more dramatic than the rent.