Selling to Family
So my husband and I tried to show our house to a friend, a friend who lives in "the county." She said she wanted to live in "the city," it's a real dream for some county-dwellers. Until they get here.
From the knock on the door, this evening was awkwardness. You don't know what they envision, the county people, before they face the reality of city living. Some, like our friend, had spent a few raucous evenings down here. One night, when I was single and living in the "cultural" center of the city, she had slept over on my leopard-print divan after an evening that she remembers better than I do. In fact, I only acknowledged I remembered it when she sat on that same divan tonight with her fiance and said, "I slept on this once." My old dog bit her once, too. We'd had some good times.
Because she was going out of town for awhile and because she is our friend, we allowed her to stop by before we'd cleaned the place, before we'd cleared the grime from the street-facing windowsills and swept up the rat poop from the back patio. The grass in our shoebox-sized back yard was high enough for the bastards to start nesting.
We gave her a driving tour of the neighborhood, all four blocks of it, and stopped at the train tracks that marked the dividing line between our neighborhood and the one we'd lived in before we bought the house. She commented on the people who emerged from the stopped train:
"That's an interesting mix there."
I looked at the group and wondered if something was wrong with them--I'd heard something off in her tone--an eclectic mix of black, white, and Eastern Indian; young and old and classy and trashy; the best the city had to offer. We drove on past the little girls riding their bikes in front of the three houses in a row with Realty signs in their front yards and headed down the main drag and the next-door neighborhood's main draw--retro stores and diners and wine bars and restaurants that cater to punk bands after closing.
"What's the crime rate around here?" she asked. My husband and I didn't answer immediately.
"Well," I said, "there are some muggings and things up here in this neighborhood that aren't as much of an issue in ours." Our neighborhood is too small for strange people to slip into it, too isolated by geography; but it isn't isolated from the people who live in it. I remembered my junkie neighbor at the end of the block who startled me this week as I emerged from my car. Walking down the sidewalk, thinking I was alone, I looked up and saw her red-pocked, starving face looking down at me as she leaned over her porch rail.
"I think you need to watch yourself anywhere in the city," I said. Silence in the back seat.
As we approached the Royal Farms on the main street, the trash mecca of this more popular neighborhood just over the tracks from ours, I pointed out what the "element" looked like.
"Check out these guys here on the corner," I said. "This is the negative element." We cruised past the Royal Farms and gawked at the swaggering young guys in their baggy shorts and their flat-brimmed hats, shaking hands with an unnerving complexity, and kept cruising.
After dinner, as we walked her to her car, a crowd of about ten teenagers strode past us down the middle of the street, en route to the Royal Farms, perhaps. We'd never seen them before, never seen crowds of kids like that in our neighborhood. I wonder if her guardian angel was sitting on her shoulder, telling her "stay in the county." We hugged our goodbyes, and she got into her car and drove away.
"She's not gonna take this place," I told my husband as we walked back to our house.
"Nope," was his singular reply.
From the knock on the door, this evening was awkwardness. You don't know what they envision, the county people, before they face the reality of city living. Some, like our friend, had spent a few raucous evenings down here. One night, when I was single and living in the "cultural" center of the city, she had slept over on my leopard-print divan after an evening that she remembers better than I do. In fact, I only acknowledged I remembered it when she sat on that same divan tonight with her fiance and said, "I slept on this once." My old dog bit her once, too. We'd had some good times.
Because she was going out of town for awhile and because she is our friend, we allowed her to stop by before we'd cleaned the place, before we'd cleared the grime from the street-facing windowsills and swept up the rat poop from the back patio. The grass in our shoebox-sized back yard was high enough for the bastards to start nesting.
We gave her a driving tour of the neighborhood, all four blocks of it, and stopped at the train tracks that marked the dividing line between our neighborhood and the one we'd lived in before we bought the house. She commented on the people who emerged from the stopped train:
"That's an interesting mix there."
I looked at the group and wondered if something was wrong with them--I'd heard something off in her tone--an eclectic mix of black, white, and Eastern Indian; young and old and classy and trashy; the best the city had to offer. We drove on past the little girls riding their bikes in front of the three houses in a row with Realty signs in their front yards and headed down the main drag and the next-door neighborhood's main draw--retro stores and diners and wine bars and restaurants that cater to punk bands after closing.
"What's the crime rate around here?" she asked. My husband and I didn't answer immediately.
"Well," I said, "there are some muggings and things up here in this neighborhood that aren't as much of an issue in ours." Our neighborhood is too small for strange people to slip into it, too isolated by geography; but it isn't isolated from the people who live in it. I remembered my junkie neighbor at the end of the block who startled me this week as I emerged from my car. Walking down the sidewalk, thinking I was alone, I looked up and saw her red-pocked, starving face looking down at me as she leaned over her porch rail.
"I think you need to watch yourself anywhere in the city," I said. Silence in the back seat.
As we approached the Royal Farms on the main street, the trash mecca of this more popular neighborhood just over the tracks from ours, I pointed out what the "element" looked like.
"Check out these guys here on the corner," I said. "This is the negative element." We cruised past the Royal Farms and gawked at the swaggering young guys in their baggy shorts and their flat-brimmed hats, shaking hands with an unnerving complexity, and kept cruising.
After dinner, as we walked her to her car, a crowd of about ten teenagers strode past us down the middle of the street, en route to the Royal Farms, perhaps. We'd never seen them before, never seen crowds of kids like that in our neighborhood. I wonder if her guardian angel was sitting on her shoulder, telling her "stay in the county." We hugged our goodbyes, and she got into her car and drove away.
"She's not gonna take this place," I told my husband as we walked back to our house.
"Nope," was his singular reply.