A Second Chance to Get the Winery House

When we lost our buyers because they couldn’t get a mortgage and the seller of the winery house wouldn’t wait for us to find new buyers, I heard my mother’s voice when I was out in the field one morning, picking up manure. That’s when it’s peaceful. That’s when I do all my thinking. She said, “Don’t worry Debi. You’re going to find an even better house.”

Truthfully, I was mad. I didn’t want another house. I hesitated telling Kurt because, even if he didn’t think I was crazy, hearing my mother’s voice, he didn’t want another house either. Plus, I didn’t believe her. No way was I going to find a house that was better than the winery house. Yeah, it needed work but anything in our price range in Jersey was going to need work. This was something that we would never be able to afford otherwise! It was a grand old house, the kind that when you passed it on the street, you thought, “Rich people live there.” There was no way we were going to find anything that could compare.

My father thought we were crazy and insisted it was still going to be there when we found a new buyer. He said, “Nobody’s going to buy that thing!” I said, “Dad! Did you see the architectural details? Did you see the banister? It’s got pocket doors!” He rolled his eyes. Fathers care about things like heating houses without going broke and they worry about roofs, bathrooms that need toilets, and tax bills.

But he was right. Father knows best. The winery house was still available when we sold our house the second time! And my mother was wrong. Maybe it wasn’t her speaking to me after all. Maybe it was just my grief, grief over losing her, grief over losing the house—no wonder I was hearing things! It was my mind’s way of helping me cope. And now it was still for sale!

But we’re not stupid. This time we planned to look it over real good and figure out exactly what it was going to cost to fix, plus we were going to look at as many other properties as we could find so we could compare it. We didn’t have time to do this the first time because we were closing so fast in Virginia, plus a blizzard was happening. Now we’d have time. And we’d be comfortable in good weather. We thought we might even end up offering the seller of the winery house less money than we had in the winter if it needed more work than we had originally estimated. Also, we were coming out with less money this time because we sold our house for less. She had her chance to lock us in but she’d refused to take a house-selling contingency and wait for us. Now she might get less! It was her own fault.

Ironically, the people buying our farm the second time are from New Jersey. We turned them on to a local mortgage broker who knew this was a horse farm and was waiting anxiously to lend somebody some money to buy it. He didn’t care about the agricultural zoning or the “income producing nature of the property”—meaning the buyer could give horseback riding lessons if she wanted to. He gives loans out for small horse farms all over this area regularly. He said our new buyer looked good. We waited until every i was dotted and t was crossed. We waited until our buyer’s buyer got all his inspections done and got his mortgage commitment. We double- and triple-checked everything and as soon as we were sure nothing could go wrong, we got Pearl and Eldon to watch the animals and we went to Jersey to buy a house.

By the time we got there, our real estate agent told us we had to go see the winery house right away. She said if we still wanted it, we had to make an offer immediately. That day. Even though I told the seller of the winery house that we were coming and she said she’d wait for us to look at it again, she took another offer. And if we still wanted it, we had to decide now, before it was through attorney review. Tomorrow attorney review was over.

We were mad. There wouldn’t be any time to look at any other houses. There wouldn’t be time to leisurely dig into what it would take to hook up the sewer pipe to the septic system or to find out even if there was a septic system. Really. When you think about it. Maybe it was a cesspool. Maybe there was an outhouse. Technically, we didn’t know. We’d have to forget trying to get prices for replacement radiators (the radiators had exploded in the winter), and we wouldn’t be able to examine the roofs, the electrical wires that draped across the front yard and were propped up by a stick, or the garage in back which was locked up the last time we were up there. Now we were under pressure again.

The other offer was for $196,000. Our original agreement was for $200,000. Meaning don’t bother to try to get it for less. I didn’t like it. I also didn’t like it that the seller would renege on her deal with the other guy, if there really was another guy, if we offered her a better one. Business is business but they had an agreement. It didn’t seem right. Still, we went right away.

Let me put it this way. If there is another buyer who is giving the seller $196,000, then I’ll smoke my hat. It was a disaster! Being vacant, it did not weather the winter well. There was more peeling paint, the tarps had blown off the roofs of the outbuildings, and the property was so overgrown and neglected that the little clearing I was going to squeeze my horses onto wasn’t big enough for a goat. Now that the snow was gone, we saw trash and debris all over the yard, there was plywood covering mysterious holes in the ground (perhaps the septic tank), and broken glass crunched like corn chips under our feet—obviously the house had been continually vandalized over the years and broken windows was the destruction of choice. It wasn’t the picturesque property I remembered from Christmastime. It looked like a city lot.

In the back was a garbage pit. I know old houses have garbage pits. But this one was about the size of a swimming pool and though I was busting to start digging because I could see old stuff right on top—milk glass, broken blue bottles, china—there was also new stuff in it. Plastic Snapple bottles, brown beer bottles, ribbons of rubber from car tires and other new things not interesting or collectible fanned out from the pit into the yard and spread toward the house like it came with high tide. And it was black. Not from being burned. It looked like oil.

I didn’t know what Kurt was thinking. The real estate agent was with us and you can’t always talk openly plus I knew how much he loved the house and I didn’t want to be a downer but I was thinking no way am I going to buy this thing! I watched his face trying to discern if he was as shocked and disappointed as I was. He didn’t reveal anything. He was looking around, stepping over boards and brush. We went inside. Instead of being freezing and dark like it was in the winter, this time it was about a hundred-and-fifty degrees and dark and smelled like cat piss. In the cellar it was cool. Kurt noticed condensation. He poked the insulation above us. Water trickled down. Everywhere we poked, water came down. We peeled back the insulation. The rafters were drenched. Turns out someone, trying to do a good thing, put in the insulation incorrectly and it trapped all the moisture. It was a mold explosion waiting to happen.

Honestly, I was relieved. There was no better reason to reject the house. I was hoping I wasn’t going to have to persuade Kurt that we shouldn’t buy it. But it wasn’t necessary. He didn’t want it either. We didn’t even have to mull it over. The seller of the winery house wanted an answer now? Then the answer was flat out, unequivocally no. No way.

We felt like a load was lifted. Now we could go house hunting without worrying about the winery house, without wondering what-if, without mooning over the grand old house that got away. Losing our first buyer and causing that deal to fall through, was, it turns out, a blessing in disguise. And maybe my mother was right. Because anything was going to be better than the winery house.

Moving Back to Jersey

Pearl brought me over a chocolate cream pie the other day. Pearl’s pies are completely homemade, including the crust she rolls out with, I imagine, a rolling pin. You see them on TV, the rolling pins—animals clonk each other on the heads with them in cartoons and women in aprons on black-and-white sitcoms wave them. You will also see them in antique shops. For a while there, rolling pins were all the rage, especially the ones with the colored handles—Depression-green or black like my own, or red. There were also marble rolling pins and glass rolling pins which, as you can imagine, were hard to find, glass being very breakable. Especially if you’re going to clonk someone on the head.

But I know Pearl’s got one that she actually uses to make that homemade pie crust of hers. Unless I’m getting it mixed up and the rolling pin is for making bread. I don’t know because a homemade pie in my house growing up meant my mother put a Mrs. Smith’s in the oven. Normally we’d go to the bakery. There was one on every corner. Normandy. Catanio’s. Westside Italian Bakery. And even though there were no pies better than one from the bakery, on special occasions, we got the Mrs. Smith’s because you had to turn the oven on.

I, myself, thought I was making homemade pies until I got down here and started getting Pearl’s. I actually mix things up to put into the pie crust. A can of pumpkin. Or cherries. When I got brave, I cut up apples or even stirred pecans into a mixture of melted butter, corn syrup and sugar. Now tell me that’s not homemade. But my crusts came out of a plastic package I picked up in the freezer case. And my rolling pins with the green handle and the black handle stayed on top of the kitchen cabinet strategically displayed in a wire egg basket as if I actually used these things and they weren’t just decoration.

Kurt always rates Pearl’s pies. “Good.” “Yummy.” “She outdid herself.” He said this one was exceptional. When I called her up to thank her, because you’re supposed to say thank you again after you actually eat it, not just when you get it, I told her she outdid herself. But I was suspicious.

“You’re trying to get us to stay, aren’t you?” I asked.

“You’re onto me Debi,” she laughed.

Then she said something that, perhaps if I would have known sooner, I might not have decided to go back. She said, “I thought that you and Kurt were going to stay forever and you’d take care of me and Eldon in our old age.” Like her heart was broken. I had no idea they liked us that much.

I didn’t want to tell her I was thinking the same thing. I’m motherless now. But even before that, we’re down here all alone, with no family, and Pearl and Eldon have no kids. I always had the idea of adopting them. Pearl and Eldon. Not kids. Though I wouldn’t be against adopting a child. Actually, I often think about taking in a foster child. But that’s another story. Pearl and Eldon—we have a lot in common. Eldon’s a horseman. Pearl’s a clean freak just like me and worries about everything just like I do. And then there’s those pies…

But the homesickness already set in like pitting on a brass fixture or mold on the underside of a stirrup leather. There is no stopping it. Now that I’ve made the decision, I’m like a dog who gets loose at the airport and trots all the way home, determined, obsessed, a thousand miles back to his old backyard where there’s a bone buried next to the porch and other dogs who jump up and down and practically break their necks on the ends of their leashes when they see him.

So I’m going home. That’s right. We’re selling the farm. It’s been 7 years since we left New Jersey and Kurt says we’re done playing around. We tried it, we had fun, we learned a few things (though I still can’t make a pie crust) but when I lost my mother, I really started thinking about things. What if my father gets sick? Maybe even more importantly, do I want to lose sharing whatever years he has left too? And maybe I want to get close to my sister. Maybe all of a sudden I think she’s pretty cool.

And what about Jamie? That was nagging at me anyway. What happens when she gets married? How will I go dress shopping with her? What about when she has a baby? Who will babysit? How can I get close to this kid like my mother was close to Jamie when she was little and my nana was close to me? I have memories of things just as important as knowing my nana loved me, memories of sitting with her on the front porch in the rocking chairs drinking cans of Shop-Rite soda—cream, root beer, grape, orange—on a hot summer day; and at the end of winter, standing on her tip-toes looking out the kitchen window over the sink and exclaiming to my grandfather, “Harry! Look! My crocuses are coming up!” I remember watching her dance in her hula skirt while Pop-Pop played the banjo and taking my hand, “Com’on Debi!”; trying to teach me how to crochet; studying her dream book to find out what numbers she should play and showing me her system—basically, take a guess. All of that is just as important as knowing someone loves you. It is feeling it. It is living it. You can’t have that unless you are sitting in the rocking chairs together.

Not only did I start riding shopping carts after my mother died, but I learned I didn’t really appreciate the people in my life like I should have. It is stunningly gorgeous here. I always say it’s so pretty it looks fake. But I can’t enjoy it if I’m mooning over my family. If only I could have my mother again, I would live in a roach-infested tenement with views of the brick building next door and a naked light bulb in a chicken-wire cage.

It doesn’t have to come to that. We’re going to have a farm again. But I want to go home.

In Memory of 9-11

9-11 is my father’s birthday. Six years ago this morning I called him on the phone to wish him a happy birthday before he went to work. Then I looked at the TV on the kitchen counter. The news was on. There was a fire in one of the buildings at the World Trade Center and they were showing it live. The newscasters were matter-of-fact. They didn’t seem nervous about it at all but I kept thinking, what if that gets out of control? We’re talking about a skyscraper here. How are they going to put it out if it gets bigger? It’s not like the fire trucks have ladders that go up that high.

I got on the phone with my girlfriend. She was watching it too. I said, “I don’t think that’s good.” I never heard of a skyscraper burning down to the ground before but you never know. Jenise, always the calm voice of reason and not a worry-wart like me, didn’t seem concerned. Suddenly, a plane veered onto the screen and we watched it crash into the second building. Now I knew there was reason to worry.

We were only an hour or so away from New York if you weren’t traveling during rush hour. Many of our neighbors worked there. My sister’s husband fixed elevators in Manhattan. We all went up there for concerts and Christmas. One time I even read one of my short stories on stage at the Hudson Grille. We were close. We were so close we could see the smoke. Later, we could smell it.

Everyone knew someone who died in the buildings. For me, it was my real estate agent’s husband, Louis Minervino. Barbara called him Lou. I never met him, but I know of him. I can still hear Barbara’s voice talking about “Lou,” and I knew he was a caring and kind man. Barbara was a caring and kind woman and when I heard Lou Minervino died in the towers, my heart broke even further.

I have a picture of the New York skyline with the twin towers in it. It is taken from my father’s boat. It is really a picture of my new boyfriend, Kurt, who is now my husband. But New York was in the background. The funny thing is, there is a plane in the picture. It looks like it is heading straight for the towers. But it was taken many years before. It was taken at a time when we took the skyline for granted, when we always thought we’d have it, when we were young and we thought that we’d always have everyone.

This afternoon I turned on the TV in the kitchen and watched a special on Oprah about the children of 9-11. Six years later, some of them never even knew the parents they lost. Others took on the parent role and raised younger siblings because there was no one left who could do it. There were boys who went to Rolling Stones concerts because their father loved the Rolling Stones and it was a small way to keep him alive. There were boys who promised to grow up to be good men just like the dads they lost. All of them impressed me with their maturity and their determination to somehow make something good come out of such a terrible tragedy. You could tell they were all good kids who didn’t deserve to be in such a position. I sat there crying my eyes out.

Then I called my father and told him how glad I was that I could still call and wish him a happy birthday. I know how lucky I am.