Praise for
Wendy Markham’s
books

“[A]n undeniably fun journey for the reader.”

—Booklist on Slightly Single

“Markham successfully weaves together colorful characters…. Readers will delight in the main character’s triumphs, share in her pain and overall enjoy the ride.”

—Romantic Times BOOKreviews on Slightly Married

“Wendy Markham writes some of the funniest chick lit books out there…laugh out loud funny.”

—Bookloons on Slightly Engaged

“This is a delightfully humorous read, full of belly laughs and groans…It is almost scary how honest and true to life this book is.”

—The Best Reviews on Slightly Single

“The inventive premise of Markham’s winning novel involves a love triangle in both the past and the present. Markham’s latest is an appealing, wholly original yarn.”

—Booklist on Mike, Mike & Me

Slightly Suburban
Wendy Markham

www.millsandboon.co.uk

For my slightly suburban friends,

Kyle Cadley, Kathy Kohler and Maureen Martin,

who know how to hug,

make birthdays special,

mix fun and fancy cocktails

and throw tiara parties fit for a queen!

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

1

It’s all about the timing.

And I keep getting it wrong.

Take tonight: Friday night. Well past nine o’clock.

I’m finally ready to leave my eighth-floor office (with a partial if-you-stand-on-the-sill-and-stretch view of the Empire State Building) at Blaire Barnett Advertising.

All day, I told anyone who would listen—which, as it turns out, was apparently only myself, Inner Tracey—that when six o’clock rolled around, I was outta here.

(Yes, six. Leaving at five is about as acceptable in the industry-that-never-sleeps as wearing tan nylon Leggs with reinforced toes.)

So when 5:55 rolled around, there I was, about to bolt from my just-cleaned-off desk.

But I decided to hold off a minute so that I could pull out a compact and put on some of the new lipstick I dashed into Sephora to buy en route from a Client meeting this morning.

Yes, Client meeting. As opposed to client meeting. At Blair Barnett, Client always starts with a capital C. Given that logic, my business cards should read tracey spadolini candell.

Anyway, my timing was off. I took too long with the lipstick. As I was loafing around putting it on and thinking happy TGIF thoughts, Crosby Courts—whose personal theme song should be “Tubular Bells”—stuck her sleek dark haircut into my doorway.

“Hot date?” she asked.

“Yup. With my husband.” Jack—who also works at Blaire Barnett, down in the Media Department—was taking me to see Black and White, that controversial indie drama that caused the big splash at Sundance in January.

Was being the key word here.

No, it didn’t happen.

Yes, we’d already bought the tickets at the big Regal Multiplex off Union Square and had managed to snag dinner reservations afterward at Mesob, the buzzy new Ethiopian place on Lafayette. We were planning to head over to Bleeker for drinks and music after that. Big night out on the town.

But here in the cutthroat world of New York City advertising, personal plans are insignificant. You can be getting married in five minutes and your boss will hang up from an urgent Client phone call, turn to you standing there all white lace and promises, and say, “I hate to tell you this, but…”

Which is exactly what Crosby, copywriter on the Abate Laxatives account and my supervisor since I became junior copywriter last year, said as she watched me slick on a gorgeous layer of raspberry-hued lusciousness. “I hate to tell you this, but…”

What I wouldn’t give to have a dollar for every time I’ve heard that exact phrase from her. If I’d had any idea that this coveted Creative Department position was going to be way more demanding and far less fun than the lowly one I left behind in the stuffy Account Management Department, I wouldn’t have lobbied so hard for a copywriting position in the first place.

So now, three-plus hours after I was supposed to meet Jack for our hot date, he’s presumably enjoying injera, tibs and wat at Mesob with his friend Mitch, who willingly ditched plans with his latest girlfriend to go in my place.

No surprise there. These days, Mitch is a fixture in our lives. Much ado about that later. For now, suffice to say that one of my favorite vintage SNL skits—“The Thing That Wouldn’t Leave”—is now playing itself out almost nightly in my living room, starring Mitch in the title role. And it’s not the least bit amusing in real life.

Anyway, when I spoke to Jack between the movie and the restaurant reservation, he told me to meet him and Mitch downtown for drinks whenever I finish resolving the Client crisis here. I don’t really feel like going now, though—especially with the perennial third wheel on board for the duration of the evening. I’d just as soon head home, take a long, hot shower and fall asleep in front of a good bad movie.

But Jack is counting on me so off I go, this time sans lipstick. The luscious raspberry wore off hours ago, along with that TGIF glow.

Before the elevator, I make a pit stop in the ladies’ room, where I find Lane Washburn, who works in the bullpen, emerging from a stall. She’s just changed out of her size zero business suit, and it drapes about the same from its wire hanger as the sparkly, clingy black size zero cocktail dress does from her protruding collarbones. Really, I mean that in the most loving way.

How do I know she’s a size zero?

Because the last time I checked, Saks wasn’t selling negative sizes. If they were, I’d peg her for a –2.

“Ooh, you’re all fancy! Where are you going, Lane?”

“Out for drinks with my boyfriend.” She leans into the mirror to put on bright red lipstick. “How about you? No plans for tonight?”

“Going out for drinks with my husband,” I return, and see her give me the once-over.

In that? she’s thinking, not in the most loving way.

I am thus obligated to lie, “I was going to run home and change first, but I got hung up on some Client stuff. Now I’m three hours late.”

Instant sympathetic understanding in her big blue eyes. “That stinks. So now you have to go like that?”

Um, I really was always going to go like this. Is it that bad?

I look down at my brown heeled pumps, topaz Ann Taylor pencil skirt that’s rumpled across my thighs, white blouse and the chestnut cashmere cardigan sweater that I used to love because Jack gave it to me for Christmas and said it’s the exact shade of my hair and eyes.

I’m sure I’ll probably love it again when I pull it out of my closet wrapped in dry cleaner’s plastic next fall. But by March, I’m always sick of my heavy winter clothes—even cashmere—and anxious to start shedding them for pastel sleeveless silk and cotton pieces. Which is still a long way off.

Anyway, I look fine for drinks with Jack and Mitch.

Still, I open another button on my blouse to make the outfit less prim. Which exposes most of my right boob. Oops.

Buttoning up again, I tell Lane, “That’s the thing about living in the city. It’s not like you can just run home before you go someplace after work.”

“Where do you live?”

“Upper East Side. How about you?”

“East Fifty-fourth at Second Avenue.”

Ah, practically around the corner. If I lived that close, I’d run home to change.

I watch Lane put her lipstick into a black cosmetics bag, then zip that, along with her clothes, into a matching black garment bag hanging on a stall door. Wow, she’s organized.

I guess I could have had the foresight to bring a nice dressy outfit to work, like she did.

However, I was too bleary-eyed and stressed this morning from getting less than five hours’ sleep after being stuck at the office till midnight last night.

You know, since I moved into the Creative Department, my life is not my own. It’s really starting to make me wonder…

Okay, it’s not starting to make me wonder.

It’s continuing to make me wonder:

Is this how I really want to spend my life? (Or at least, the career portion of my life, which lately seems to encompass everything else anyway.)

At which point, I wonder, do I finish wondering and start deciding…and doing?

Something else to wonder: if I did bring makeup and a change of clothes to work, would I have to carry them in a quart-size Ziploc and a Handle-Tie Hefty?

The answer to that, at least, is clear: absolutely. The beautiful matching luggage set Jack and I bought for our Tahitian honeymoon was lost a few months ago by the airline somewhere between New York and Buffalo when we flew up to spend Christmas with my family.

Lane, who probably spent Christmas skiing in Switzerland, tosses her auburn hair. “Well, have fun tonight, Tracey! See you Monday!”

She swings out of the ladies’ room in her fabulous, sexy little number.

The number being 0, you’ll recall. In lieu of –2.

I look at myself in the full-length mirror next to the hand dryer.

I’m usually a 6 or 8, though I’m a 4 at Ann Taylor, which is my favorite place to shop. Did I mention I’m a size 4 there?

If there’s anything I’ve learned these last few years, it’s that everything is relative.

Because, you know, back in my size 12–14 days, I would have been envious of someone like size 6–8 me.

You know, this is utterly exhausting. Am I ever going to be satisfied with who I am?

I keep thinking maybe I would be…if I lived somewhere else. But here in If You Can Make It There, You’ll Make It Anywhere, the competition is fierce. Everywhere you turn, someone is more attractive, more successful, more respected, thinner, happier, just plain old better. And everyone is richer.

Here in Manhattan, Status Quo is a curse. There is tremendous pressure to achieve greatness—on a personal, professional, spiritual and, yes, global level.

I’m telling you, all this striving can really exhaust a girl.

Lifting the sweater, I tuck the blouse in more tightly and twist the waistband of the skirt, which has shifted slightly so that the side seams aren’t lined up with my hips. It’s a little big on me, even without my trusty Spanx, which I opted not to put on this morning.

The silver lining in having to work these long hours is that I rarely have time to overeat anymore—and sometimes, to eat at all. Not only have I managed to keep off the fifty pounds I lost over six years ago, but I actually weigh a few pounds less than I did on my wedding day.

So why am I not satisfied?

With my weight?

With my job?

With my life?

With my outfit?

I make a face at the mirror. I might be pleasantly unplump these days, but I’m unpleasantly uncomfortable.

In general, yes. And mostly, right now, in these clothes. Too much bulk caused by too many layers. I wish I could change into something more fun and sexy. I wish I could be someone more fun and sexy.

But you’re not, grouses Inner Tracey. You’re an overworked married woman who’s closing in on thirty.

Does that mean I have to look frumpy on a Friday night?

Yes, because changing would mean going all the way uptown, then all the way down, which, depending on the time of day and various acts of man, God, Mother Nature or the Metropolitan Transit Authority, could take hours.

Forget it.

See what I mean about living here? You can strive all you want, but even the most mundane things are extra challenging.

You know, I haven’t felt this bummed about life since The O.C. was canceled.

My long camel-colored coat—also cashmere, a steal at Saks last April—feels cumbersome as I plod down the corridor toward the elevator. Ho-hum. I look like every other corporate drone in the city.

Plus, my leather shoulder bag, bulging with work I need to go over this weekend, weighs a ton. Lugging it back and forth to the office, I’ve accumulated all kinds of extra junk in there—loose change, wrappers, magazines, papers—the kind of stuff you’d toss into the ashtray or backseat of your car if you had one. But a car is a liability here in New York, so I wind up carrying all of this around town on my back, which—no surprise—has been killing me lately.

Here’s a brainstorm: Maybe I should start wheeling a little wire cart, like those wizened old widows who live in the boroughs. Instead of groceries or laundry, mine will be filled with PowerPoint presentations and endless notes from endless meetings.

For a split second, it sounds like a great idea. Maybe I’ll start a new trend! Maybe I can design a sleek little black cart, patent it, quit my job—key point—and become a rich and successful entrepreneur, marketing chic carts to Manhattan’s upwardly mobile young women.

Mental Note: or maybe you’re just losing your mind.

Yeah. That’s probably it.

“Night, Tracey,” Ryan Cunningham, an assistant art director, says as I pass him in the hallway.

“Night. Have a good weekend.”

“I’ll be spending it here,” he says, striding on past. “Same as usual.”

Having endured my own share of seven-day workweeks, I shake my head in empathy, glad it isn’t me this time.

You know, lately I really miss the good old days in account management. Not that I knew that they were good old days at the time—or that I’d even want to go back there, because it’s not the same.

There used to be four of us who shared a big cubicle space on the account floor—along with countless margarita happy hours, office dirt, diet tips, recipes, advice—you name it.

But Brenda quit two years ago when her husband, Paulie, got promoted to sergeant on the NYPD. Now she’s a stay-at-home mom in Staten Island with two kids and a third on the way.

Not long after that, Yvonne retired to Florida with her husband, Thor. I still can’t quite picture Yvonne, with her tall raspberry-colored hair and tall kick-ass kick-line body (she was a Radio City Rockette back in the fifties), and Thor (her much younger Scandinavian not-just-a-green-card-marriage-after-all husband) hanging around some retirement community.

But Yvonne has reclaimed her showgirl past and is entertaining the “geri’s,” as she calls them, with a torch-song act at the residents’ club.

Of our original foursome, only my friend Latisha still works at Blaire Barnett. She’s an executive secretary for one of the management reps. We try to get together as often as we can, but when we do manage, it’s kind of lonely with just the two of us.

Anyway, I’m usually too busy with Client demands to go for drinks or lunch, and Latisha’s got her hands full with a husband, Derek, and two kids. Her son, Bernie, is in preschool—and wait-listed at every decent grammar school, so it’s nail-biting time. Her oldest, Keera, has a learning disability and Latisha’s trying to get her through junior year with stellar grades so she’ll have a prayer for an Ivy League college, which she has her heart set on.

See what I mean?

Back in my hometown, Brookside, New York, no one ever worried about getting into an Ivy League school. You were lucky if you got a higher education at all. I went to a state college. A lot of my classmates went to community college, joined the military or just started working.

Now they all think I’m this huge success merely because I moved to Manhattan, have a business card and once rode an elevator with Donald Trump, who was at Blair Barnett for a meeting. Do I have to mention I wasn’t even at the meeting?

That didn’t matter to anyone back home.

Seriously, when my mother introduced me to the new church organist at midnight mass at Most Precious Mother, the organist exclaimed, “You’re the one who rode the elevator with Donald Trump! It’s so, so nice to meet you!”

See what I mean?

Here at Blaire Barnett, the eighth-floor reception area is dimly lit and buttoned up, as you would expect at this hour, and as I wait for the down elevator, there’s no sign of The Donald.

I can see fellow Creatives bustling up and down the halls.

A handful of others scurry out of an up elevator that, frustratingly, doesn’t change direction on my floor. They’re clutching cups of coffee and take-out bags, obviously here for the duration.

They all work on the agency’s new spacetrippin.com account, which is just what it sounds like: a company that arranges dream vacations into outer space. Laugh if you want—we in the Creative Department have certainly gotten some good mileage out of it—but it’s a legitimate new business, started by a venture capitalist who has millions to spend on start-up advertising.

“I really hope you’ve got an umbrella, Tracey,” one of the spacetrippin.com guys tells me as they head back to their offices. “It’s nasty out there.”

Uh-oh. I really hope I’ve got an umbrella, too. On a good hair day, my straight brown hair doesn’t exactly incite photoshoot offers from the agency’s Lavish Locks Shampoo account group.

This isn’t a good hair day. Douse me with rain and mist, and a bad hair day goes catastrophic.

I dig through my bag and come across everything else one can possibly need in the course of daily urban travels: Band-Aids, gum, tampons, car-service vouchers, low-fat granola bars, a book, sunglasses and a Metrocard—which I shove into my coat pocket for easier access, along with my iPod.

There are also plenty of things no one could possibly ever need, anywhere: a dried-out pink Sharpie, a limp Splenda packet spattered with coffee stains, an expired 20%-off Borders coupon and a couple of loose, bleached-out Tic Tacs.

But no umbrella. The little fold-up one I usually carry is in the pocket of my jacket at home, I remember. I took it along when I ran out in the rain to get milk the other night, and I never put it back.

Well, maybe the rain will let up by the time I get downstairs. It’s taking long enough.

I wait impatiently, thinking about my father and brother who work at a steel plant back in Brookside, near Buffalo. When they’re done with work, they punch out, walk out the door, get into their cars and drive maybe three-tenths of a mile at most to their houses. I bet they could do their commute door to door in sixty seconds or less, no exaggeration. Who says there are no perks to being a steelworker in a fading, blue-collar, Great Lakes town?

Come on, Tracey. You don’t want to be a steelworker. And you don’t want to move back to Brookside.

No, but I wonder if I really want to be a junior copywriter at Blaire Barnett Advertising in Manhattan, either.

Maybe I want…

Maybe I don’t know what I want.

Other than to get the hell out of this building before Crosby Courts reappears and summons me back to her lair.

I stick my iPod earbuds into my ears and turn it on. Some good, loud music will be an appropriate way to kick off the weekend, right?

Right—except the charge is depleted.

And let me tell you, there is nothing worse than riding the subway without an iPod. It’s the only way to tune out the chaos of the city.

I’m contemplating taking the stairs when at last a down elevator arrives. Naturally, it’s already filled to overflowing with office workers impatient to launch their own overdue weekends.

I wedge myself in and ignore the grumbles from behind me as the doors slide shut two inches from the tip of my nose. Something—it had damn well better be someone’s umbrella—is poking into my butt.

Outside, Lexington Avenue is still engulfed in an icy March downpour. Getting a cab would be akin to landing that Lavish Locks print ad: It ain’t gonna happen.

Blaire Barnett offers a car service to employees who work past ten. Do I dare go back upstairs to wait it out?

I check my watch. It would be about twenty minutes…

But no, I do not dare. On any night at 10:00 p.m., there’s a car-service backup. Friday nights are worse. Plus, it’s raining. That’s at least another hour delay.

Anyway, Crosby is still up there. If she sees me, she’ll need me to tweak a line on the copy I just rewrote for the hundredth time, and twenty minutes will turn into tomorrow morning.

So off I splash to the number six subway a few blocks away. I duck under scaffolding and awnings at every opportunity, but there’s no way around it: I’m drenched.

As I hover in the doorway of a bank on the corner waiting for the light to change, I call Jack from my cell.

“Hey, where are you?” he asks, and has the nerve to sound boozy and jovial.

“I was headed for the subway, but now I’m thinking I might just go home. By the time I get down there—”

“No, don’t go home. I miss you. It’s Friday night.”

Aw…he’s so sweet. He misses me.

And it is Friday night…

“Come on, Tracey!” I hear a voice saying in the background. “We’re having fun! Get your keister down here.”

Oh, yeah. I momentarily forgot about Mitch, aka pain in said keister.

“I don’t know,” I tell Jack, “I’m really wiped out, and it’s pouring, and I’d have to take the subway—”

“It’ll take ten minutes, Trace.”

So will going home.

But it’s Friday night and I miss my husband. I sigh and tell Jack I’ll be there.

As I head toward the subway entrance, I reach into my pocket for my Metrocard.

It’s gone. Seriously. I pull out the linings of both pockets to make sure it isn’t crumpled in with a dry used tissue or something. Nope.

I must have dropped it. Or maybe someone pickpocketed me in the elevator.

It wouldn’t be the first time that’s happened—although never in my office building. A few months ago, when I was caught up in a herd of commuters at Grand Central Station, some kid stole a twenty I had tucked into my pocket. I felt myself being jostled, realized what was happening, and shouted, “Thief! Thief!” as the kid took off.

A National Guardsman was right nearby—post 9-11, they patrol all the major transportation hubs wearing camouflage, which always strikes me as slightly ridiculous. The camouflage, I mean. Are they trying to blend into the background? They’d be better off wearing cashmere overcoats with plaid Burberry scarves and polished wingtips.

The National Guard did not come to my rescue when I was robbed. Apparently, Homeland Security is only interested in apprehending potential terrorists, not pickpockets. Understandable, I guess.

I haven’t run into any yet—terrorists, I mean—but that doesn’t mean I’m not always on the lookout. Don’t think the prospect of suicide bombers doesn’t cross my mind every single time I walk down the steps into the subway.

Like right now.

As always, I warily scan the crowd to make sure no one appears to be packing an explosive vest. You can never be sure.

If you see something, say something—that’s my motto.

Well, not just my motto. It’s actually the Metropolitan Transit Authority’s motto, but I’m down with it.

I spot a couple of candidates who look as if they might be up to something, but they’re probably just your garden-variety street thugs. There’s a woman who’s acting furtive and seems to have something strapped across her front, but then she turns around and I see that it’s a baby. Close call.

At the automated ticket machine, I feed a couple of soggy dollar bills into a slot that keeps spitting them back out again. After many frustrating tries, I wind up waiting on a seemingly endless line at the booth.

Finally, new Metrocard in hand, I’m through the turnstile, where I almost head to the uptown stairs out of habit. Home is a mere forty-three blocks and five stops up the line, I think wistfully. Jack is about the same distance in the opposite direction.

Should I just forget about meeting him? I so wish Mitch weren’t there. I so wish Mitch weren’t everywhere. Lately, he’s camped out on our new (custom-upholstered, a Christmas present to each other) couch night after night, watching sports with Jack.

Hey, if I go home now, I’ll have the couch—and remote—all to myself. I have to admit, E! True Hollywood Story sounds better than anything else right now.

But Jack is counting on me. And who knows? Maybe Mitch will take a hint and leave when I get there.

No, he won’t. He loves us. Even me. Jack is always telling me that. “He loves you, Tracey. He thinks you’re great.”

I’m so great and he loves me so much that a few months ago, Mitch decided to move into a studio apartment right around the corner from us. Thank God there were no openings in our building. He checked.

Don’t get me wrong—he’s a terrific guy. He and Jack have been friends since college and he was best man at our wedding. It’s just that my weekdays (and nights) have become so challenging that when I’m not at work, I want my husband—and our apartment, and our couch, and our remote—to myself.

I guess I should probably stop being so nice to Mitch whenever he’s over, so he won’t want to hang around. Or I should get Jack to tell him we need more time to ourselves. Or I should tell him myself.

Yeah. Or we could just move far, far away.

I trudge down the stairs leading to the southbound number six track, where I sense something is amiss.

My first clue: the platform is a squirming sea of humanity wearing a collective pissed-off expression, and the loudspeaker is squawking. The announcement is unintelligible, but it’s not as if they can possibly be saying, “Attention, subway riders, everything is running like clockwork tonight and we’ll have you where you’re going in no time. Have a great weekend!”

Hopefully it’s just a temporary delay.

I wearily force my way into the crowd, steering clear of the edge of the platform because really, the last thing I need right now is to fall onto the tracks and get hit by a train. Although, I wouldn’t really be surprised. If I lived to be surprised.

“Excuse me, what’s going on?” I ask the nearest bystander, who, if she were any nearer, would be huddled inside my coat with me.

She explains the situation, either in a language I don’t understand—meaning, something other than English or Italian—or with a major speech impediment, poor thing.

I smile and nod, pretending to get it.

Meanwhile, I eavesdrop on the guy whose elbow is pressed into my rib cage mere inches from my right breast. He’s saying something into his cell phone about a derailment down near Fourteenth Street.

Derailment?

Forget it. There’s no way in hell—which is pretty much where I am right now—that I’ll ever make it down to the Village.

I have no other choice but to squirm my way back to the stairs as—wouldn’t you know it—an uptown train comes and goes without me on the opposite track.

When at last I make it up the stairs and am heading toward the other side, I hear another train roaring into the northbound track below. Already? They usually don’t come this close together.

I break into a run, shouting, “Someone hold the doors!”

Nobody does, dammit.

I reach the platform just as they’re dinging closed, and this guy standing on the other side of the glass—some lame guy in a wet trench coat who could have held the doors, because I can tell by his expression that he heard me—offers a helpless shrug.

I dare to glare, hoping belatedly that he doesn’t have a gun, and watch the train trundle off toward my distant neighborhood without me.

Oh, well. Another one will be along in a few minutes, right?

Wrong. So, so wrong.

Twenty minutes later, this platform is nearly as crowded as the other side, and someone near me has terrible gas. I keep trying to move away, but the stink keeps moving, too. By process of elimination I’ve isolated it to three possible people: a guy with a goatee and backpack, an old lady, or an attractive businesswoman who’s about my age and may be trying too hard to appear nonchalant.

I’ve also just been treated to an a cappella rendition of Billy Squiers’s “Stroke Me,” sung by some dirty old man whose fly is down—making it less serenade than suggestion. When I refuse to throw some change into the hat he passes, he tells me to %@#$ Off, with an accompanying hand gesture.

By the time the next train comes hurtling into the station—so packed that the only way to get on is to literally shove past people crammed by the doors, who shove right back—I am wondering, once again, why I live in New York City.

I mean, seriously…what am I doing here?

Yes, my husband is here. And my job. And my friends. And all my stuff.

But…why?

These days, unless one is supremely wealthy—and we’re not—the quality of life in the city seems pretty dismal. Traffic, poverty, crowds, the smell…I can’t imagine it’s that much worse in Calcutta.

Okay, maybe that’s an exaggeration. They have monsoon season in Calcutta, right? And a lot of curry. I’m not crazy about curry.

But there’s a lot of curry in New York, too. And this might not be a monsoon, but as I splash back out into the deluge, I decide it’s worse. Whatever’s falling out of the sky has now frozen into sleet, or hail, and it’s pelting my face and head.

Remembering that there’s probably nothing to eat at home, I detour two blocks to the deli. I pick up a loaf of whole-grain bread, a half pound of turkey breast, lettuce, an apple, a diet raspberry Snapple and a couple of rolls of toilet paper because we’re almost out.

“Twenty-seven fifty-eight,” says the clerk.

I blink, look down at the counter and shove aside a big fruit basket that’s sitting there in shrink-wrap. “Oh, this isn’t mine,” I tell her.

“I know.”

Then why did you add it to my bill? And would it kill you to crack a smile?

Wait a minute. The fruit basket alone would have to be at least fifty bucks.

“How much was it?” I ask again, gesturing at my stuff, because I thought she said—

“Twenty-seven fifty-eight.”

Jeez. Can this measly little pile of groceries possibly cost that much?

Yes, it can, and Unsmiling Cashier is waiting for her money.

I open my wallet again, wondering why I’m surprised. I mean, after all these years of living in Manhattan, I know things are superexpensive. Yet every so often, I still find myself caught off guard at cash registers.

All that’s left in my wallet are two ones and a wad of receipts.

With a sigh, I pull out my American Express card. As Unsmiling Cashier runs it through the machine, a quick mental calculation tells me that in my hometown, this would run me ten bucks, maybe twelve. Tops.

Back out in the monsoon, I make my way to the doorman building that seemed like such a luxury when I first moved here from my dumpy little studio in the East Village.

As luck would have it, Jimmy, my favorite doorman—who actually flew up to Brookside for our wedding a few years ago—isn’t on duty tonight. He always cheers me up.

Unlike Gecko. He’s on duty tonight and always has the opposite effect. He’s the ultimate pessimist. I swear, you could win the lottery and he’d immediately list every past lottery winner who ever went on to get divorced, go bankrupt or commit suicide. He’s just that kind of guy.

“What a crappy night, huh?” he comments as he opens the door and I blow in on a gust of frozen precipitation.

“Yes,” I say.

“I mean literally.”

Uh-oh.

I know what he means by that.

“The M.C. has struck again,” Gecko informs me.

“Where?” I hold my breath.

“Third floor.”

I sign in relief. That’s six floors away from ours.

The Mad Crapper has been terrorizing our building for over a month now. He never strikes in the same place at the same time, so he’s been impossible to catch. Some tenants want to band together and organize a twenty-four-hour surveillance team with mandatory participation.

I really hope it doesn’t come to that. Because really, the last thing I want to do after a long, exhausting day at work is lurk in a shadowy corridor waiting for some stealthy figure to come along, squat and deposit a steaming pile of fresh crap before my very eyes.

Anyway, who’s to say the Mad Crapper isn’t living right here among us?

Sharing much T.M.I. about the latest strike, Gecko follows me to the mailroom, where I retrieve a stack of bills and catalogs from our box, along with an envelope addressed to Resident.

Uh-oh. Is this from the Citizens Vigilante Group?

No, thank God.

Even better.

“Building’s being fumigated again on Monday,” Gecko informs me as I open the envelope and skim the super’s note telling me just that.

“Again? Why?”

“Roaches,” says the perennial bearer of bad news. “Seventh floor’s infested.”

Infested. Now there’s a word that can’t possibly have a positive connotation under any circumstances.

“Uh-oh,” I say, making a face.

“Uh-oh is right. They’re probably crawling around in your place, too. Keep an eye out when you turn on the light.”

“Believe me, I will.”

It’s not like I’ve never seen a roach. Just about every apartment in New York has them at some point or another. But I freak out every time one scuttles past.

Going back to the Crapper’s latest M.O.—the culprit apparently signed his most recent offering with a fecal flourish—Gecko follows me toward the elevator.

“Have a good night,” he calls after me as I step in.

“You, too.”

“I doubt that,” he replies dourly as the doors slide closed.

For once, I’m right there with him.

On our floor, I make my way to apartment 9K, the tiny Ikea-furnished one-bedroom where we’ve been living for—is it almost five years now?

Five years. No wonder.

After unlocking three dead bolts, I step inside and promptly crash into a chair.

Not because somebody left it practically in front of the door, but because that’s where it belongs. There’s just no other place to put it.

I drop my barbell—I mean, bag—on it.

Ah, relief.

Rubbing my aching shoulder with one hand I turn on a lamp with the other, and check to see if roaches are scurrying into the corners.

No. But they’re probably there, tucked away into the cracks, watching me.

Just to be sure none has invaded our space, I give the apartment a good once-over. That takes all of four or five seconds, because there’s not much to it. Two boxy rooms—living room and bedroom—plus a galley kitchenette and bathroom.

Maybe the place would seem more spacious if we got rid of some of this clutter, I think, trying to be optimistic.

Like what, though? Our toothbrushes? The television set?

A booming sound overhead makes me jump, until I remember that a family of circus freaks moved in upstairs last month.

Seeing them in the elevator, you’d think they were a perfectly respectable Upper East Side family of four: Dad in suit with briefcase, Mom in yoga pants pushing designer stroller, one older kid who’s invariably plugged into something handheld with earphones, one younger kid placidly rolling along in said designer stroller.

The second they get home sweet home, though? Sideshow, full swing. Our ceiling shakes so violently you’d swear there are elephants, giants and fat ladies stomping around up there. Jo-Jo-the-dog-faced-boy scampers to and fro in an endless game of fetch, and there must be at least a couple of klutzy Wallendas who regularly fall off their trapeze onto the uncarpeted floor.

I’m betting a full-time live-in decorator is there as well, because furniture is rearranged as regularly as most of us pee. And I think there’s a resident carpenter, too—that, or a serial killer, because I hear what sounds like a hammer and a buzz saw at all hours. (Jack claims it’s just high heels and a blow-dryer, but he has a high noise tolerance. I could be standing right over him, talking to him, and he doesn’t hear me. I swear, it happens all the time.)

Oh, and I don’t know what happens to Older Kids’ ubiquitous earphones when he crosses the threshold of his bedroom—which has to be right above ours—but he’s not using them there. Our room vibrates day and night with the audio from his television and iPod speakers and arcadelike video-game system.

Valentine’s Day was a nightmare. To celebrate the third anniversary of Jack’s popping the question—yes, I’m big on commemorating relationship milestones—I staged this whole cozy scene for when he got home from work. There I was, waiting in our bed with lingerie, candles, champagne, chocolate fondue and Norah Jones (her new CD, I mean, not Norah herself—we’re not into threesomes).

About five minutes into our romantic evening, our room filled with deafening screams—not mine, and not pleasure. Then came the squealing car-chase tires, cursing and gunfire. Talk about a mood wrecker. Obviously, the kid was tuning in to some cable movie or a PlayStation game that wasn’t rated E for Everyone.

If you ask me, our upstairs neighbors should be censoring their kid’s audio-video habits.

That, or we should get the hell out of Dodge.

You know what? I really think it’s time.

Because, suddenly, I can’t take it anymore.

The circus freaks, the cramped quarters, roaches and pesticides, Mitch, the prices, the subway, Gecko, the Mad Crapper, my job, Crosby, the elevators, the lugging and hauling, the bodily contact with strangers.

When Jack and I first got engaged, I remember, I wanted to move.

But he said—and I quote: “one major life change per year is my quota.”

Ever since, there’s been at least one major life change per year. First we were newlyweds, then he got promoted at work, then I got promoted at work…

Worst of all, in the midst of the job shuffling, my father-in-law died suddenly.

Jack’s had a somewhat contentious relationship with his father for most of his life, and his parents’ divorce after more than thirty years of marriage didn’t help matters. As the only son, with two older sisters and two younger, Jack has always been his mother’s favorite—and his father’s least favorite.

Jack Candell Senior was a high-powered ad exec on Madison Avenue for years, and he pretty much pushed his son into the industry when what Jack really wanted to do was go to culinary school.

I think—no, I know—Jack Senior was hoping his son would become a wealthy, high-profile account-management guy, like he was. Instead, Jack found his way into the Media Department, where he’s great at what he does, but hasn’t become the big shot Jack Senior wanted him to become, and probably never will.

Over the years, Jack and I maintained regular contact with his father—mostly at my urging. My family is tight-knit and it just doesn’t feel right to me to shut out a parent. I’m the one who made sure we stopped to see Jack’s dad when we were up in Westchester, and I’m the one who invited him—and the woman who was his fiancée at the time, soon to become his wife—to the surprise thirtieth birthday dinner I threw for Jack.

Did they come?

No. But his father did write out a big check and stick it into a card with his apologies for being busy elsewhere that night. The card was one of those generic ones you get in a box of cards, not even a “special son” or “thirtieth birthday” one.

Jack was hurt when he found out I had extended an invite and his father turned it down, and his mother, Wilma, was livid.

“He’s a bastard,” she told me privately. “I don’t like to badmouth him to my kids. But he always has been a bastard, and he will be to his dying day.”

Which, sadly, wasn’t all that far off.

Not long after the party, we got one of those chilling early-morning phone calls: Jack’s sister Jeannie, with the news that their father had suffered a fatal heart attack.

Jack’s since had a hard time dealing with all that was left unreconciled—or at least, in his perception—between him and his dad.

He’s thanked me, many times, for trying to bridge the gap, for what it was worth.

Anyway, time is helping to heal.

And I think a fresh start is in order.

We’re a couple of months into this calendar year, and so far, there’s been nary a major life change in the Candell household.

Yet.

2

The next morning:

“Happy anniversary!”

That’s me, to Jack, all kiss, kiss.

“Er…anniversary?”

That’s Jack, to me, all deer in headlights.

I know what you’re thinking: typical male, forgot his wedding anniversary already. This honeymoon is more over than cargo capris. From here, it’s all downhill, like that old Carly Simon song where married couples are fated to cling and claw and drown in love’s debris.

Well, I, Tracey Spadolini Candell, am here to say: Wrong!

Of course Jack and I are still happily married.

And it isn’t our wedding anniversary.

Jack just thinks it is.

But not for long.

“Wait…we got married in October, Tracey. This is March…” Jack’s eyes dart to his watch calendar, just to be sure. “Right. March.”

He looks relieved.

“I know.” I perch on the arm of his favorite chair, which he sat in, fresh from his morning shower, newspaper poised and stereo playing, right before I kiss-kissed him. “But it’s the eighth. We met on the eighth, remember?”

“Of December,” he says, after another brief mental calculation. “We met on the eighth of December.”

“Right. But this is kind of like our diamond anniversary, if you think about it.”

Apparently, Jack really is thinking about it, wearing the same expression he had the other day when I asked him what inning it was in the Knicks game he was watching.

Look, I’m no ditz. I’m not a big sports fan either, but I’ve been married to this one long enough to know basketball games have quarters and baseball games have innings. When I said inning it was a slip of the tongue because I was weak from hunger at the time, and we were supposed to be going out to dinner after the game was over.

He hasn’t let me live it down. “Hey, guess what, Mitch? Guess what, Jimmy the Doorman? My wife thinks basketball has innings. Har dee har har.”

Good stuff. I’m surprised Conan hasn’t called.

“Diamond anniversary?” he echoes now, wearing that same my wife is slightly crazy look.

It doesn’t bother me nearly as much as it did back when we were newlyweds and I was much more emotional and touchy. Probably because I, too, have a look: the one I flash at him whenever he stands cluelessly in front of the open fridge telling me we’re out of butter, or mustard, or milk.

Um, no, hello, it’s right here in this gi-normous-can’t-miss-it plastic jug, see? All you have to do is look beyond the week-old container of moo goo gai pan you insisted you’d eat for a snack, and the wee jar of quince jam that came in a gift basket from some Client back in December, which you also claimed you’d eat for a snack, and, voila! Milk.

Like my friend Brenda once told me, love might be blind, but marriage is no eye-opener.

“I sway-uh, Tracey, no married guy I’ve ever met can find anything around the house,” she said in her thick Jersey accent, “not even when it’s right in front of his face. Scientists should do some kind of study and find out why that is.”

I figure scientists are still pretty wrapped up in global warming and cancer, but as soon as there’s an opening, I’m sure they’ll get to it. Because it really is strange.

You know what, though? I don’t really mind Jack’s masculine faults. In fact, I find most of them endearing. Except for the one where he farts under the covers and seals the blankets over my head, laughing hysterically. He calls it the Dutch Oven.

I figured all guys also do that. But when I asked my friend Kate about it, she reacted like I’d just told her Jack was into golden showers.

“What? That’s disgusting,” she drawled in her Alabama accent. “Billy would never do that to me!”

As if Billy—who is a total douche bag—isn’t capable of flatulence, or, for that matter, far worse behavior where Kate is concerned.

But I won’t get into that at the moment. So far, I haven’t dared get into it with Kate, either. I’m waiting until the time is right to mention that I saw her husband walking down Horatio Street in the Meatpacking District late one night with a woman who wasn’t Kate.

Granted, I was walking down the same street at the same hour with a guy who wasn’t Jack.

However, I had just come from my friends Raphael and Donatello’s place, and the guy, Blake, was a friend of theirs and while infinitely gorgeous and masculine, not the least bit threatening to my marriage, if you catch my drift.

Blake and I were both a little loopy from Bombay Sapphire and tonics and were singing a medley of sitcom theme songs when I spotted Billy and the Brunette.

They weren’t kissing, or groping, or even holding hands, but there was definitely something intimate about the way they were walking and talking. As in, she might have been a colleague but she definitely wasn’t just a colleague, and they might have been coming from a restaurant but they definitely weren’t coming from a dinner meeting.

And she definitely, definitely, wasn’t his sister. For one thing, I know—and strongly dislike, but that’s neither here nor there—his sister, Amanda.

For another, if that woman turned out to be some other unlikable Billy sister I haven’t met, then there’s something distinctly Flowers in the Attic about their relationship.

How do I know Billy and the woman aren’t platonic? Sometimes I just get a feeling about things for reasons I can quite put my finger on, and that was one of those times.

Blake—who must have met Billy at Raphael and Donatello’s wedding three years ago but probably wouldn’t know him if he fell over him, which was not unlikely in his Bombay Sapphire-fueled condition—was oblivious to the situation.

He launched us into the theme song from One Day at a Time as I saw the rest of Kate’s life—as a divorcée—flash before my very eyes.

Maybe I was jumping the gun. Maybe they really were just colleagues.

Blake elbowed me as I stopped singing and turned to watch Billy and the woman get into a cab together.

“Tracey, you’re supposed to back me up. Let’s try it again,” Blake said, and sang, “Thiiiis is it…”

“Thiiis is it,” I obediently echoed in tune, watching the cab make a right turn onto Hudson, heading downtown, instead of continuing on the next short block, making a right onto West Fourth and heading uptown.

Billy and Kate, of course, live uptown. Shouldn’t he have been heading home at that hour on a weeknight?

And even if she lived downtown, if they were going their separate ways, shouldn’t they have gotten separate cabs? There were plenty around. Believe me, I checked.

I know, I know, I said I wouldn’t get into this whole Billy thing at the moment, but I can’t help it. It’s been weighing me down for weeks now and even though I know it could have been perfectly innocent, I also know that it wasn’t.

Getting back to Jack—who doesn’t know about Billy on Horatio Street and who, I’m absolutely certain, would never be heading downtown in a cab with a strange woman at that hour of the night—he’s still waiting for my explanation about our diamond anniversary.

“Twenty-five is the silver anniversary,” I explain to Jack as patiently now as I do when he’s being Ray Charles in front of the fridge, “and fifty is gold, and seventy-five is diamond.”

“We haven’t even been alive seventy-five years,” he says just as patiently in his reasonable Jack way, and looks longingly at the section of newspaper he was about to unfold.

“Not years—months. We met at the office Christmas party seventy-five months ago today.”

“Really?”

He actually looks moved by this news. The fact that he tends to find me endearing is part of the reason I love him so much—and find him endearing in return. Except when he’s Dutch Ovening my head. But I guess there’s a little leftover frat boy in most grown men, Billy aside.

(Or maybe not, because Billy’s recent behavior—all right, suspected behavior—strikes me as pretty damn immature and reckless. Not to mention immoral.)

“So it’s our seventy-five-month anniversary?” asks my endearing Jack. “I can’t believe you actually keep track of these things, Tracey.”

I’ll admit—but not to him—that I actually don’t. Not until this morning at around 6:00 a.m. when, unable to sleep, I glanced at the kitchen calendar and happened to realize what day it was—right around the time the circus freaks kicked into high gear up in 10J.

“Well…happy anniversary,” Jack tells me. Then, having concluded being endeared by my observation of our milestone, he goes back to reading the sports section of the New York Times.

“Wait…Jack?”

“Mmm.” He turns a page.

“So it’s been seventy-five months since we met. Wow!” I say brightly. “And almost two and a half years since our wedding.”

“Yup.” He’s reading the paper.

“Remember when we didn’t want to come back from our honeymoon?”

He snorts a little and looks up. “Who does?”

True. But we really, really, really, so didn’t want to.

Maybe because we had the most amazing honeymoon ever: we went to Tahiti and stayed in one of those huts on stilts above the perfect, crystalline aqua sea. I had been dreaming of doing that but didn’t think we could afford it. Jack surprised me.

Naturally, we spent much of that week lolling around that lush paradise scheming ways to escape our dreary workaday life. Anything seemed possible there, thousands of miles from this claustrophobic Upper East Side apartment with its water stains and dismal, concrete view.

The honeymoon flew by and the next thing we knew, we—and our luggage—were careening home from J.F.K. through cold November rain in an airless Yellow Cab that smelled overpoweringly of wet wool, mildew, chemical vanilla air freshener and exotic B.O.

“Remember how we both wanted to quit our jobs and move away from the city,” I go on, “but you said one life change per year was your quota?”

“Yee-eess…”

I have his full attention now, but he’s not letting on. He’s pretending to be captivated by a story about Yankees spring training. Which, ordinarily, really would captivate him. Except, I know he’s suspicious. He must realize where I’m going with this.

“Then remember how on our first anniversary I asked you about it again—” (I’d have bugged him sooner but I’d gotten over my initial impulse to flee when spring came early and our building was sold and the new owner nicely renovated everything) “—and you didn’t want to talk about it because you had just gotten promoted?”

This time, he doesn’t bother to answer.

“You know, I haven’t even brought this up in ages,” I say, “because I’ve been feeling like things are going great and why rock the boat…”

Renovated apartment, Jack’s promotion to assistant media director at Blaire Barnett, my move to junior copywriter…

Yeah, aside from what happened with Jack’s father, things have been relatively even-keeled lately. Much more even-keeled than ever before in my life.

Except…

The circus freaks moved in overhead, and someone’s shitting all over the building, and we can’t afford to live here, and I don’t think I can take another day of riding the subway or lugging stuff around or brainstorming clever taglines for Abate Laxatives—although I just had a sudden brainstorm. Hmm…

Mental Note: explore working the Mad Crapper into the Abate campaign.

“I feel like it’s time, Jack,” I tell my husband, getting back to my other, more palatable brainstorm. “Seriously, we’ve been together seventy-five months and I really feel like we need a major change.”

“Tracey, we can’t move to Tahiti.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

He sighs and folds the paper, putting it aside. “You want to have a baby?”

Huh?

“A baby?” I echo. “No. I don’t want to have a baby—yet,” I add, because presumably I will one day soon wake up with the urge to reproduce.

At least, that’s what my friends keep telling me. Including Raphael, who is about to become a father at last. Not via the original old-fashioned means, since his significant other—Donatello, his husband—is also ovarian challenged.

Not via a surrogate, either, which was one of their earliest plans. When I (and every other female they’ve ever met, plus a good many they haven’t) refused to lend them a womb—not that I don’t adore and wholeheartedly support their efforts—Raphael and Donatello decided to go the more recent old-fashioned route: foreign adoption.

Sadly, that didn’t work, either. You’d be surprised how many countries forbid a monogamous, healthy, well-off gay couple to adopt from their overflowing orphanages.

Or maybe you wouldn’t be. Maybe you don’t approve, either. But let me tell you, Raphael and Donatello deserve a chance as much as any stable, loving couple, and they are going to make terrific daddies. I know this for a fact, because they’ve had plenty of practice on the parade of foster kids they’ve been caring for over the past few years. Now one of those kids, Georgie, is going to become their son.

As for me…

“My biological clock isn’t ticking yet,” I inform my husband. Then I add cautiously, “Is yours?”

“Nah. I just figured you’d start thinking about it sooner or later. Or now.”

You may be wondering why this is only coming up after two-plus years of marriage.

Well, it’s not. It’s been brought up (by me) and shot down (by Jack) before.

I actually thought I might be pregnant when I skipped a period right around the time we got married. My ob-gyn said it was probably due to wedding stress. Still, I took a pregnancy test on our honeymoon. Of course it was negative.

Even then, I wasn’t entirely convinced. When I did get my period, I was actually disappointed, and went through a brief period during our newlywed year when I was gung ho to start a family. After all, hadn’t I always wanted children? Hadn’t I been told enough times by my evil ex-boyfriend, Will, that I have birthing hips? Hadn’t I once even won a Babysitter of the Year award from my hometown Kiwanis Club? (I was seventeen. Which pretty much tells you everything you need to know about my high-school social life.)

So, yeah, I’ve always wanted to start a family for legitimate reasons.

Mostly, though, I just hated my job as account executive and I was desperate for a way out.

At that point, anything—and I mean anything—round-the-clock morning sickness, childbirth without pain meds, endless sleepless nights, death by firing squad—would have been better than taking the subway to midtown every morning and dealing with my anal-retentive boss, account group director Adrian Smedly and an array of bitchy Clients.

Luckily for me, Jack didn’t think an eight-week maternity leave was sufficient incentive for motherhood. At the time, I was a little miffed. But since it takes two to make a baby the original old-fashioned way, and I couldn’t find a willing sperm donor ( just kidding ), I reluctantly set aside the baby dream—half hearted and short-lived as it was.

Not so long after, I found my salvation—or so I thought, pre-Crosby Courts—when I was at last moved into the Creative Department.

Meanwhile, Jack and I pretty much dropped the baby-making subject. I figured it would come up again, though, when one of us found a burning desire to procreate—or play hooky from work for a few months.

Or forever.

Which is how I feel right about now.

Seriously. I need to get out at some point. I’ve been at Blaire Barnett, aside from a brief foray as a catering waitress at Eat, Drink and Be Married, for my entire adult life. I’m so over agency life. And city life.

Things have to change.

So last night when I was eating overpriced turkey on overpriced bread with overpriced lettuce and drinking an overpriced Snapple, while keeping one eye out for cockroaches, trying to ignore the deafening crashes from 10J and watching the ten o’clock news with its usual urban murder and mayhem, I came up with a plan. A good one.

Nope, pregnancy isn’t my proposed ticket out this time. This new plan doesn’t involve nearly as much physical pain. Or sex.

Unless, of course, I need to use my wiles to bribe Jack.

Just kidding. I don’t really do that.

Much.

“So, look, I think we should start thinking about moving,” I tell my husband, officially launching Operation Fresh Start. “We said we were going to do it someday, and we’ve got the down payment.”

Thanks to his dad, who surprised us with a pretty big chunk of change for our wedding gift. I say surprised because even though he was filthy rich, he also was never the most generous guy in the world, and like I said before, he and Jack weren’t on the best terms.

But he had mellowed a little over the years, and he did give us money to use toward a house. Jack—who, as a media planner, is proficient with handling large sums, though it’s usually the Client’s tens of millions and not our own tens of thousands—decided to invest it in a CD until we need it. That sounded like a good idea to me, and Jack and I have always been on the same page about our household finances.

Unlike my parents, who have always argued over money—not that they’ve ever had any.

Also unlike Kate and Billy, who have also always argued over money—not that they’ve ever had any shortage of it, as bona fide blue bloods.

Anyway, Jack might be getting an inheritance, too, once his father’s will is sorted out. Jack Candell Senior had remarried a few months before he died, and his new wife is contesting his will, which left everything to his kids. She says he made a new one leaving—surprise!—everything to her. Only there seems to be some discrepancy about that.

Even without a cut of his father’s fortune, though, Jack and I can probably afford a decent house in the suburbs.

“So,” I say to Jack, “we’ve got the down payment, and I think we should start thinking about a move. Out of the city.”

Jack looks at me, shifts his weight in his chair. “I don’t know.”

Okay, the thing is…I didn’t ask him a question, so why is he answering one?

“You don’t know…what?” I ask. “What don’t you know?”

“Just…why do you want to leave the city?”

“I’m sick of it. It’s crowded and noisy and expensive and stressful and dangerous and it smells and we’re surrounded by strangers, some of whom are circus freaks and pickpockets and perverts. I can’t take it anymore. I want to live in a small town.”

“You grew up in a small town.”

“I know, but—”

“You left your small town the second you were out of college and moved five hundred miles to New York because you didn’t want to live in a small town. Remember?”

Of course I do, but he doesn’t. I didn’t even meet him until I’d been in New York a few years. I hate when he uses my past against me like this.

Okay, he’s never really done it before. But he’s doing it now, and I think I hate it.

“So are you saying you want to go back?” he asks.

“To Brookside? God, no!”

“Good. Because I don’t think I can live there. Nothing against your family.”

“I know I can’t live there. Everything against my family.”

Don’t get me wrong—I love my family. Do the Spadolinis have their little quirks and oddities? Absolutely. Like, as much as they resent stereotypes about Sicilians and organized crime, they do have a hush-hush sausage connection (my family pronounces it zau-zage, and I’ve never been sure why).

What the heck is a sausage connection, you may ask? Or you may know already, though unless you’re Spadolini compare, I doubt it.

See, my brother Danny knows this guy, Lou, who furtively sells homemade zau-zage out of the trunk of his car and let me tell you, it’s the best damn zau-zage you’ll ever taste, see?

It’s even better than Uncle Cosmo’s homemade zau-zage, which has too much fennel in it, see. When one of my nephews once told him that, he inadvertently started what is now referred to in Spadolini lore as the Great Zau-Zage Wars of Aught-Six.

So, yeah. We have our quirks and oddities, just like any other family.

Well, Jack’s family doesn’t exactly have quirks and oddities, per se. The Candells may have an organic-produce connection, but their (probably organic) family tree is barren of colorful relatives like Snooky and Fat Naso and Uncle Cosmo of the Homemade Zau-zage and Spastic Colon—who will tell you, usually over a nice zau-zage sandwich, that one has nothing to do with the other, but I’m not so sure.

Oh, and the Candells don’t discuss bowel function—or malfunction—around the Sunday-dinner table, either. In fact, they rarely even gather around the dinner table on Sundays or any other non holidays in the first place. When they do, it’s usually for takeout. Usually chicken. Not KFC, though. The Candells don’t go for battered, deep-fried food.

My family would batter and fry lettuce—iceburg, of course. They privately refer to the Candells as a bunch of health nuts, and they don’t mean that as a compliment. When my brother Frankie Junior found out at our wedding that Jack’s sister Rachel is a vegan, he practically shook her by the shoulders and screamed, “What the hell’s the matter with you? For the love of God, eat a cheeseburger, woman!”

So, while I do love my family, I do not want to live anywhere near them or, for that matter, in the bleak and notorious blizzard belt of southwestern New York State.

You’ve probably heard about the prairie blizzards of yore, and the historic Buffalo blizzards fifty miles north of my hometown. Let me tell you, that doesn’t compare to what we get in Brookside every year once the Lake-effect snow machine kicks into gear—and it lasts for months on end. Our Columbus Day and Memorial Day family picnics have both been snowed out more than once.

A few Christmases ago, my brother Joey parked his van on my parents’ side yard and when Lake-effect snow started falling, it quickly became mired. He had to leave it there overnight. Well, the snow kept falling, foot after foot after foot, and by the next afternoon, the van was completely buried. I’m talking buried—no one knew the exact spot where he had parked it, so it couldn’t even be dug out. Joey had to rent a car until well after Martin Luther King Day, when the roof emerged after a fleeting thaw.

So, long story that could go on and on—no, I don’t want to live in Brookside.

But I don’t want to live in Manhattan, either.

“I want to live someplace where the sun shines and we can have a house, and a garden—” I see Jack cast a dubious glance at the barely alive philodendron on the windowsill “—and trees,” I go on, “and a driveway—”

“We don’t have a car.”

“We’ll get one. Wouldn’t it be great to have a car, Jack? We’d be so free.” It’s funny how basic things you took for granted most of your life—like cars, or greenery, or walls, ceilings, and floors without strangers lurking on the other side—can seem luxurious when you haven’t had them for a while.

“I don’t know,” Jack says again.

“Come on, Jack.”

“But…I get allergic smelling hay!” he quips in his best Zsa Zsa Gabor as Lisa Douglas imitation, which, I have to say, isn’t all that great.

“There’s no hay. I’m not talking about the country. Just the suburbs. It’s time for a change.”

“I’m not crazy about change.”

“Change is good, Jack.”

“Not all change.”

“Well, whatever, change is inevitable. We might as well embrace it, right?”

Jack doesn’t seem particularly eager to embrace it—or me, for that matter. He’s starting to look pissed off. He aims the remote at the CD player and raises the volume a little.

“I just feel like we’re stagnating here,” I tell him, above Alicia Keys’s soulful singing. “We can’t go on like this. We need a change. I desperately need a change, Jack.”

I should probably drop the subject.

But I’ve never been very good at that—not one of my more lovable qualities, but I can’t seem to help myself.

“I really think we’re missing out on a lot, living here,” I tell Jack.

“Missing out? How can you say that? This is the greatest city in the world. It’s filled with great restaurants and museums, and there’s Broadway, and—”

“When was the last time we took advantage of any of it?”

“I took advantage of it just last night,” he points out, and immediately has the grace to look apologetic and add, “It wasn’t that much fun without you.”

“Well, I feel like all we ever do is go to work and come home, and on the weekends, we scrounge around for quarters and hope we can find an empty washer in the laundry room. Wouldn’t it be great to have our own washer? We could leave stuff in it if we didn’t feel like taking it out the second it stops. We wouldn’t have to worry about strangers coming along and touching our wet underwear.”

“I don’t worry about that.”

“Well, I do,” I say, shuddering at the memory of walking in on the creepy guy from 9C fondling my Hanes Her Way. “Seriously, Jack. I want a washer. In a laundry room. In a house…”

“That Jack built.”

“No! You don’t have to build it,” I assure him, and he laughs.

“No, it’s Mother Goose,” he says, and I’m relieved that he seems a lot less pissed off. “Didn’t you ever hear that nursery rhyme? This is the cat that killed the rat that lived in the house that Jack built. Or something like that.”

“There are rats,” I say darkly. “They’re living in the alley behind this building. I saw one the other day when I took stuff down to the Dumpster.”

“There are rats all over the city.”

“Exactly! And now there’s a bad roach problem in the building.”

“How do you know that?”

“Gecko told me. He also told me the Mad Crapper has struck again.” I fill him in.

“Nice.” Jack rolls his eyes.

“Why do we live here, Jack? Let’s move.”

Oh my God! He’s tilting his head! He only does that when he’s seriously contemplating something!

Then he straightens his head and says, “This isn’t the greatest time to invest in real estate.”

“Sure it is!” I don’t care, the initial head-tilt gave me hope, and I’m clinging to it. “This is a great time! We’ve paid down our credit cards, we don’t have kids yet, we’re both making good money in stable jobs…”

Mental Note: save part II of Operation Fresh Start—in which we quit our jobs, or at least I do—for a later discussion.

“I don’t mean it’s not a great time in our personal lives,” he clarifies. “I mean it’s not a great time in the country’s general economical climate.”

“Oh, come on, Jack. It’s not like there are soup-kitchen lines around the block. The economical climate is fine,” I assure him, while wondering, um, is it?

“Anyway,” I add quickly, lest Jack point out that lately my current-events reading has mostly been limited to page-six blind items, “real estate is the most solid investment you can make.”

“Not necessarily.”

“So you’re saying you don’t think we should buy a house somewhere?”

“No, I’m not saying that.”

“Then what are you saying?” I ask in a bordering-on-shrill voice I hate.

But I swear, sometimes Jack’s utter calm makes my voice just go there in response. I can’t help it. It’s like the lower-key he is, the shriller I become.

He shrugs. “I don’t think we should jump into anything.”

“We’ve waited over two years!” Shrill, shrill. Yikes. I try to tone it down a little as I ask, “How is that jumping in? The least we can do is start looking at real-estate ads.”

“That’s fine,” he says with a shrug. “Go ahead and start looking.”

I promptly reach into the catchall basket on the floor by the chair, which is overflowing with magazines I never have time to read anymore.

Pulling out the New York Times real-estate section—which I pored over while he was still in bed earlier—I thrust it at him.

“What’s this?”

“The listings. For Westchester.”

“Westchester?” He frowns. “We never said we were moving to Westchester.”

“Back when we got married, we said we’d look in Westchester.”

“Did we? I don’t remember.”

I frown.

“What? It was a long time ago,” he says with a shrug.

“Well, then, to refresh your memory…we decided Manhattan is too expensive, the boroughs are also expensive and if we’re going to pay that much we might as well live in Manhattan—”

“Which we can’t afford,” Jack observes.

“Right. And Long Island is too inconvenient because we’d have to go through the city to get anywhere else, and the commute from Jersey can be a pain, Rockland is too far away, Connecticut is Red Sox territory…”

Kiss of death for Jack, the die-hard Yankees fan. I am nothing if not thorough and strategic.

“So,” I wind down, “by process of elimination, it’s Westchester if we’re going to live in the New York suburbs at all.”

“You’ve got it all figured out, don’t you?”

“Yup.” Pleased with myself, I watch him scan the page of listings.

Westchester County, directly north of the city, is an upscale, leafy suburban wonderland. It just so happens that Jack grew up there. His mother still lives there, as do two of his four sisters.

“Won’t it be nice to live near your mom?” I ask Jack. “This way, you wouldn’t have to run up there every time she needs something. You’ll be close enough to go running over there all the time.”

To some sons, that might sound like a threat. But Jack adores his mother. They’re really close. And as mothers-in-law go, Wilma Candell is the best.

“And when we have kids,” I add for good measure as he scans the newspaper page without comment, “your mom can spend a lot of time with them.”

“I thought we weren’t talking about starting a family yet.”

“We aren’t. We’re talking about finding the house where we’re going to eventually raise our family when we start one.”

Jack barely gives the paper another cursory glance before handing it back to me. “Okay, well…good.”

“Good…what?”

“This is good. There are houses in our price range, so if we decide to look up there at some point, at least we’ll have something to look at.”

We have a price range? And these houses are in it?

Hallelujah.

“But we have to strike while the iron is hot,” I tell him, and add for good measure, “You know, we can’t let the grass grow under our feet.”

“Slow and steady wins the race,” Jack returns with a grin.

“Maybe,” I say, slipping from the arm of his chair onto his lap, “but a rolling stone gathers no moss.”

What does that even mean? I don’t know. But it sounds motivational.

I guess not to Jack, though.

“We’ll look someday,” he says, pushing a clump of my hair out of my eyes, “when we’re ready.”

“I’m ready.”

“For family starting?” he asks, and I laugh and shake my head.

“No family starting yet,” I tell him.

Jack reaches for the remote, aims it at the CD player and presses a couple of buttons. Alicia Keys gives way to U2’s “With or Without You.”

Which happens to be a major aphrodisiac—at least for me.

Go ahead, try it—listen to that song and see if it doesn’t instantly put you in the mood.

The opening bass is enough to do it for me, every time—and Jack knows it.

“How about a dry run on the family-starting thing, so to speak?”

I loop my arms around his neck. “I’m game…if you’re game for a dry run on the house-hunting circuit next weekend.”

Jack tilts his head.

I kiss his neck.

Bono sings.

We are so there.

3

“Let’s take a drive through the village first, shall we?” asks Verna Treeby, slipping behind the wheel of her silver Mercedes.

Yes, we shall, because Verna Treeby of Houlihan Lawrence Real Estate is calling all the shots today here in suburbia on this cold, gray Sunday.

Jack settles himself into the backseat, and I climb into the front. I was thinking maybe he’d be the one to sit up here, but he made such an immediate beeline for the back that I’d swear someone must have said they’re giving away cold Heinekens and Fritos back there.

Alas, the air has that leathery new-car smell mingling with Verna’s designer perfume; nary a hint of Fritos.

“And we’re off,” Verna says cheerfully, pulling out of the real-estate office parking lot and onto Main Street in Glenhaven Park.

I cast a quick glance over my shoulder to make sure Jack is paying attention.

He’s looking out the window, as he should be. So far, so good. Unless he’s staring off into space, wondering why he’s here.

Frankly, there might be a teensy chance of that.

Because even though we agreed last Sunday to spend this Sunday looking at houses, I’m thinking he’s either been in weeklong denial, or had no intention of honoring his promise to me.

The biggest indicator: when Mitch asked us last night—while the three of us were walking home from a late movie—if we wanted to hang out today and watch the basketball playoffs, and Jack said yes.

“We can’t, we have other plans,” I said to both of them, and wound up feeling like the mean mommy who doesn’t allow Super Soakers or sweetened cereal.

“What kind of plans?” Mitch asked nosily.

All right, maybe not nosily. Maybe just curiously.

Maybe I’m just pretty damn sick of Mitch and his questions and his hanging out.

Of course Jack hedged, so I was the one who had to break it to Mitch that we’re probably moving to the suburbs.

Mitch didn’t say much in response. Mostly he just gave Jack a reproachful look, and me the silent treatment as we covered the remaining half block to his building.

After we left him off, I said to Jack, “I guess he’s going to miss us when we move, huh? Or you, anyway.”

“Not just me. He loves you, Tracey.”

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Mitch loves me. If he loves me, he’ll set me free.

“Anyway, it’s not like we’re moving tomorrow,” Jack says, “so…”

That pause seemed ominous to me.

I found myself wondering how he was going to complete that thought.

So Mitch will have plenty of time to get used to the idea?

Or…

So Mitch will have plenty of time to convince our future suburban next-door neighbors to sell their place to him?

I probably should have asked Jack to finish the sentence, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it.

Anyway, here we are, embarking on a new adventure as future home owners, and I don’t want anything to put a damper on this day because so far, it’s going well.

I was pleasantly surprised by Verna, the listing agent on a bunch of houses whose ads caught my eye. Not surprised by the fact that she’s sporting a Palm Beach tan in mid-March and has a fresh-from-the-country-club preppy pink sweater, gold jewelry, blond pageboy caught back in a black headband. I was more surprised that she’s treating us so well when most of the listing pages taped in the window of Houlihan Lawrence run upward of a million dollars.

But when I called Verna earlier in the week and answered a few questions—including the dreaded “What price range are you looking in?”—she didn’t tell me to try the outer reaches of New Jersey. She said, “Sure, come on up!”

The thing is, anywhere else, our price range—half a million bucks, give or take a hundred grand—would buy a mansion. In my hometown on the opposite end of New York State, I don’t think houses that expensive even exist. But here in the tristate area, that’s the lower end of the housing market, and I’m thinking Jack and I will be lucky if we find something.

Glenhaven Park is the first town we’re visiting as we launch our official house hunt here in Westchester County. We chose it—well, I chose it—because Jack and I have driven through it a few times while we were up here visiting his mother, and I think it’s charming.

It has always struck me as one of those old-fashioned small-town movie sets. You know: leafy streets lined with sidewalks that attract strolling pedestrians and kids on bikes; flag-flying Victorian houses with blooming gardens; redbrick schools and white church steeples. In the business district, turn-of-the-century storefronts line the brick sidewalks. Running through the center of it all is a grassy commons where cobblestone paths meander among ancient shade trees, lampposts, benches and statues.

Beyond the village proper, some of the surrounding roads are unpaved and lined with crumbling old stone walls. That’s where the horse farms and country estates are.

Here in the heart of town, there are plenty of expensive homes, too—as in a million dollars and well on up. But I circled ads for a bunch of houses in our price range, so I’m excited to see what our money can buy.

We could definitely afford a two- or even three-bedroom condo in the complex perched on a hill above the town, but I’m tired of sharing walls, a ceiling or a floor with strangers. I want a regular house, with a basement and an attic. I want a garage and a driveway and a car to park there. I want a dome-topped mailbox on a pole, the kind where you put the red flag up for outgoing mail, and I want a yard with trees and a swing set (eventually) and yes, a septic tank. I want to step out my back door on a hot August afternoon to pick fresh tomatoes and basil for a salad, and cut an armload of bright-colored zinnias to put in a vase on the dinner table, just the way my mother always did on hot August afternoons back in Brookside.

I want my future children to grow up the way I did, and the way Jack did.

Although, my parents’ cozy, well-worn house in Brookside is a far cry from the stately six-thousand-square-foot Bedford colonial where Jack was raised. His parents sold it after the divorce.

And while Brookside is a bona fide small town, it’s seen better days, unlike this one. Here, you get the feeling that better and better days just keep on coming.

At least, I get that feeling judging by the lineup of cars parked in the diagonal spots along Main Street: BMWs, Lexuses—even a Ferrari. Every other car is an SUV, with a few Hummers thrown in for good measure.

“I’m sure I don’t have to tell you both that Glenhaven Park is very commutable. You took the train up from Manhattan this morning, right?” Verna points at the Metro-North rail station as we pass.

“Actually, we took the train up to my mother-in-law’s—she lives nearby—and borrowed her car to drive over here,” I tell Verna.

“Oh! So you’re familiar with Westchester already, then.” She brakes at an intersection, glances into the rearview mirror, maybe at Jack. “Where does your mom live?”

I can’t tell whether she’s talking to me, or to Jack. Wilma isn’t my mom, she’s my mother-in-law, as I just mentioned. But maybe Verna misunderstood. Or maybe she’s trying to engage Jack in the conversation.

Good luck, Verna.

Jack’s been pretty quiet from the moment we woke up this morning, back home in Manhattan.

True, I had set the alarm for an ungodly early hour for a Sunday, and Jack is never exactly chatty before he has his coffee. But he wasn’t chatty afterward, either, or during the hour-long ride up the Harlem line on Metro-North, or at his mother’s condo during our short visit with Wilma.

It could be that he’s changed his mind about ever moving to the suburbs after all. Or maybe he’s just upset that he has to miss watching the March Madness game today.

Knowing Jack, that’s probably it. He grumbled about it the whole time he was setting the TiVo this morning to record it.

“My mother-in-law lives in Bedford,” I tell Verna when Jack neglects to answer the question, probably too busy wondering how on earth he’ll carry on if there’s a massive blackout in Manhattan and TiVo fails him.

“Really? So you grew up there? Then for you, this is coming home again.” This time, Verna is definitely looking into the backseat via the rearview mirror, talking to Jack.

And this time, Jack replies. “Well, I didn’t grow up here in Glenhaven Park, so…not exactly.”

“She means Westchester in general,” I tell him, wishing he could be more agreeable. “And since Bedford’s practically next door to Glenhaven Park—ooh, how cute!” I interrupt myself to say, gazing at a children’s boutique called Bug in a Rug.

It’s housed in a Victorian building painted in shades of pink and cranberry, with striped awnings. Totally charming. If you have kids.

Or charming even if you don’t, because I, for one, am totally charmed.

“Jack, look at that amazing rag doll in the window! Wouldn’t Hayley love that for her birthday?”

“It’s bigger than she is,” he observes.

True. Still…

“I think she’ll love it.” Hayley is my niece—my brother Danny and his wife Michaela’s daughter, back in Brookside. She’s turning three in June and is obsessed with dolls.

I turn my head to keep an eye on the shop as we drive past, noting its location. Very cute. Very charming.

Speaking of charming—which is not a word I use often, but I’ve found myself speaking it, or thinking it, pretty constantly since we arrived in Glenhaven Park: “Ooh! Look at that—is that a bakery?”

“Yes, isn’t it charming?” Verna asks, equally well versed in the local vernacular.

“So charming. Look, Jack, it’s called Pie in the Sky.” Perched up on the second floor of a skinny building, the exterior is painted sky blue and the sign is hand-lettered on a fat, white cloud in the plate-glass window. “I love it. Isn’t that a great name? It’s so fitting!”

“It’s almost as fitting—and charming—as Bug in a Rug,” he fake rhapsodizes. “Although, unless they’re selling bugs or rugs, I really don’t see why that—”

“So I take it they make good pie at that bakery?” I ask Verna, cutting off Jack. Usually, I find it amusing when he mock gushes. Not today. I don’t want Verna to pick up on it and decide not to sell us a house here.

Okay, okay, maybe I’m being paranoid, but I really want things to go well. I really feel like Glenhaven Park can be my new hometown.

“Oh, absolutely! They make great pie.”

“I love pie!”

Not that I ever allow myself to eat much of it these days. But back when I was fat, and depressed, I could have eaten a whole pie by myself in one sitting. It’s one of my favorite things in the world.

“If you have time while you’re here in town, you really should stop in and pick one up to take back to the city with you,” Verna advises. “The prices are so reasonable and the key lime, especially, is scrumptious. They make it only once a year, for Saint Patrick’s Day, so they have it this weekend.”

Scrumptious, charming and reasonable prices?

What’s not to love about Pie in the Sky?

Or Glenhaven Park, for that matter.

Yes, I can so see us living here—Jack and me. Without Dupree. Er, I mean Mitch.

I feel like celebrating. I might even allow myself a piece of pie.

“The first house we’re going to look at is right back this way,” Verna informs us, turning right around a corner, and then right again.

I’m half expecting the scrumptious and charming streetscape to give way to a pocket of seediness, but so far, so good. The houses are set a little closer to the street and to each other here, but that’s no biggie. Not a derelict or a rat in sight.

“Here we are.” Verna glides the Mercedes along the curb.

For a second, I think she’s referring to the two-story stucco Tudor with the white wooden trellis arching over the front walk.

Whoa—I love it! I absolutely love it! I can just see—

Oh. Oops. We’re still gliding.

When we do come to a stop, it’s in front of the house next door to the Tudor.

A house that…isn’t half-bad. Seriously. I don’t absolutely love it on sight, but…

“It’s nice,” I tell Verna, mustering some enthusiasm.

“Isn’t it?”

Sure it is. Especially if you like small, low ranch houses circa 1971, with vinyl siding in a deep yellowy gold precisely the shade of First Morning Pee.

So this is our price range. It could be worse.

It could also be a whole lot better.

I don’t dare look at Jack as Verna leads the way up the walk, maneuvering her shiny black patent-leather loafers carefully around the puddles left over from last night’s rain.

“That azalea will be scrumptious in a couple of weeks.” She points at the overgrown shrub that obscures most of the living-room picture window.

I nod and murmur something appropriately passionate about the soon-to-be-scrumptious azalea, while scanning the listing sheet she just handed me.

Built in 1972—what’d I tell you?

It’s billed as the Perfect Starter Home, which right off the bat tells you—at least it tells me—that you’re probably not going to want to stay long. The nine-hundred-square-foot house has a front entryway, plus an LR, Updated EIK, 2 Brs, 1B, At Gar, FP.

This I have learned by doing my homework this past week, translates to Living Room, Updated Eat-In Kitchen, Two Bedrooms, One Bathroom, an Attached Garage and a Fireplace.

There is also a Level Lot with Mature Plantings, catchphrases I noticed in quite a few ads as I was perusing the papers. I’ll admit, I’ve never given much thought to Level Lots and Mature Plantings, but some people must be into them. And you have to admit, there’s not much appeal to a Steep, Rock-strewn Lot or Immature Plantings, which would be…what? Saplings?

I don’t know.

I just hope the inside of this place is more promising than the outside, because I’m already not loving it, Perfect Starter Home or not.

Verna unlocks the front door—which is made of yellow-orange wood and has an arched window in the top—and we step inside. There, we find ourselves standing on a rectangular patch of tile patterned to look like flagstone.

This, I assume, would be the front entryway, separated from the carpeted LR by a flat gold metal strip of flooring. It’s like we’re standing on this ugly little fake stone pier jutting into a turquoise shag sea that smells strongly of cat.

On the upside, there probably aren’t any rats in this house.

On the downside: in addition to a strong cat aroma, there are warping sheets of wood paneling, fake brick veneer on the fireplace and those small slatted windows you have to crank open.

The Updated EIK is no better. Avocado-green appliances, green—a different shade of green, like emerald—indoor-outdoor carpeting, sagging dark brown cupboards with black metal pulls. Okay, so…updated when? 1973? And the tiny eat-in alcove, which lacks a table and chairs, is mostly occupied by a plastic step-pedal garbage can and a litter box. I’m not sure which smells worse.

Onward we trudge, encountering a highly pissed-off-looking black cat who doesn’t look the least bit pleased to see us.

Bathroom: blue tub, blue sink, blue tile and an even smaller, narrower, crank-open window, which is located just at boobs level in the wall above the tub. No curtains, shade or blinds. The lovely Tudor next door has a prime peepshow view. Nice.

Bedrooms: small rectangles, pretty much the same size, though the master is distinguished by a shallow double closet with pressboard slider doors that aren’t quite operating on the track. In fact, one is swinging free from the top track and nearly knocks me unconscious when I go to open it.

Garage: oil stains on the only patch of floor visible amid heaps of things like broken-down lawn furniture and rusted yard tools. It smells of spilled gasoline. Heavy scampering overhead alerts us that something—maybe another cat, maybe God-only-knows-what, a raccoon? A bear cub?—is living in the rafters.

As we go back through the house, Verna keeps pointing out all the potential. I honestly do keep trying to see the place without the home-owner clutter, the god-awful furniture, the cheap, shiny drapes, the litter box, and oh, yes, not one but two pissed-off black cats who watch us warily and stealthily follow us from room to room.

Finally, as we return to the living room, I look over my shoulder at Jack and raise my eyebrows, as if to ask, Well? What do you think?

Jack shakes his head slightly at me, as if to say, I’d rather endure all eternity amid the rats and roaches, beneath the circus-freak family, with the Mad Crapper creeping ever nearer to our doorstep.

I nod in complete agreement as Verna leads us out the front door, pointing out the additional potential in the concrete slab, which she generously refers to as a “porch.”

The whole experience is somewhat depressing, and the fact that it’s starting to drizzle outside doesn’t help. I give the house one last glance as we drive away. I mean, I’m sure there could be potential here somewhere.

Maybe some savvy buyer could knock the place down and start fresh amid the Mature Plantings. But that savvy buyer is not going to be us.

“It’s not quite what we’re looking for,” is how I phrase it to Verna, who wants to know what we thought.

“Mmm, hmm. Well, it was on the small side,” she says.

I nod vigorously, as if small is the deal breaker.

What I want to say is, “Got anything that doesn’t reek of cat pee?”

But who knows? Maybe cat pee is all we can afford in Glenhaven Park.

Nope.

We learned on our next stop that we can also afford a partially gutted wreck whose owner started a massive renovation and then either ran out of money, or was run out of town on a rail—something like that. Verna kind of mumbled the details, which involved running. Maybe from the cops, or a gun-toting ex-wife.

Anyway…the gutted wreck is out of the question, affordable or not.

We then find out that we can also afford a flooded basement. The two-story Victorian on a nice block is actually promising until we start to descend the subterranean stairs. There must be at least two feet of standing water there.

Verna, ever the optimist, begins, “You can always pump it out…” Then she catches sight of our expressions. “You’re right. You don’t want this place. Let’s move on.”

House number four, another seventies ranch, is empty, so we don’t have to try to envision it without furniture or home-owner clutter. But there’s a definite pall hanging over it from the moment we cross the threshold.

“The seller is very motivated. The owner passed away suddenly last summer…” Verna pauses to close the door behind us and fumble for the light switch.

Jack and I exchange a glance, wondering just how motivated a dead guy can possibly be.

“Anyway,” Verna goes on, “his nephew, who inherited the house—” Aha, lightbulb moment. So the seller is the nephew, who is apparently very much alive, living on the West Coast and hoping to unload it. According to Verna, “I’m sure he’ll entertain any offer you might want to make.”

The house is your basic seventies ranch, no frills, but no cat smell or piss-yellow siding, either. White paint inside and out, hardwood floors, rectangular rooms. There are three bedrooms and two baths, as well as a nice screened-in patio off the back, and a deep lot with trees, which I guess don’t qualify as Mature Plantings? Or do they? I’m still not entirely down with this real-estate jargon.

“What do you think?” Verna asks as usual, when we finish our tour.

It’s all very basic, very okay, very affordable.

But like I said, there’s just this…pall. That’s the best way to describe it.

I’d be willing to bet the dead guy died right here in the house. Who knows? Maybe he’s still hanging around.

“I don’t know…it’s a little dark,” I tell Verna.

“Picture it on a sunny day, without the vinyl blinds. It would be so much more—”

“No, Tracey’s talking about the way it feels, not the way it looks,” Jack cuts in. “Dark as in sad and depressing.”

So he gets it, too. I shoot him a surprised and grateful look. Good to know we’re in sync—and that houses really do have personalities.

Heaven only knows house number five does. Meet the plain girl who’s nice enough but just tries too hard to be liked.

Architecturally, it’s what you draw with crayons on manila paper when you’re in first grade: a simple rectangle with a triangle sitting on top of it. First floor: door centered between two windows, second floor: three windows, each placed directly above a window or door on the first floor.

Most people would drive by and never give it a second glance if it didn’t self-consciously scream, Hey, look at me! Here I am!

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