NICKI
I’m waiting for a sign. A large black crow, maybe, or a
coincidence of some kind. Just something to tell me: this is
it, this is the place. The place I’m supposed to live. The
place I’m supposed to be. I’ve got questions, too— about the
thing I’m supposed to do, the person I’m supposed to love, and
what’s going on with my kid—that I’d love signs for as well,
but I know that’s a lot to ask for. Too much, probably. So I’ll
just settle for some kind of heads-up on The Place. Would a
burning bush be too much to ask for? I could really use one of
those right about now.
How many houses have we looked at so far anyway, thirty? Forty?
Fifty? I lost count sometime after deciding we should shift our
search from Northeast Portland back to Southeast Portland.
Which was a couple of weeks after shifting our search
to Northeast Portland from Southeast
Portland, and that’s not counting the two lofts we looked at in
the Pearl District, or the two weeks we spent nosing around the
West Hills (as if).
We saw some great houses, but none of them said anything like
This Is The Place. We’ve seen a lot of This Is Somebody’s
Place, But Not Mine, a few examples of This Would Be The Place,
If You Were into Granite, and of course, enough This Is
Absolutely Positively for Sure Not The Place to last a
lifetime. Everyone says the same thing: You’ll know it when
you see it. But at this point, I’m wondering if it’ll ever
happen, and if it did, how would I know?
Which is why I really need a sign.
Jake doesn’t believe in signs. At all. Jake is my twenty-six-
year-old boyfriend. (That’s eleven years’ difference, for those
of you who are counting, and we’ve been together for two
years.) Jake is just sure about stuff—about houses, about the
restaurant, about life. He doesn’t think in terms of places and
signs. He thinks in terms of his mind and what it’s telling
him. His mind is the place. He knows in an instant
what he wants. Like me, for example. On our third date he told
me I was it for him. That he could see himself with me
forever. At first I was a little bit suspicious, but he won me
over. Scratch that. At first I was thrilled—like the homecoming
king had just asked me to go steady. Then I got
suspicious and he had to win me over. I can tell you the exact
moment of my conversion, too. About a month after we started
dating, I had to go to San Francisco overnight for work. The
next morning, I woke up to room service knocking on my door.
Jake had ordered me a full breakfast over the phone, paid for
it, and had it delivered to my room with a note that said:
From Jake, with love.
We’ve been together ever since.
Weirdly, I know in an instant what Jake wants, too. Like the
house at 2325 SE Burnett. The moment we pull up in front of the
Open House sign, I know that he’s going to want this one.
Really want it. I can tell just from the house numbers. Big,
sleek ones in matching brushed-satinnickel- stainless-steel-
whatever. The kind that scream Cool People Live Here, like a
dog whistle specially tuned to a pitch that only guys with
tattoos and piercings can hear. In other words, guys like Jake.
“I love it!” See, we just rolled up and Jake’s already sold.
It’s the orange door, obviously. “Don’t you?”
“It’s nice,” I say tentatively. I don’t want him to get any big
ideas so soon. We just got here. “The foundation work is great,
I’ll say that.” I will always pay respect to a good foundation.
If I had to give Jake a one-line bio, the kind you’d ironically
put on a Twitter profile, it’d say something like: I do
life like a black-diamond run. Jake’s the kind of guy who
skis fast and hard down the most challenging, most dangerous
mountains—literally and figuratively—and gets off on it. Jake
is bold. It’s what I love about him, and, of course, what
sometimes drives me nuts. But I deal with it because he’s not
intimidated by me, and that’s a relief. The more successful
I’ve become, the more I’ve realized that there’s something
about a woman who can take care of herself that can make a guy
feel insecure. Men like to be needed; it makes them feel safe.
Too often they want a woman who is “less” than they are—at
least in their minds. My guess is it’s because little girls
can’t hurt you the way big ladies can. Very few men have the
strength to be with a woman who wants them but doesn’t
need them.
Jake is one of those men. He manages The Echo—named “Best
Restaurant to See and Be Seen In” by Portland Weekly—
and he makes it look easy. Jake has a U.S. senator’s ability to
make people do what he wants, and a pimp’s ability to make them
feel special while they do it. (Or is it the other way around?)
He’s not only the most ambitious guy I’ve ever met, he’s one of
the smartest—all wrapped in a physical package (face, body,
clothing) so attractive he could be (and actually has been)
cast in a cell phone commercial. Jake’s dream is to open his
own restaurant—and I’m going to help him do it. We’re going to
do it together. I’ve always fantasized about the idea of
working with the person I’m partnered with, and now it’s going
to happen. “You can’t possibly not like it, Nicki. What’s not
to like about it?”
Can’t possibly? Ugh. It worries me that he can just
fall for a house like this so quickly. He just met it!
Can’t he see how cliché that orange door is? Or how that
brushed nickel is trying too hard? The house is like a girl who
posts too many selfies on Facebook. What Cody would call
thirsty. But I’m not in the mood for a confrontation,
so I keep silent, for the moment.
“If this place is half as good inside as it is out here,” Jake
says, “I approve.” I already know what’s inside. Carrara
marble, white subway tile, dark wood floors, undermounted
kitchen sink: pick any three out of four. After all, assessing
houses is my business. Literally. My real estate appraisal firm
somehow (if I’m honest, it seems like an accident) managed to
become one of the busiest in Portland. I not only handle all
the refinancing appraisals for Oregon’s biggest mortgage
company—which amounts to taking a spin through the house,
making sure it isn’t going to fall over anytime soon, and
that’ll be six hundred dollars, please, thank you very much—I
have a ton of residential clients as well. Not bad for someone
who can’t solve for two variables.
“Wow.” Jake stops just inside the doorway to take it all in. “I
love it.”
Even I have to admit this place does not disappoint. A huge
open space with vaulted ceilings and walls of glass overlooking
an amazing garden. “I feel like we tripped and fell into a
Crate and Barrel catalog,” I say.
“I’ll take it,” Jake says. Then, “I could really see us here,
Nicki.”
He smiles at me, his dark brown eyes all excited, and that
makes my heart spin like a pinwheel. This is when I love him
the most, when we’re out exploring the world together, even if
“the world” is just every open house, every Sunday, in
Southeast Portland. I’ve never had a better running buddy.
Somehow, the two of us walking into a house is like opening the
door to a whole potential life, a life that can be ours for 20
percent down plus closing costs. Do we want a Craftsman life, a
midcentury life, a modern life, a two-story life, or a condo
life? It almost doesn’t matter. For these three hours—Sundays
between 1 and 4 p.m.—I have no doubts about my life, or anyone
in it. I’m going to buy a great house, move in with Jake, and
be happy. And I mean officially move in, not like the makeshift
situation we have now where he crashes at my house all the
time, but still keeps an apartment on Twenty-Third and
Northwest Hoyt.
But that’s just for three hours on Sunday. The rest of the
time, I’m looking for a sign.
“Welcome! I’m Sue!” A bubbly, fortyish agent appears out of
nowhere and thrusts a setup sheet into my hands. “Three
bedrooms, two full baths, a total redo, and as you can see,
it’s delicious.”
“Yum,” Jake says, possibly mocking Sue, but also possibly not—
Jake has a way of mirroring people when he wants to be liked.
Like if you have a French accent, then sometimes so does he.
“Been looking for long?” Sue asks casually. I’m sure it’s taken
her years to perfect this question. A less-experienced buyer
would hardly suspect she’s trying to turn them into a client.
“A little while,” I say. I’m not committing to anything at this
point, not even a conversation. Which isn’t stopping Sue.
“Is it just the two of you?” She glances at my belly, like she
might find some more information down there. Um, no.
“I have a sixteen-year-old son,” I offer. I just decided Sue is
okay, and we can be friends. Probably because I sort of liked
how audacious Sue was about the “pregnancy” that doesn’t exist
and never will.
Jake looks at me. He’s asked me to tell people we have
a sixteen-yearold son, but I always forget. I’ve been saying
my kid, Cody, for sixteen years, and it’s hard to
break the habit. I think it’s sweet that Jake wants to present
us as a family—it feels like he’s committing to me—to us—for
good. “Well, we do.”
“You have a teenager?” Sue is gushing at me. “You’re kidding.
You don’t look old enough to have a teenager!” She
says teenager like it’s herpes.
“Thanks, that’s really sweet,” I say. I do totally mean it.
“What, were you twelve when you had him?” Sue’s genuinely
curious. People always are. I’m mostly happy to indulge them. I
think maybe I’m trying single-handedly to dispel the struggling
single mother stereotype one person at a time.
“I was young, but not that young.” I’m thirty-seven, but I come
across like someone Jake’s age. It’s the combination of my
supersized green eyes—I feel weird saying it, but they’re
really big and pretty, the only things I have to thank Beth, my
mother (but just barely my mother), for—and my olive skin that
still hasn’t started to wrinkle.
“The thing is,” I say to Sue, “at sixteen, Cody’s a full-on
guy. It’s like living with another adult.”
“Well then, you are going to love this layout. It has
double masters!” Sue pronounces this in the same tone you would
use to say I’m going to Disneyland! “Buckle up,
because you are going to be wowed.” “I want to be wowed,” Jake
echoes.
“Okay, fine,” I say, fake-begrudgingly. “Go ahead, wow me.” I
really, really don’t want to like this house.
“It’s pretty much perfect,” I say, plunging my feet into the
plastic dish tub full of lukewarm water. I’m talking about 2325
SE Burnett. I fiddle with the buttons on the chair massager and
scooch around until the mechanism is working the middle of my
shoulder blades. That’s where all the tension from a lifetime
of A-studentness holes up like a crazed conspiracy theorist in
a Montana cabin. “It’s really . . . it’s . . . just . . .
perfect.” Though I wouldn’t admit this to Jake, I really did
love the house.
“You say that every week about something. And every
week, you forget about it, and move on.” Peaches shoves her
massage controller into my hands. “Make this thing chop me.”
Peaches and I have a standing mani-pedi date every Sunday at 4
p.m.— right after the open houses. We’re like sisters—we met in
fourth grade and bonded immediately over being forced to slog
through the same lame childhood: crazy single moms, a pile of
stepdads, every year a new apartment and a new school. But
through it all we stayed best friends.
The interesting thing—and no doubt a big part of our attraction
to each other—is that the same lame childhood spun us in
completely opposite directions. I became an overachieving
compulsive saver with an eight hundred credit score who is
addicted to having my shit together, while Peaches 15 turned
out to be a waitress with a special love for motorcycles and
pit bulls who has never had a relationship last longer than it
takes a jar of salsa to go bad in the fridge. Kids are almost
certainly never going to happen for Peaches, and trust me, that
is a good thing.
“There, abuse yourself.” I hand the controller back to Peaches,
who rolls her eyes back into her head as she settles into the
visibly buzzing chair. She’s one of those women who likes it
rough.
Peaches might drive me crazy, but I’ve never found another
person who understands, really and truly, what it was like to
grow up rain soaked and benignly neglected in the Northwest, in
the eighties—back when it was still about guns, logging, and
sheep, not coffee and craft beer—by moms who probably meant
well but totally misinterpreted feminism to mean you could just
do whatever you want whenever you wanted and your kids would be
fine because they can’t be happy if you’re not happy and
besides kids are “really resilient” so don’t even worry about
it.
They probably should’ve worried about it.
Oh, and we argue like sisters, too.
“Face it, you’re the George Clooney of house hunting. You’re
going to just keep casually dating houses for the rest of your
life—because you’re never going to meet the gorgeous, skinny,
Audrey Hepburn–like, international lawyer of—” Peaches cuts
herself off, holding up a bottle of nail polish in a shade of
yellowish acid green. She has no attention span to speak of.
“What do you think about this one?”
I fake-retch a little. “I think I don’t get why you want to
look like someone barfed on your nails.” I seriously do not
understand why Peaches, who at thirty-six has the looks, hair,
and body of a Miss Texas—or a porn star, take your pick—wants
to wear ugly colors on purpose.
“You need to relax, as usual,” Peaches says. “This color is
edgy. It goes with my tattoos. And my nipple ring.”
“Eww. Why do you have to talk about your nipple ring all the
time?” I give a pretty pale blue bottle of Essie nail polish to
Hua, the only woman in all of Portland—including myself—allowed
to touch my cuticles. I change the subject back to the house.
“Anyway, Jake really wants to make an offer on it. And it’s the
only home we’ve found that would work for all three of us.”
I can hear myself selling the idea to Peaches. It’s like I
can’t help it. Long ago, I gave Peaches a papal-like authority
to approve or reject decisions in my life and, surprise,
surprise, Peaches has never given the authority back. “It has
two master bedrooms!”
Somehow that doesn’t sound as great as it did when Sue said it.
In any case, Peaches isn’t buying it. “I hate how real estate
people always call houses homes. It’s like how lawyers
always say they’re attorneys—so fake. I really wish
you would stop.”
“Whatever, Peaches. Okay, the house—”
“And can we just get something straight? Jake is not
going to be making an offer on anything.” She gives me a full
serving of side-eye. “You are. And the fact that he
even says that worries me.” Peaches speaks in italics
a lot.
“I didn’t say he said, ‘I want to make an offer.’ ” I’m always
defending Jake. Peaches doesn’t see how sweet he is to me, how
he brings me little gifts (a scarf here, a ring there), makes
me a perfect cappuccino every time he sleeps over, and
scratches my back every single night exactly the way I like it—
one long stroke from top to bottom, right to left, like mowing
a lawn. She doesn’t see any of that and I don’t mention it,
because it would cheapen the whole thing. I don’t have to prove
Jake’s love to Peaches, of all people. “He didn’t say that.”
“Fine then. What did he say?”
“He said we should make an offer.”
“Well, what he should have said is, ‘You, Nicki
Daniels, should make an offer, with the money you
have worked your ass off to earn, starting with the paper route
you had in sixth grade, and continuing until this very day when
you are still working your ass off, and
taking care of your kid, and dealing with my entitled
ass.’ When I say entitled, I mean Jake, not me.”
She pulls one foot out of the water and offers up her toes for
a helping of puke green/yellow. “Speaking of which, does he
still want your money for a restaurant?”
Of course she would bring that up. About a month ago, I
mentioned in passing that I was thinking of investing in Jake’s
restaurant, and I’ve regretted it ever since. Peaches makes it
sound like Jake is some sort of male gold digger who is only
with me for my money. I don’t even have that much money. At
best, a guy could dig for bronze. To me she just sounds old-
fashioned. This is the twenty-first century, people. So I have
the money, big whoop, why feel bad about it? I can’t deal with
the idea that it’s okay to be a woman who makes money as long
as you’re partnered with a man who makes more.
“It’s not like that,” I say. Conversations with Peaches can
sometimes start to feel like dropping a piece of paper on a
windy day where your only hope is to stomp on it the moment it
lands. Otherwise you’re going to chase it all over tarnation.
“Oh really, then what’s it like?”
“I’m not the only investor. The contractor guy, Miguel, is
putting in all the labor and materials—which is worth way more
than my share. Jake is putting in the sweat equity. And I’m
underwriting the lease. We’re all three equal partners.”
“So you’ve already committed to this?” Now Peaches is accusing
me. “You didn’t tell me that.”
“I didn’t have to!” I can hear myself going on the defensive,
which I hate. But Peaches is partly right. Until now, I’ve been
making it seem like the restaurant thing is more of a maybe
than a yes. Probably because I knew she would have such a big,
fat opinion about it. Peaches has big, fat opinions about a lot
of things in my life.
And I let her get away with it, probably because she’s not just
the closest thing I have to a family—she’s all I have
for a family. With no brothers or sisters, a mom who is God
knows where (seriously, she could be dead for all I know, but I
don’t know because I’m really great at practicing Don’t Look,
Don’t Find), and a dad in prison I haven’t spoken to in years,
I am alone in the world. Except for Cody—and if I ever decide
to marry him, Jake—I am essentially an orphan. For a very long
time, Peaches was The Most Impor tant Person in my life, and
just as Bill Clinton is still called Mr. President, it’s not a
title Peaches is going to relinquish anytime soon. Like, ever.
Which is why Peaches hates all my boyfriends. Whenever a new
guy comes along, Peaches drops down to third in my Netflix
queue of people. She could handle becoming number two when Cody
was born. But for her, being number three is just not
acceptable. Peaches believes no man is as trustworthy as she
is, and in some ways she’s right. Love has a tendency to make
even good people turn shady. Or maybe I just like guys who have
a little bit of shady in them.
“I don’t know, Nick.” Peaches has that skeptical tone in her
voice. “Maybe you should slow your roll with Jake. It’s fine to
boink him, but you don’t need to give him a job, too.”
“Peaches, I’m sorry, but I’m not taking relationship advice
from you.”
“Why not?”
“Because you wouldn’t know the difference between a good
boyfriend and Charlie Sheen.”
“Charlie Sheen is hot.”
“Exactly.” I practically snort, I’m so right. “Anyway, I don’t
think you get it. Jake loves me. He wants to marry me—”
“Ohhhhhh! So that’s it! He said the magic words! I want to
marry you.
Okay, now I get it. This explains everyth—”
“Peaches, please.”
“You’re going to tell him the house is yours, though. Right?
We’re not buying it, you are, and your name
is going to be on the deed. The only name.”
“Peaches.”
“If he’s cool, he’ll have no problem with that. If he’s not
cool with it, he’s a taker, Nicki.”
“Peaches! He’s not a taker.”
Hua looks up from my cuticles. “Peaches right. No one ever
says, ‘I’m a taker.’ ” It would be just like Hua to
interject once in her broken English, but totally make it
count.
“Yes!” Peaches gives Hua a high five. “Hua, you kill
me, woman. Thanks for the assist.”
“Maybe you’re right,” I say. I’ve learned this is the best way
to get Peaches to stop talking about something. She’s like the
drunk driver of BFFs—she has a way of jumping the curb and
plowing right through any sobriety checkpoint you try to set
up.
“Just ask him if he’s okay with his name not being on the deed.
I dare you,” she says.
I can’t even look at Peaches, I’m so mad. I just stare at my
OK! magazine and pretend to be absorbed in the latest
Jennifer Aniston pregnancy rumor.
There’s a long silence.
“Okay, now can we please talk about something else?”
Peaches says impatiently. She’s pretending like she’s
the one who can’t take it anymore. Nice move. Classic Peaches.
“I wish we would,” I say, still staring at the extreme close-up
of Jennifer’s womb area. It’s got a red box on it to indicate
where the baby would be. If there were one.
“No, I wish we would.”
“No, I wish we would, first.”
It’s hard not to laugh. Peaches and I have a way of keeping a
fight going and laughing about it and playing
it like a scene in a movie—all at the same time.
“Fine.”
“No, I’m fine!”
“Fine. Be fine, then. I’m not stopping you.”
“I will.”
“Go ahead,” Peaches says, letting her head bob just a little.
“I’m waiting for you.”
“I’m doing it,” I say. “Right now. This is me being fine.” I
exaggeratedly do my best impression of “fine”—supercalm face,
Mona Lisa smile, eyes forward, head just slightly tilted to the
left. “You like it?”
“I love it.” Peaches laughs and holds up her hand for a high
five. “You’re effing hilarious.”
I slap her hand. “No, you are.”
And as both of us dissolve into giggles, Hua tries not to ruin
my cuticles.