Safe as Houses, Part 2

With the house in Austin sold and spring break providing a gap in the academic schedule, it was high time to return to Long Island and see if some progress could be made on the house-hunting front. New York towns take two months to close deals on houses because, apparently, attorneys have to get involved. Sounds crazy to me, too, but it also means that if we want our furniture to have some place to go other than Uncle Vinny's Used Furs Storage we need to pick something out.

Things have not gone auspiciously. I mean, the flight to JFK was on time and the walk from the Jet Blue terminal to the Air Train was as good for my figure as ever (it's a new terminal, so why is it so far from the freakin' train?). I had rented a 2009 Mustang on the theory that if you can't beat Yankee drivers, you may as well join them. And it's a sweet car, too. The only trouble is that in an excess of confidence, I had declined to rent a GPS. I figured I could find Long Island's North Shore without a resident AI in the car. And the journey went just fine. Initially. I crossed the island's central artery, the Long Island Expressway, headed north for Some Yankee Town, then things started to go a bit pear-shaped. I had lost the 135. Frantic, I called Mike for directions.

"Here," he said querying Google Maps while he talked, "I'll take you the pretty way."

Unfortunately, "the pretty way", involved crossing some train tracks. How hard can it be, right? The barriers were down. The lights were flashing. I'm the first at the barrier and I believe know the procedure. The barriers went up. I proceeded slowly, looking both ways. Just in case. As I'm slowly rolling forward, I notice the car on the other side of the train tracks. That barrier has also gone up but, curiously, the other driver is not, not, rolling forward. Does that driver know something I don't? I slow down even more. Suddenly, the gong starts sounding and the mother-flummoxing, son of a bleep-bleep-bleep barrier starts coming down. I'm no genius, but I think this means a train is coming and I can either floor it or back up. DON'T PANIC!

In retrospect, I should have floored it, but I chose to back up, just in time to get the car fully back before the barrier came down on our heads. Except the radio antenna nearly snapped in half, caught by the barricade. But we made it. And sure enough, a train came roaring through. Then another train.

Maybe it's the after-affects of radiation, but my pulse didn't go up at all. Or maybe it was the half of an anti-anxiety pill that I took on the flight, because the captain promised lotsa turbulence.

So the next day, we're up early and poring over notes on various houses. Then we go meet our realtor, keen to look over a few more houses. Surely, surely, the one we'll love, the one that will sweep all the others off the table will reveal itself.

Or, you know, not. We visit a lovely old Victorian in what had once, a hundred years ago, been a beach community for the wealthy of Manhattan. I love old wood, old floors. The warmth can't be faked. But the house is too small. As a friend of my mother's used to say, his trailer sleeps two, feeds four, drinks six. That was about the scale of this house.

Then onto a ranch house in the same general neighborhood, but in a more recently developed section (50s?). This house is bigger, but still too small, with a master bath that brings back the Gentleman's Shaving Cupboard that we replaced in our present house. And, as with our present house, doing anything to expand the master suite would require the expansion of the house itself. There's no way to just borrow space from another room. And that's a shame because this is the house I love. A half mile from the sea with a large, wildish yard to the side, you can't beat it for both neighborhood feel and relative isolation. And the house is damned pretty, with proper fireplaces, floor-to-ceiling windows, brick fireplaces, and hardwood floors everywhere. The kitchen was new and bright. The house called to me.

Then we went to see a "Farm Ranch" (don't ask), which I also fell utterly in love with, but the taxes in some areas of Long Island are positively grueling. And in this particular house, Jesse's bedroom would be downstairs. And princesses, as everyone knows, must sleep upstairs, preferably in a tower.

So we come full circle back to a house in Cold Spring Harbor, which we've seen before. Jesse drools, all over again.

I've mentioned Cold Spring Harbor before, as a very upmarket area of Long Island. Before the bust, we could not have even considered a house in CSH. But the Great Reckoning has caught a particular builder unawares and he's seeking to unload his outwardly nice, er, "Whaler's Cottage". But despite the pleasant exterior, there's no hiding that this builder, like most others of my acquaintance, is out to make a fast one. If he thought he could get away with nailing granite counter-tops to Lego boxes, he'd do it.

And the lot is tiny. I mean, I want to reduce the yard-work in my life, but this lot is so small that the dining room looks out on the wall of the neighbor's house. The realtor suggests that we re-jig the windows with beautiful stained glass. Hey, it's only money.

Meanwhile, the Politics of Child-rearing get complicated. Jesse loves the CSH house's high ceilings and boxy logistics. She is not dissuaded even when we tell her she'll have to scoop the dogs' poop in such a tiny yard. She will have to do it.

In a roundabout way, she tells us that it's not the house that makes her want to live in Cold Spring. The house is nothing. She just wants this unexpected opportunity to go to the best high school in the country (CSH High School has even been featured in Newsweek, as the director of education was only too happy to tell us).

A mere three weeks ago, Jesse had hated the very idea of going to such a school. She much preferred a larger school, she told us, one with a varied population and lots of different electives. But now that she's fallen in love with a house and its upstairs Princess Quarters, it's as if that particular teenager, the one who craved anonymity in a new school, never existed.

Exasperated, we try to sweeten the pot: "Baby, if we stick you in a house you don't like, we'll build a Really Nice Treehouse."

This has been a burning desire of hers for the last five years. Without even batting an eye, Jesse responds, "When did I ever say I wanted a tree-house?"

Me: "Okay, then. I think I saw an English Horn on Ebay the other day for just three thousand dollars."

Her face remains placid. "Oh, I've decided to just stick with the oboe."

Her dad: "Prices have really come down on baby grand pianos." She's wanted one of those since she was four.

"Thanks so much Daddy! You're the best dad! But I realized months ago that I'd miss my old piano too much. And you know how upsetting it's going to be to leave Texas and all my friends. I have to keep my old piano."

I wonder: does Mr. Obama know she's ready for the diplomatic corps? After an hour with her, Putin would give away the Kremlin.

And I have no more spine than Putin would have before this little schemer. We made a very low-ball offer on the Cold Spring Harbor house and had it flatly rejected. The nature of the rejection tells us what kind of offer will be considered by the builder. I'm again weighing up the wisdom of pouring so much money into my kid's education, for I remember (as well as I remember anything I studied long ago), that the offspring of doctors, lawyers and engineers become doctors, lawyers and engineers, whatever the school.

Some kids, the spooky bright ones for whom their intelligence is almost a disability, need some form of special education. But our kid, who is merely high IQ, whose Nobel probably will be of the Peace rather than the Physics variety, is the kind who it's almost hard to damage with a school choice. As long as there aren't head-slams in the halls and I can figure out which teachers to avoid, I expect her life chances will be the same whatever school we choose. But those in service to the Evil One, that is, people whose salaries depend on preying on parents' anxieties, are legion. They convince parents that Acme Elite Academy is all that stands between their child and permanent loserdom.

I suppose I'll give in to the attractions of such an education, because as long as others are swayed by such marketing, I'll have no difficulties in reselling the CSH house, when it comes time. And in the meantime, the neighborhood has access to a great semi-veloway, where I can cycle among blooming rhododendrons in Spring. And that will be enough for me.