A Map of the World - Jane Hamilton [127]
“I need the cash,” I said again. I wasn’t sure there was anything in me that went deeper than my stinging skin. I wasn’t sure I’d ever felt much more than an animal sensation, a veering toward ruin. Everywhere I looked I kept seeing that sign, I Need Food.
“I can tell already that it’s a real special piece of property,” Sandy said as we walked along the edge of the soybean field. It was a respectable stand and the only green thing close to the ground. She was probably seeing the place divided up into five-acre lots with dream houses, sprawling brick affairs with hardwood floors and decks, windows and views, stone fireplaces, master bedrooms with walk-in closets and Jacuzzis, family rooms, great rooms, mud rooms, closets, closets, closets. “It’s going to take that special buyer. Now, you say that this property, parts of it anyway, cannot be zoned residential, is that right? Is it locked into some kind of conservation easement?” She was huffing and puffing as we climbed the slope to the plateau. “I just gotta get back into aerobics,” she muttered. She kicked the ground and the earth rose in a puff of smoke. “Is it dry or what?” When she’d had a chance to catch her breath and scan the horizon, she pursed her lips, as if to whistle. She blew out a silent stream of air as she shook her head.
It is a good place. With your back to the east you hardly notice the greyhound racetrack in the distance. You can see the fields laid out in squares, the pond sparkling in the sunlight, and the old orchard beyond. You can see the cows standing still around the few shade trees in their worn pasture. You can see how far the woods stretch. You can see the marsh with its cattails, and the cranes lifting off into the air, making their guttural trill.
“There’s a marsh, a bog, and a fen on this property,” I said, which was stretching the definitions of those wet places slightly. We definitely had a marsh, and pretty much had a bog. The fen was questionable.
“No kidding,” she said. “I didn’t know there were so many things like that.” The bog is what had sold me on the place originally. A farm with a barn and a bog. “This is a real special piece of property you’ve got here,” she said for about the third time. “I’ll tell you what.” She was going to deliver a secret, a Sandy Brickman kind of secret. She put the stem of her sunglasses into her mouth. They hung from her lips like some gruesome piece of orthodontia.
“Yes?” I said, waiting for the revelation.
“We’ll have to have the house appraised, do a survey, work up the papers, take care of the business. I’m going to zip back to the office and make a few phone calls.” She managed to say that with her mouth full.
“I’d really like to get this going,” I said.
She put her glasses back on. “I think I’m having an inspiration, Guy.” She called me Guy, as if it was my name and only I hadn’t known it. “What you have to do is sit tight. That’s all you have to do.”
Sandy Brickman, as it turned out, was the answer to the prayers somebody must have been making. Theresa was the only person I knew who prayed every day. It was more than likely that she was praying not only for her damned soul but also for Alice, and for me. I hold Theresa personally accountable for conjuring up Sandy Brickman. In the weeks that followed, the appraiser and the surveyor did their work. Even before Sandy wrestled with the details of our farm, the image of Mrs. Arnold L. Reesman must have risen up in her mind. Sandy had spent much of her professional life cultivating Mrs. Reesman. She must have somehow appealed to the lady not as an obsequious money-grubbing real estate agent, but as a friend, an advocate, perhaps a lover of nature.
It was mid-August when Sandy showed up. Alice had been in Racine for nearly two months. I remember Emma, around that time, wanting to go to the summer library story hour on Tuesday afternoon.