“Hey, sorry to keep you waiting, I was on with my honey, he’s in Toronto for a game.”
Even her voice was fabulous—dulcet, a little sultry, like a newscaster. Jane relaxed; today would be okay.
“We’re so happy to meet you. I’m Jane, and this is Lindsey.”
“Please, come on in!”
Tracey insisted on giving them a tour of the house, which was so large it felt like a hotel, more so because staff—housekeepers, gardeners, cooks—discreetly darted about in the background.
“This is so huge! You must get lost in here,” Lindsey marveled.
Tracey laughed politely. “Oh, I know my way around. I’ve been working on this house for three years now, and I’ll probably never finish. There’s so much for you to do, I’m not even sure where to start. The media room, the family room, the kitchen.... Although Patricia, who cooks for us, she rules the kitchen with an iron fist.”
“Got it, we’ll steer clear of the kitchen. Happy to start anywhere, tackle anything.” The house was so large the tour could take hours, and Jane was itching to get to work.
“Okay, well... the kids have a school room, where they get their tutoring, and it’s messy. The media room, I mean—DVDs everywhere, do we still need them? Derek’s golf-gear closet out by the putting green is a disaster. I’d love for you to get into his man cave, but that’s pretty off-limits. The pool house is full of floaties and all kinds of random stuff. Oh, and the wine cellar, it’s, like—there’s no system. And of course there’s my closet, but—I’m not ready for that yet. Dreading it, in fact, so putting it off.”
“We’ll do that whenever you want!” Lindsey effused.
Jane wondered if this enormous house, with all its rooms, with the staff required to maintain it, made Tracey feel like a powerful queen in her palace, or a tiny and insignificant mite. Jane was already finding it stultifying and oppressive. But that could simply be the reflection of her lugubrious mood.
They started in the golf closet, a simple job that required sorting clubs and tossing lots of balls and tees, then worked in the game room, where many games were still in shrink-wrap and others missing pieces that would never be found, then in a bar-kitchen area on the lower level copiously stocked with top-shelf liquor and boxes of candy and junk food, some well past their expiration dates. These were all relatively easy tasks, and the monotony was reassuring: Jane could work on autopilot while Lindsey nattered on and on and on about her school, her love life, her affection for gummy bears. Jane made a concerted effort not to watch the clock and was surprised at how quickly the day flew by.
In the late afternoon, they tackled the wine cellar, an enormous, glass-walled, temperature-controlled room over thirty feet long with sliding glass doors facing the bar-kitchen area they’d tidied earlier in the day. Jane was glad she’d brought a sweater, because the cellar’s thermostat was set to fifty-fivedegrees. Lindsay was shivering in her flimsy yellow T-shirt and had to run to her car to grab a sweatshirt. Between the chill and the expansive, thick glass windows, Jane felt like a guppy in giant fish tank. A tank with stagnant water that needed aeration.
The towering wine racks started at the floor and reached to the ceiling, a setup you might find in an upscale wine-centric restaurant. Jane did the math: there were ten racks, each fully stocked with twenty-five bottles. So two hundred fifty bottles, plus many more in the boxes and crates stacked on the floor. A daunting amount of booze for some, but a welcome, diverting challenge for Jane.
Jane had been trying to train her palate and learn more about wine, so she framed this project as educational. She liked studying the labels of the bottles, each one an attempt to convey some essential truth about the grape juice inside: its provenance, its aesthetic, its price. The bottles had been racked with no rhyme, no reason. Using the sliding ladder, they took all of them down, and then sorted by country, by region, by color, by varietal. To do this project justice, Jane thought, would take a few days, but they did all they could in the time allotted.
When it was almost five o’clock, while Lindsey finished collapsing boxes, the sort of manual task Jane always delegated to her when possible, Jane went in search of Tracey.
The vast rooms were eerily quiet. She heard the muffled sound of children playing and laughing somewhere far off. When Jane passed a housekeeper in a hallway and asked where Tracey was, she shrugged, unhelpfully telling Jane “you just need to look around.”
After meandering for what seemed like eons, Jane stepped into the empty kitchen, where the cook had laid out a meal in warming dishes on the counter, and finally heard Tracey’s voicecoming from the adjacent mudroom. Jane stopped in her tracks, not wanting to interrupt.
“I know, babe, but I’m pretty busy here.... Yeah, the kids are good, they had a good day at school and are playing, got to help them with some homework after dinner.... Well, what do you want me to say? I’m sorry I can’t be there. I can’t make every game.... Just don’t, okay? Focus on your game tonight, we’ll all be watching.... Are you serious? You think I should pull the kids out of school, upend their lives to come to every game? You know Toronto is on the other side of the continent, don’t you?”
Jane stayed frozen in place. Tracey’s tone was briskly professional—cool, implacable, but Jane could hear the frustration and anger bubbling underneath.
“Babe, they need to have structure, that’s so important for kids.... No, not more important than you,asimportant as you. What do you want from me? I don’t want to leave them with a nanny.... Fine. You know, I can’t do this anymore.... What does that mean? I don’t know exactly, but I can’t dothis... really, Derek? Okay, go ahead, you do what you need to do.... I really don’t care.... Let’s not do this right now, okay? All you need to focus on is having a good game.... I love you, okay? Bye.”
Jane quietly scurried out of the kitchen, then immediately reentered, calling out for Tracey as if she had just arrived.
“Coming!” Tracey answered. She entered moments later, looking gorgeous and composed, but Jane could see the forlorn sadness in her eyes.
As they walked to their cars, Lindsay asked Jane what she was up to that night. Jane had no plans, and after that big empty house, she was dreading going home to her tiny empty house.
“I’m not sure, actually.”
“I’m pretty positive the guy I am crushing on will be working at Trader Joe’s. He’s almost always there at this time. You want to be my wingwoman?”
Jane considered. She had offered. Also, she did need some groceries, and that Trader Joe’s wasn’t much of a detour.
In the early evening, parking was tight and the store packed. Jane was no longer shopping for two, so roaming the aisles made her feel slightly melancholy despite the hyper-cheery, vaguely Polynesian vibe that endeared Trader Joe’s to a lot of people. Since Jane had learned the company was owned by a monolithic German corporation, the Walmart of Germany, the quirk and geniality belied a tinge of Teutonic ruthlessness.
Lindsey located her crush standing behind a counter, where he was offering samples of two items: a savory one, some kind of creamy spread on a cracker, and a sweet one, some new spin on peppermint bark.
“He’s so personable, I am sure that’s why he’s the sample guy.”
