If You Were Here

“Oh, my God, you guys, are you sitting down?”

As I dash toward their lunch table, Tracey and Kara shoot each other puzzled looks before looking back to me. “Um, Mia?” Tracey asks, drawing out her vowels as though she’s speaking to a dog or a particularly dim child. “Do you need us to get off our chairs and move to the floor, or are you preparing us for some piece of potentially advantageous news?”

“News! News! News!” I yip, waving my hands in front of my face like I’m trying to cool myself down as I fall into my chair. I’m so excited I can barely form multisyllabic words.

Kara immediately mirrors my excitement and begins to bounce in her seat. “What? Movie deal? The Persiflage Films thing? What’s happening?”

“Better! My house! I found my house! I got a house!”

Tracey rests her hand on my forearm in an attempt to calm me. “Whoa, slow down there, Speed Racer. I saw you yesterday and you hadn’t even mentioned anything worth a second look. Now you’re what? Making an offer? Already under contract? How can that be? You are not Little Miss Snap Decision. I mean, last week you spent twenty minutes at the Whole Foods meat counter debating between the prime rib eyes and the grass-fed filets. But you could pick a house — the biggest investment of your life — in an afternoon? Tell me how this works.”

My words come rushing out. “Okay, number one, protein is a priority in my life, and number two, because the universe essentially rented a billboard and said, ‘Hey, Mia, this is the place.’ It’s fate. I am destined to live in this house.”

Kara grabs me for a quick hug. “Yay! I’m so happy for you! Tell me everything. . starting with how you’re not buying in my parents’ neighborhood!”

I take a big breath and try to steady myself. “No worries. We’re going to be east-siders, so you’re totally safe. Anyway, we’re up in the Cambs yesterday and Liz’s looking at her MLS printouts. She’d pulled a listing that was outside of our set budget, but she said there was something about it that made her want to take me there.”

“Pumpkin, that ‘something’ is called ‘commission.’ ”

I cut Tracey a sideways glance before continuing. “So, like, Liz is all, ‘There’s an interesting notation in the remarks section,’ and I’m like, ‘What?’ and she’s like, ‘Lemme read the whole thing,’ and I’m like—”

“And you say you have trouble mastering the modern teenage dialect.”Tracey smirks.

“Ignoring you. Anyway, she goes, ‘I guess this house has a claim to fame. Someone used it in a movie a while back.’ Which, hey, that’s kind of cool, right? Then we look at a bunch of lame and boring houses and I forget she mentioned it. Then we eventually pull up and I see what she’s talking about, and right then and there in the passenger seat of Liz’s Volvo, I shat myself.”

“Oh, sweetie!” Kara gasps. “Are you okay?”

“Figurative shat,⁵³ I’m fine.” I take another huge breath and I inadvertently start grinning, remembering yesterday. “I’m actually pretty goddamned great, to tell you the truth. Listen, do me a proper. Close your eyes and picture this. Imagine yourself going down a long, circular driveway to a big brown-and-white Tudor tucked back in the woods. And in the distance? You can hear the lake.” I clear my throat and try to stop beaming.⁵⁴ “Ahem, big lake.”

“Mia, that sounds awesome!” Kara gushes. “Particularly since I can just sneak up Whitefish Bay Road to get there and I won’t be spotted.”

“You really think your parents or their friends are going to have a watch out on the roads you might drive, all in an effort to bust you if you don’t stop by home?” Tracey demands.

Kara begins to gaze off into the distance with a melancholy expression all over her face. “Without a shadow of a doubt.”

“Um, hello? Not done! So, you’re imagining this house, yes?” Then I realize I don’t actually have to have my eyes shut during this exercise and I open them. “Now visualize a big picture window. Do you see it?”

Tracey’s and Kara’s lids are firmly closed, but one of Tracey’s eyebrows is getting dangerously close to raising itself in exasperation.

“Envision this big window and on the other side is a shiny glass dining table and it’s, um. . all aglow, as if being lit by candles on a birthday cake. And two people are kind of hunkered over it. Now as you’re taking in this scene you start to hear the opening notes of a really amazing song, like. . ‘If You Were Here’ by the Thompson Twins.”

Tracey’s eyes snap open. “You’ve just completely ripped off the final scene of Sixteen Candles.”

Kara does the math a couple of beats quicker than Tracey. “No… no! No way!”

I say nothing and just nod.

Kara begins to shriek,“Holy shit, you’re buying Jake Ryan’s house!” causing all the hipsters at Lulu’s to look up from their graphic novels and Vonnegut books. Listen, kids, when you stop trimming your beards like bonsai trees you can judge. Until then, I’ll be the one doling out snide looks, thanks.

“How is that even possible?”Tracey wonders.

I reply, “The Jake Ryan character lived in Abington Cambs, so it makes sense that’s where his house would be. John Hughes filmed a ton of stuff up there, so it figures he shot a real place. Plus, all homes go up for sale eventually, right? Why not that house and why not now? My point is that this is the universe’s way of telling me I’m meant to buy Jake Ryan’s house.”

Tracey persists: “Wasn’t that place kind of a mansion? And it’s close to the water? I’m not sure how to say this, so I’ll just say it — I realize you’re doing well, but I didn’t realize you were doing mansion-on-the-lake well.”

“Weeeeell,” I drawl.“Remember how the house was so quintessentially eighties?”

“Oh, yeah,” Kara agrees. “All the chintz and the glass tables and brass accents. That movie’s like a living time capsule.”

I nod. “Right. The good news is that, um, the eighties never quite ended there. I guess the couple who owned it during filming sold it, and they sold it to someone else, who died shortly afterward, so nothing’s been touched in at least twenty years. A trust owns the place now, and they’ve priced it to sell to anyone who wants to take on the renovations. Mac hasn’t even seen it yet, but when I told him he could tear out drywall, he was totally behind me.”

“Mmm-hmm, mmm-hmm, right. But it’s still a mansion on the lake, and those aren’t cheap,”Tracey persists.

I begin to squirm a bit in my seat. Sometimes I wish Tracey would stop writing terse police dramas and go back to chick lit. She was a lot less intense back then. “You’d make one hell of an interrogator,” I observe.

“Uh-huh,” she agrees, not breaking her gaze.

“Fine, it’ll be a bit of a stretch financially, but we can do it, especially if we tackle some of the rehabbing ourselves. Plus, I’ll get a big check once I finish my work in progress, which, ugh, don’t remind me about right now. Anyway, if I get in a financial pinch, I can create a new book series, maybe for adults this time. Come on! It’s Jake Ryan’s house! You can’t put a price on that!” I exclaim.

“Except you can, because that’s the nature of real estate,” Tracey says.

“No, Mia’s right,” Kara agrees. “Ask any woman between age thirty to fifty and she’ll tell you that Jake Ryan was her ideal man. I mean, who wouldn’t fall in love with the hot guy who actually gave a shit about inner beauty? And when he showed up at Samantha Baker’s sister’s wedding in the Porsche? That’s every modern girl’s dream of the knight on the white horse. Did you know the Washington Post did a big article about his enduring legacy a while back? Twenty-five years later, women still want Jake Ryan to do filthy things to them. Fiiiillll-theee. I know; I read their e-mails.”⁵⁵

Tracey rakes her hand through her curls. “Honestly, I never saw the appeal. Too pale, too brooding. Not for me. Also, it bears repeating that a) Jake Ryan is fictional; ergo b) he never lived in that house, and c) you absolutely can put a price on that. In fact, I’ll wager that price was clearly marked on the MLS sheet.”

“Listen,” I say. “The bottom line is this: I have faith in fate and I take stock in signs.”

This is no exaggeration; I’m a firm believer in destiny. Maybe this is because I grew up listening to my right-