“No,” Joe said. “My sister askedmeto talk about it, and when Marguerite saw me flailing, she stepped in as usual to save me. Believe me, Mom, I didn’t tell her how the baby gets started. Catch me doing that! What I don’t understand is whyyoudidn’t tell her.”
“She’s fourteen years old!” Mrs. Stark said.
“Mom,” Joe said. “Fourteen’s too old not to know. You can bet all the boys know.”
“And what does that matter?” she said. “It’s not as if she’s going steady. At fourteen? When she’s sixteen and going tothe … the soda fountain with a boy, it’ll be time enough to explain.”
“The cat’s pretty well out of the bag now, I think,” Joe said. “And I’m sorry to disillusion you, but kids tend to lie a fair amount to their parents about where they’re going after school and so forth. About whether the parents will be at the party. About whether they played Spin the Bottle at that party. Modern adolescence is like an iceberg: only about ten percent of it is on the surface.”
“And there are the cars, of course,” I said.
Joe said, “Cars?”
I made an impatient motion with my hand. “Americans have a great many cars, and I suspect that if one sits in a car with a boy, there may be a great deal of … privacy.”
“Boy, you’ve got that right,” Joe said, and grinned. On a positive note, this conversation seemed to be improving his mood.
“I can’t even—” Mrs. Stark began, then stopped.
“And Margueritetriedto tell her using chickens,” Joe said.
“Chickens? What do?—”
“About fertilizing the eggs,” I explained. “I said that if the rooster covers the hen, the egg is fertilized and can grow into a chick. I thought that was a rather clever way to describe it, but Sophie has a most curious and scientific mind and wasn’t satisfied, for humans, you know, are not chickens. Having three openings instead of one, for example.” And at an inarticulate noise from Mrs. Stark, “But she did say that it sounded disgusting, which is perhaps good news?”
“Face it, Mom,” Joe said. “Sophie’s likely to be almost as disobedient as I was. She’s just not going to be as sneaky about it.”
“But you werewonderful,”Mrs. Stark said. “A wonderful child!”
“Well, thanks,” Joe said. “But remember that iceberg? Lookat it this way: I turned out all right, didn’t I? Other than marrying ashiksa,but then, I’m pretty crazy about myshiksaprincess, so no hope there. I’m guessing Sophie will be OK too. If you think any boy’s ever going to take advantage of her—well, I’d like to introduce you to Marguerite. She slashed a guy across the forehead with a knife, remember?”
“That may not be the assurance you think it is,” I said. “I expect that Mrs. Stark would prefer that Sophie not slash. She could kick, perhaps? Or a knee is very useful. Maybe you should teach her, Joe.”
The next thing that happened wasnotthat we purchased the tract of land and the apartment house, for we had to wait for the money to come through first, and then for the loans to do so. Christie’s would send a check eventually, and we would deposit the check, but there was apparently to be a great deal of “clearing” between each of these steps, for a check was only a piece of paper until proven otherwise. I did wish I’d been allowed to take that “Economics of Enterprise” class, but in its absence, Joe and I had had a long conversation with the bank manager, who’d been most helpful in explaining.
I spent the time before the purchases could be completed by continuing to help Jean with her real-estate business, serving as a sort of general dogsbody and learning what happened behind the scenes. There was a great deal of law and also a great many contracts, and with these, Joe was most helpful. We’d learned Philosophy together, and now we were learning real estate together, too. We also interviewed a number of possible stockbroking firms, for there would be rather a lot of money to be dealt with while we learned to make wise choices in our land acquisitions.
To my annoyance, nearly every man with whom we spokeaddressed his replies to Joe, even when I’d been the one asking the questions and Joe had pointed out that the money was from the sale of my family’s property. After four or five such experiences, I admit I despaired. At last, however, we found the right person at a reputable old firm in San Francisco. Not a young man, as I’d expected, but an older one with much experience, who seemed more focused on how to achieve my objectives than on convincing me that my objectives were wrong and I should listen to his much better ideas.
When I commented about his willingness to speak to me directly, Mr. Parks said, “Mrs. Stark, I’m convinced that women can bemoreskilled at investing than men.”
“How?” I asked. Was this merely flattery? I would telephone the clients on the list he’d given me, of course—and try to find clientsnoton the list as well to question—but I didn’t wish an advisor who went along with my every uninformed whim, either.
He said, “Because men go in thinking they already know, and women go in looking to find out.”
So you see why we chose him.
What else did I do, besides fail utterly at meekness? Well, I rode in the car with Jean and her clients and walked through innumerable houses, absorbing everything I could about the personal side of selling and buying real estate andwatching her ask questions of the wife as well as the husband. “Remember,” she told me at the end of one such day, “that the wife is the one spending most of her time at home. Do you know what the most important room in the house is?”
“The living room,” I said, “where one entertains, and also sits in the evenings.”
“Exactly wrong,” she said. “It’s the kitchen. That’s the deciding factor. Besides that, whatever the client says about the age of the roof and square footage and repairs, it’s the location,the layout, and the light. How does the housefeel?When I get a new listing or look at one, I make sure I go in alone, and then I stand in the middle of the place and take it in. Sometimes I even close my eyes. People think they’re choosing based on the facts. They’re choosing based on the feeling. Watch whether they’re open, going through a new house, or closed off to it. Then try to figure out what made them that way. Is it color? Color can be changed. Or is it that the kitchen is dark, the ceilings are low, and the bathroom has no window?”
You see how useful!
Oh, and theotherthing that happened during this time? This one was the best of all. No, it wasn’t the decision about the check to the Red Cross. It was something much less noble. I was never going to be as kind as my mother, I feared, for I was cut from different cloth. Saxon cloth.
That was why, on a Friday morning three weeks after the sale—the check was in the bank now, and in the next two months, we would finally be closing on the apartment building and the land—Joe and I were in a Stanford office. In the office of the chairman of the Economics Department, to be exact, having just knocked at his door.
