I'm So Happy for You by Lucinda Rosenfeld

Author:Lucinda Rosenfeld [ROSENFELD, LUCINDA]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9780316078856
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
Published: 2009-07-29T04:00:00+00:00

Adam accompanied Wendy back down to the city that Saturday, ostensibly to help look for a new apartment. But on Sunday, when all the open houses were held, he claimed not to feel well and went back to sleep. So Wendy, trying not to feel any more exasperated than she already felt, set out alone in search of new digs.

The first place she saw had a bathtub in the kitchen; the second had been advertised as occupying the “garden floor” of a brownstone, but only the upper half of the apartment’s two windows were aboveground.

At first glance, the third place Wendy visited—the top floor of an aluminum-sided frame house, five streets away from their current address—was scarcely an improvement over the first two. Proximity aside, it might as well have been located on a different planet. At one end of the block was a car wash, at the other a store that sold nothing but fire extinguishers. The concrete expanse of the Prospect Expressway was directly across the street; catty-corner to that was an entrance to the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway. Wendy had to assume that the sound of traffic filled the living room at all hours of the day and night. The stairwell smelled like kitty litter. And the brokers were charging a fee of 12 percent of the annual rent for the privilege—or was it punishment?—of living there.

But on second glance, the place was clean and spacious enough. It had a small alcove off the bedroom that, in a crunch, could be used as a nursery. The R station was right across the street, on Fourth Avenue. Most important, the rent was comparable to their current one. Figuring they were unlikely to do better, and concerned that some other desperate couple might come to the same dreary conclusion, Wendy called Adam.

He sounded as if he’d just woken up. Or maybe he was still asleep. But after listening to a brief description, he muttered, “It sounds fine—let’s take it.”

“Don’t you want to come see it first?” asked Wendy.

“I trust you,” said Adam.

“The bedroom is in back, but it might be loud, especially at night,” said Wendy, wary of being held accountable if and when they couldn’t sleep.

“We’ll get used to it.”

“And you realize it directly faces the expressway? I mean, you can practically see into the cars.”

“Whatever. It’s not about the view out the window.”

“Then what’s it about?”

Adam paused before proclaiming, “It’s about being with the people who care for you. Unfortunately, certain people don’t always realize that.”

“Point taken,” said Wendy.

But as she wrote a check for several thousand dollars and handed it to the broker, she wondered if she even agreed with the point that her husband had made.

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