Chapter Five
reverse your telescope. Point the small end at a sign that is neither here nor now, a long way off in space and as many years past as it has been since the end of World War II.
The sign is in a dozen chromatic colors, a picture of a vine-covered cottage with a curl of smoke winding from a fieldstone chimney, and an impossibly long-legged girl waving from the door. The giant letters read:
BELLE REVE ESTATES
“Gracious Living for America’s Heroes” VETS! OWN YOUR OWN HOME! $350 cash, $40.25 monthly, pays all
FREE!
3-speed washer, home freezer fifteen-foot picture window
Before the paint on the sign was dry, three cars were parked in the muddy ruts in front of it and three couples were being guided through the model home by Belle Reve salesmen— estate managers, they preferred to be called.
Their technique was identical. If any one of them had lost his voice, or been blasted to charcoal by a resentful God, any of the others could have taken his place in mid-syllable. And their movements were as exact as a ballet troupe; when salesman A brought his charges into a room, salesman B was just on the way out. The rooms were handsomely made and cutely furnished, but the sales director didn’t like to have too many people in a room at one time—gave the impression the rooms were small.
When the salesman had finished, a prospect got back to the sparkling kitchen, where the closing desk was, under the dizzy impression that somehow he could move into the place tomorrow, furnished as it was, simply by signing his name «nd handing over the twenty-dollar binder. And a swimming pool would be on their lawn the day after to be shared with
another nice couple like them, and the children could gambol on the grassy sward unmenaced by city traffic, and they would spit right hi the eye of the city apartment-house janitor after telling him they were getting out of the crowded, evil-smelling, budget-devouring, paper-walled, sticky-windowed, ahfless, lightless, privacyless hole in the wall forever. They were i^oing Home to Belle Reve. They signed and paid.
Time passed.
Belle Reve receded before them always like a mirage. The four-color circulars continued to arrive, and the statements of their down-payment balance due. Plus title-search fee. Plus handling charge. Plus interest. Plus legal fee. Plus sewer assessment. Plus land tax. Plus road tax. They paid.
Time passed.
Their house was built; their hour had struck! The kids wailed, “Is that it?” and began to cry. Whichever was weaker, the wife or husband, sagged shoulders and stared in horror at the sea of mud, the minute house riding it like an ark, like one ark hi a fleet of identical arks drawn up rank by rank for review by a snickering deity. Whichever was stronger, the husband or wife, squared shoulders and said loudly, “It may not look like much now, but give us a few weekends and we’ll have it just like the demonstration place. And we’ll be working for ourselves, not some landlord. This place isn’t an expense; it’s an asset.”
Time passed.
Sod was laid on the mud. It sank hi curious hummocks and swales when it rained. Takes a little time to settle, honey. Fill was dumped on the sod, and topsoil on the fill. Grass was planted on the topsoil to burn and die in the summer. Honey, we can’t water it this year because of the water rates. In a normal year, sure, but we have a few non-recurring charges, and once they’re out of the way—— The sewer assessment. The road assessment. The school tax. And we ought to do something about the foundation, I guess. You catch these little cracks early and you never have trouble again. Every house settles a little, honey.
Time passed.
The place isn’t an expense, honey; it’s an asset. Do you realize we have an equity of eight thousand dollars hi this house we can recover at the drop of a hat if we can find some-
body to buy the place and if there was some place else to go? It makes a man feel mighty good to know he has eight thousand dollars to his name. I know it runs a little higher than anybody figured, but things are up all over. Insurance, sewer assessment, road tax, fuel oil, interest, assessment in that stockholders’ suit whatever it was about—it isn’t more than a hundred twenty-five a month, if that. If I get the raise and swing that note on the car we can have the roof repaired before the November rams, and then get right to work on the oil heater—please don’t cry, honey. Besides. There’s. No. Place. Else. To. Go.