Playing the 'Son' Card (4 page)

“Oh, okay.” I stammered a bit.
“Right, of course, Melanie. Thank you.”

I put the phone down, and went to
get my jacket off the hanger. I was fully ready to go. As I walked
down the corridor to the front, I thought about how to suggest that
Melanie call me Troy, instead of the ‘Mr. Evanson’ that she was
using. However, that kind of adult conversational skill was a bit
beyond me at present, and I figured that I would just go with the
flow for now.

I smiled at Melanie, and thanked her
again as I headed out the door. The green SUV was sitting in the
first spot, obviously for the head of the office. It was a new
model, and upper end, too. I thought about the car that Mom had
left at home when she flew out to the coast. This new SUV was
certainly a step up.

I’d only waited a minute when my Mom
came rushing out the door. For a moment, it was almost as if she
didn’t recognize me standing by the car.

I saw a big surprised look on her
face as recognition hit home. For a moment, she slowed her rush,
and took me in from head to toe.

“Oh my God! Troy! I can’t believe
it’s you.” She walked right up and kissed me right on the mouth,
and gave me a quick hug. “Someone took my boy away and replaced him
with a man.”

My wide smile was the best greeting
she could have seen. I didn’t have time to say anything before she
spoke again.

“Look, sorry, but we’ve got to go.
We’re in a rush. We’ll talk on the way, okay.”

She clicked the button to unlock the
car, and we each got in. I got buckled up and stayed quiet as she
started the car and backed out of her parking spot. I was about to
say something as she pulled out into traffic, but my comment was
stalled by her grabbing her cell phone.

She punched in a number and in a
moment I hear her telling someone that she was running five minutes
late and she’d be there in a couple of minutes. She was very polite
and apologetic as she spoke, and I gathered that it was the people
we were to meet at the house she was showing.

She hung up, and again before I
could say a word, she spoke. “I’m glad you’re here with me, Troy.
Maybe the only way we can spend time together is for you to tag
along with me.”

She went on to explain all about the
house. I heard that she’d had it listed for just over three months,
that the sellers were still living in the house but were away for
the long weekend. She told me the features of the house, and a
little about the neighborhood, and finished up by telling me the
price history. It had been reduced in price once, after two months
on the market, and if it did not sell within the next week or two,
she was going to try and get the sellers to agree to lower the
price further.

By the time she finished all that
background, we were pulling up at the house.

There was another real estate agent
already there, standing beside his car talking to a couple. I
guessed they were the potential buyers.

Mom introduced herself. She knew the
other agent, but of course she didn’t know the couple.

“Hi. I’m Liz Evanson. It’s very nice
to meet you.” Then she added, “This is my son, Troy
Evanson.”

I’d wondered how she was going to
play the ‘son’ card. We all shook hands. Mom handed out her card,
and then she glanced at me. I’d put some in my new jacket pocket,
so I pulled out two cards, handing one to the other agent and one
to the couple. Mom smiled, and I knew that was what she’d
wanted.

I was a little confused. I didn’t
think I was supposed to take any kind of active part in all this,
but here I was all dressed up, and meeting people and handing out a
business card. Well, if this was what Mom wanted, I could go along
with it. A small price to pay for a nice office and the promise of
a nice new life.

They all headed for the front door
of the house, and I trailed along behind everyone. I was close
enough, however, to hear my Mom start into her selling mode. She
described the work that had been done on the front of the house,
and pointed out the new roof, and the freshly painted front porch
area.

Inside the house, we did the tour
with Mom talking pretty much the whole time, trying to sell the
couple on everything they saw. She told them about all the new or
nearly new stuff, and pointed out all the nice features, as if they
could not see for themselves. I’d never seen her fully in action
like this before, and I just supposed that this was the way she did
it.

Finally, the tour was done. Mom
finished with, “Troy and I will be outside if you have any
questions, and we’ll give you as much time as you need to look
around a little more and talk among yourselves.”

I gathered that this was so that the
buyers agent and the buyers could talk about the house, and
possibly discuss prices and purchase options. If they liked what
they saw, they might even ask Mom to come back inside to talk about
an offer.

I followed Mom outside, and we stood
in the driveway. She put her arm around me.

“Troy, I just cant’ believe you’re
here. This is so wonderful.”

“I’m glad I’m here, Mom. It’s really
good to see you.” I wanted to take her in my arms and hug her
tightly, but figured that might be a little unprofessional in the
circumstances.

She looked at me, up and down.
“You’re as tall as me now, Troy. You must be eating okay back at
home.”

I smiled. “Well, not too bad, Mom.
It’s not as much fun when you’re cooking for yourself.”

“Don’t I know it. If Melanie didn’t
make sure I eat at the office, and if Sally didn’t make sure I eat
at her place, I don’t know what I’d do.”

“So, Mom,” I started, “I really like
my office and everything.” I was going to go on, and ask her what
exactly my role was supposed to be at the office.

“Good, Troy, good,” she replied.
“You know, when I came out of the office I thought for a moment
that you were your dad. You look so tall and grownup, and so much
like him. It really is just wonderful to look at you.”

I didn’t really know how to reply to
that, so I just said, “Thank you.”

Just at that moment, our time along
was interrupted as the couple and the agent came back
outside.

I knew right away there was going to
be no offer, as the agent looked at us and said, “Thank you for
your time this afternoon.”

He and Mom spoke for a moment, and
then we all shook hands again, and they headed for their car to
leave. Mom and I walked back into the house to do a check and make
sure it was left as we found it, and all locked up.

We got back into Mom’s car, and she
showed me a couple of things that I acknowledged were pretty
cool.

“This is what I would use, if they
were going to write an offer,” she explained, pulling out her
laptop, and a small bag with a portable printer.

“I’ve got this stuff rigged up with
a small power supply, and the laptop is hooked up to a statewide
wireless connection that works over a cell phone link.”

She opened it all up to show me, and
brought up the house we’d just seen. I watched as she clicked on
the folder and file icons, and brought up the listing for the
house.

“I can then click on this link on my
own listing file, and bring up the state real estate board site,
and it automatically brings up the form for doing offers. I only
have to type in the name of the potential buyers, and the price
they want to offer, along with any subject clauses they want to put
in, and it prints right here.”

“Wow,” I acknowledged. “That’s
pretty cool, Mom. I thought I was pretty good on computer stuff,
but you’re way ahead of me on this one.”

She smiled in response to my praise.
“I thought you’d appreciate this setup. I was thinking of you when
I did it.”

She went on to explain that she’d
heard about it at one her company’s ‘head of office’ meetings, and
decided to pioneer it in her office.

“It’s already made a difference in
one sale, so I’m about to expand it to the rest of the
agents.”

I was curious. “When was the time
you used it and it made a difference, Mom?”

I think she was pleased with my
expressed interest. “Well, I’d had a listing, and an agent from
another company wanted to show it. The buyers liked it, and he told
me they were going to go back to his office and write an offer. I
explained that I could do it right in my car, and I’d be happy to
help him do it right then, if he wanted.”

“He was a little reluctant, but
agreed after consulting his clients. They all sat in the car, and I
brought out the stuff I you see right now. They agreed on the
price, and added a couple of conditions about inspection and stuff,
and in ten minutes I had an offer signed, and ready to present to
my sellers.”

She finished up her explanation.
“Later on, after the deal was done, the buyer’s agent told me that
having the offer written right then had made a difference, and that
the buyers might not have gone ahead with the offer if they hadn’t
done it right then.”

I really was impressed. “Wow, that’s
really good, Mom.”

Her cheerfulness now disappeared.
“It’s just too bad I didn’t need to use this today.”

She was a little quieter on the way
back to the office. I think, however, that I was more disappointed
than she was that she had not made a sale. I’d really hoped for
something for her.

Mom put a good spin on it, though.
She pointed out that most showings do not turn into offers, and
that it was all part of the business.

“We just have to show our best, both
about the house, and about ourselves. They are also buying us, as
well as the house. You can have the best house, but if you have a
bad agent, they won’t want to work with you and that can break the
sale. You can have a less than perfect house, but if you’re a great
agent, they will feel like they can work with you, and that might
just make a sale.”

I liked her point of
view.

We’d still not really talked about
my role, but she invited me to sit with her for a few minutes when
we got back to the office. She had a bit of time to eat something,
and she took a few minutes to explain that she just wanted me to
feel at home at the office.

“You’ll be going to school of
course, but there’s after school, and weekends, and sometimes even
lunch, maybe. I’ll be spending a lot of time at the office, and I
thought if I made it easy for you to be here, we might see more of
each other.”

“Okay, Mom, I get that part, and I
think that’s great. Thank you,” I acknowledged. “But, what about
the business cards, and going to show houses, and
stuff?”

“Well, you are my son, so you make a
good ‘broker’s representative.’ There is normally no such thing, so
it’s a title I’ve just made for you. You can do as much or as
little as you want around the office. If you want to get more
involved, I’ll welcome it. You can learn it if you want. If you
don’t want to get involved, that’s okay, too. As for today, well,
it doesn’t hurt to see what I do, and how some of this works,
okay?”

“Sure, Mom,” I agreed. “Sounds
good.”

She then explained that she had a
meeting, and when she finished, we’d head over to Sally and Jack’s.
She got up and kissed me on the cheek and I left to head back to my
own office to wait.

My new suit was already there,
hanging up in my cupboard, along with a note from the salesman,
thanking me for my business.

I sat down behind my desk, thinking
about what had happened so far on this day, and how different
things were already.

So far, so good, I thought. Let’s
just see where things go from here.

CHAPTER

6

The plans for the late afternoon
changed a bit not long after I’d returned to my office. The phone
buzzed and I answered it again with my name.

“Troy,” a mature male voice said,
“It’s Jack.”

“Oh, hello, Uncle Jack,” I answered.
I’d been calling them Uncle Jack and Aunt Sally for as long as I
could remember. I had no natural aunts or uncles, and they made for
really good ‘pretend’ ones.

“Listen,” he said, “I was just
talking to your mom, and she said that she might be a while. I’m
going to be passing nearby, and I wondered if you wanted me to stop
and pick you up. You might as well come back to the house now, and
we can get you some supper. Then we have to go out tonight. The
boys have their diving class tonight, and I made arrangements with
their instructor for you to attend as a guest student.”

“Oh, okay,” I replied. That was a
little unexpected, and I was not certain my own diving skills were
up to any kind of public scrutiny. It had been a long time since
I’d done any diving. Pretty much since my Dad had died.

“Anyway, Troy, I’ll be there in a
bit. See you then, okay?”

“Okay, Uncle Jack,” I said.
“Thanks.”

I hung up, and little disquieted by
the thought of diving again, but at least the boys were younger and
hopefully not too good as divers.