If You Were Here by Jen Lancaster Page B

here, I fell in love with the thick white wooden-slat blinds. “Those are custom-made plantation shades!”
    Tracey’s not having it. “Yeah, and you certainly could never replicate those, right?”
    Ooh, good point.
    “To be fair, Tracey, you’ve told me how much you love French Provincial houses.”
    “Yes,” she agrees. “In Provence.”
    I feel like I have to defend our bringing her here, so I say,“I swear this place didn’t seem nearly so over-the-top with the lights off.”
    Before she can get in another snarky remark, I add, “Plus, this room isn’t what sold us. You haven’t yet seen the adorable guesthouse off the back patio. A guesthouse! As in a separate house for guests! You know what people in Indiana don’t have? A spare house for visitors. How exciting is that? Guests could have all the peace and privacy they wanted. Genius! And more important, there’s a pool and a pond. Do you realize if we buy this house we could be all, ‘We’ve got a pool and a pond. Pond would be good for you,’ every time someone came to visit. How hilarious would that be?”
    “Mia, you can’t drop that kind of cash on a house just because you want to quote Caddyshack .”
    I guess we’ll see about that.
    “Let’s just finish the tour before we completely rule it out,” I reason.
    We move on to the ultra-high-end kitchen, with its custom cabinetry and PRO series Sub-Zero fridge and wine cooler and double dishwasher and . . . ropes and ropes of fake ivy and pretend grapes. They seem to have snaked their way from the entry hall, over the balcony, and back down the wall in here. The plastic vines are strewn everywhere—on top of cabinets, over the fridge, looped from the ceiling, and woven into the window treatments. Tracey grows increasingly appalled. “No, seriously, the owners have to fire this home stager. Hell, I might just e-mail some photos to Get It Sold , because clearly they could use the help.”
    Then we get to the big dance—the two-story family room with its trompe l’oeil tray ceiling with its columns and cherubs. Tracey doesn’t notice it until I point up, and when she does, she jumps a little. “It just gets better and better.”
    “To be fair, that wasn’t done cheaply,” I say, attempting to be the devil’s advocate for the house. I’m coming around to agreeing that it might be a tad much, but someone dropped a ton of cash upgrading this place, and I really do like the pool and the pond.
    Okay, I can’t not say it again.
    Pond would be good for you.
    See? Hilarious! Every time!
    “Oh, no,”Tracey agrees. “You’re right on target there. Someone paid big money on these hideous treatments, thus proving the axiom ‘You can’t buy taste.’ ”
    Mac’s been looking in the pantry (which, of course, boasts another ginormous chandelier) (and, of course, impressed me on our last visit) and comes out to rejoin the conversation. “Obviously the place isn’t our taste—”
    “This is no one’s taste,” Tracey insists.
    Mac is undeterred. “But the reason we brought you here is to get your opinion on the bones of the place. Is what’s underneath all the grapes and sparkles worth salvaging?”
    Tracey pulls out a chair and has a seat at the rococo-legged kitchen table with the five-inch-thick marble top. “Here’s my issue with that—you said the house was priced reasonably but not great.”
    Liz sits across from us and she nods, toying with the enormous bowl of fake plastic grapes in the center. “I feel like they’d really need to come down on the asking price to make this place a good deal, and from what the listing agent says, they’re not terribly negotiable. It’s not a short-sale situation, at least not yet.”
    Tracey processes this information. “To me, it doesn’t make financial sense to pay a premium for expensive fixtures and then get rid of them. You’re going to have to fork over multiple thousands to chase the ghost of Carmella Soprano out of here. You want