Blake was loving his new job, and looked ten years younger when he came home. Sybil knew it had been the right thing for him to do. But she was anxious for him to find an apartment for them and he promised to search even more vigorously when he went back after Thanksgiving.
“Can we live in a hotel?” Charlie asked after his father had gone back to San Francisco.
“I hope not,” Sybil said with a stern expression. She didn’t want to live in a hotel with three children, no matter how much Charlie liked the idea. “Daddy will find something before we get there,” she promised. The realtor was negotiating for an apartment in the Millennium Tower on Mission Street on the fifty-eighth floor, with fabulous views, but it was in a somewhat dicey neighborhood, not ideal for children. It was in the financial district amid office buildings in an area that had been gentrified, but there was no park or playground for Charlie. The apartment was in a very fancy high-rise and had been up for sale for the past year, since the owner had moved to Hong Kong, and there had been construction problems in the building, which made the apartments harder to sell, but possibly easier to rent, and maybe at a more reasonable price. The realtor was hoping to get them a lease for a year or two. It was still a great building despite the construction issues. Blake was waiting to see the apartment, and several others, as soon as the realtor could organize it and get him in, while Sybil pressed him about it daily.
In the meantime, the children were enjoying their last month in New York before the holidays. Andy was seeing all his friends while he could, and going to basketball and hockey games. And Caroline still thought her parents were cruel, but managed to have fun with her friends anyway. They were going to spend Christmas in New York, and then fly to San Francisco on New Year’s Day. Sybil just hoped they had a place to live by then, and so did Blake. Not finding one so far was beginning to unnerve them both. He had a day set aside to see apartments with the realtor on the first of December, and hoped he would have better luck than he’d had in November. He didn’t see how it could be that hard to find a four-bedroom apartment, in a modern building with light and views, per his wife’s instructions. They had five apartments to see that day. The one at the Millennium Tower hadn’t come through yet, but Blake and Sybil were hopeful. Blake had been living at the Regency since he got there, which was a combination of co-op apartments and hotel suites, but he wanted to find a home for Sybil and the children, not a temporary solution.
The realtor picked him up on a foggy San Francisco morning and assured him that she felt in her bones that they would find what he was looking for that day. He hoped she was right. He was grateful to Sybil and his children for being willing to move there, and now he was determined to find a home they’d love.
The first apartment they looked at was in a 1930s building in Pacific Heights, the city’s prime residential district, but the apartment was dark and depressing, although it was a floor-through with spectacular views. It didn’t have the modern feeling Sybil wanted, and it faced north. As they drove on to the next location, Blake was beginning to wonder if he’d ever find the right apartment. He didn’t have the heart to text Sybil and tell her he’d seen another bad one. There had to be a home for them in San Francisco somewhere. All he had to do now was find it, whatever it took.
Sybil had allowed him to pursue his dream. Now he owed it to her to find them a decent home in the city that his family had graciously agreed to come to. He had his eyes closed for a minute, thinking about her and missing her, when they stopped at an intersection, and he opened his eyes and found himself staring at a building that looked very much like the Frick museum in New York. He didn’t recognize it and had never noticed it before, although they had driven through Pacific Heights several times.
“What’s that?” he asked, intrigued. It had more the appearance of a small museum than a home. There was a wall of trees around it, with the house peering over them, an elaborate gate, and a courtyard just inside. The garden seemed overgrown.
“It’s the Butterfield Mansion,” the realtor answered as she drove past the stop sign, and Blake turned around to gaze at the house behind them. It was an impressive building, in a European style, but appeared abandoned despite its grandeur.
“Who lives there?” he asked, curious about it.
“No one, not in a long time. They were an important banking family at the turn of the century, when the house was built over a hundred years ago, before the 1906 earthquake. They lost their money in the Great Depression, and sold the house. It changed hands a number of times after that, and a bank foreclosed on it five or six years ago. It’s been empty ever since. No one wants houses that size anymore. They’re too expensive to run, and too much trouble to staff. Eventually some land developer will buy it and tear it down. I don’t think the bank wants the bad publicity that will go with it when that happens. It would make a great hotel—it sits on quite a bit of land—but the area’s not zoned for that. So it’s just empty for now. It has something like twenty bedrooms, a million maids’ rooms, and a ballroom. We have the listing, but I’ve never been inside. It’s a piece of San Francisco history. It’s too bad no one has bought it, with all the high-tech money around the city now. The bank has it listed for a ridiculously low price, just to get rid of it, but it’s too big a headache for anyone to take on.” Blake nodded. It was easy to see that would be the case, but it had such dignified elegance, even in its untended, unoccupied, slightly forlorn state. Blake could tell that no one had loved it in a long time.
“What happened to the family who lived there? The Butterworths?”
“Butterfields,” she corrected. “I think they disappeared after they sold it. Or they died out. I vaguely remember that they moved to Europe. Something like that. They’re not part of the San Francisco social scene anymore.” It was sad to think about a family who had lived in so much elegance and splendor dying out. Blake was fascinated by the house and what she told him about it, but they drove on to see four more apartments he knew Sybil would hate, and he went back to his office south of Market, and to his hotel that night. He told Sybil on the phone that he had struck out again finding them an apartment.
“Something will turn up,” she said, trying to sound optimistic. “What about the one in the Millennium Tower?” she asked, although she felt squeamish about living on such a high floor in what she insisted was earthquake country, or even in case of a fire, with three children to walk down fifty-eight floors.