The Good House: A Novel (22 page)

“Yeah, so I saw that house that Santorelli guy is buildin’ out on Grey’s Point.”

This caught my attention.

“You did?”

“Yup.” Frankie was turning to leave and I grabbed his sleeve, making him laugh. He was toying with me. He knew I was dying to hear about the Santorelli house out on Grey’s Point.

“So? Is it huge? Is it ugly?”

Vince and Nick Santorelli were local builders who had made a fortune in the eighties and nineties building “spec” houses on the North Shore. Their houses were considered to be very high-quality, well-constructed homes. They worked with a Boston architect and had built some notably vast and attractive houses in Ipswich, Manchester, and Beverly Farms. Houses that sold for millions. The previous year, they had bought a property at the end of Grey’s Point that had been owned by the Dean family for many generations. Now the youngest Dean kids were grown and no longer spent their summers in Wendover. They had, easily, the most coveted parcel of land in the whole town. It was eight acres—the entire point. If you sited a house properly, you could have an ocean view from every window. The Deans had listed the property at five million dollars. Just for the land. And Vince Santorelli had bought it. There had been all sorts of talk among the local brokers about it. The Deans had listed the house with a Coldwell broker named Simon Andrews. He sold it to the Santorelli brothers, who planned to build a house that Simon would sell for them. Very shortly after the deal closed, maybe six months later, Simon Andrews had a heart attack at the gym, running on the treadmill. So nobody knew who the Santorellis would list it with, once the house was finished, and for how much.

I had driven past the property many times. There was a long driveway lined with centuries-old hemlock trees leading out to the point. The Santorellis had put a chain across the drive, so it was impossible to drive up and have a look. Well, not impossible, but it would have been trespassing. Trucks had been going up and down that driveway for almost a year now. You could see the construction from the water and I had heard reports all summer about the progress.

I really wanted that listing. It was becoming hard for a private broker like me to deal with the Sotheby’s and Coldwell Banker corporate brokers. I needed a few prime properties to reestablish myself as the area’s top broker, not only some of the older homes of longtime residents but also a few of the newer, grander estates. Soon there would be no more townies left with any loyalty to me and everybody would just want to list with whichever broker had the highest sales. I needed the Santorelli property and wanted to approach the brothers with a real understanding of the property. This was going to be the biggest sale in Wendover history.

“Well, it’s big, Hildy. Wicked big. I wouldn’t say it’s ugly. I wouldn’t mind livin’ in it. Big wraparound porch. It’s lookin’ good, for a house. I liked the place better when it was covered with trees, though.”

“I really want to see it, Frank. Do you think Manny would let me go out with him some morning?”

“Only if you help him pull some traps.” Frank laughed.

“I can band ’em up,” I said. Lindsey and I had become experts at banding lobster claws that summer in high school, though one sliced my finger good and I ended up with a pretty bad infection from it.

“Nah, you wouldn’t have to. Manny’d be happy to have you along. You’d have to come tomorrow. Boat comes out the end of the week for the winter.”

“All right. I will.”

That night, Rebecca came over. It was a Thursday, the night she usually spent with Peter, and she had stopped at my office that afternoon, distraught that he had canceled on her. He had called her that morning to say that he wouldn’t be coming up that weekend. Rebecca didn’t know it, but I had heard her walk up the stairs to his office and jiggle the handle of his door before she tiptoed down and knocked on my door.
Did she not believe he wasn’t there
, I wondered,
or did she want to go in and have a little snoop?
When she came into my office and told me how upset she was that she wouldn’t be seeing him that night, I felt sorry for her. I invited her over to my house, and she had accepted, tearfully.

She brought Japanese and a bottle of white wine. When she opened it, I said that I wasn’t really in the mood for wine, and poured myself a glass of seltzer. Rebecca needed to understand that I don’t
need
to drink.

Rebecca was moody and distracted. Liam was having trouble with math. Rebecca didn’t like the teacher and she wanted Brian to go with her for a conference, but he wouldn’t be able to do it until after the holiday break. She had been asking him for weeks to make time for this, and he hadn’t. He was in New York on business. He had urged her to hire a tutor, which, for some reason, enraged Rebecca.

“My mom and dad outsourced their parenting to others. I’m not doing it. Brian is a financial whiz, but I don’t know anything about math. He could really be helping Liam. But he won’t take the time.”

“Well, maybe you could hire a tutor just temporarily,” I said.

“Peter is so involved with Sam. Did you know that?” she asked.

“No. Actually, I’ve often thought that it’s a shame Peter spends so much time up here without Sam. I’m sure Sam misses his dad.”

“I’m sure Sam does, too. Too bad Elise is such a shrew about keeping him in town on weekends. Peter has to come here. For his work. Now he just told me that he’s going to be spending more weekends in Cambridge. And he’s going to be coming up here on Fridays instead of Thursdays.”

“Oh, so that’s why he didn’t come up today?”

“Actually, he’s not coming up this weekend at all,” Rebecca said, refilling her wineglass. “He said he won’t be up much until after the New Year.”

“Oh. Sorry.”

“I have to make some changes.”

“What kind of changes?”

“The situation with Brian has become intolerable. I can’t stand being in the same room with him.”

“Oh,” I said. Then I asked, “Are you and Peter making any kind of plans?”

“Well, no specific plans, no. He actually has been talking about us maybe taking some time apart. He doesn’t mean it. He’s been miserable with Elise for years. We’re meant to be together. I think he just wants to keep things between us quiet for now, but I want to start making some plans by the summer. In the meantime, I might not wait that long before I change the locks on Brian.”

“Well, be careful. Don’t do anything rash. I have a great lawyer, if you want. He’s the best guy in Boston. Maybe you should talk to him before you do anything else.”

“Is it Dave Myerson?”

“Yes,” I said. “How did you know?”

“You said the best guy in Boston.”

Rebecca, somehow, is able to obtain the services of the best guy at anything, anywhere. It’s another thing I’ve noticed about people who come from her type of money. Somehow they’re just plugged into this “best of” network, wherever they go.

“Peter’ll be up soon,” Rebecca said. “He needs me.”

“I’m sure he’ll be up. You know, I think I will have a glass of that wine now, if you don’t mind.”

Rebecca poured the wine into my glass in such an absentminded fashion, I almost wondered if she even remembered her recent wild accusations. See, this is what I mean about Rebecca’s mood swings. She’s just not very stable. I had a long sip of my wine, then another, and then I felt a warm rush of compassion for Rebecca. Sometimes, when I haven’t seen her in a while, I’m taken aback by her beauty. Her beauty and her fragility.

“You know,” she said, “we’re collaborating on a project with his moon photographs. We’ve been enlarging them, cutting out the moons and pasting them onto canvas, and then I paint over them with these beautiful colors of the sea, and I’ve even integrated some collage into some of them. Covering them with bits of kelp and shards of sea glass.”

“They sound so lovely, Rebecca,” I said. “I’d love to see them. I imagine they’re quite beautiful.” I finished the wine in my glass.

“That’s the thing,” said Rebecca. She was leaning in close to me, the way she always did when she was feeling her wine. “They are beautiful, beautiful pieces. And neither of us could create such a thing alone. Do you see what I mean? I just … I never felt this way about anybody, Hildy. I know we’re meant to be together. I think about him when I wake up—he’s the first thing I think about, and he’s the last thing I think about before I go to sleep. I’ve become so forgetful. Do you know the other day I forgot to pick up Liam at the bus stop? He walked home in the snow.”

“Oh, Rebecca,” I said. “You have to stop obsessing over him, it’s really not good.” The bottle of wine stood on the table between us—by my calculations, enough left for exactly one and a half more glasses. I wouldn’t move for it. I wouldn’t give Rebecca the satisfaction.

“It’s not just me, Hildy. Peter’s constantly thinking about me, about us. You have no idea how lonely he is. You don’t know how lonely we both are when we’re apart.”

I poured all the remaining wine into my glass then, annoyed with Rebecca again. Rebecca had children at home. She had a husband and a lover. Peter had the same setup. I lived alone. My children were grown and I hadn’t had a lover in too many years to count, but they were the lonely ones and I was expected to feel pity for them.

“You have no idea what that kind of loneliness is like,” Rebecca sighed.

“No?” I asked.

*   *   *

The next morning, I awoke at four-thirty to my blaring alarm. I made a large pot of coffee and pulled on my thermals and then some heavy sweatpants and a turtleneck and a thick wool sweater. I poured the coffee into a big thermos. I grabbed a box of blueberry muffins I had bought the day before, at Sue Doliber’s bakery. I was rummaging through my closet, looking for some warm gloves, when I heard Frank honking outside. He had told me he’d pick me up at five. I found the gloves and pulled an old pair of Bean boots over my thermal socks and then out I went into the pitch-black morning.

Frank leaned over and opened the passenger door and I handed him my thermos and muffins, then climbed up into the truck.

“Where’s yer hat, Hildy?” Frank asked. “It’s freezin’ out there.”

“I don’t need one,” I replied. I really look awful in hats. I have a rather long nose. For some reason, hats tend to make it longer.

“Manny has a boxful of hats and gloves and stuff on the boat. Plus some foul-weather gear. It’s wet out there.”

“Jesus Christ, Frankie,” I said, trying to find a place on the floor to put my feet. The floor of his truck’s cab was filled with debris—empty soda cans, wrappers, old newspapers, door handles, a bicycle seat, a couple of lobster buoys, a tackle box, and what looked like a petrified, half-eaten bagel. I lifted a rusty old horseshoe from where it lay next to my boot. “What is all this crap?”

Frankie just chuckled and shook his head. “Yeah, she needs a good cleanin’, that’s for sure.”

“But how does an old horseshoe find its way into your truck?”

“It’s good luck. Found it on a job site. Thought I’d keep it for luck.”

“I think you’re supposed to hang them up like this,” I said, holding the horseshoe with the arc in my palm, the two ends pointing up. “Otherwise, all the luck pours out of the ends.”

“Yeah, well, I just haven’t had a chance to hang it, I guess.” Frankie smiled.

I propped it up on the windshield.

“I don’t know how lucky yer gonna feel if I have to slam on the brakes and that sucka comes flyin’ back and breaks all yer teeth, Hildy.”

I laughed and tossed the horseshoe back on the floor.

“I brought coffee and muffins.”

“Didja? Great. We usually have breakfast at the Driftwood when we come back in, but we’re always starving by then.”

We drove through the dark, slumbering town of Wendover, and there was not another car on the road. When we arrived at Wendover landing, there were a few local lobstermen parking their trucks and calling out gruff greetings in white gusts of breath to one another. They were the diehards. Most lobstermen pulled their boats from the water in November. We parked right next to Manny’s rusty old blue pickup. The night was dissolving into a cold silvery dawn, and the old shops around the wharf began to take shape all around us. We climbed out of the warm truck and I pulled my turtleneck up over my chin. Frankie grabbed some gear out of the back of his truck and we headed over to the landing.

The tide was low and the ramp from the parking lot down to the dock was steep, and although Frank easily strode down carrying coils of heavy rope and my bag of coffee and muffins, I had to hold the rope railings and walk down carefully. There was a time when Lindsey and I used to skip down this ramp barefoot.

It was that moment of dawn on the waterfront when the sky and sea both take on the exact same shade of gray and the horizon is lost. There was just a boat, seemingly floating in air, with Manny in bright cautionary yellow. Manny was wearing the yellow foul-weather overalls that are the lobsterman’s uniform even on the hottest summer days.

Manny’s big. He’s about six-five and rather stout and he still has tufts of curly reddish gray hair sticking out beneath the hats he always wears. I suspect he’s balding, as I haven’t seen him without a hat in a good twenty years. In the summer, he wears grimy trucker’s caps; in the winter, knit fisherman’s hats.

“Got somethin’ for Hildy to wear? She didn’t bring any gear,” Frank said, stepping aboard and then reaching out a hand to me. I took his hand and tried to leap nimbly aboard, so that it would feel to him that I was just as light a little thing as I once had been. I sort of staggered into him. Frank laughed and steadied me. I pretended that nothing unusual had happened. I just walked back to the stern, examining Manny’s boat. She was called
Mercy.

Commercial lobster boats all have more or less the same design. The bow, directly in front of the cabin, is short and usually swales up in the center, so in rough seas, water can easily fall off to both sides. It was on these sloping planks that Lindsey and I used to sprawl in our bikinis like a couple of young, wet, sunburned figureheads that summer so many years ago. Every time I have a mole removed, I think of Manny’s old lobster boat.