The Good House: A Novel (24 page)

Well, it was probably for the best. I was getting a little complacent with the whole “moderation” thing. I woke up more mornings than not with wine headaches, and the drunken phantom calls to Rebecca had unnerved me. I would have my dinner with Frankie, have a little wine with him, and then leave the stuff alone for a while. It was all stashed in the cellar now. And it would make tonight more of an occasion. Frankie wouldn’t tell anyone that I wasn’t going to AA meetings, that I wasn’t in “recovery.” He and Rebecca had become my only true friends, in this regard.

I made up the stew and left it on the stove to simmer. I had bought fresh bread at the bakery and was planning to make a salad just before Frankie arrived. I walked my dogs and then took a shower. I shaved my legs. I shaved under my arms and around my—well, around my bikini area, if you must know—we’re all adults here. I dried off and began slathering myself with a fragrant body lotion that one of the girls gave me every year for Christmas.

Then I came to my senses.

What the hell was I doing? My skin was loose, except around my girth, where it was stretched taut. My hair was brittle, my face was covered with fine lines, and my entire body sagged. Even my fucking knees had started to sag. How did I not know to expect saggy knees? It suddenly struck me as profoundly pathetic that I was preparing for a date, a date with Frankie Getchell, and that I was fretting about
my
appearance. My girls had said it—the man looked like a gnome. And it was highly unlikely he was primping and pruning anything in his pubic region in preparation for our date.

I had had a few dates since Scott and I split up. Disastrous encounters with portly older men whom clients had tried to fix me up with. Nothing ever came of them. We had dinner and called it a night. But the idea of a date with Frankie had never crossed my mind since my divorce. Frankie, well, let’s just say that people would be a little shocked to imagine me and Frank Getchell on a date. I was a businesswoman—the town’s most successful business owner, really. He was the town garbageman. He was the fix-it man.

So what? Who would know? I’d loved him once. Who would guess it now?

Frank arrived at seven. He was all clean-shaven, with a crisp shirt and what looked like a brand-new pair of jeans. I had, in recent years, acquired a body that looked best in skirts, and I rarely wore pants. So that night I wore my usual black tights and skirt and a black sweater. I hadn’t expected Frankie to get dressed up, but his jeans and ponytail made me feel ludicrous for even coming up with the dinner plan in the first place. Molly and Babs made a huge racket over Frank’s arrival. He leaned down to pat them, and when Babs snapped at his hand, he laughed and pulled it away just in time.

“Watch her,” I said.

“They don’t call ’em bitches for nothin’.” Frankie laughed.

Don’t insult my bitch,
I thought, trying to figure out what on earth had inspired me to invite Frank Getchell over.

He had brought me flowers. They were the kind you get at Stop & Shop, a bunch of oddly bright mums and a couple of droopy yellow roses with some baby’s breath and a fern thrown in. He handed them to me and I took them and thanked him. I was stirring the stew, so I just dropped them on the counter.

The wine! I had brought it up from the cellar just as Frankie arrived and now I passed it to him with a corkscrew and he opened it while I stirred the stew. I turned the heat down and took two wineglasses down from the cabinet and handed them to Frankie, who did the pouring.

“Cheers,” I said in an almost exasperated tone—I couldn’t help myself. We clinked glasses and took a sip.

“Nice haul yesterday out on Manny’s boat,” said Frankie.

“Yes,” I said. I took another sip. “What would be his usual haul on a winter day like yesterday?”

“I dunno, sometimes we get over thirty, sometimes just a dozen or so.…”

The wine was so nice.

“That stew smells good,” Frankie said.

“Oh, I know, and you must be starving, Frankie. I just want to make a salad. Grab a chair and make yourself comfortable.”

Frankie had been in my house before, on a number of occasions. He had cleaned a bat’s nest out of my chimney once, and he supervised his crews when they did their big fall and spring cleanup of my property. They removed leaves, cleared gutters, and replaced storm windows and screens. He knew his way around my house, but now that he was my guest, he seemed to be looking at it for the first time.

“You sure lucked out with this house, Hildy.” He leaned against the counter, watching me chop vegetables.

“‘Lucked out’? What do you think, I won it in the lottery or something?” I was laughing now and sipping my wine.

“You’ve done real good for yourself. I guess that’s what I meant to say.”

“Well, you haven’t done so bad yourself, Frankie. You know, if you sold that lot next door, you could buy a house twice this size.”

“Right, and let some lawyer build a mansion next door for you to wake up and look at every day?”

I smiled at him then, even though it was a joke. It was a sweet idea, that Frankie was keeping the land there for me. I smiled and finished off my glass of wine. Frankie poured me another.

The salad was ready and so was the stew. I turned and saw the bunch of cellophane-wrapped flowers that I had plopped onto the counter and my heart soared with loving sentiment over Frankie’s sweet gesture. The idea that Frankie had walked into Stop & Shop and chosen these flowers to bring to me! I had married a man who would be appalled at the thought of grocery store–bought flower arrangements, and look where his exquisite sense of style had gotten me. I carefully unwrapped the flowers and placed them in a favorite vase of mine—a green fluted vase, the color of sea glass. I plumped and arranged the flowers and then I carried them into the den and placed them on the coffee table.

“Look how they brighten the room,” I said, and Frankie grinned and nodded.

My kitchen table is quite large, which seemed awkward. Instead, I decided we’d eat in the den, in front of the fireplace. It was the right thing. It’s nice and dark in that little room and so cozy with the fire. There didn’t seem such an urgency to converse with a crackling fire to admire. The stew was good, the meat just the right tenderness. I make a nice beef stew. I rarely cook anymore, but it’s one thing I do well, my stew. We sipped our wine and settled into an easy conversation about some of our old friends. We laughed about the old Wendover Yacht Club parties. He asked if I knew what had ever happened to
Sarah Good,
the sailboat he had given me. I had to think about it for a while. I really had no idea. My dad must have hauled her off to the dump at some point.

Frankie in the firelight. The rich Pinot Noir. I was beginning to soften. My heart, my mind, even my skin and bones seemed to shake off their brittle edginess. I was softening. It’s what wine does for me, and what’s wrong with shedding one’s armor once a day, especially in the warm company of an old friend? We had been sitting in the club chairs in front of the fire while we ate, but now the flames threw off too much heat and we moved back to the sofa and even had to crack a window for a few moments to let out some of the heat. The night air was crisp with the aroma of pine and the river and there was a damp vapor that smelled like snow. We both agreed that it smelled like snow. We looked out at the moon with its smudged halo and agreed—snow was coming.

We finished off the wine and I asked Frankie if I should open another bottle. He said, “I don’t know, should you?”

“Well, I really don’t drink much anymore,” I said.

“Mmmm-hmmm.” He smiled.

“Listen, Frankie, I’m still so embarrassed about that night you picked me up from Mamie’s. I never get like that anymore.”

“Aw, never mind. Go get another bottle before you make me embarrassed, too.”

I ran downstairs and grabbed another bottle. When I came up, I smelled … was it … pot?

Yes, Frankie had lit up a joint. I hadn’t smoked pot since I was in college. Scott had always liked it better than I did anyway, but now the smell of it made me feel like a teenager again. Well, the first time I ever got high was with Frankie.

“D’ya mind, Hildy?” Frank asked, holding up the joint. “I realized after I lit it that I shoulda asked first.”

“No.” I laughed. “Not at all. It’s just that the last time I smelled that stuff was when I came home too early on a night when my girls decided to throw a party.”

I uncorked the wine and sat down next to Frankie. I nestled up against him, just a little. He handed me the joint and I took a hit. I inhaled, then coughed it back up, laughing at myself, and then put it to my lips and inhaled again before handing it back to Frankie.

“No more,” I said when he tried to pass it back to me a moment later. I was a little drunk. But not too drunk. Another glass of wine wouldn’t hurt.

Frankie finished the joint. I turned on the stereo. I put in a CD, and then I started to dance around the room to a Van Morrison song, which made Frankie chuckle.

“Remember how we all used to dance at the Wendover?” I laughed. “Come on, dance with me, Frankie.”

Frankie just smiled. His eyelids drooped slightly from the fire and the pot, but his eyes twinkled with amusement. “I never did any of the dancin’. You go ahead, though, Hil. I always liked watchin’ you dance.”

I took my full wineglass from the table and sipped from it, then moved it in graceful arcs in front of me, gazing at it adoringly, as if into the face of a lover. I glanced at Frankie and then I guzzled the remainder as if it were whiskey before tossing the glass into the air. I meant to catch it, but my toss was off, and Frankie lunged and grabbed it just before it hit the coffee table, and then I really started to dance. The CD was one that Scott had made for me—a collection of songs from our college days—and now Janis Joplin was belting out “Piece of My Heart.” I was gyrating my hips and swinging my hair around in front of my face like Janis, and you know, I can sing to Janis like no other. I’ve always loved her. I placed my hands on Frank’s knees and sang those opening words, sweet and soft, asking him if I didn’t make him feel like he was the only man. Frank wrapped his hands around my wrists, but I wriggled free, belting out, “Honey, you know I did!”

I moved my hips in slow circles, singing along, and soon Frank and I were both laughing and shouting the words aloud. Then Frankie had me by the hand and pulled me on top of him on the coach and then I was kissing Frankie Getchell. Then I was really being kissed good and hard by Frankie Getchell. I hadn’t been really kissed by a man in so long. I was straddling his lap, his hands were buried in my hair and my palms were placed on each of his rough cheeks, and we seemed to want to hold each other’s mouths in this kiss, to not let it end, until finally we did, and then we were kissing again, all over, and groping each other like a couple of teenagers. I pulled back for a minute, smiling a bit shyly as I started to move off his lap, and then Frankie seized our wine bottle by its neck and said, “Ya better get runnin’, girlie” (it was an old game), and I let out a squeal of delight and he chased me upstairs and along the hall to my room, the dogs yapping and growling and snapping at his heels like a couple of crazed spirits.

We were just drunk enough not to care how fat and old we looked, just drunk enough for me to do an elaborate striptease and for Frankie to hoot it up as if I were twenty. Then he grabbed my hand and we were in the bed, and it was just like those nights in the holds of strangers’ yachts. Just like those sweaty, salty nights with the waves slapping against the outside of the hull, except for one thing. The tentative knocking on my bedroom door and the sound of a grown woman’s voice calling, “MOM? MOM?”

Frankie and I froze.

“Did you hear something?” I whispered.

“MOM?”

It was Emily. She was home.

“Hi, honey,” I said, trying to sound as crisp and bright and sober as a nun. Frankie lay completely still at my side.

“Um … Mom? Are you … with somebody?”

“Well, yes, dear, as a matter of fact, I am. Did you want something?” I asked, still trying to chirp soberly. Frankie was trying not to laugh and was making little choking, snorting noises. I scowled at him.

“No.… Good night,” Emily said, and I heard her scamper down the hall to her room.

“Oh my GOD,” I said. I kept saying it.

“What’s the big deal?” Frankie whispered.

“Did we leave an empty wine bottle down there?”

“Uh, probably.”

“I’m supposed to be in recovery.”

“Huh?”

“My daughters sent me to a … a … rehab place.”

Now Frankie was cracking up. “A rehab place?”

“Yes,” I hissed. “They think I don’t drink. They think I go to … AA. Stop laughing. It’s not funny.” I burst into tears.

“Awwww, Hildy, stop. Whatsa matter? You’re the mom, right? Why are you actin’ like a kid? You’re supposed to be the one in charge, you can do whatever you want.”

I just shook my head and said, “Frankie, can you leave?”

“Yeah.”

“Will you take this bottle with you and take the one downstairs?” I was frantic now, and Frankie jumped out of bed and started dressing.

“What’s she gonna do, call the vice squad on us?” he whispered, and I couldn’t help it, I had to smile. I was still a little drunk, but now I felt shy about climbing out of bed all naked, so I said, “Come over here and give me a kiss before you go, Frankie.”

He did. Then he glanced out the window and said, “It’s snowin’, I gotta get my guys out with their plows anyways. See you around, Hildy.”

And then he was gone.

The next morning, I was up at dawn and carried the wineglasses down to the kitchen, washed them, and put them away. I dumped out the stew that I had left out on the stove all night. I tidied up the den, looking for any evidence of the joint we had smoked, but I found nothing. Then I took the dogs for a walk. It had been snowing since Frankie left and now there was a good four inches on the ground. It was Sunday, so nobody had plowed River Road yet. There was no sound but the gentle crunch of my footsteps in the clean snow and the excited huffing and whining of the dogs as they sniffed out rodents beneath snow-mounded bushes. It was a gentle, earnest snowstorm. The snow fell vertically, instead of blowing sideways as it can in a nor’easter, and it fell in great puffy flakes, like multitudes of cotton balls. It gathered on the dogs’ fur and on my shoulders and mittens and made it hard to see very far down the road. All the world was covered with the whiteness of the storm and it was hard to imagine anything dirty or ugly lay beneath this fluffy bounty of white.