The Good House: A Novel (27 page)

“Only the geniuses, and thank God Grady’s not one of those,” I said, pulling the child from the dog’s water bowl, which he had begun to drink from. I lifted Grady up and started nuzzling his neck with kisses, which made him shriek with laughter.

“Who’s your favorite in the world?” I asked.

“GAMMY.”

“Who do you love more than that Nancy person?” I laughed. I winked at Frank and mouthed the words
the other grandma.

“GAMMY,” Grady squealed.

“Here, Frank, hold him while I finish this salad.”

Frank set down his glass and reached out his strong arms for little Grady. Grady enjoyed being held by Frank, enjoyed studying this new face. I finished making the salad and we had dinner and then we all decorated the tree. When we were finished and the wine was gone, Tess and Grady left and Emily went up to bed. Frank got ready to go, too, but I said, sort of abruptly, “You can stay if you want.”

Frank said nothing. He was thinking.

Then I said in a nicer tone, “I want you to stay,” and Frank smiled and grabbed me tight and kissed me with great urgency, hard and strong, the way I like it.

sixteen

I sold one house in February, just outside the Crossing—a split-level ranch that went for well under the asking price—and I was in negotiations for somebody to buy some commercial office space in Manchester, but other than that, business continued to be slow. The Dwights had pulled their listing and were planning to list the house again in the spring. I told Cassie that I thought they were making a huge mistake. She had stopped in the office one day in February to talk about it while Jake was at school.

“We just couldn’t move now. The school here isn’t great, but at least it’s a familiar place for him to go each day. If we moved to Newton, he would have been home all day and he would have regressed. And he would have driven us out of our minds.…”

“But you should have let me help you find a rental here.”

“Hildy, we need to just move once. Jake really does best when things stay the same.”

“Okay, so when do you want to list it again?”

“We were thinking June. That way, if it sells right away, we can plan to close right before school starts in Newton.”

“But, Cassie, houses don’t usually sell right away. Not in this market.”

We’re going to have to try our luck,” Cassie said. “Not that we’re the luckiest people in the world.”

“Okay, we’ll plan to list it June first. And I’ll call the buyers.”

By the beginning of April, I had a few clients who were looking in Wendover. One family—two Boston lawyers and their six-year-old daughter—was looking for a house that could be converted to a “green,” ecofriendly house. This was a first for me, believe it or not. These people wanted to live “off the grid” in a house that would be powered by wind and solar energy. They wanted to gut it and replace all the old materials with ones that didn’t “off-gas” toxins into the air they would breathe. The wife had suffered miscarriages before they had removed some toxic carpeting and mold from their apartment in Boston. Only then were they able to conceive. Now, for the health of their child, they wanted a house that would be “clean and green.” The wife was very enthusiastic about this. Honestly, she seemed a bit obsessed. It was easy to show them homes, though, because they didn’t really care how a house looked on the inside. They were more interested in its “orientation”—whether it faced north or south and what kind of light it would receive. I talked to them about looking at some land. It can be much cheaper to build a place like this than to try to convert an older home.

“Oh, but we’ve always loved the charm of the old New England homes.”

“Well,” I said, “the really old ones are pretty well insulated, which should help with energy conservation. The colonists who built them needed to conserve heat, so they’re usually built with small windows so that heat can’t escape.”

“Yes, but now that we have thermal-pane windows, we would like to install those and add extra windows to allow the sun in to heat the place. And solar panels in the roof…”

You see what I have to deal with. They want it old, but they want it new.

*   *   *

I was seeing Frank, very quietly. We never went out. Neither of us liked to, really. Frank always came to my house, always at my bidding. We’d see each other by chance. I’d drive past him and he’d honk and slow down. If we were on quiet back roads and there were no cars behind us, he’d back up and smile at me, ask me how I was doing. I would say something like “Stop over for some chili tonight, if you feel like it.” He always felt like it. Sometimes we’d watch movies and sometimes we’d watch the fire and chat. I know I have said that I know everything that goes on in this town, but Frank really knows everything. He has the fire department scanner, for one, which I believe he keeps at the snoop setting, where you can hear every dispatch in this and the five surrounding towns. He knew that the O’Briens were divorcing, that the Halsteads were expecting a baby, and that poor Ethel Quinn had inoperable brain cancer. He had kept me apprised of the Santorelli property out on Grey’s Point. As soon as the siding went up, I planned to approach them with a proposal.

And, amazingly, Frank knew all about Rebecca and Peter. I found this out late one warm afternoon in early May when we were walking the dogs through Frank’s riverfront lot, the one next to my house. Frank reminded me that he had seen me skinny-dipping one night the summer before, and I started laughing. “I was a little drunk,” I said.

Now that I didn’t drink anymore, it was easy to laugh about my former ways. I was like those people I used to listen to in meetings. That lady who drank alone, who disgraced herself on occasion, was gone. She would not return, as long as I didn’t drink. Instead of feeling diminished by this knowledge, it empowered me. I wasn’t that person anymore. And I felt better. I was losing some of that extra weight around my middle. I had Frankie around a lot and I felt less lonely.

We wandered down to the beach. The sky had taken on a sort of dusky hue, and the sea, still ice-cold from the winter, glittered with multitudes of tiny whitecaps that disappeared, one after another, with a great
whoosh
as they were churned onto the sand.

“It’s the golden hour, Frank,” I said.

“The golden hour. Haven’t heard that since the war.”

“Really, you guys knew about the golden hour in Vietnam?”

“Yeah … it’s a medical term.”

“No it’s not. It’s a filmmaking term. Rebecca told me about it. It has to do with the fading light at the end of the day.”

“Well, in Vietnam it had to do with gettin’ medical care to a patient in the first hour after he was hurt. There’s this critical hour, well, more or less, after a major injury when, if you don’t get medical help then, your chances of survivin’ go way down. I used to drive the field medic truck.”

“I didn’t know that’s what you did in the war, Frankie. I guess I’ve never heard you talk about the war at all.”

“Yeah, well, who wants to talk about that? You know,” he said suddenly, “I used to see yer crazy friend Rebecca with Peter Newbold, out on his beach at night. All last summer, they’d be cavortin’ around half-naked in the dark. I guess they thought nobody could see them. But when the bluefish are runnin’, I like to fish at night. I just row my dory off Hart’s Beach, and you’d never know I was there. I was surprised he’d start somethin’ up with her—him being a shrink and all.”

“Why?” I asked.

“Because she’s wicked crazy, Hil. I know you’re friends with her, but she’s a serious nut job. I thought she seemed okay that first time I met her, when you showed her the house, but she’s got a screw loose.”

“She’s not that bad,” I laughed. “I know one of your guys pissed her off once. What happened?”

“Skully White drove up there to pick up garbage—not long after they moved in—and his truck broke down, and you know, there’s no cell service up there on the rise.…”

“Frank, your trucks are a disgrace. Why don’t you get a couple new ones so they’re not breaking down all over town?”

“What’re you talkin’ about? They’re fine. Why would I get new ones when the old ones still run?”

This made me chuckle. It wasn’t just that Frank was a miser (which he was). He also just hated new things. He was averse to any kind of change. “So what happened, up at Rebecca’s?” I asked.

“Skully knocks on the door of the house and the baby-sitter tells him she can’t let him in to use the phone ’cause the mom’s not there—she’s up ridin’, in the ring behind the barn. Skully walks up to the barn, but nobody’s ridin’. So he goes in the barn and there’s yer witch friend in the wash stall. She had stripped herself down to her underwear to hose herself and the horse off. When she saw Skully, she flipped out. Started screamin’ at him.…”

“I don’t blame her. Do you know how hot and sweaty you get riding in the summer? She must have felt very embarrassed having crusty old Skully White standing there gaping at her in her underwear.”

“Yeah? Well, Skully had to walk all the way down Wendover Rise to the Browns’ house to use a phone to call me. When I drove up to jump-start the truck, Rebecca came out of the house screamin’ at me about trespassin’ and about how she was gonna call the cops. I said, ‘How am I trespassin’? You hired us to remove your garbage.’ She said, ‘Now you’re fired, so you’re trespassing.’ Then she said, ‘If that truck’s not out of here in ten minutes, I’m calling the cops.’”

Frank laughed, relaying this. “Like I was gonna get arrested for havin’ a garbage truck break down on a job.”

It was amusing, I was chuckling, too, at the idea of Rebecca’s reaction to Frank and Skully. The idea that she was somehow threatened by these two guys. Two gentle men I’d known all my life. Old Skully White used to work in the market for my dad. He took over the butcher counter when Dad bought the store. He and Dad always restickered roasts and turkeys during the holidays for certain families who were having a bad year. I doubt Stop & Shop carries on that tradition. Skully helped out my brother, Judd, when he drunkenly drove his pickup into a ditch one night. Skully towed him out with one of Frank’s old pickups and a winch before the cops could come. He never told my dad. Just warned Judd to shape up—which he did, eventually. But my point is, Skully White is a good guy. He received his nickname, “Skully,” after he fell from a tree when he was in grade school, cracking his head open and fracturing his skull. Nobody remembers his real name; at least nobody I know does.

“Rebecca’s a little tightly wound, it’s true. She might be a little crazy,” I said, “but so are a lot of people in this town. And who cares about her and Peter? They’re hardly the first married couple to be having an affair in this town.”

“There’s somethin’ really wrong with her, that’s all I’m sayin’.”

“But in what way?”

“She’s huntin’ him … stalkin’ him. Whatever you call it.”

“How do you know?”

“Well, he hasn’t been up here much. We do his maintenance. I plowed snow off his driveway one Friday and she must’ve drove by five times. She’s always wandering around on his beach when he’s not there—we used to see her from Manny’s boat.”

“I know she’s a little obsessed,” I said. “I guess she’s in love with him.”

“Her husband owns a hockey team. He flies around in a private jet. I wonder what she wants from Pete Newbold is all.”

“Frank, she’s in love with him. Are you too cynical to believe in love? Maybe she doesn’t want anything from him. She might just be in love with him.”

“That kind of huntin’ of him, it doesn’t seem like love. There’s somethin’ abnormal about it, if you ask me.”

“Stalking,” I laughed. “Not hunting. Stalking.”

“Whatever,” Frank said, pulling me close. “I’m gonna start stalkin’ you if you don’t quit laughin’ at me.”

“Promise?” I said, pulling away and starting to run toward the house.

“Promise,” Frank bellowed, and he chased me home, me screaming with delight, the dogs snarling and snapping at his heels.

*   *   *

The call came at three-thirty in the morning. I was curled against Frankie and had to pull myself from the thick curve of his body. He grumbled and tried to pull me back against him, but I brushed his arm away and fumbled for the phone.

“Hello?” I gasped. You always think somebody’s died when you get a call like that, in the middle of the night. My heart was pounding.

“Hildy?” said the quavering, unrecognizable voice.

“Yes, who is this?” I asked.

“It’s me … Rebecca.” She was sobbing.

“Rebecca? What is it? Are you okay?”

Frankie was now sitting up in bed, gazing at me.

“Peter told me he wants to end our … relationship. He’s done with me.”

“Rebecca, I’m sorry, but it’s three-thirty in the morning. Why are you calling me now? Call me in the morning. We can talk then.”

“I’ve been trying to call Peter all night, but he must have unplugged his phone. It keeps ringing. I’ve tried him in Cambridge and up here.”

“Okay.” I sighed. “I don’t think you should call him in Cambridge.”

“HE WON’T RETURN MY CALLS.”

“Rebecca,” I said softly, “think carefully about what you’re doing. If Elise finds out about you and Peter, she could tell Brian. It could be really, really bad. Think about Liam and Ben, Rebecca.”

“I HAVE been thinking about them. They’re the first thing I think of, always. I thought Peter was going to leave Elise and help me raise my boys.”

I said nothing. What could you say? I shook my head at Frankie, rolling my eyes.

“Hang up,” he mouthed.

“Now, now, for some reason, he … he doesn’t even want to speak to me. I want to come over, Hildy. I want you to do a reading. Tell me what’s really going on.”

“I don’t do that, Rebecca. I don’t know what’s going on in anybody’s mind but my own, and even that’s sort of foggy most of the time.”

“I’ve seen you do it, you’ve done it to me.”

“I can’t tell you what people are thinking, especially if I can’t see them. And even then, it’s not really their thoughts.…”

“I think he’s planning on coming up. In the next few days. I think he’s been coming up without telling me. If he does, try to talk to him, Hildy. Try to read what he’s saying and get the truth.”