The Good House: A Novel (12 page)

For the longest time, I blamed all my problems with Scott—especially all our sex problems—on the fact that Frankie was my first lover. Frank liked to get a little rough—not too rough, but just the right amount of rough. He was confident and take-charge in a good-humored way. Yes, he had a lovely and potent intensity about him that he only revealed during lovemaking, and, well, a girl likes to be handled. At least this girl does. I admit, at the end of the summer, when I went off to UMass, I cried the whole way up to school. My dad didn’t have a clue as to what was the matter with me. He would have died if he had known I was involved with Frankie Getchell.

Frankie received his draft notice that fall, and he was in Vietnam by Christmas. After the war, he moved back to Wendover. I had graduated and moved back, too. With my husband, Scott Aldrich. I rarely thought about the old times with Frank. He really had aged in a sort of ragged way. There was the night, years ago, when things were so bad with Scott, and I had that unfortunate incident with Frankie that still seems to amuse him. I was drunk. Nobody’s perfect. Now I’m in recovery. I’m sure he knows that—everybody else does—so you’d think he’d stop looking so amused every time he sees me.

*   *   *

Frankie’s crew finished the work on the Dwights’ house Friday morning. I dropped off a bottle of scotch as a token of thanks, along with a note asking him to bill the job to me.

Friday afternoon, the Sandersons called. They weren’t going to be able to make it up to Wendover that weekend after all. Maybe the next, they said. I called every broker in Essex County in a desperate attempt to get some people in while the house was still in good shape. I had two showings. Neither party was the least bit interested. I knew Cassie and Patch would be exhausted with the many extra outings they had planned for Jake that weekend.

“Well,” Cassie said when they came home on Sunday. “Any offers?”

“No,” I replied. “But I still feel hopeful about those Sandersons. Maybe next weekend. In the meantime, let’s set up an open house.”

Jake was in the living room, screaming and spinning.

“He’s not adjusting well to the changes,” Cassie said softly. “He misses the carpet.”

We sat at the table for a while and listened to the boy. Then I got up to leave and Cassie locked the door behind me.

eight

The following Tuesday, I left my office at six and drove through town on my way up to Rebecca’s house. Normally, I would just have taken Wendover Rise from Atlantic Avenue, but Rebecca had said that I should come around six-thirty, and I needed to kill some time. So I turned onto my old street, Hat Shop Hill Road, which is a back road leading to the rise. Some of my clients get a great kick out of the names of the streets in our town. Gingerbread Hill, Old Burial Hill, Pig Rock Lane, and Hat Shop Hill Road are just a few. They all have honest origins. There was once a bakery on Gingerbread Hill, Old Burial Hill is the site of a historic graveyard, and Pig Rock Lane once, apparently, had a large rock shaped like a pig on the corner, when it was still a carriage road, but when they widened the road for automobiles, it was removed. Scott, my ex, loved all this stuff, but he was from the Midwest—Michigan—from a town with a history that began with the invention of the assembly line, so he got a lot more out of the local history than I did. I never knew there was once a pig rock on Pig Rock Lane until he told me.

Hat Shop Hill Road, the steep road where I grew up, once had a hat shop. It wasn’t a real shop, just a business that a local woman with a flair for headwear ran out of her home sometime in the 1800s. We were 20 Hat Shop Hill. There’s still a 20 Hat Shop Hill Road, but it’s not the house I grew up in. When Dad died, I sold it and split the income with my sister, Lisa, and my brother, Judd. This was about ten years ago now, and the buyers tore it down and built what some would call a McMansion. There was a lot of commentary around town about the Good house being torn down. Many told me how upset they thought I must be, but I told them the truth. It hadn’t been my home for a long time. It was never a particularly attractive home—just a crooked old farmhouse. My dad always felt that people had the right to do whatever they wanted with property they owned.

“But the memories…” people would say. Not everybody said this, but most did. I was only twelve when my mother died. That was a long time ago, so not a lot of people around here know about all that.

I rarely drive up Hat Shop Hill Road, but I did that night, on the way to Rebecca’s, and I stopped in front of the new number 20. It was a sort of McMansion, in the sense that it was massive and cheap-looking. It had stone veneer in the front and what looked like vinyl siding around the rest of the house. It had that fake multiple roofline. The “footprint” of my childhood house would have fit in that house’s living room alone. But unlike many new-construction homes, this one appeared to fit on the property. I had thought that whenever I drove past, but it wasn’t until that night on the way to Rebecca’s that I realized why. It was because the builder hadn’t clear-cut the trees on the property the way most new builders so often do now—it’s always cheaper to clear-cut than to build around existing trees. This builder had left most of the mature trees, only removing the few that were too close to the house. I’d like to be able to report that I got misty-eyed when I recognized the old maple we used to use as our base when we played hide-and-seek. I recognized the tree all right; I just don’t get sentimental about stuff like that, the way some people do. It was a tree. We played under it. Now it’s in front of a house with central air and granite countertops. There’s nothing left of our family here in Wendover except me and the ghost of a house’s old worn-out footprint under six thousand square feet of hardwood, granite, and Sheetrock.

When I pulled up to the old Barlow place, I have to admit, I was a little blown away. I had heard that the McAllisters had done a beautiful job, but I had no idea that the Barlow place could ever look so … lovely. And I’ve called it the McAllister place ever since, by the way.

I got out of the car and was greeted by a large German shepherd who bounded toward me, broadcasting big blustery woofs, his hackles slightly raised. The sight of the dog would probably have alarmed some people—he was coming right at me—but I recognized a playful uncertainty in his bounce and saw that despite his size, he was a juvenile—an awkward teenager. When I squatted down and patted my knee, he came sidling over, all wagging body and lolling tongue.

“Yes, you scared me. Nicely done, beasty,” I crooned. He had flopped over onto his side and I began rubbing his exposed belly. Rebecca’s kids were playing on a rope swing that hung from a tree in the side yard. There was a young woman playing with them, and Rebecca came out to greet me.

“I see you’ve met Harry,” she said, leaning over and pounding the dog on his massive chest. He closed his jaws on her wrist, playfully, and she gave him a clipped “uh-uh-uh,” and he dropped her wrist instantly and tapped the ground apologetically with his tail.

Rebecca reintroduced me to Liam and Ben and their nanny, Magda. The boys had grown since I’d last seen them. I wouldn’t have recognized them in a group, but I find that the older I get, the more kids just look like kids. I don’t really notice them as much as I used to. On the other hand, I could have instantly picked Harry out of a lineup of similarly marked German shepherds, were there ever a need to do so. Harry was a wonderful character. The boys were just boys.

It was late in the day. The last rays of sun hit the tips of the trees, the way they do on autumn afternoons, illuminating the red, yellow, and orange treetops in the distant woods so that they shone like torches against the darkening slate blue sky.

“What a gorgeous night,” I said. “Just look at that sky.”

Rebecca smiled. “It’s the golden hour.”

“‘Golden hour’?”

“Oh, it’s a term they use in filmmaking and, you know, photography. I was in a couple of films, years ago, nothing you would have heard of, but in one of them, the script called for a scene to be shot on a beach during the so-called golden hour. We spent three days freezing our asses off on a beach, just so that the lead actors could kiss during the golden hour in that stupid film.”

“So it’s like a sunset, the golden hour?”

“No, it’s before the sun sets. Or right after it rises. Just that first or last hour of light, just like this. The atmosphere is very … rare and unusual. It all has to do with the purity of the light, the angle of the sun and the way it hits the horizon. The light is sort of filtered. I’m much more aware of light now as a painter, of course, than I was standing shivering on that beach for that movie. All I think about is light some days.”

Rebecca’s words made me suddenly aware of the light shifting against the distant hills in undulating patterns, and I saw Rebecca tilt her head and gaze at her children. How pleased she looked at the sight of them frolicking in what she had called, so delightfully, this “rare” atmosphere, this “golden hour.”

“See what happens to the boys’ shadows? All the shadows are long but not as dark; the light is less harsh. There’s just less contrast and everything takes on this special hue. There’s a blueness. Well, look at the color of the roses.… Oh, why am I carrying on like this, let’s go inside.” Rebecca laughed.

“No, I’m fascinated,” I said. “The golden hour.”

The cocktail hour is how I had always thought of it. A golden hour indeed.

We walked toward the house, and though Halloween was still a couple of weeks away, four carved pumpkins grinned maniacally up at us from the front steps, all dentally misaligned, with moldy triangular eyes and faces that were collapsing from the ravages of the early autumn sun.

From the front yard, the house looked more or less like the original Barlow farmhouse. It was a white antique Colonial with black shutters on all the windows. It wasn’t until you entered the house that you discovered that the little old house had become an open, loftlike foyer, a beautiful front room with exposed beams and burnished wide-plank floors. All the walls had been taken down, and the massive fireplace was now in the center of a great room surrounded by oversized sofas upholstered in rich velvety fabrics of deep burgundies and gold. Cushions were strewn everywhere—cushions and throw pillows covered in brilliant silks and woven materials that looked like tapestries from India. We walked through the room and entered a passageway that was a sort of solarium, with beautiful glass-paneled walls and ceilings. The floors in this glass room were made of polished bluestone. Along the walls were shelves lined with white ceramic pots holding fragrant herbs and flowering plants. In the corner stood a lemon tree.

Beyond the glass passageway was the new part of the house. It wasn’t huge, nor was it tiny. Everything, everywhere you looked, appeared to have been there always, and each thing complemented the next. We walked through a hall, passing a small library and a dining room, and then we were in the spacious kitchen, which was white and cool and lovely. There was a large center island with a marble countertop and on it was an open bottle of red wine with two glasses next to it. One was half-full.

“I’m having red, but I can open a bottle of white, if you prefer,” said Rebecca.

It had been a while since I had been in the presence of somebody who didn’t know my “history.” Usually, when people have me over, they say, “Well, Hildy, we have all sorts of things to drink: Coke, Diet Coke, seltzer, water.…”

Rebecca’s offer to pour me a glass of wine was so casual and innocent that I almost asked her to go ahead and pour me a glass of that nice Pinot Noir that she was drinking. But I didn’t. Instead, I said, “You know, I think I’ll just have a glass of water for now,” and I mumbled something about some medication I was taking, letting her think that I was only not imbibing alcohol that night; that normally, I drink socially, just like her. Just like all the good people of the world.

“I have a stew on the stove,” Rebecca said. “I hope you eat beef.”

“Of course,” I said.

“I’m going to have Magda feed the boys now. I want to show you my studio; then we’ll come down and eat afterward,” Rebecca said, handing me my water with a smile. She took a nice sip of her wine. Then she smiled at me again, in that way she has, with her eyes.

We chatted for a few moments, and when we stepped outside to see the studio, it was dark. “We should probably look for a flashlight, but it’s almost a full moon,” she said as we left through the kitchen door. “You don’t mind walking in the dark, I hope, Hildy,” Rebecca said. “Brian keeps pestering me to get some floodlights put out here, but I hate floodlights.”

“I loathe them,” I said. I really do. For some reason, when people move out here, especially from cities like Boston and New York, the dark worries them, and they decide to illuminate their properties, as if they are trying to be seen from space. I love the dark, and I was pleased to learn that Rebecca did, too.

Indeed, the moon was almost full, and it was the harvest moon that month and the land around us was wild with shadows and light. Harry bounded alongside Rebecca, thrilled with the night excursion. We followed a path through a little stand of hemlock trees and then we came upon a small house with one wall made entirely of glass panes. Rebecca opened the door and, after fumbling for a moment along the wall, flipped on a light switch. Her studio had three whitewashed walls and, like I said, the one glass wall, which, I imagined, during daylight hours would have that beautiful view down to the marshland. Her paintings were huge and appeared to be rather abstract, impressionistic seascapes. I’m not an art expert, but my daughter went to the Rhode Island School of Design and did some painting before deciding on the more lucrative field of sculpting. (She shares a loft with no plumbing in Brooklyn. I pay the rent.)

Rebecca’s paintings were filled with sand and sea colors, and I asked her if she had done the paintings from photographs or if she actually painted outdoors. She explained that the bigger canvases she had painted here in the studio, but some of the smaller ones she had done down at the end of Wind Point Road.