The Good House: A Novel (7 page)

Linda and Henry’s grandfather, Judge Barlow, ran a sort of hobby farm up there on what is now the McAllister place on Wendover Rise, raising a rare breed of cattle. The judge once owned a great many things. He had the farm here, and the brownstone on Commonwealth Avenue in Boston, and the family had a place in Palm Beach—once. Now Linda and Henry Barlow still live here in Wendover, but the family money is long gone. Linda, as I’ve mentioned, rents an apartment down in the Crossing. Her brother, Henry, spends his days and evenings at AA meetings, and nobody is sure how he manages to feed his sober self, but he does—feeds himself and drinks lofty mugs of coffee at the Coffee Bean, the overpriced coffee shop in the Crossing, where he shouts hearty hellos at everybody he knows.

I’ve avoided the Coffee Bean ever since it first opened and I walked in and, in all my innocence, ordered a “regular.” The dirty, blond, dreadlocked girl behind the counter just blinked at me.

“Um, a regular what?” she asked.

“A regular coffee,” I snapped. “This is a coffee shop, isn’t it?”

In Massachusetts, a “regulah” means a coffee with cream and two sugars. It wasn’t until I was in college that I learned that this is a Massachusetts thing. I thought that’s how everybody ordered coffee. If you wanted a coffee with just cream, it was “a regulah, no sugah.” Now I’m learning that it’s a generational thing as well. Younger people order coffees that are “grande,” or “dry,” or “Americano,” or some other craziness, and they don’t mind spending three or even four dollars on a coffee. I left my coffee sitting on the counter that first day when the girl told me the price, and now I stay away from the Coffee Bean unless I have a client who really wants a latte or whatever, and then I’m forced to resign myself to Henry Barlow’s overly enthusiastic “Hildy! How ah ya?”

“Fine, thanks, Henry. And you?” I’d say.

“I’m good, Hildy. Wicked good. Haven’t seen ya around.”

“No?” is usually my response

“Whatcha been up to?” he brays.

“Working,” I say with a forced smile. “Some of us have to work for a living.”

“Well, nice to see ya, Hildy. Take it easy,” he always says, and then he starts to give me that solemn smile, but I usually dodge it by turning my attention elsewhere. Why not shout, “One day at a time”? Or “It’s the first drink that gets you drunk”?

The AA slogans. The cult’s incantations.

I would say, “You take it easy, too, Henry,” but that’s all Henry does. Take it easy. It was no wonder he lived in that old shack near the boatyard, while the McAllisters built playrooms and sunrooms and tended the gardens on his old family homestead.

I had clients coming from Boston one cool morning in early October and we had planned to meet at the Coffee Bean. The wife told me that she would need a coffee after the drive, and we made plans to meet there at nine. When I entered the shop at 8:50, the clients, a young couple named Sanderson, were there, and I saw that Henry had already engaged them in conversation.

“Yup, lived here all my life. Never seen any reason to live anywhere else.… Oh, there she is. Hildy, how ah ya?”

“I’m fine, thank you, Henry,” I replied.

“These are yer customers, the … What’d you tell me yer names ah?”

I reached out my hand to Hillary Sanderson, whom I had talked to on the phone. “Hi, Hillary, I’m Hildy Good. And you must be Rob.”

I saw that they already had their coffees, so I suggested they follow me to my office, where they could park their car and then ride around town with me. As I followed them through the door, Henry bellowed after me, “See ya, Hildy. Take it easy.”

“You take it easy, too, Henry,” I called back. “And stop working so hard.” I could hear his booming laughter as I followed the Sandersons out to the street.

Whenever I have out-of-town clients, I always give them a little tour of the town of Wendover. We start at my office building, which was originally a house but is the only building on Wendover Green that’s commercially zoned. My offices—the offices of Good Realty—are on the first floor. On the second floor are the offices of Dr. Peter Newbold, psychiatrist, and Katrina Frankel, LSCW.

Our building, like all the other houses on Wendover Green, is an honest rectangular clapboard structure, erected in the late 1700s. It was once the parsonage for the Congregational church next door. The white-steepled Congregational church no longer needs a parsonage, as the number of congregants has dwindled over the years, not only here in Wendover but also in nearby Essex, and now both churches are served by one minister, Jim Caldwell. The Reverend Caldwell and his family live in Essex, where he conducts a nine
A.M.
service every Sunday, and then he drives here to do an eleven
A.M.
one in Wendover.

You enter the offices of Good Realty through the front door on the porch. Years ago, my husband, Scott, set a couple of antique rocking chairs and an old painted table out on the porch to give our building a hint of domesticity, and they have remained there ever since, though I don’t recall anyone ever sitting on the chairs. I always keep a planter of seasonal flowers on the table and hang baskets of colorful fuchsia plants—my mother always called them “bleeding hearts”—from the porch overhang. An ivory-colored hand-painted wooden sign on our front door modestly announces our business. A smaller sign on the side of the building shows the clients of Paul and Katrina the way to enter through a side door, where they climb a set of steep stairs to the therapy offices.

The Sandersons were living in a condo in Swampscott and were looking for a starter home. I invited them into my office and handed them some printouts of listings in their price range, and then we walked out to where my Range Rover was parked. It was the kind of fall New England day that every broker dreams of. The air was crisp and slightly cool, but it was clear and sunny. Somebody was burning leaves. A breeze whirled across the green, whipping bright yellow leaves from the towering maples on its perimeter, and we all stood for a moment and gazed at what appeared to be flecks of gold floating in the air all around us.

We climbed into the car and drove around the green and down winding Pig Rock Lane to River Road, where I live. I bought my house on the river when Emily was a senior in high school. It was the first year my business really took off. I had the record number of sales in Essex County that year (
and
the two previous years). It’s a great house, a historic landmark, once owned by Elliot Kimball, a famous shipbuilder, who built the house in the mid-1800s. It’s supposed to be haunted, and though I love to play up that intrigue, I’ve never seen or heard any signs of ghosts. My daughters, however, refuse to stay in the house overnight without me because they insist they hear and see ghosts in the house.

In the past, I’ve had clients offer me figures for my house that are triple what I paid for it, but until recently I couldn’t imagine ever selling it. Now I had started pointing it out as my own house to a few of my clients with deep pockets. I wasn’t going to list it, but if they wanted to make me an offer, I would listen. I had bought the house in 2004—the height of the market out here—and had mortgaged it heavily. It had been such a good year that I did something I would advise my clients against—I bought a house that I would
someday
be able to afford, not one that I could actually afford at the time. Yes, I should have known better, but I guess it’s the whole “cobbler’s children have no shoes” scenario. My dad had owned the only grocery store in town, but there was never food in our fridge when I was growing up. Now I, the top broker in the region (well, perhaps not the top anymore, but certainly right up there), stood a chance of losing my house to the bank.

Well, it wasn’t really a huge risk. I just needed a good year.

From River Road, I drove the Sandersons to Beach Street, which leads to the Hart Preserve. The Hart Preserve is the former home of Robert Hart, an early-twentieth-century industrialist who built a small castle on a beautiful eleven-hundred-acre estate with hills rolling down to one of the sandiest and most pristine beaches in Massachusetts. Most of the beaches here on the North Shore are rocky, but not Hart’s Beach. The Hart estate is now a state wildlife preservation. The castle is rented out for weddings and other functions. We admired the castle and the grounds and drove a little farther north to North Beach—the public beach with all the playground equipment.

I showed the Sandersons three or four properties, but to be honest, there wasn’t much on the market in their price range. We drove down to the Crossing, and as we did, we passed the Dwights’ house, with the Good Realty sign planted on its lawn.

“That looks like a cute place,” said Hillary Sanderson.

“Oh, yes,” I said. “That’s a great house, and it’s in your price range, too. I can’t get us in there today, but the next time you come up, give me a little notice and we’ll have a look.”

We drove back along River Road, past all the protected estuary land, and then we turned up Wendover Rise. Wendover Rise is the name of the road that the McAllisters live on, but everybody calls the whole hilltop “the rise,” though there are many small roads that run across it. I always drive my clients along the rise, though there is rarely anything for sale up there. It’s just to show them the view. You can see the salt marshes and estuaries and, in the distance, the ocean. That day with the Sandersons was so mild that the ocean was dotted with the white sails and colorful spinnakers of diehards who wanted to get in one last day on the water before dry-docking their boats for the winter.

Eventually, we drove back down into Wendover Crossing—the rather charming village that is centered around our MBTA train station. The train from Boston stops here in Wendover four times a day. We’re on the Rockport/Newburyport line. In the Crossing, we have what Scott used to call “the Stop & Shop of the Seven Gables,” the Coffee Bean, of course, the Wendover Public Library, the Hickory Stick Toy Shop, the post office, and a little pizza/ sandwich place called Big Joe’s. Hillary oohed and aahed at the quaintness of it all. I knew she was hooked. You can always tell. She would live in Wendover … or die. I would have to talk to Cassie and Patch about their house. If they could only clean it up a little.

When we arrived back at my office, we were just starting up the front steps when Rebecca McAllister appeared from the side porch. It can be awkward sometimes, encountering my friends and clients leaving the therapist’s office upstairs, but honestly, it’s only really awkward the first time. There are very few people in this town whom I haven’t met going in or coming out of those side doors. Mostly, it’s parents bringing their kids to be “evaluated” by Katrina Frankel, who specializes in learning and developmental disorders. My office faces the side porch, and I have to admit, it boggles the mind that so many children in our town might have these disorders. My former sales associate Lucy and I used to joke that there must be something in the water, but I’m told it’s everywhere. Teachers send kids off for diagnoses if they sit wrong in their chairs, I’m told.

Scott is a history buff, and he researched the old parsonage when we bought it. Apparently, the early ministers used it as an entrance for those seeking counsel from the clergy, so it’s rather fitting that it serves a similar purpose these hundreds of years later.

I had seen Rebecca leaving Peter’s office before, always walking slowly, always with the dark glasses. The afternoon with the Sandersons, however, she came around the corner of the porch quite abruptly and actually bumped into Hillary as I unlocked the front door to my office.

“Oh my God!” Rebecca exclaimed, breathless and then laughing good-naturedly. “I’m SO sorry.”

“No, don’t be. I’m fine,” said Hillary.

“How are you, Hildy?” asked Rebecca. She was looking so much better. She had looked quite depressed those few times I’d seen her leaving Peter’s office in the early summer. I’d never quite gotten over that thing she did with the mare and foal that morning. And then after the party and the incident at the beach with Cassie and Jake, I worried that we might be losing the McAllisters. If the wife decides she doesn’t like a place, nobody stays.

“I’m great,” I said. “Rebecca, meet Hillary and Rob Sanderson. They’re thinking of moving to the area.” I turned to Hillary. “Rebecca and her family just moved here recently themselves,” I said.

“We love it,” Rebecca said before they had a chance to ask. “So nice to meet you,” she added, and then, I swear, she literally skipped down the porch steps. It was that kind of day; you don’t get many like those in New England. I was sure the Sandersons would be back the following weekend. I gave them a folder with all the listings of the houses I had shown them.

“What about that cute place on the hill going down to the town?” asked Hillary.

“Yes,” I said, “the Dwight place. It’s a nice house. I promise to show it to you the next time you come up.”

We made an appointment for the following Saturday.

*   *   *

I called Cassie Dwight on Monday morning. “I think I have the perfect buyers for your house,” I said.

“Really?” Cassie said. “Hildy, that’s so great. We have a deadline to sign Jake up for that school in Newton.”

“I need to come over and talk to you about it,” I said. “When would be a good time?”

“Could you come this morning? Jake has school.”

When I pulled into her driveway half an hour later, Cassie was planting yellow chrysanthemums around her front steps.

“Lovely, Cassie,” I said. She was beaming.

“Let’s go inside and talk about what needs to be done before the showing,” I said. “They’d like to come this Saturday. And even if these people aren’t interested, we could do an open house the following Wednesday.”

The house was in the same state as usual, only this time there was oatmeal smeared all over the kitchen table. Cassie grabbed a roll of paper towels and started wiping it up, all the while describing the great program at the Newton school.

“He would be there all day, with one-on-one therapy for most of the time. It’s a program specifically developed for kids with his types of delays. Where we have him now, he’s thrown in with kids with every disability under the sun. I mean, how is that going to help him?”