The Good House: A Novel

by Leary, Ann

  “He can’t bear to be touched. Would it be okay if I give him the truck to play with and see if it calms him down?”

  “Sure,” Rebecca said, glancing at Ben, who was still crying. As Cassie tried to get Jake’s attention with the truck, Rebecca squatted next to Ben and gave him a little hug. “Honey, I brought other toys.…”

  “It’s MY truck. I want it BACK.”

  “I know, but it’s not as easy for Jake to share as it is for you.”

  “Why?” Ben sniffed. “He’s a big boy.”

  I saw Cassie shoot a wary gaze at her.

  “Well,” Rebecca said, “I know, but he’s … disabled.…”

  “OH MY GOD,” Cassie said, glancing over at her friends, who were smiling sympathetically at her, and then leveling her gaze back on Rebecca. “Where have you been living? In a cave? Try educating yourself.”

  Rebecca’s cheeks reddened and she stared up at Cassie. “What did you say?”

  “Jake is a child with a disability, not a disabled child.”

  “Oh, I thought that’s what I said.”

  “No, what you said was dehumanizing.”

  “‘Dehumanizing’? I don’t know what you’re talking about, and you know what? I wasn’t even talking to you; I was talking to my son.” Rebecca stood then and, grabbing Ben by the hand, called out to her other son in a shrill, reedy cry.

  “LIAM. LIAM, it’s time to go. Time to go BACK TO OUR CAVE.”

  Liam jumped off his skimboard. “What?” he called back.

  “NOW,” Rebecca shouted, and she started toward the parking lot. Liam scrambled up the beach after her, dragging his skimboard behind him.

  “Mom…” he whined.

  “My truck,” wailed Ben.

  “We’ll. Get. You. A. New. One,” Rebecca said as she dragged her sobbing child to the car. She jerked the skimboard from Liam and he ducked into the car next to his brother.

  “Cassie,” I said.

  “What, Hildy? What?”

  “Nothing.”

  We watched Jake spinning the wheels on the truck.

  “She didn’t need to treat him like some kind of monster. He’s never hurt anybody. It was just the truck…”

  “I know,” I said. “I know.”

  Rebecca’s silver Land Cruiser cut a sharp reverse in the sandy lot and then she sped off, leaving a wake of hot sand and dust behind her.

  * * *

  I remember Jake as an infant. Cassie brought him by the office a few times when she was driving through town. He was cuter than your average baby; all plump, with those big blue eyes. Just gorgeous. I guess it was when he was about a year old that Cassie started to notice he wasn’t developing like the other babies his age. Her sister had a daughter four months younger who was more advanced—at everything. I have two daughters, but I remember telling Cassie that I’d always heard that boys are just slower. “He’ll catch up,” I said. That’s what we all said to her. But Jake didn’t catch up. When he was about a year and a half old, he started having seizures, and that’s when they detected the chromosomal abnormality. There’s a genetic problem of some sort—I don’t recall the specific name—but by the time he turned two, anyone could see that there was something wrong. He never spoke, he laughed at nothing, and he twirled in circles until he was so dizzy that he fell over, or he spent hours spinning the wheels of a truck and staring at them. These were things he did during his good moments.

  The day I first went to look at the Dwight house after they told me they wanted to list it, I got a little glimpse of their life. It was a Saturday morning, and when I rang the bell, I had to wait quite a while. Nobody answered, but I heard a high-pitched, repetitive screaming coming from inside. I waited and then rang again. Realizing they were unlikely to hear the bell over the screaming, I tried to open the door. It was locked. I walked around to the kitchen door and knocked again. Cassie saw me through the window. Jake was seated on the floor, with his back against the wall, banging his head against it and wailing. Cassie was trying to pull him away from the wall, but he repeatedly wriggled from her grasp and moved back to the wall, where he rocked back and forth in a rhythmic precision, like a human metronome, whacking his head against the plaster on every upbeat. Cassie left him for a moment, flew to the door and unlocked it for me, then returned to Jake.

  “LOCK THE DOOR BEHIND YOU,” she shouted. It took me a moment to find the lock, which was at shoulder level.

  “PATCH,” Cassie shouted over Jake’s high-pitched screams. I have to admit, I was overwhelmed by what was going on. I’d really had no idea, until then. After a moment, Patch came out of the back hall, wearing old sweats and a T-shirt, his hair wet.

  “I’ve been calling and calling you. He’s having a total fucking meltdown, and Hildy’s here to see the house,” Cassie hissed.

  “I was in the shower,” Patch said in a tone of barely controlled rage. “Hi, Hildy,” he said without looking at me. He was looking at Jake, his head moving back and forth in time with the boy’s head banging.

  “Hi, Patch,” I said.

  “C’mon, Jake,” Patch said, grabbing the boy by his wrists. “Let’s watch Sesame Street. Let’s watch Elmo.”

  Jake said, “Sneakahs, Sneakahs,” and continued his wailing as Patch hauled him away from the wall and lifted him up in his arms like a baby. Jake’s fists swung at Patch’s face.

  “We’ll find Sneakers,” said Patch. “No hitting, Jake.”

  Cassie stood for a moment to catch her breath, and then gave me a little smile. “He’s getting too big for me to handle.”

  “Yes, I see, he’s getting to be so … big,” I replied.

  Really, what do you say?

  Cassie gave me a tour of the house. It was, to put it mildly, a wreck. Holes had been punched through the plaster. What looked like a large dried turd lay on a closet floor. Blood had been smeared on the bathroom walls and adult-size diapers were stacked everywhere—in the bathroom, the bedrooms, the kitchen. Meds, charts, soiled clothing, doctors’ bills, and magazine clippings littered the house. Cassie didn’t really say much. There was no need. Like I’ve said, the house tells the story.

  In the den (they had once thought it would be the room of a second child) were photos of little Jake in a bunny costume, his eyes fixed on something in the distance, unsmiling. Also displayed were wedding photos of Cassie and Patch, both looking twenty years younger. They hadn’t been married a decade.

  I asked Cassie what was under the stained carpets in the living room. She just looked at me vacantly and said, “The ground? Who knows.” Patch thought his dad had put hardwood floors there. He would pull up a piece of carpet to check later, he promised. Jake was standing in front of the television, rocking back and forth to a counting song on Sesame Street.

  The Dwights wanted to move to Newton, where they would be in close proximity to the best school for Jake in the Boston area. But they had to sell their house first. Cassie and I sat at the kitchen table, working out some numbers. From the next room, the TV volume was rising and Jake could be heard stomping about and singing. His voice was like nothing I had ever heard before. It was clear and tonal, and though there were no words, there was a distinct melody. It sounded like an Indian meditative chant, like something a Native American might beat drums to, a deep, guttural incantation, but, like I said, with no words.

  We had to go back into the living room to get some paperwork. Jake was sitting on the floor, facing away from the TV, rocking back and forth with his eyes closed. A large orange cat had draped itself across the child’s lap. It was one of the fattest cats I’d ever seen, but you know the type, a real fancy-pants, with a handsome, regal head, a long, thick coat, and a beautifully feathered tail that twitched every few seconds, just at the very end, like the rattle on a snake’s tail. He rolled onto his back and his massive white double paws kneaded the air, then he swayed back onto the soft blob of his belly and plucked gently at Jake’s pajamas with his claws, purring away, his green eyes opening wide at
times, and then narrowing back into little crescents that curved up at the corners. Jake’s singing had become a sort of purring hum, and the cat lolled this way and that, his head moving back and forth merrily, pressing up into the child’s open palm with first one bewhiskered cheek and then the other. Jake was smiling. He was rocking back and forth, eyes closed, stroking the cat’s chin and belly, and the purring cat gazed at us across its great paunch with an expression of smug superiority.

  “Nice cat,” I said, and I meant it, though I’m not usually a cat person.

  “That’s Sneakers, and yes, he’s a great cat. They love each other.” Cassie was beaming now, watching her son cuddling his pet. “Feeling better, Jakey?” she asked, smiling at him, but he seemed to have no idea we were there. “He loves the sensation of the cat’s fur, and his occupational therapist says there’s something about the purring that he also finds soothing.”

  “So sweet,” I said.

  “We never planned on getting a pet. We didn’t think Jake would cope with one very well, but this guy showed up one night last year, a stray. Just hung around on our porch for a few days, and we started feeding him. Whenever Jake and I went outside, the cat followed us around. Jake always understood that he needed to be gentle with the cat. We never had to teach him that.”

  Jake was moving his cheek against the fur on the cat’s back, and the cat casually licked the bottom of one of his front paws and then the other.

  “We had to move the locks up a few months ago,” Patch explained as he let me out the kitchen door. “Jake let himself out last year.… It took us two hours to find him. I’ve never prayed so hard in my life. He doesn’t know anything about traffic or dogs or strangers. I thought Cassie was gonna lose her mind. They did a whole Amber Alert and everything. Finally found him behind Stop & Shop, barefoot, walking through a bunch of glass behind the recycling bins. For weeks, it haunted me. I kept thinking, ya know, what if? What if…”

  “You can’t think like that,” I said. “You’d drive yourself insane.”

  I listed the house at just under $500,000. I think I showed it three times that winter, but the Dwights hadn’t been able to do much to improve the place. If anything, each time I went in, it looked worse. It’s on a quiet road that leads down to the Crossing, and when I drive past, I often think about something Cassie said to me that first day I came to talk to her about the listing, and she explained abut the school in Newton.

  “It’s a day school. But someday, we’re gonna be old, and I don’t know who’ll take care of Jake,” she said. “I lose my temper with him twenty times a day, and I’m his mom. What would somebody do to him who didn’t love him the way Patch and I do? What if somebody was taking care of him who didn’t give a shit about him? Ya know, there was an article a few years back about an elderly man who shot and killed his thirty-year-old brain-damaged son, and then himself. I understand why, Hildy, seriously, I do,” Cassie said. “I want Jake to learn enough skills to be without us someday. He’s happy enough to be away from us, but I worry about the people who will be responsible for him. At this school, he can learn some social skills that can enhance his life so much.…”

  I’m not the touchy-feeliest, but I put my hand on Cassie’s arm when she said that. I guess Cassie’s not touchy-feely, either, because she pulled her arm away and we turned our attention back to the bank statements.

  five

  My dad served on the Wendover Board of Selectmen during most of the 1950s and 1960s. For twenty-five years, he worked behind the butcher’s counter at Stead’s Market down in the Crossing, and when old Barkie Stead died, my dad bought the market from his family. When Dad retired, many years later, he sold it to Luke Farman, who eventually sold it to Stop & Shop. Stop & Shop had to agree to construct a sign and maintain a facade that fit within the zoning bylaws, which my dad always thought too restrictive. Dad was an old-fashioned New England Yankee who believed that people should be able to do whatever they damned well pleased with property they owned. I actually need the zoning laws, not because I think supermarket chain stores should be forced to look like Nathaniel Hawthorne once shopped there, but because my clients want things to look that way. They appreciate the history of our town, and the value of almost everything in our town appreciates as a result. Not everybody gains, of course. Some people who grew up in Wendover can no longer afford to live here, due to the increase in housing prices and property taxes, but some manage to stay on. Linda and Henry Barlow, for example.

  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.