The Good House: A Novel
Page 10
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.)
“Oh,” I said. “That’s a beautiful road. Did you know that’s Peter Newbold’s house there at the end—near the beach?” I said it before thinking and worried for a moment that Rebecca might be embarrassed that I knew that Peter was her psychiatrist, but she brightened when I mentioned his name and said, “I know.” She pulled a huge canvas from the back of the studio and said, “This is a painting from a photograph taken from his lawn.”
“Lovely, Rebecca,” I said. Then: “So you’ve been to Peter and Elise’s house?” I’d never been in therapy and had no idea, therefore, whether it was usual or unusual for patients to socialize with their doctors. But it made sense to me that the McAllisters and the Newbolds would get along, as couples, and it seemed altogether likely that they were all friends.
“Yes … well, actually, I’ve never been inside, but I was taking photographs down there and Peter came wandering down the beach. I was standing almost in front of his house. I had no idea.”
I was facing Rebecca when she said this, so I was able to see that she was telling me a lie. I thought she was going to continue, but she stopped talking and was biting her lip. Then she smiled and said, “Well, long story short, it turns out Peter’s very into photography, too, and he said I could take photographs from his lawn if I wanted to.”
“Oh, I do really love that one,” I said, taking a step closer to the huge canvas she was holding up. I didn’t care to pursue her little untruth. We all lie on occasion; there’s usually nothing behind it. But I wouldn’t lie about somebody’s artwork. I don’t tell people I like things if I don’t. I usually just say nothing. I really did love Rebecca’s painting. It made me almost smell the sea. It was beautiful.
“Actually, Peter took the photograph,” Rebecca said. “He gave it to me when I admired it, and then I painted it.”
“I adore Peter,” I said. “He’s such a nice man. I’m sure he’s quite a good therapist.…”
I was watching for Rebecca’s reaction, but when she answered, her back was to me. She was placing the paintings back against the wall.
“Yes … well, he’s not really a therapist to me. He prescribed some medication that I needed, that’s all. It … well, it changed my life. I’ve seen different shrinks over the years, and have been prescribed various antidepressants.… God, I barely know you and I’m telling you all this,” Rebecca said. She turned and smiled at me. Rebecca had carried her wineglass down from the house, and now she lifted it from a paint-speckled table and took a sip. It pleased me to see that Rebecca enjoyed her wine. I always notice the way people drink. I like it when I spot what I think is a fellow lover of spirits. I suspected that Rebecca was my kind.
“Don’t worry,” I said. “People tell me everything. But I don’t gossip.”
And I don’t, really. Not about real stuff.
“Well, there’s not much to tell. Peter prescribed a medication that finally worked for me. Now I’m not depressed.”
“So, I’ve always been curious about these antidepressants,” I said. Both my daughters take them. I won’t take pills. “Do you feel sedated on them? High?”
“No, most of them make you feel like shit, actually. Like a dullard swimming through some thick muck all the time. But the stuff Peter has me on … well, I started feeling better, little by little. One day, I suddenly noticed how good food tastes. I was eating something silly, an English muffin, I think it was, and suddenly I thought, This is the most delicious thing I’ve ever eaten in my life. That’s why I’ve put on a few pounds. Food tastes good again.”
It was true, Rebecca had gained a few, but she needed to.
“I’d be petting the dog and thinking, How did I never notice how soft his coat is before? I had never felt anything so soft.”
“Wow, you should be on one of those commercials for the company that makes whatever you’re on,” I said, and Rebecca laughed. She really did make it sound appealing. It sounded like being permanently on your second drink. Not drunk, but not desperately sober. That would be a nice way to be all the time, I supposed. We looked at a few more paintings and then we decided to head down to the house for dinner.
“Your wine,” I said. She almost left it behind.
“Oh, right,” Rebecca said, and grabbed the glass. She sipped the rest of the wine in that glass as she served up the stew and then she drank water with me as we ate. I can’t help it, I notice the way people drink. I’m always surprised by the kind of person who can have just a glass of wine or two and then switch to water. Rebecca hadn’t struck me as one of those, but now it appeared that she was.
* * *
When I left Rebecca’s that night, I drove down Wendover Rise, but instead of turning toward the river and my house, I decided to drive past Getchell’s Cove, just to get a look at the harvest moon on the water. There were still a few boats moored there. I recognized Oatie Clarke’s old Chris-Craft and the Steins’ sailboat and the Westons’, and I watched them bob up and down beneath the golden light of the moon, the gentle water sparkling all around. I thought about the little sailboat I used to keep moored there in the cove. Frankie Getchell gave it to me that summer before college. It was an old Widgeon that he had found at the dump, salvaged, and repaired. He patched up the hull, painted it bright red, and told me I could have it. He taught me to sail. I don’t think they make Widgeons anymore. You never see them, but they’re a great little sailboat. They have a jib and a mainsail and there’s room for two people, but it’s still small enough to sail alone. We named her Sarah Good, after my ancestress, and we spent many afternoons sailing out of Wendover Harbor; me in the striped bikini I wore that whole summer, Frank, shirtless, in a pair of baggy painter’s pants. We scrambled over each other’s limbs, cursing and laughing, when I was learning to tack and jibe, and more than once, I managed to capsize us. A Widgeon isn’t the easiest boat to right, but Frank taught me how to stand on the centerboard and use my body to rock her back upright. He taught me to do it myself, in case I was ever out alone. I became a sailor. We got so that we sailed with such ease, Frank and me. We really didn’t talk much; there wasn’t the need. We’d rig her silently; then Frank would sit back against the stern with the tiller tucked under his arm and a cigarette dangling from his easy smile. I would lean into the beefy crook of his thighs, the jib sheet tucked between my fingers and my face angled up at the sun. It was just that one summer. Then I went off to college. But I kept Sarah Good. I had a friend with a trailer who would help me pull her out at the end of the summer, and I stored her in my dad’s backyard all winter, her hull breaching up through the snow like the broad back of a red whale surrounded by a swelling white sea.
The first time Scott visited me in Wendover was the summer after our junior year. I used to borrow Butchie Haskell’s skiff to row out to my mooring, and as we pulled up alongside my little dented sailboat, Scott, who was always great at impressions, let loose with a great cry of “My, but she’s yar.” We both cracked up and spent the afternoon sailing around Wendover Harbor, talking like Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant. Of course, we both wanted to be Katharine Hepburn. I know this is hard to believe, but until Scott told me he was gay, almost sixteen years into our marriage, I’d had absolutely no clue.
nine
“Hi, Mom, it’s me, Tess. Grady’s sick today. He’s all right, just a bad cold. We’re going to stay home with him tonight, so we won’t be needing you. But thanks anyway. Oh, but call me when you get a chance. I want to talk to you about Thanksgiving.”
The message had been left on my home phone. It was Friday evening.
Shortly after I returned from rehab, Tess and Michael had started asking me to baby-sit on occasional evenings. Then it had turned into an every Friday
kind of thing—a date night for them, and a date night for me and little Grady. I really did look forward to my time with Grady. I won’t bore you with all the doting grandmother stories, but allow me this one: I had been there the past Friday, the Friday before the night they canceled because he was sick, and Grady was sitting in his high chair. He had just finished his “supper.”
When my girls were babies, their meals were rather simple affairs. I vaguely remember a plastic plate separated into two or three compartments, and I used to fill these compartments with food—meat, vegetables, maybe a little fruit. They had a sippy cup of milk. Before that, I nursed them.
Grady’s meals are complicated and serious affairs, each and every one of them. They have been since the day he was born. Tess had sought out “lactation specialists” shortly after she arrived home from the hospital, because she was afraid the baby wasn’t getting enough milk. Once they sorted out the breast-feeding, he was colicky, so they consulted all sorts of doctors and nutritionists. A lactose intolerance was discovered, and Grady was allowed only soy milk once his mother weaned him. No milk, no cheese, no butter. And though Grady had never been near a peanut in his short life, there was a cousin on Michael’s side who had a peanut allergy, so nothing with peanuts or peanut oil was allowed in the house. They were in the process of trying to “rule out” a gluten allergy.
“What’s left?” I asked Tess. “What will he live on?”
Tess and Michael hated when I asked questions about Grady’s diet, and Michael actually said to me one day, “We worry, when you make little offhand comments about his food issues, that you’re not taking them seriously and that you might … forget and give Grady the wrong thing to eat.”
I assured him that I knew the “food issues” were serious, and of course I would never feed Grady anything he wasn’t supposed to have, though I have often entertained wicked fantasies of sneaking him a little cup of ice cream or a sliver of cake. The baby didn’t eat. And who could blame him? But anyway, that Friday night, Grady had finished pushing around his meal of pureed organic peas, gluten-free pasta, and some kind of soy burger, and while I was wiping off the high chair’s tray, he was just beaming up at me.