The Good House: A Novel

by Leary, Ann

  So back she went to Danvers State. I do remember her hospitalization this time, because we went to visit her there. After a few drinks, Scott could usually persuade me to tell him about it. Mostly, I remember the smell. It just filled the air at Danvers State—the smell of urine, feces, ammonia, and some strange amalgamation of chemically tinged body odors. You walked into the stench the minute the attendants opened the doors to the wards. You never stopped smelling it, because you were just completely immersed in it. You had to go home and soak in the tub for an hour and shampoo your hair over and over again to get the smell out. My mother was very confused and mostly silent during our visits. She must have been heavily sedated. But some of the other women on the ward, they cackled and swore, and one told me she could see the devil above my head. He was always there, in a vapor, she told me. She kept staring at the space above my head and shaking her head with wild eyes, then looking at me with pity. We never went back to visit after that. Eventually, Mom came home.

  My mother was depressed. What else can I say? Scott and the girls were always curious about her, but I haven’t a lot of details. She loved animals. Our cat, Calico, was one of the few things that was guaranteed to always make my mother smile. She taught me to knit. She liked to read. She needed quiet. She was rather pretty. When I was twelve, she killed herself.

  It was on one of the first days of summer. I remember my brother and sister and I were just giddy with the excitement of no school that morning. My mother stayed in bed, which wasn’t unusual. We rode our bikes down to the market and our dad gave us doughnuts for breakfast. Then we went to my aunt Peg’s—she lived down the road from us—and played with our cousins, Janie and Eddie. Eventually, Peg took us home. It was suppertime and Peg said she had a feeling, a premonition. She wanted to make sure my mom was feeling okay.

  Mom was still in bed. The bedroom door was locked. Peg knocked and knocked. Then she called my dad, who came home and propped a ladder against the house, and I climbed up and into the small upstairs window. My dad was too big to squeeze through the window frame; my aunt Peg, weeping and wringing her hands, was too anxious. So I climbed through the window and ran to the bedroom door and unlocked it. I remember that I held my breath as I ran through the room, for some reason, as if I were swimming underwater from one side of a pool to the other. I just caught a glimpse of my mother out of the corner of my eye. She was curled up, facing the wall. I unlocked the door and ran past my father. I don’t know how I knew she was dead. I just did. She had swallowed every pill in the house (and we had a houseful of pills).

  Afterward, for years, I felt a strange guilt about running through the room like that. I should have gone to her. In fact, people who knew the story assumed that I had actually done just that—walked over and tried to wake her somehow. But I didn’t. I’m not sure why I feel that guilt. I still feel it at times. Somewhere, deep inside, I think that maybe if I could have held my hand in front of her nose to see if she was breathing, like my father had done when he ran into the room, she might have been revived. By my need. Like that mare Rebecca had saved that first morning, revived by the presence, the simple and undeniable need of her baby.

  But my mother knew we needed her when she took all those pills. There was no denying our presence. We weren’t babies anymore. We were wild, my brother, sister, and I. Always tearing through the house. Telling on one another, having raging fights that spilled into her room. Jumping on her bed, screaming accusations about one another. Judd was always in trouble in school; he’s a cop now, in Swampscott. My sister, Lisa (now a makeup artist in L.A.), and I had howling, slapping brawls and we’d shriek and curse at each other in front of my mother, trying to get her to take sides. Sometimes she would. Usually, though, she’d tell us that she needed quiet. She was too tired. She wanted us out of her room.

  “You’re all driving your poor mother out of her mind,” Aunt Peg used to shout at us when she stopped in to “check on things,” which she did regularly. We were, too. We knew it. We seemed to drive her into herself, make her distant and sad. But once she got that way, during what I now realize were her very depressed times, our mother didn’t even seem to know we were there. We could be jumping around her bed, screaming and cursing and kicking one another, and she’d just turn and face the wall.

  We are here, we are here, we are here was our constant chaotic, cacophonous cry.

  Who gives a fuck, I guess, was her answer.

  eleven

  I had been invited to Tess and Michael’s for Thanksgiving dinner. It was going to be Tess, Michael, and Michael’s parents, Nancy and Bill Watson. Emily was coming from New York, without Adam, who had decided to spend Thanksgiving with his own family, for some reason, this year. And Scott was coming. It was the first time since our divorce that we would be spending a holiday together with the kids. When Tess first presented the idea to me, several weeks earlier, I had balked.

  “Just have Scott. I’ll have dinner with Aunt Jane,” I had said. My cousin Jane lived in Wendover, and in the past I had spent holidays with her and her family when Scott was with mine.

  “Mom, why?” Tess had demanded. “Dad’s all alone and you’re all alone. I know you two get along fine. Dad said he just spoke to you last week.”

  It was true. Scott had called from his home in Lenox to ask my advice about whether he should put his house on the market now, or wait until the spring. Now that he and Richard had split up, he wanted to move closer to Marblehead, so he could see more of Grady. I had told him to wait. The Berkshires are beautiful in the spring, but the fall and winters are a little desolate, in my opinion. Scott knows that my opinion on the Berkshires is based on one visit to Lenox in midsummer twenty years ago and multiple readings of Ethan Frome. But he took my advice. He was going to wait until spring, and in the meantime, he made frequent trips to Brooklyn to see Emily and to Marblehead to see Tess. He always was a dedicated father.

  Thanksgiving week marks the beginning of a slow-down time for me. It’s a time I usually look forward to, but this year was different because the preceding months had been very slow. Plus, it was right before the holidays, two years earlier, that I had been shipped off to Hazelden. This year, holiday invitations had already started to arrive, but I didn’t feel inclined to attend any of the parties. People get so drunk at holiday parties. I used to love that; it made me feel like a normal drinker. Now, prim and sober at parties, I often find myself cornered by somebody’s shit-faced husband who’s determined to have me hear his incoherent monologue about Barack Obama or how much he’s always loved the sea. And, of course, there are always those people who ask me how much their property is worth. People have always asked me this, and it can be a little irritating. It’s like asking a doctor about your niggling cough while at a social occasion. Sometimes I’d actually sold the house to the person doing this. When I was drinking, I’d usually tell them it was worth at least 10 percent more than what they’d paid, just to make them happy. Now I’m tempted to admit, “Not even close to what you paid for it,” just to see the look on their faces. In general, I had been refusing invites for holiday parties, but I did finally agree to go to Tess’s and be with the rest of the family.

  The day before Thanksgiving, I was doing some paperwork in the office when Rebecca blew in. She was wearing riding britches and boots and a navy windbreaker. She looked windburned and radiant. It was an unseasonably mild day and she and Linda Barlow had trailered her two horses Serpico and Hat Trick down to Hart’s Beach for a ride. The horses were fresh, unaccustomed to the sound of the surf, and they had had a long gallop. They had ridden all the way past Wind Point Road, Rebecca mentioned, in an offhand manner. All the way past Wind Point Road and back.

  “We’ve been so lucky with this weather,” I said. “What a great day for a ride on the beach.”

  Rebecca had seated herself on one of the armchairs that faced my desk. She rested the ankle of one boot on her knee and leaned back. She looked my office over as if for the first time, taking everyt
hing in.

  “This is a great office,” she said. “Did your ex do the decorating?”

  “Of course,” I said. “I’m hopeless at that kind of thing.”

  Rebecca grinned. “Did he used to like to shop with you? For clothes, I mean … your clothes?”

  “Yes,” I groaned, and we both started to laugh. Rebecca thought it was hysterical that I’d had all these clues, all those years, and never knew Scott was gay. And it was funny when Rebecca made little jokes about it.

  “He was constantly bringing me things home from Boston and New York, things that I would never have bought myself but that were actually great.…”

  I could see that I had lost Rebecca’s attention. Somebody was unlocking the side door—the entrance to the upstairs offices—then there were footsteps on the stairs. Rebecca’s face was flushed, and it wasn’t just the windburn.

  “That must have been Peter,” she said, picking up a paperweight that was sitting on my desk and pretending she was examining it.

  “I don’t think so,” I said. “Peter rarely comes in on Wednesdays. The Newbolds usually do Thanksgiving at Elise’s sister’s house. In Concord, I think. That was probably just Patch Dwight. There’s a leaky faucet up there.”

  “Oh,” said Rebecca. The paperweight—a simple crystal dome with a digital clock set into its center—had suddenly become a source of great fascination to Rebecca. She was examining it very carefully, holding it up to the light and looking at the ceiling through its curved perspective.

  “Hey, by the way, did you ever call Patch about getting a water hookup in your studio?”

  “Yes,” Rebecca said. “Well, actually, I had Brian call. You were right. He was happy to do it and was really nice when they were doing the work. Now I can wash out my paintbrushes in the studio.”

  “Have you been doing a lot of painting?”

  Rebecca brightened. “Tons. I’m doing a whole series of these giant oil paintings of the moon over the water. They’re from photos Peter took, mostly. One of them, though, I actually painted at Peter’s one night. It was a night when the moon was full and you just couldn’t capture the size of it with a camera. But as soon as Peter saw it, he called me and told me to bring my paints.”

  We heard Patch running down the stairs again, and Rebecca jerked her head around to watch him walk past my window. Then she turned and smiled at me. “You’re right. It was Patch.”

  I had glanced down at some papers on my desk when Rebecca said, “Hildy, Peter’s a little upset with me. With both of us, really.”

  “Oh? Why?”

  She was picking at one of her fingernails.

  “Wait, let me guess. He knows that you told me about what’s going on between you two.”

  “Yes, I told him how you … came to know about it … and he was really upset. He said that you took advantage of me.”

  “Advantage?” I was trying not to laugh. I had taken advantage of Rebecca. That was rich, coming from Peter Newbold.

  “Don’t get upset, Hildy. It’s all fine. He just thinks that you made me tell you stuff that I wouldn’t ordinarily tell anybody. He thinks your whole psychic thing is an act.”

  “Rebecca, it is an act. I told you that. I don’t read people’s minds, not in the way you think I do anyway. But I didn’t make you say anything. I’m shocked that Peter thinks you are so malleable that I could … Well, now that I think about it, I guess I’m not surprised; he seems to have had great success manipulating you.”

  “HILDY. How could you say that? That’s one of the cruelest things anybody has ever said to me. We’re very serious about each other, Hildy. You know we are. You know all about it.”

  “Well, tell Peter I won’t tell anybody. Who would I tell? Nobody up here even knows his wife. I’m sure people think he carries on with all his patients.…”

  This was below the belt. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t mean that.”

  “It’s okay,” Rebecca said. “Peter told me that you’d react very angrily if I talked to you about this, but I had to. You’re my closest friend up here. The thing is, Peter’s not just worried about Elise finding out. He could lose his license to practice if this came out. Psychiatrists can’t have intimate relationships with their clients. It’s against the law. In some states, he could go to jail for what has happened between us. Even though he was my doctor for only a short time.”

  “Against the law for two adults to have a relationship? Two consenting adults? I don’t think that’s true, Rebecca. Maybe in Puritan times, but now you’re allowed to have sex with whoever you want, as long as you’re both adults. I hate to say it, but I think Peter’s feeding you a line of bullshit here.…”

  “What on earth? It’s not a line.…”

  “I’m paying alimony to a man who was carrying on with another man for two years while we were married. The law saw nothing wrong with that. In fact, somehow, I am responsible for supporting him financially, him and, at one time, his partner, because I earn more money. So I don’t see how it could be against the law for you and Peter to be carrying on as you are. Perhaps Peter wants you to think this so—oh, never mind, I’m sorry.”

  “Hildy, it’s okay, but you’re wrong. I’ve looked it up. It’s against the law. Because some unethical doctors in the past have taken advantage of their patients. Some patients develop transference and they think they’re in love with their shrink, but it’s not real love. It’s not like what Peter and I have. But I was never really Peter’s patient. Not really. Not for long anyway. We’re in love.”

  Rebecca looked so fragile then, so vulnerable, I felt bad about what I had said.

  “I know you are. I know.”

  Rebecca sat forward in her seat then and looked into my eyes. She wanted a reading.

  “You do? You know how he feels? You can tell me, Hildy. Don’t spare me. I really need to know. I know that you know.”

  “I don’t.” I sighed.

  This is why I stopped doing this kind of thing years ago. People want you to tell them that they’re special; that there’s some kind of cosmic meaning to their life’s journey and a foreseeable fate that is just for them. A bright, happy fate just for special old them.

  “Hildy. Hildy, just look at me, just for a minute.”

  I did. It made me shiver. Poor Rebecca.

  “Yes. Yes, of course he loves you. Now stop worrying. Why don’t you come over tonight? After you put the kids to bed. Come over for a quick glass of wine.”

  “I’d love to, Hildy, but I can’t. Brian’s on his way out here. My in-laws are coming for Thanksgiving. I guess I’d better get home and get changed.”

  “Have a happy Thanksgiving, Rebecca,” I said, and she wished me the same.

  I watched her walk out the side door and heard her pause for a moment at the bottom of Peter’s stairs. Then she stomped along the porch in her riding boots, and in a few moments I heard her car speed off down Church Street.

  I worked late that day. I was getting all my accounts organized for the end of the year, and when I left my office, it was dark. The darkness took me by surprise because the clock on my desk had said three-thirty. In fact, the little clock in the crystal paperweight on my desk has said three-thirty ever since then, though I’ve replaced the batteries numerous times. I’m not saying it had to do with Rebecca—still, I did recall what Brian had said that night at Wendy’s party about Rebecca’s strange magnetic field and its destructive effect on electronics. But that paperweight clock is cheap, made in China. It probably stopped days before Rebecca even touched it. I just didn’t notice.

  I walked along the driveway between my building and the Congregational church and I turned up the collar on my coat. There’s always a wicked east wind that whips in between the two buildings when the weather turns cold. I blew into my hands and looked up at the church’s tall windows, which were brightly lit from within. It was Wednesday night—the night the church choir usually holds its rehearsal for the coming Sunday’s services. I often
see them from my office window, through the church’s fogged panes: Sharon Rice, Brenda Dobbs from the Crossing library, Frizzy Wentworth, old Henry Mallard, and some I don’t know. On nights that I worked late, I enjoyed watching them from my desk. I usually couldn’t help but smile at those earnest townsfolk, their hymnals held aloft, their mouths moving in keen, pious syllables, their eager, submissive eyes fixed on a choir leader who stood just out of sight. That night before Thanksgiving, they were working a handbell recital, and I slowed my steps as I passed. The church’s walls are thick and solid and no music could be heard from where I stood, but I watched the congregants as they held their bells, one bright brass, oak-stemmed clanger in each hand. They moved the bells up and down in what appeared, from where I stood, to be a random sequence. I thought about how these Wendover Protestants looked no different from the folks who peopled the choir when I was a kid. Those Massachusetts women, hair bobbed, no makeup, as sexless as children or Pilgrims. And the men, those paunchy family men, all chiming in with their bells; all together and each alone. Up. Down. Now … now … now … in a sequence set by somebody I just couldn’t see from my driveway.

  * * *

  I have no idea who runs the music program at the church now, but when I was a child, it was Mrs. Howell, the minister’s wife. I was very fond of Mrs. Howell; she was the one who first got me interested in music. She made me love music, really. Mrs. Howell conducted both the adult and the children’s choir. Sometimes the children’s choir joined the adult choir for hymns; on other occasions, we children sang our own hymns during church services. Mrs. Howell said that the sound of children singing made her feel God’s presence most clearly, and she taught us not to be afraid to sing; not to worry about hitting false notes, but to sing out with our hearts. She said that none of our notes would appear off, or false, if we sang like that.