The Good House: A Novel

by Leary, Ann

  As the years went by, however, after I became a wife and a mother, it was no longer very funny to forget hours at a time. It was seen, by some, as an indication of some sort of a problem. So I became quite adept at blustering my way around the last night’s recollections. I’d offer vague answers to queries about how I had gotten myself home and fumble my way through forgotten conversations with others. I made real-estate deals in blackouts, invited people over, told secrets, expressed loving sentiments to casual acquaintances, and all this stuff had to be undone while sober—usually under the bludgeoning sledgehammer of a hangover. So you can see how drinking alone, in my own house, after my trip to Hazelden, had offered a nice solution for me. What a relief not to have to wake up with all that bullshit to undo. I thought I had given up drunk-dialing, but apparently, according to what Rebecca was telling me, I had taken it up again. Or rather, my scheming autopilot had. At Hazelden, during an “alcohol education” session, a counselor discussed blackouts: “When you’re in a blackout, your conscious mind is not at work. You are operating, mainly, on very primitive instincts. You’re like a beast.” My beast had called Rebecca and now I had to cover its tracks.

  “I realized that it would be better just to go to bed,” I said again.

  Rebecca laughed. “Well, I worried about you driving. From the sound of your voice. But when I called back and you didn’t answer, I figured you had turned in. It sounds like you had a great Thanksgiving, though.”

  “It was actually quite wonderful,” I replied tersely. Ugh. What had I said?

  “I just love the way you and Scott have such a great friendship. I don’t think things will be so jolly with Brian and me, once we split up,” Rebecca said. Then, before I had a chance to say anything, she asked, “Have you noticed if Peter is up at his office today?”

  “I just got here, Rebecca, but it’s Monday. Why would he be here?”

  “I don’t know. But he’s not at the hospital. I’ve been trying all morning.”

  I looked at my desk clock, which still read three-thirty. Then I looked at my watch.

  “It’s nine-forty,” I said. “I’m sure he’s just not there yet. What’s so urgent anyway?”

  “Urgent? Why does it have to be urgent? I haven’t seen him in over a week. I need to talk to him. He’s usually at the hospital by eight. Now I’m thinking something bad happened over the weekend.”

  “Rebecca,” I said, “I’m sure everything’s fine. It was probably a very hectic weekend, with a lot of partying. Who knows, maybe he’s a little hungover from the weekend and overslept.…”

  “What? Do you think he enjoys his time with Elise? That he parties with her? You told me yourself the other day. He’s in love with me! His life with Elise is hell! I’m just afraid something’s wrong.”

  I said nothing then. Rebecca was being rude. I had a headache.

  “Hello?” she said finally.

  “Yes, I’m here,” I said, leafing through a pile of mail on my desk.

  “Hildy, will you tell me if he comes in?” Rebecca asked, her voice softer now. She was pleading, like a little girl.

  “Yes, dear, of course I will,” I said soothingly. After I hung up the phone, I worried about her a little. I worried about her and Peter.

  * * *

  Business continued to be slow, but during the last week of November, I received an offer on Cassie and Patch’s house. I had shown a New Jersey family, the Goodwins, the house twice, so I knew they were interested, but they had grumbled about the “state” of the place, so I didn’t hold out much hope. Frank’s home-improvement efforts had not been long-lived. But the Goodwins wanted to live in Wendover, it was just the right price for them, and they loved the location. The offer was slightly low. Cassie and Patch countered, and a deal was reached. I was thrilled. That night, I admit, I had myself a nice little celebration toast with Babs and Molly. Cassie and Patch had been thrilled when I told them the sellers had agreed to their terms, and Jake, well, he didn’t know it, but he was going to be going to a school that had the possibility of really helping him. It made me feel good that I was a part of that. I finished off the bottle of red that I had been drinking, but it had been nearly empty when I began, so I opened another.

  The next morning was gray and there was a wet, rainy snow coming down—what the weatherman calls a “wintry mix.” I was a little late arriving at the office, and as soon as I entered the reception area, Kendall jumped up from her desk, visibly flustered.

  “Rebecca McAllister is in your office. She was waiting here when I arrived.”

  “Ah fuck!” I said. Kendall actually flinched.

  I walked into my office and saw Rebecca peering out the window at the falling slush.

  “Hi, Rebecca, what’s going on?”

  Rebecca turned, and when she saw me, she heaved a very dramatic sigh of relief.

  “Oh, Hildy, I’m so glad you’re okay.”

  “Well, I’m fine, of course.”

  “Do you remember anything about last night? About after you left my house, I mean?”

  What? My heart was pounding. “Last night?” I said.

  Rebecca walked over and closed the office door. I sat down at my desk.

  “Hildy, I haven’t wanted to say anything, because I know you’re very sensitive about your drinking, but I think you really need to go back into treatment or something. You don’t even remember coming over last night, do you?”

  Breathe. I had to remember to breathe in and then to breathe out.

  “No, I didn’t go anywhere. I went to bed. I have a lot of work to do this morning, so maybe we can catch up another time.…”

  “I know. The Dwight deal. You told me last night.”

  Now I had a foggy recollection of a phone conversation—of speaking on the phone, in my bed.

  “That’s right, I remember now. You called,” I said. “I was half-asleep; that’s why I couldn’t remember at first.” I began busily moving papers around my desk. It was to hide my shaking hands. I was nervous, and when I get nervous, my hands shake.

  “No, Hildy,” Rebecca said sadly. Why did she have to sound so full of pity? “I didn’t call you. You drove over to my house. You were … just, well, out of your mind. I wanted to drive you home, but it was Magda’s night off and you wouldn’t let me anyway. You woke up Ben with all your shouting.”

  It’s like a suctioning of the soul, being told the things your body does when your mind is in that dead zone. It’s like having your very skin peeled off, like being publicly stripped down to some gruesome inner membrane that nobody should see, and revealing it to all.

  I never tell a person what they did when they were drunk. I would never do this.

  “You drive around this town at night drunk out of your mind. Am I the only one who knows this? I hope so. I haven’t said anything to you or anyone else about my concerns, because this town shuts down so early, I didn’t really think there was any danger. Every house in Wendover is dark by eleven, so I never thought it was that big a deal that you like to haunt the roads at night after a few too many drinks. But, well, now I’m nervous. If you’re calling and visiting me, I can’t help but wonder who else you might be calling. Who you might have told about me and Peter.”

  I had gone to bed. I remembered putting on my nightgown. I had been awakened by the phone. Or had that been a dream?

  “And now Peter’s worried about it, too. He told me.”

  I looked up from my papers and said, my voice quivering with rage, “I am SO sick and tired of being brought into this mess between you and Peter. I have no interest in what you two do. I have told nobody.…”

  “You mean you don’t remember telling anybody.”

  “Just get out, Rebecca. I have work to do. I have to work for a living. My father wasn’t rich like yours. I do very well, in case you hadn’t noticed, and I don’t think I would be considered such a success if your ideas about my drunkenly talking about trivial gossip like the stupidity between you and Peter—”


  “Hildy, I came to you as a friend. Peter told me this would happen. That you would react angrily.…”

  “Rebecca, get out of my office. Please!”

  thirteen

  The Goodwins signed their contract, a deposit was placed in escrow, and a building inspection for the Dwight house had been set up. The buyers needed to close by February 1. I had been shaken up a little by Rebecca’s crazy accusations, but within a few days I had let it go. Rebecca was unstable. I had always suspected this about her. Her boyfriend had been her shrink. That pretty much summed it up. I decided that I should keep her at arm’s length for a while, not only because of her nastiness to me during her visit to my office but also because, in recent weeks, I had run into Brian McAllister a few times. They’d been mostly brief encounters at the gas station or the market, but once it was in front of a shop in the Crossing. He was with the boys. They were shopping for a Christmas present for Rebecca. Brian had given me a warm hug and told me how much they loved Wendover; how thrilled they were that I had sold them their dream home. I couldn’t even look at the boys. I felt complicit in Rebecca’s transgressions, somehow. Like a silent accessory to a very serious domestic crime. Rebecca’s affair no longer entertained or amused me. I decided to keep my distance for a while.

  I was heading into the post office a few days after the Dwight contract was signed and I bumped into Frank Getchell, who was on his way out.

  “Hey, Hildy,” he muttered as he walked past.

  “Hey, Frank, wait,” I said. He turned around to face me.

  “I’ve got some good news. I’ve sold the Dwights’ house.”

  “No way,” Frank said. He was grinning at me. He seemed to be trying to think of the right thing to say, but he ended up just saying, “Cool.”

  “Yeah, so thanks for doing all that work. I still haven’t gotten a bill.”

  “Oh. Guess I haven’t gotten around to sendin’ it.”

  “Okay, well, thanks again.”

  “How’s the real-estate business?” Frank asked.

  “Slow. It’ll pick up in another month or so. When the weather gets a little nicer. I never got an offer on your property. Why don’t you put a price on it?”

  Frankie just laughed. “Okay, fifty million dollars.”

  “C’mon, Frankie. You should think about it…”

  “Hey, I was out with Manny Briggs the other day. Sometimes I go out with him this time of year; he never has a crew in the winter.…”

  “Yeah, I bet,” I said.

  Manny was probably the sixth or seventh generation of Briggs men who were commercial lobstermen in Wendover. Manny and his dad had once had a fleet of lobster boats, but now he just had one or two. It was always easy to get high school and college kids to crew in the summer, but in the winter, the kids were back in school. It was hard, cold work. Manny is exactly my age. My friend Lindsey dated him in high school and I dated a friend of his, and we used to go out with them before dawn and spend the mornings sunning ourselves on the bow. The boats stank of fish and fuel and the sweat of the boys. Lindsey and I ate lobsters that whole summer. I always brought a couple home for my dad and Lisa. Judd never liked lobster. I haven’t been able to eat one since, actually. You go off them if you eat too many. I bet Manny Briggs hasn’t eaten a lobster since he was a child.

  “Yeah, so I saw that house that Santorelli guy is buildin’ out on Grey’s Point.”

  This caught my attention.

  “You did?”

  “Yup.” Frankie was turning to leave and I grabbed his sleeve, making him laugh. He was toying with me. He knew I was dying to hear about the Santorelli house out on Grey’s Point.

  “So? Is it huge? Is it ugly?”

  Vince and Nick Santorelli were local builders who had made a fortune in the eighties and nineties building “spec” houses on the North Shore. Their houses were considered to be very high-quality, well-constructed homes. They worked with a Boston architect and had built some notably vast and attractive houses in Ipswich, Manchester, and Beverly Farms. Houses that sold for millions. The previous year, they had bought a property at the end of Grey’s Point that had been owned by the Dean family for many generations. Now the youngest Dean kids were grown and no longer spent their summers in Wendover. They had, easily, the most coveted parcel of land in the whole town. It was eight acres—the entire point. If you sited a house properly, you could have an ocean view from every window. The Deans had listed the property at five million dollars. Just for the land. And Vince Santorelli had bought it. There had been all sorts of talk among the local brokers about it. The Deans had listed the house with a Coldwell broker named Simon Andrews. He sold it to the Santorelli brothers, who planned to build a house that Simon would sell for them. Very shortly after the deal closed, maybe six months later, Simon Andrews had a heart attack at the gym, running on the treadmill. So nobody knew who the Santorellis would list it with, once the house was finished, and for how much.

  I had driven past the property many times. There was a long driveway lined with centuries-old hemlock trees leading out to the point. The Santorellis had put a chain across the drive, so it was impossible to drive up and have a look. Well, not impossible, but it would have been trespassing. Trucks had been going up and down that driveway for almost a year now. You could see the construction from the water and I had heard reports all summer about the progress.

  I really wanted that listing. It was becoming hard for a private broker like me to deal with the Sotheby’s and Coldwell Banker corporate brokers. I needed a few prime properties to reestablish myself as the area’s top broker, not only some of the older homes of longtime residents but also a few of the newer, grander estates. Soon there would be no more townies left with any loyalty to me and everybody would just want to list with whichever broker had the highest sales. I needed the Santorelli property and wanted to approach the brothers with a real understanding of the property. This was going to be the biggest sale in Wendover history.

  “Well, it’s big, Hildy. Wicked big. I wouldn’t say it’s ugly. I wouldn’t mind livin’ in it. Big wraparound porch. It’s lookin’ good, for a house. I liked the place better when it was covered with trees, though.”

  “I really want to see it, Frank. Do you think Manny would let me go out with him some morning?”

  “Only if you help him pull some traps.” Frank laughed.

  “I can band ’em up,” I said. Lindsey and I had become experts at banding lobster claws that summer in high school, though one sliced my finger good and I ended up with a pretty bad infection from it.

  “Nah, you wouldn’t have to. Manny’d be happy to have you along. You’d have to come tomorrow. Boat comes out the end of the week for the winter.”

  “All right. I will.”

  That night, Rebecca came over. It was a Thursday, the night she usually spent with Peter, and she had stopped at my office that afternoon, distraught that he had canceled on her. He had called her that morning to say that he wouldn’t be coming up that weekend. Rebecca didn’t know it, but I had heard her walk up the stairs to his office and jiggle the handle of his door before she tiptoed down and knocked on my door. Did she not believe he wasn’t there, I wondered, or did she want to go in and have a little snoop? When she came into my office and told me how upset she was that she wouldn’t be seeing him that night, I felt sorry for her. I invited her over to my house, and she had accepted, tearfully.

  She brought Japanese and a bottle of white wine. When she opened it, I said that I wasn’t really in the mood for wine, and poured myself a glass of seltzer. Rebecca needed to understand that I don’t need to drink.

  Rebecca was moody and distracted. Liam was having trouble with math. Rebecca didn’t like the teacher and she wanted Brian to go with her for a conference, but he wouldn’t be able to do it until after the holiday break. She had been asking him for weeks to make time for this, and he hadn’t. He was in New York on business. He had urged her to hire a tutor, which, for some reason, enra
ged Rebecca.

  “My mom and dad outsourced their parenting to others. I’m not doing it. Brian is a financial whiz, but I don’t know anything about math. He could really be helping Liam. But he won’t take the time.”

  “Well, maybe you could hire a tutor just temporarily,” I said.

  “Peter is so involved with Sam. Did you know that?” she asked.

  “No. Actually, I’ve often thought that it’s a shame Peter spends so much time up here without Sam. I’m sure Sam misses his dad.”

  “I’m sure Sam does, too. Too bad Elise is such a shrew about keeping him in town on weekends. Peter has to come here. For his work. Now he just told me that he’s going to be spending more weekends in Cambridge. And he’s going to be coming up here on Fridays instead of Thursdays.”

  “Oh, so that’s why he didn’t come up today?”

  “Actually, he’s not coming up this weekend at all,” Rebecca said, refilling her wineglass. “He said he won’t be up much until after the New Year.”

  “Oh. Sorry.”

  “I have to make some changes.”

  “What kind of changes?”

  “The situation with Brian has become intolerable. I can’t stand being in the same room with him.”

  “Oh,” I said. Then I asked, “Are you and Peter making any kind of plans?”

  “Well, no specific plans, no. He actually has been talking about us maybe taking some time apart. He doesn’t mean it. He’s been miserable with Elise for years. We’re meant to be together. I think he just wants to keep things between us quiet for now, but I want to start making some plans by the summer. In the meantime, I might not wait that long before I change the locks on Brian.”