The Good House: A Novel

by Leary, Ann

  “She was so beautiful, your mother. I remember that she had a cat on her lap and she was smiling at all of us.”

  Oh, the tears. It was so hard to breathe.

  He was at the bottom of the stairs now and had turned and was making his way slowly through the dark. I had a vivid recollection of playing hide-and-seek with him when he was a little child and Allie was baby-sitting him—when I was really still a child myself—and I recalled the way Peter had loved it when we would jump from our hiding places and scare him silly. The hunter turned into the hunted, that was his favorite part. Now I was the prey and I thought my heart would pound right out of my chest. I wondered how close he was, when I heard the crashing of bottles a few feet away from me. He had stumbled into my empties. They had been there all winter. I was keeping them there until the spring, when I planned to take them to the dump. In the early morning, when nobody would be there.

  “Oh, Hildy, please let me help you. You can get better. Your denial, your delusional paranoia right now, it’s all part of the disease. Why are you hiding? It’s just me. It’s me. Your friend Peter.

  Then the strangest thing happened. I saw myself from a different perspective. I saw myself as Peter must have seen me. As, perhaps, everyone saw me. I saw myself as a drunk. A pathetic old alcoholic. Maybe I was not really the dynamic businesswoman, successful mother, and various other titles that I liked to attach to my name. Maybe I was like those people in those sad meetings. Maybe I was just Hildy. Nobody special—just an old alcoholic. Hildy Good, alcoholic. A regular old garden-variety alcoholic.

  “Hildy, let people help you. You can get through this. You have so many people who love you. Your daughters, your grandson.”

  Why had I run into the cellar? What a crazy thing to do. Why was I trembling behind the hot-water heater? I really had a vision of myself, then, a frantic, strung-out old lady, hiding in the cellar from a doctor—a friend—who was trying to help. A man I had known since he was a toddler, whose father was so kind to us, so kind, after Mom’s death. Not an unhinged murderer who was stalking me. What a delusional idea. It was Peter Newbold.

  “It’s just me, Hildy. It’s just Peter.”

  “Peter,” I whispered. Then I managed to stand up. “I’m over here.”

  I felt his arm around my shoulder.

  “It’s okay,” he said. Then he led me back to the stairs. He had to help me walk up. I felt so weak. His arm was around my waist.

  “Take some deep breaths, Hildy. We’re almost there. Just a few more steps.”

  “Okay,” I sobbed. “Okay.”

  When at last we arrived at the top of the steps, Peter reached over my shoulder to push the door open, but before he actually touched it, it had flung open wide, and there stood Frank.

  I fell into Frankie’s arms. “I’m sorry,” I sobbed. “I’m so sorry. I did go out in my car last night.”

  Frankie held me for a moment and then he tilted up my chin and looked at my face.

  “No, you’re all confused, Hil.”

  “I was out driving last night, Frankie. I was drunk. I don’t remember. I hit something.…”

  “She doesn’t know what she’s sayin’,” Frank said. He pulled me close. “Shhh,” he said.

  “I didn’t see anything.” I sobbed into his chest. “All I remember is a loud crack and then wondering how such a thick cobweb got on my windshield. It was so hard to see on my way home. I had to look out the passenger window.”

  “Shush now, Hildy, it was a dream. I was here with you all night. What’re you doin’ here, Newbold?” Frank asked.

  “I had something I needed to talk to Hildy about,” I heard Peter say. “I’m leaving town today, and I wanted to say good-bye.”

  “Hildy was with me all night,” Frank said. “She’s all confused.”

  “Yeah, I know. Hildy, I’m leaving that medication for you. It’ll help. Bye, now. Good-bye, Frank,” Peter said.

  “See ya,” Frank grunted.

  When Peter was gone, Frank helped me to a chair and sat next to me. He put his hands on my wet cheeks and looked into my eyes. He brushed something, a cobweb or some cellar dust, from my hair and said, “They still haven’t found Jake, Hil. But Skully just brought your car back from Lynn with a brand-new windshield. They touched up the scratches on the hood. The guys down at the shop said it looked like you hit a tree. It was probably a limb that hit the windshield, based on the scratches on the hood.”

  “I remember going out in the car last night, Frankie. I wanted to go to your house. I wanted to be with you. I felt so alone, and I missed you so much. I could have hit him. I could have hit anything. I just wanted to be with you.”

  “Shhhh,” Frankie said. “Go wash your face, then I’ll drive you into town. You can help search for Jake. Don’t tell anyone you were out in your car last night. There’s no point to it. It was a tree. It had to have been a tree.”

  “I can’t go now, Frank,” I said. “I need to rest. Maybe this afternoon.”

  Frankie nodded. “Okay, go to bed, though. Go get some rest. Don’t talk to anyone, Hildy. Don’t tell anyone about yer car.”

  “Okay,” I said. “Okay. I’m sorry.…”

  “Shush, Hildy. Stop with that, now.”

  * * *

  I couldn’t sleep. I tried. I curled up on my bed and tried to sleep, but I kept having those wakeful dreams I so often had. Semilucid dreams. I don’t usually recall my dreams when I’m fully asleep, but when I’m trying to doze or relax, I will sometimes be carried off into a stream of dreamlike thoughts—daydreams, I guess you’d call them, not quite awake, not quite asleep. That afternoon, I dreamed that it was night and I was driving my car fast over some hardscrabble roads that caused my tires to skid. Something dark smashed against my windshield, sending tiny little faults, like the spreading fissures you see in cracked ice, all across my windshield, but I didn’t stop. I was speeding along, trying to see through my cracked windshield, and I caught a glimpse of the road here and there. A turn came in the road, and my foot flailing for the brake awoke me with a start just as my car started to flip over the guardrail.

  I watched the shadows crawl across my ceiling. There was a fly buzzing against one of the window screens. Maybe it was a wasp. Then I was on the floor of my cellar, looking up at the ceiling there, but the cellar was filled with water and I was holding my breath. I wanted to swim to the surface, to the cellar ceiling. I wanted to shoot to the surface, to breach triumphantly, to suck in the good air above the sea in great gasps, but I didn’t because Jake was there, swimming above me, dog-paddling madly, his head just above the surface. I didn’t want to frighten him, so I stayed there, flattened to the floor of my underwater cellar until he lowered his face into the water. His face was gone, ravaged by crabs and minnows, and I awoke myself with my own scream.

  I got out of bed. The dim afternoon sky gave me some comfort. It was almost the golden hour. Almost time for a drink. I never drink before five—only alcoholics do that—but I realized I might have to nudge it a little closer to four that day. My nerves were shot, I was shaking, my head was pounding, and I was plagued by the image of the swimming child. I wondered if I should tell Cassie about my vision, but I just couldn’t face her yet. And what comfort would it give her to know that I’d had an odd daydream about her son swimming in deep water? Like I said, I always have dreams of water. Still, I thought I should call Cassie. I couldn’t face her in person, but I wanted to hear her voice.

  The woman who answered introduced herself as a friend, Karen somebody. I asked to speak to Cassie and was told that she was out in one of the patrol cars.

  “Can I take a message?” Karen asked.

  “Just tell her that Hildy Good called, please.”

  “Okay.”

  “Also, do you know if they’ve started any kind of water search? Are they searching in the ocean for Jake?”

  “Um, yeah. I think I heard something about that. There are some patrol boats out searching along the coastline, an
d people on the beaches, of course.”

  “Okay, well, thank you,” I said.

  That was that. I couldn’t offer anything else, I just had the dream of him swimming and I couldn’t tell where he was or even see for sure that it was him. They were already searching the water. There was no need to mention the vision to Karen or Cassie or anybody else. There was nothing I could do to help the Dwights.

  I washed my face, brushed my hair, and then went down to the kitchen, and on the counter, I saw Frank’s Red Sox cap. He had left it there earlier, and now I snatched it up angrily. How many times had I told him how disgusting it was to leave his hat on the counter? I tossed the cap on the floor and was just about to remove a wineglass from my cabinet, when I heard the front door opening. It was Frank; I recognized his footsteps. I knew the heavy clunk of his boots. Why did he have to come now, when every living fiber of my being was screaming for a drink?

  “Hey, Hil,” Frank said when he entered the kitchen, and I said, “Hey.”

  Frank gave me some updates on the search effort. Everybody else was out searching. There were dogs now, and helicopters.

  “Are they searching the water, Frank?”

  “Yeah, Manny, Robbie Brown, a few other lobstermen, and a bunch of fishermen are out with their boats. And the police boats are out. They can’t start with dive teams at this point.… Well, let’s hope they won’t never have to. You should go to Cassie’s, Hil. I know she’d like to see you.”

  “I’ll go later,” I said. The truth was that I couldn’t look her in the eye. Not dead sober like this, not with my nerves completely shot. Frankie had planted the nightmarish thought about hitting the child with my car and now I needed a little wine to wash it away.

  Go away now, Frank, I thought.

  I needed that wine, just a little, to take the edge off.

  Bye-bye now, Frank.

  “The good news is that the dogs found his trail goin’ down into the ravine behind the house, down into the woods. It looks like he was stayin’ away from the road,” he said, snatching his hat up from the floor. Then, after ramming the cap down over his balding pate, he poured the cold remains of that morning’s coffee into a cup.

  Frank Getchell will always drink cold coffee, rather than “waste” it by pouring it out and brewing a fresh pot. I’m sorry, but there’s something diseased in that kind of mentality. It’s one thing to be thrifty, but Frank goes too far. I had deluded myself that he was just a little eccentric, just an old-fashioned New England Yankee with his whole “Waste not, want not” ethos, but now I had to face facts: There was something very seriously the matter with Frank Getchell.

  “He would have been found by now if he was injured, Hil,” Frank was saying, leaning against the counter and swilling the cold coffee.

  I suppose he meant the words to be comforting, but they just reminded me of his crazy suspicion and his ugly words about my drinking that morning. How are you supposed to forgive a person for that kind of betrayal?

  “I spoke to Cassie’s friend. She sounded so … overwrought,” I said calmly. I didn’t want him to know that he had hurt me. I didn’t want to give him the satisfaction.

  “Everybody is. I’m pretty wiped myself. I thought I might crash here for a while,” Frankie said. “I would’ve gone home, but I didn’t want you to be alone.”

  He tried to pull me into an embrace, but I wriggled free.

  “Why don’t you want me to be alone?”

  “What do you mean, why? I just was worried about you.”

  “Worried that I might get drunk? That I might drive around killing people again?”

  “Hildy…”

  “That was wine on my blouse last night, Frank, not blood … wine.”

  “Yup, fine. I didn’t sleep last night. Let’s talk about this later.”

  “Yes, I know you didn’t get any sleep last night. Thank you. Satisfied? Thank you for staying up all night driving my car. Thanks for fixing everything, Mr. Fix-it. That must have been expensive, getting those guys to work on a car at night. How much do I owe you?”

  “Don’t worry about it now, Hil.”

  “Be sure to bill me for what I owe you for your time.”

  “For what?”

  “For your time. For the time on the job last night, Frank, driving the car there and everything.”

  I meant to hurt him, and when he hesitated, closing his eyes for a moment, I took some comfort in the idea that he was reeling from my well-placed and much-deserved blow. That’s what any normal person would have been doing; any normal person would have been insulted that I had so coldly turned a kind favor into a business transaction, but in fact, Frank had closed his eyes because he was calculating the number of hours he had spent dealing with my car. He managed to mentally tabulate the figures faster than any calculator and then he calmly produced a sum that sent me reeling.

  “Are you out of your goddamned mind?” I said, laughing bitterly. “I wouldn’t pay you that much if you spent all week working on my car.”

  “I haven’t sent you a bill in a few years, but my hourly rate is a little higher now. Plus … holiday weekend, so double time, and I gotta pay Skully, too. He followed me down there and drove me back.”

  I had fucked this man. I had nestled in his arms, whispered tender words into his ear, and covered his body with kisses.

  The garbageman.

  “Well, I hope you don’t mind if I send the check in the mail. Feel free to tally up all the other charges, too. I need you, Frank, I know garbage can’t get to the dump on its own.”

  He nodded at me when I said this. I was searching for some pain in his eyes, but I couldn’t read any there, so I added, “Isn’t it garbage day today? Isn’t it Friday? Shouldn’t you be out collecting garbage?”

  Frank turned to go, but on his way out the door, he called back, “It’s Saturday. Take it easy, now, Hil.”

  Take it easy. That was a parting shot, if ever I had heard one. Of course he would know that “Take it easy” was an AA slogan. Everybody has seen those lame-ass bumper stickers. I was shaking with rage. I needed my wine, but I wasn’t going to take any risks. What if I decided to drive over to Cassie’s after I’d had too much?

  As soon as I heard Frank’s truck roar off, I grabbed my car keys from where Frankie had left them on the table. I needed a drink, but Frankie had made me so crazy with his ideas about my driving drunk that I actually thought I should flush the keys down the toilet before I opened my wine. I couldn’t see any other way. How else are you supposed to hide something like a set of keys from yourself? But I had the keys to a few of my listings on my key chain. I really needed those. That’s when I had the idea of tossing them up on the roof. I would never climb up on the roof drunk. I wasn’t even sure where my ladder was. I walked out the door and flung the set of keys onto the roof before I had a chance to think about it twice. I watched them roll back toward me, and I jumped sideways, so they wouldn’t land on my head, but they had settled into the gutter. I was careful to note the spot where they had fallen—just to the left of the front door. I would find them tomorrow. Now I needed to stop my heart from racing and my hands from shaking. I needed to go down to the cellar; back down in my cellar, down below the ground, where it was always so warm.

  nineteen

  I prefer that the girls call before they drop in at my house. It’s the considerate thing to do. I’d never just show up at one of their homes—I respect their privacy—but my adult children have never lost their sense of entitlement when it comes to me. I heard that childish entitlement, plus a hefty dose of suspicion and blame, when Tess demanded that I tell her what I was doing up on my roof the following morning. She actually sounded slightly hysterical.

  “I’m not on the roof, dear. I’m on a ladder,” I said evenly, smiling down at her. I wouldn’t let her know that her childish prying had annoyed me. She had Grady in her arms and he was waving up at me. “HI, GRADY,” I called down, waving back.

  I had taken one of Peter
’s pills an hour before. Then I had taken another. I had awakened with a doozy of a hangover, but the pills had worked great magic upon my nerves. God bless dear Dr. Newbold. I waved to Grady again and the ladder tipped slightly away from the edge of the roof.

  “Hold ON,” Tess said, rushing over to hold the base of the ladder. Then she cried out, “MOM. You don’t have anything on under your nightgown. What if somebody was walking by?”

  “Who would come walking by?” I laughed, steadying myself by clutching the gutter. “Nobody just stops in unannounced. That’s considered rude.”

  Then I saw what I had been looking for. My car keys were resting in the gutter, just inches away from my hand. I scooped them up while casually surveying the rooftop.

  “What are you doing?” Tess demanded.

  “I’ve been having problems with a leak. In the attic. I wanted to see if the gutters were clogged. Now move away from the ladder, dear. I don’t want to slip and land on you and Grady.”

  It was hard to climb down with my cluster of keys in my fist, but I managed it. Dr. Newbold’s magic pills. There was nothing I couldn’t do that morning. And I had a bottleful of the pills in the kitchen. There would be enough for days, Peter had assured me during his visit the previous night. He would give me more. There would be enough.

  “Come inside,” I said, smiling with this thought. I kissed Grady, he said, “Hi, Gammy,” and Tess burst into tears. “I heard about Jake Dwight on the news this morning. Why didn’t you call me yesterday, Mom? He’s been missing for more than twenty-four hours and nobody called me. I stopped at Cassie’s and there were so many cars there, but Cassie and Dwight are out searching with everybody else.…”

  “He’s been found,” I said joyfully.

  “HE HAS? When?” said Tess.

  “Peter Newbold stopped by last night and told me the great news.”

  I had been half in the bag when he told me, but I was pretty sure that was what he had said.

  “No, Mom, it’s all over the radio. I passed all these groups of searchers this morning. He’s still missing.”