Musical Chairs

by Amy Poeppel

  She found her score for a Rachmaninoff piece and put it on the stand, thinking it might be a good choice for the trio to play at the wedding. She hadn’t talked to Will yet about her vision for Forsyth’s debut concert with Caroline, but as soon as he came downstairs, she would tell him. She felt like he’d been avoiding her the last two weeks. Every time she called him in New York, he made excuses to hang up, saying he was running late to a lesson, hopping on the subway, getting poor reception.

  Bridget had only begun to play the piece when she heard an aggressive knocking on the front door. She set the cello down on its side and went to open it.

  “Hi there,” said the stranger on the doorstep. “Are you Bridget?” He stuck his hand out. “Mark Thomas, Realtor. I met Will in the grocery store a couple weeks back, and he said you were thinking about selling the house. Thought I’d stop by and introduce myself.” He handed her his business card. “Is Will here?”

  Bridget looked at the card. “I think there’s been a misunderstanding,” she said. “I’m not selling. It was just a passing thought I had after I got brutally dumped by my boyfriend.”

  “You got dumped?” Mark looked her up and down. Why, she couldn’t imagine; she was wearing running shorts and an old, oversize T-shirt. “I find that hard to believe,” he said.

  Bridget couldn’t tell if this comment was a terrible attempt at flirting or if he was buttering her up so she would give him a listing. “Anyway,” she said, “it’s just something I was considering.”

  “Well, I’m here anyway,” he said, waiting for her to invite him in.

  “Yes, and on a Saturday.”

  “Will said you guys are weekenders, so I figured you’d be up for the holiday. Want to take a look around outside? I have a couple ideas about the exterior already, some things you might want to address anyway, whether you sell or not. And then if someday, down the road, you decide you’re ready, you’ll know who to call.”

  It didn’t sound like a bad idea to get an expert to tell her what needed to be done to the house. Seeing what needed fixing had never been her strength.

  Rather than let Mark in, she walked outside with him. Blocking the sun with her hand, she stood with him in the heat of the yard, looking out at the damaged tennis court, the neglected barn, the flock of sheep and guinea hens milling about.

  “So?” she asked. “What do you think?”

  Mark’s hair was parted far on the right, and his brass-buttoned navy blazer did not hide his slightly squishy midsection and sloping shoulders. He was wearing tired brown tassel loafers. Putting his hands on his hips, he turned slowly in a circle, making a rapid sound as he looked around, “Bah bah bah bahhh,” like he was riffing off the sheep. He was sucking in his stomach, so Bridget involuntarily sucked in her own and stood up straighter.

  “I can show you the inside, too,” she said, “but I’ll need to wake everyone up.”

  “Teenagers?” he asked.

  “Not exactly.”

  “Oh, right,” he said. “Will mentioned that the kids moved back home.”

  “I don’t know about ‘moved,’ but they’re here—”

  “I know all about it,” Mark said. “My daughter’s living with me since she stopped going to college. She’s only twenty-two, but we’re gonna have to have a serious talk pretty soon.”

  Bridget was glad to know she wasn’t the only one dealing with grown-up kids under her roof. “A talk about…?”

  “She’s taking a summer class at the community college and bartending on the weekends, so she’s trying. But it’s getting complicated.”

  “Complicated how?”

  Mark looked down at his shoes. “She brought a date home the other night, and the next morning he was in my kitchen, cooking pancakes.” He looked pained. “I’ve got to set some rules. It’s my house, you know?”

  The sound of a door closing made them turn and look up at Will’s porch. Emma was slipping out of the loft, carrying gladiator sandals in her left hand and a slouchy purse in her right. She turned, saw Bridget, and gave a shy little wave.

  Bridget waved back. “Coffee?” she called up.

  “Work,” Emma said, pointing in the direction of town. “But thank you.”

  Bridget nodded and waited until the sound of Emma’s car faded before she turned back to Mark, who was flapping his hand to swat away a cloud of gnats in front of his face; he looked like a conductor having a tantrum.

  “You might want to think about doing some repairs out here,” Mark said, “before things get any worse. For starters, I’d say replace the tennis court fence, and it looks like you might need a new roof over the porch there. And you should at least paint the outside trim where it’s rotting. You’ve got one window there that’s spoiled,” he said, pointing in the direction of the breakfast room, where one of the windows had a milky film over it, “but you can probably wait on that.”

  “Anything else?” Bridget said wryly.

  “Yes,” he said. “You need to repave the worst parts of the driveway so people don’t get a flat on the way up. And you should clean up the weeds obscuring the stone wall and, generally speaking, make the place less… run-down. Some of it’s pretty urgent.”

  “I don’t really notice this stuff,” Bridget said.

  “You’ll notice wood rot as soon as it starts raining inside your house.”

  Bridget decided not to mention that her house had already sprung a leak or two. “If this were your place,” she said, “what would you do first?”

  “Let’s take a peek inside, then we’ll talk specifics.”

  Through a window on the back of the house, she could see Oscar wandering into the kitchen, wearing nothing but boxers.

  “Do you mind waiting here a minute? I need to let my son know you’re coming in.”

  Mark nodded. “I’ll walk around the house and check the rest of the exterior.”

  “For what?”

  “Visible damage.”

  The porch door opened and Oscar’s dogs came bounding out, running up to greet them. Mark bent his knees and placed his hands over his crotch. He was obviously not a dog person. Hudson, scratching at the slider door upstairs, started barking from the loft.

  Bridget walked over to the house and saw that Henry Higgins, who was spending almost all of his time now outdoors or in the barn, was leaving a dead mouse on the doorstep. She used a leaf to pick the mouse up by the tail and flung it into the brush. Henry looked insulted. She tried to pat him, saying, “Thanks anyway, pal,” but he dodged her hand and ran off under the bushes.

  Oscar was standing by the stairs, watching Mark, who was studying the gutters and muttering to himself. “Who’s that?” he asked.

  “A Realtor.”

  Bare-chested with bedhead and dark circles under his eyes, Oscar looked like hell. “Are you selling?”

  “I’m only talking to him. The house is in worse shape than I realized.”

  He placed his hand on Bridget’s shoulder as though he needed physical support. “I’m so hungover,” he said.

  “Again?”

  “Couldn’t you describe the upstairs to him? Or start in the guesthouse? I need a few minutes.”

  “Are you okay,” she said, “apart from the hangover?”

  “Matt keeps calling,” he said.

  “I bet he misses you,” Bridget said, wishing she had some solid marital advice to give. Surely her decades-long friendship with Will had taught her something about commitment, respect, loyalty, and the importance of honest communication. As angry as she was at Matt, she hoped they could work out their problems. “Maybe he’s sorry and wants you back.”

  “There’s more to it than that.”

  “What?” she asked. “What’s more to it?”

  He moaned as he turned around, walking up the stairs slowly as though his back ached.

  “Forget the Realtor,” Bridget said. “I’ll just show him downstairs.”

  “Thanks, Ma.” He turned at the top of the stairs and closed hi
s door.

  Looking out the window, she could see Mark kicking at the broken flagstone on the pathway. She opened the door as he leaned over and started taking his shoes off.

  “You can leave them on,” Bridget told him. “We’re not a shoes-off household.”

  “I stepped in dog feces,” he said. Bear knocked into him as the dogs ran past and into the kitchen, hair flying, tags clinking against the metal water bowl. Eliza Doolittle hissed as they ran by.

  Mark came in, and Bridget tried not to look at his big toe poking through his beige sock.

  They walked through the downstairs, as Bridget pointed out the fireplace and the built-in bookcases in the living room on their way to the kitchen.

  “Needs updating,” Mark said, pointing at the crooked pot rack that hung directly beneath the loft. The pots and pans would always rattle slightly whenever Will moved around upstairs. Last night they’d been knocking against each other like cowbells; at least someone was having sex.

  “And the master bedroom,” said Bridget. “I have my own little porch. Perfect for a glass of wine at night.”

  “Mm-hmm,” said Mark, with a tone that suggested he was unimpressed.

  “We’re skipping the upstairs,” she said, without any explanation.

  Leaving the dogs in the house, she and Mark walked out and across the field to the other side of the barn. Bridget knocked as she opened the door to the guesthouse. She saw wildflowers in a vase on the coffee table. Bridget smiled at the tidy living room, relieved that one of her kids was acting like an adult. Mark stepped out of his shoes again and entered the house at the exact moment that the bathroom door opened and out walked Kevin, wearing nothing but a towel around his waist.

  Bridget stopped breathing and stared.

  “Ooops, sorry,” Kevin said, turning red and tightening the towel. “Oh, man.”

  Bridget couldn’t speak. Kevin?

  Mark seemed to be missing the awkwardness of the situation entirely. “Oh, hey, Kev, just the guy I wanted to see,” Mark said, walking right up to him. “She’s got some bats living in the eaves over the front door.”

  Kevin nodded.

  “Naturally, I thought of you.”

  “You…” He looked at Bridget. “…need a bat house?”

  “You built some over at the Clarks’, right?” said Mark.

  “Yeah, a couple of years back.”

  Mark turned back to Bridget. “You should get Kevin to put one or two out in the field, draw those bats out. You don’t want them flying in the house, but it’s illegal to kill them, as I’m sure you know.”

  Bridget had no intention of killing bats, but she couldn’t find her voice to say so.

  “I can do that,” Kevin said, trying to look agreeable in spite of the situation.

  “Good to see you, man,” Mark said, smiling broadly. “Did you bring the sheep?”

  “Yeah, doing what I can to get the field under control.”

  “Great, great.” Mark must have seen the confusion on Bridget’s face and said, “I’ve known Kevin since he was a kid.” Mark looked at Kevin and smiled again. “So how you been? I heard you were back in town.”

  Bridget finally thought of the right thing to say: “Why don’t we move along and give Kevin a chance to… put some clothes on.”

  “Sure,” Mark said. “I get the general idea here. Your basic guest cottage. Hasn’t been renovated. Looks like some water damage on the floorboards over there. How many bedrooms here?”

  Kevin and Bridget looked at each other.

  “One,” they both said.

  “You’re living here now?” Mark asked. “And working on the place? That’s a swell arrangement.”

  Kevin started to answer when Isabelle came to the doorway of the bedroom in a tiny silk bathrobe. “Morning,” she said, walking into the room looking especially cheerful.

  Mark introduced himself.

  “Well, we better get going,” Bridget said, looking up at the ceiling. “Lots to talk about. Shall we?”

  “Is there coffee?” Isabelle asked.

  “Not anymore,” said Bridget. The coffee had gone cold hours before.

  “Wow, I could have slept all day.” She ran her fingers through her tangled hair.

  Bridget forced a bright, completely fake smile. “All righty then,” she said.

  Mark caught up with her between the two houses, tripping in his loafers. Bridget turned to face him, trying to put the image of Kevin in a towel out of her mind. “Off the top of your head, Mark,” Bridget said, “three things. Name three things I should do.”

  “You want to start with three?” Mark looked around. “Only three, huh? Then I’d say porch roof, driveway, tennis court. No, porch, kitchen remodel, exterior trim. Or porch, court, and, man, what about that barn?”

  “What about it?”

  “It’s an eyesore. It looks like it’s actually sinking into the ground. Does the field flood around it?”

  “Not that I know of.”

  “Because it looks like you could have drainage issues.” He shook his head at the barn. “When those sheep leave, they’ll probably give you a one-star Yelp review.”

  Bridget was not amused. “They like it here.”

  “If this were my place,” he said, “I’d tear that thing down and grass over it. You could double the size of your yard.”

  “No way,” Bridget said. “It’s got character, and it’s very old.”

  “I can see that,” Mark said and chuckled.

  “I mean, it’s historic. It’s an eighteenth-century structure.”

  Mark looked worried. “It’s not landmarked, is it?”

  “Not yet.” In fact, Bridget liked the idea so much, she’d taken Kevin up on his offer to look into it for her at town hall.

  “Don’t do it,” said Mark. “Keep the bureaucrats out of it in case you change your mind or a future owner wants to tear it down.”

  “I don’t want it torn down,” Bridget said, appalled he would suggest such a thing. “Anyway,” she said, “it sounds like you think there’s a lot of other work I need to attend to first.”

  Mark slapped himself on the face, killing a mosquito and leaving a bloody streak across his cheek. “If this were my place, I’d start addressing the urgent maintenance issues before they lead to bigger problems, and I wouldn’t limit myself to three. See that tree over there,” he asked, pointing, “leaning toward the house? It’s stone dead. You get a big storm, and that’s falling over and going through the roof.”

  So far, Mark had not said one positive thing about the property. His endless list of problems was making Bridget want to go back to bed.

  “You need names?” he asked. “I’ve got a great tree guy.”

  The one thing Bridget did not need was names. Marge had a whole book full of them. “That’s okay, I got it.”

  “Kevin’s great, by the way. He’ll get this place fixed up for you, whether you sell or not. But imagine if you did sell.” He let his voice go dreamy. “No more property taxes for a school system you’re not using. No more problems with plumbing or electricity, no more trees falling down. No more grown kids thinking they can stay as long as they like.”

  “And no more family home,” she said, hating the sound of it.

  Mark was looking at the barn with an amused expression. “Funny,” he said. “People have such a thing for old barns. When they’re being put to good use, I can get on board, but when they’re just sitting there like that, taking up space… Hey, have you ever heard of Peter Latham?”

  Bridget shook her head.

  “He has an alpaca farm on Spectacle Hill. He bought his place several years back for peanuts and did a major renovation of the barn on his property. He put in a gorgeous office space in the upstairs, installed heat and A/C, solar panels on the roof, and started his whole business right there.”

  Bridget looked at her wreck of a barn and felt like a failure. She could see Mark’s point: it did look run-down, and not in a cute Batshit Barn
sort of way. It looked shabby and old. It looked unloved.

  “I’m surprised you don’t know Peter,” said Mark. “He’s kind of a big deal in the county.”

  “I’m not very social here.”

  “He’s got a cool coffee shop in town where he also sells clothing, all made from his own alpacas. His mission is to create a community hub where people gather and talk. Sort of like a town square.”

  Bridget wasn’t convinced. “Isn’t that a lot of pressure to put on his alpacas?”

  “You should check it out.” He nodded his head proudly, as though he himself were responsible for Peter Latham’s success.

  “I’d like to clean out my barn, spruce it up, and make it usable again. I just don’t know where to start.”

  “Usable for what?” said Mark, making a face as he looked up at the broken shingles around the cupola.

  “You know what?” Bridget said, feeling motivated. “I’ll do it.”

  “You’ll sell?”

  “I’ll work on the place this summer. I’ll deal with as much as I can—the roof and the dead tree and the bats—and I’ll make the place as nice as it was when I bought it.”

  “And then… you’re selling?” he asked with a hopeful expression.

  Bridget looked around, considering the question. “I’ll let you know at the end of the summer.”

  14

  Will stretched his legs and stared at the peaked ceiling, his arms spread out across the mattress. He’d been up for an hour already, but he didn’t want to get out of bed. In spite of the brutal heat that morning, all of which seemed to rise into the loft and settle there, Will was happy to be in his room. The light filtered through the shades that covered the sliding door, and he could see the outline of the mountain through the fabric. It was a beautiful, comfortable space, and Will always slept well in it. As sorry as he was about Bridget’s relationship, a part of him was very glad that Sterling hadn’t taken over his room, used his shower, his deck, his chair, all of which Will considered his own, even though none of it technically was.

  Over the years, Bridget had given him presents, always making it seem like he was doing her a favor in accepting them. They kept up the charade of reverse gratitude, regardless of how ridiculous it was. There was, for example, the Danish-designed sofa in his apartment. She had special-ordered it from Design Within Reach, got a case of buyer’s remorse, and begged him to take it off her hands, claiming her cats were going to claw up the fancy custom fabric and it couldn’t be returned. He’d offered to pay for it, but she’d refused. Many of his belongings had come to him in similar ways. “I somehow ended up with two Nespresso machines,” she once told him. “Can you take one off my hands?” The antique bar cart was an impulse buy, she’d said, and “completely wrong” for her apartment. And then there was the time she said, “I bought Oscar a Hugo Boss suit on a final sale, and it’s too big for him. Would you mind trying it on?” Will’s only suit at the time was threadbare, and this suit happened to be a perfect fit. Coincidence? Of course not. And yet she said “thank you” when he agreed to wear it.