Local Knowledge

by Liza Gyllenhaal

  “Now, just hold on,” Paul told him. “Of course we’ll do what we can to help. And Maddie isn’t responsible for any of this, okay? Come on, Luke! You know us better than that. We’re going to do whatever we possibly can to get this changed. I’ll take it up with Frank and Nicky. Maddie will talk to Nana. We’ll work something out.”

  Luke turned and strode back down the hill, and Paul and I stood together watching him make his way unsteadily along the rutted roadway. Most construction sites are pretty ugly: a clutter of building equipment and materials scattered around a raw open hole in the ground. This one was made worse by the recently denuded landscape, now a mountainside of muddy debris. I could only guess how much money had been spent logging the site. How much more to regrade and lay in the drive. I’d talk to Nana, of course, but I already felt the hopelessness of the situation. I think Paul did, too, though he didn’t let me see what he was feeling.

  “How do you want to handle this?” he asked me. “Should we try to get the three of them together, maybe? Or do you want to talk to Nana on your own?”

  “I think I’d do better one-on-one. Nana got to know Luke a little bit during the sale. She may have more sympathy than the others. God, I can’t see Nicky giving a damn, can you?”

  “No, but Frank might listen to reason. He’s a pretty good guy, basically, once you get past that ego. And these are his designs, after all. I’m going to have to send the crew home, I guess. Then I’ll try to track Frank down.”

  The office was still empty when I got back. But Nana arrived about half an hour later, and I went right in and laid the whole thing out to her. Her initial response was encouraging enough.

  “I don’t think any of us took that cottage into consideration. To be honest, sweetie, I forgot that anybody actually lived there. It just looks so run-down, almost abandoned. Your friend’s a little—well—kooky, isn’t he? I’m sorry he’s so upset. Listen, I’ll give Frank a call right now and see what we can do.”

  And it might have worked out except my kooky friend beat both Nana and Paul to the punch. Luke must have gone right home, looked up Frank Miles’s address in the phone book, and driven immediately down to his architectural design offices in Northridge. I’d only met Frank a few times at that point. He’s a tall, balding man in his midfifties who, according to Paul, spends an hour every morning lifting weights. He likes to touch himself when he talks, running his fingers appreciatively over his expensively clothed pecs and abs. But he’s the single most respected and sought-after architect in our area, known for his sensitivity to the landscape and his promotion of environmentally responsible building materials. Despite his success, he seems friendly and easygoing enough—at least until his talent and authority are called into question. And, apparently, Luke had derided both in pretty short order. Frank was “in conference” when Nana first called him, but he phoned her back just as I was heading out her door to go back to my office. She waved at me to come back in.

  “So, Frank, I—” Nana began, but then she had to stop and listen to the barrage of words that, even from across the room, was almost loud enough for me to hear.

  “Yes, I know he’s a little—

  “But, don’t you think he might have—

  “No, I understand. Of course, it’s your call. I know the gradient was tricky. Right. And the view from there … yes …

  “He might try to fight it. But, legally, no, he doesn’t have a leg to stand on. There weren’t any covenants. Please, Frank, you know perfectly well this is your best work. Of course, you have my full support… .”

  Nana at least seemed a little sorry. Frank was so furious that when Paul arrived at his office to plead Luke’s case shortly after Luke had left, Frank threatened to fire him on the spot. Nicky was pissed off, too, especially when he found out that Paul had taken it upon himself to shut the work site down that morning.

  “I think I was finally able to convince them both that I’d maybe done the right thing after all,” Paul told me that night after the girls were in bed. We were sitting at the kitchen table, hunched over cups of cold decaf. It was a weekday night and we’d both have to get up at the crack of dawn, but neither of us was ready to head upstairs. We kept going over what had happened. “But, man, do I sense that Frank has his reservations about me right now. And Nicky’s going to be riding my ass for the foreseeable future. God, what a mess. Why the hell didn’t he let us handle things?”

  This was the third or fourth time Paul had asked that question, and I kept pretending that I didn’t know the answer. But it was obvious: Luke didn’t trust us anymore. Neither one of us. Of course, I knew perfectly well that Luke blamed me for this disaster, but he knew without asking whose side Paul would be on. When the three of us stood together on that hillside, both Paul and I thought the situation could be salvaged, our friendship kept intact. But Luke knew better. He looked around him and saw that it was over. All those trees, some more than a hundred years old, gone, their trunks lumbered, the branches chipped into mulch. And he, too, had been stripped of direction, his bearings uprooted. And the world he had come to despise—represented by Frank’s ambitious contemporary designs—rising up from the mud behind his home. He felt betrayed. And abandoned all over again. Except now he had lost so much of what he had once held dear. But he wasn’t about to take what he saw as a massive injustice quietly. He was going to fight it every way he knew how—even if that meant fighting us, too.

  Paul had decided to wait until the following day to talk to Luke; he said he needed to get a better grip on his own anger. What upset him most was that Luke had accused me of somehow talking him into selling the land. That Luke so obviously blamed me for what had happened.

  “Nobody held a gun to his head when he signed those papers,” Paul said. I should have taken some solace in the way Paul rallied to my defense. But it gave me no joy. And the next morning Paul got a call from Owen Phelps: Luke was demanding a hearing of the select committee. He said that he’d hired a lawyer. He was talking about suing Red River Development Partners, the town, and the two of us.

  “It sounds to me like he’s really gone off the deep end,” Owen told Paul.

  I told Paul that I wanted to go to the special meeting, but he advised me against it.

  “I think it would look as though you were there to defend yourself. You haven’t done anything wrong. Luke’s clearly worked up about this and he’s bound to say some things—”

  “That’s exactly why I want to be there. It’s his word against mine. I’m not afraid of anything he has to say, Paul. And I think it would look cowardly if I didn’t show my face.”

  It was a Wednesday night. As usual, the committee met in the old high school gymnasium. Paul and Owen, three other selectmen, and the town clerk, Solly Heinrish, arranged themselves on folding chairs around a collapsible table. I sat in the back of the room on the bottom plank of the old bleachers. Owen called the meeting to order at 8:00. Luke arrived alone. I should have known his threat to hire a lawyer had been an empty one. Luke walked right over and stood in front of the group; I didn’t think he saw me sitting behind him. Solly took notes on a long legal pad.

  “We’re here to address the concerns of Luke Barnett, relating to the construction project currently under way on property that he sold to Red River Development Partners last year. You should all have in front of you copies I had made of the blueprint that the planning committee signed off on at the time of the sale. Any questions before we let Luke take the floor? Okay then …”

  “Good,” Luke said. “You’re looking at the same plan I was shown when I agreed to sell my land. I was told that there were going to be six big sites for possible development, as you can see there. And I was told that quote unquote I would probably not even know any houses were there because of the way things were laid out. Well, guess what? They’re putting up the first one now and it’s practically going to be sitting on top of my house. I mean it’s right up there on the hillside directly behind my place. It’s just incred
ible! I was lied to! That’s why I’m—”

  “Luke, I was looking over your file before you got here,” Owen cut in, “and I didn’t see any covenants.”

  “What’s a covenant?”

  Owen glanced at Paul before he replied. “It’s something the seller stipulates as a condition of sale. For instance, people often say that they don’t want any house trailers going in, or prefab homes. Or any building within a certain number of yards from the property line.”

  “I didn’t know that I needed to do that.”

  “Well, it would have protected you from exactly the situation you’re complaining about now. These deeds are legal contracts. You could have asked for as many covenants as you wanted, so long as the buyer agreed to them. But without anything in writing, there’s really no way that we can act on this complaint.”

  “You’re saying you won’t do anything to stop this?”

  “I’m saying I can’t. We can’t. There’s no legal—”

  “Oh, fuck you and your legal garbage, I—”

  “I’d advise you to keep a civil tongue in your head.”

  “I don’t believe this! I’m the one who should be civil? When you let these people just come marching into this town and rip it to shreds? Bulldoze the countryside to make way for these obscene houses? I’m the one who should be civil, when you thieves and liars—”

  “Luke, please—” Paul said.

  “Please what? Please don’t make a fuss because you let your wife steamroll me into turning over my property—to be devastated! To have my home become like a prison—”

  “Nobody steamrolled you into anything. You told Maddie—”

  “Maddie! You and Maddie!” He turned around to stare at me. “I thought you were trying to help me. But you never told me anything about covenants, did you? You never warned me this might happen!”

  “Luke,” Paul said. “Leave Maddie out of this.”

  “I wish I could,” Luke said, facing Paul again. “I wish to hell I had. But it’s a little late for that, isn’t it? And now, when my whole fucking life is being destroyed, you turn your back on me like the Judas you’ve always been—”

  “Mr. Barnett,” Owen interrupted him. “I think it best if you and Mr. Alden continue this more personal discussion elsewhere. Meeting adjourned.”

  Luke threw up his hands and, cursing, walked out of the room. Paul followed him.

  I waited in the empty auditorium for ten minutes or so. Thinking back. To how Luke had reacted to the partnership’s initial sale proposal. To the closing. To that business about his “guy not being able to make it.” I finally realized just how deep his animosity toward the law really went: he’d only pretended to hire a lawyer when he sold his land. And now, too, when he’d hoped to fight what had happened. He held the law in such contempt. He thought he knew better. He was already broke. Why the hell should he pay good money for some lawyer’s suspect advice? Once again, he’d let his prejudices, and now his anger, get in the way of his own best interests.

  I can only guess what Luke and Paul said to each other when they faced off alone in the parking lot. Whatever it was, it hurt Paul so deeply that he’s never spoken to me about it. I think, no, I know it had to do with me. I believe that was the moment—after a lifetime of holding back—when Luke finally told Paul what he thought of me. Don’t you see? She’d do anything to get what she wants, Paul. Anything.

  We drove home in silence. We didn’t see Luke again for a long time after that. We did not talk about him in front of the girls. And, oddly, they didn’t question us about why he was no longer in our lives. I think Rachel found out through school friends what had happened at the meeting; I’m sure the whole town was gossiping about it.

  The construction continued. They broke ground farther up for the next site: Hemlock View. Sometime in July, a demolition crew came in and took apart and carted away what was left of the Barnett mansion. Paul managed to keep work ahead of schedule. By the end of the summer, Frank told Paul he was impressed by how well he was managing everything. All the ugliness on that first day of building was forgotten. At least by the others.

  It was a busy fall. Both Paul and I were working so hard. Rachel and Beanie were back in school. After Christmas, I started Lia at the pre-K half days, dropping her off on my way to the office and picking her up at the end of the morning. She loved school, all those new kids to play with! She’s like Paul that way; other people make her happy. She and I would have lunch together at home most days, just the two of us now, and she’d chatter on to me about her morning. I’d only half hear what she was saying—Angelina Ballerina, and Gary said, then Mrs. Tyler got so mad—listening instead to the excitement in her voice, that thrill to be out there in the world. She was still going to Kathy’s in the afternoons, but I could tell she would have been happier doing the full day at pre-K. Kathy’s basement has a dank smell in the winter months and, even with all the overheads on, it can feel dim and claustrophobic. And Kathy herself had still not really recovered from that postpartum business she went through after Danny. I felt sometimes when I talked with her that she was not altogether there; her attention was fixed on something she couldn’t explain, just over my shoulder.

  I wonder sometimes about all the things we keep hidden from each other. Our little collections of shames and regrets that we hold so closely to our hearts. How bad are they really? How special? If we let them out—opened the window and unscrewed the lid—would they be any more terrible than bugs in a jar, fluttering away into the light? It’s the darkness that makes them seem so important, isn’t it? The fear? Paul and I didn’t talk about Luke, but he was always there in the back of my mind. Now more than ever. As far as I knew, he’d cut himself off from everyone. He never even came into the general store to pick up the paper. But I kept thinking I would see him, or that I did see him: turning into the bank drive-up, or walking out of the post office. But it was always somebody else.

  That morning started like any other, though we all had a hard time crawling out of bed; it was the beginning of daylight savings time and still pitch-dark at six thirty. We had to scramble to get out the door on time, but the bus was waiting at the end of our driveway for Rachel and Beanie, and I was actually only a few minutes late dropping Lia off at school. Heather called me on her cell phone about ten minutes after I opened the office. She was on the Mass Turnpike en route to Boston. Her mom and been found wandering half naked through the hallways of her apartment building the night before. Heather didn’t know how long she’d be away; she’d decided to stay in Boston until she could get her mom into a nursing home. She’d try to make what calls she could from the road, but she went over a few things that she needed me to handle for her in the office.

  The phone was ringing again as we were hanging up. It was Nana. She wouldn’t be coming in either. Her allergies were acting up; she sounded terrible. She was upset to hear Heather was out, too. Because she knew Linda was going to be tied up with a closing. And Nana had an appointment to show Maple Rise, now in its finishing stages, to a new client that afternoon. It was a family from Manhattan. I would have to handle it. I could tell she was worried about how I’d do. And I was, too, honestly. But eager, as well. This was my first big break. A chance to prove I could be trusted with more than the quarter-acre in-towns or the condos at Silver Acres. Though I knew it wasn’t really so much a question of what I was selling—but to whom.

  Part Nine

  35

  The Zellers. Anne Zeller. She was lodged in my life now, painfully oversized, monopolizing my attention. I didn’t hear anything from her over the weekend after Richard had addressed the town meeting about Luke. What had Richard said when he got home that night? I couldn’t stop thinking about her, and what I had told her about Luke. It stabbed at me. Had I been wrong to tell her? Had I betrayed Luke’s trust? He’d begged me not to say anything to her, but surely it had been better coming from me rather than Richard. What was Anne thinking? What had I done?

  The we
ather turned hot again: heavily humid with thunderstorms threatening every hour or so, gray clouds massing above the tree line, then sunlight suddenly slanting through and the heat rebuilding.

  That Sunday, for the first time all summer, I didn’t have any showings or appointments. Nana had been complaining that business was slackening off, but I hadn’t felt it myself until that weekend. This only added to my sense of uneasiness and foreboding. Late that afternoon, restless and uncomfortable, I called Paul on his cell and suggested that he meet us after work at the lake for supper; we could cook some steaks on one of the outdoor grills there. The following weekend was Labor Day and we’d be expected at the farm for an Alden family get-together. Unbelievably, this was our last free Sunday of the summer.

  “Sure,” he said. “But I was going to stop off and see Luke after I’m done here. So I figure I’ll get there around six or so, okay?”

  “Just make sure you leave yourself enough time to go for a swim,” I told him. He’d been working seven-day weeks at the Covington site, driving himself and his crew to the point of exhaustion. It wasn’t just that he was working too hard; he was throwing himself into the final stages of this project with a kind of fury. One of his men had actually walked off the job the day before, complaining that Paul had been verbally abusive. I think we both understood that his anger and drive had nothing to do with making that construction deadline.

  Six o’clock came and went without Paul. The sun sank below the mountain ridge, casting our little crescent beach in sudden shadow. The other families started to pack up their folding chairs and towels. I lit the charcoal and Rachel began to set out our things on one of the picnic tables. Beanie and Lia had been laboring together for the last hour or so on an elaborate sand castle by the edge of the water, which was now mirrorlike and ethereal in the fading light. Rachel came over to me at the grill when she was done setting up for dinner.