If You Were Here

by Lancaster, Jen

  I haul ass Baywatch-style to the shore and scoop up the toddler right before he goes under a gentle wave. He seems to be having a fine adventure, whereas I’m pretty sure I’ve headed into atrial fibrillation.

  My heart banging away in my chest, I climb the wide teakwood stairs up the bluff to Lululemon’s impeccably maintained backyard and pass through the open gate. Even though I’m on a mission, I can’t help but appreciate the surroundings. She’s got dozens of small garden areas sectioned off with stacked pavers, and they’re all filled with the most glorious assortment of prairie grasses and yellow and purple native flowers. She’s got larkspur and lobelia and silky aster blended with meadow blazing star and wild senna. The grasses come in a host of varying shades of green, yellow, and magenta. Some are stout with broad leaves, and some are so tall and willowy they’re practically my height. I love all the varieties of coneflowers, with their delicate petals sprouting out of the spiny center disk. They contrast beautifully with hoary vervain and wild leek, some with blooms so heavy and dewy they’re practically doubled over.152 This garden is nothing short of magical.

  The pool house is the size of the ranch I grew up in on Spring Street, with a peaked roof, shake siding, and window boxes, and her pool’s surrounded by bluestone and dotted with artfully staged rocks meant to look like natural formations, complete with waterfalls.

  Lululemon’s perched on the edge of a basil-green-and-white-striped double lounge chair, talking into her cell phone while Calliope plays with a doll at her feet. Lululemon’s face runs the gamut from rage to shock to pure fear as she puts the pieces together and she drops her phone and runs to us.

  “Missing something?” I ask, holding the child out to her.

  “Gregor! Oh, my God, what happened? Where did you—How did you—Is he—” She’s red faced and sputtering and crying and, for the first moment since we met, seems almost human.

  “He was on the beach about to get in the water. He was having the time of his life,153 so I don’t think he’s going to be scarred by the memory or anything.”

  Lululemon shakes her head in disbelief. “I don’t understand. I just sat down for a second to take a call and . . . I didn’t even know he was gone. I didn’t know.” She sinks heavily into the lawn chair and buries her face into Gregor’s chest. “I didn’t know.”

  I stand there awkwardly in my bathing suit and I’m not really sure what to do next, as I’ve never been around her when she’s not shouting at me. Do I just leave? Do I reassure her? This is all new territory for me. I begin to back away and she stops me.

  “How can I possibly repay you? You saved Gregor’s life. My family is in your debt.”

  I look her up and down, and for a second my mind races to all the things I could request. I get the feeling I’m in the position to name my own price, considering the garden alone on this place is easily worth six figures. Oh, and I bet the ladies in this neighborhood would have a field day if they heard about this little incident. I could probably even get pool-house-shower access if I play my cards right.

  And then I instantly feel guilty for even imagining capitalizing on this incident. Doing right by someone else isn’t about getting paid back.

  “Two things,” I say. “First, I want to be left alone. Let me be very clear about that. If you don’t approve of the construction noise or the flowers I’ve planted or my mailbox, I want you to keep it to yourself. According to all sixteen of the petitions I’ve received, you, Mrs. A. J. Bain, are the neighborhood president; ergo, you’re in charge. I imagine you have the power to call off the dogs. Everyone around here follows your lead; am I right?”

  Numbly, she nods.

  “And number two?” She braces herself for what I’m about to say next, knowing she’s in no position to negotiate. “I want to know your first name.”

  Her expression’s colored with caution and suspicion. “That’s it?”

  “Yep.”

  “Nothing else?”

  “Nope.”

  She exhales heavily, never once letting up her death grip on her son. “My name is Amanda.”

  “Then it’s nice to meet you. I’m Mia.” We regard each other long and hard. I have sincere doubts that we’ll ever be friends, but I bet maybe, just maybe, if I needed some sugar she’d lend it to me.

  “I can never thank you enough.”

  “No need.” Things are going to be different from here on out. And you know what? I’m fine with that.

  I begin to make my way back to the gate and then I remember something. “One more thing, though? I have to go wash my hair in the lake now and I’d appreciate not getting a petition about it. See you later.”

  It’s amazing what a little passive aggression can accomplish.

  I ease back into the tub as the water pours down on my feet. This is far and away the finest bath I’ve ever taken. Perhaps Mac believed I meant business yesterday after I impaled his apple core on the satellite antenna of his car with a note attached that read, You’re next, so he had a whole parade of friends up here today to install this tub. I hate that I had to be so childish to get his attention, yet I can’t argue with the results.

  The jets aren’t hooked up yet, and this bathroom’s still pretty torn up, but the idea of getting clean in my own home is such a novelty that I don’t even care.

  Mac, Luke, and Charlie headed out to celebrate their “massive victory” (their words, not mine—mine were more along the lines of “bare minimum”), so it’s just me, a mug of tea, and Cecily von Ziegesar’s newest book.154

  I take turns alternating the taps with my toes. First the water’s too hot, so I have to cool it down, and then it’s too cold, so vice versa. The taps feel a little loose, but I imagine they’ll tighten up with use. When I hit the cold water, I hear an annoying little whistle, but it’s not nearly as bothersome as, say, washing my hair in the lake or bathing with a bunch of Japanese industrialists, so I ignore it.

  I slide down into the water and let my hair fan out around me. This? I could get used to this. I sit up and take a sip of chamomile and then dry the tips of my fingers on a towel so I can turn the page.

  Oh, Chuck Bass, you are my favorite bad boy.

  My mind drifts to the author—I wonder if she’d ever compromise her principles to write a gritty sex scene in exchange for drywall and fresh paint? My guess is no.

  I just ran the hot and I’ve practically poached myself, so I opt to cool things down. With my right foot, I reach the whistling tap and nudge it just a tiny bit to the right. A slow stream pours out and the whistling grows louder.

  As I lean in to get a closer look, the faucet makes a clanking sound and then—wham! The tap launches itself off the wall and pegs me directly in the chest and is immediately followed by a fire hose–worthy stream of water that’s coming out so fast and hard that I’m pinned to the back of the tub.

  I drop my book in the water and begin to shriek. I spend about ten seconds immobile from shock before I finally scramble forward to reach the tap. I try to block the water, but when I do, it shoots directly upward, drenching all the fresh new drywall hung on the ceiling. Shit!

  I attempt to rise, but the water’s coming out so hard and fast that I keep losing my footing and falling backward into the tub. Tidal waves of bathwater spill out over the newly grouted floor and are most likely seeping into the subflooring as I struggle and scream. I fish around in the water for the tap and attempt to screw it back over the gushing water, but the pressure’s so high I can’t get it connected.

  I finally get the bright idea to stanch the flow with a towel, and I’m able to crawl, freezing and furious, out of the bath.

  From what I ascertain, in their haste to celebrate their victory in assembling the tub, one of Mac’s dim-witted cohorts forgot to tighten the tap with a wrench, and the buildup of water pressure caused it to fly off and, essentially, waterboard me.

  I have to gather up every towel in the house to sop up all the water on the floor. I slip in puddles twice, soaking
my shorts all the way down to my underwear, so I yank off my bottoms and continue my mopping in the buff from the waist down. Every time I saturate a towel, I toss it in the tub, which now appears to be overflowing with terry cloth.

  I’m all bent over getting up the last of the water when I hear a noise behind me.

  Fortunately it’s just Mac and not a couple of Japanese investors. He’s somewhat unsteady after a night out, and he seems more than a little puzzled about my state of undress.

  “Hey, where are your pants?” He squints as he takes in the scene. “And what’d ya do to the ceiling?”

  I say nothing, choosing instead to pitch my waterlogged copy of Don’t You Forget about Me at him. I miss him by a mile and I’m perversely disappointed by this.

  I bet Blair Waldorf never had to put up with this shit from Chuck Bass.

  Chapter Nineteen

  YOU KNOW, LIKE A RAT

  What fresh hell is this?

  Judging from the commotion coming from downstairs, I’m guessing it’s a bunch of monkeys clanging metal pipes with wrenches.

  Because it’s absolutely impossible to concentrate on my last few book revisions with all this racket, I go downstairs to grab a Diet Coke and find out the source of the noise. When I reach the kitchen, I stumble across Charlie, who is, ironically, underneath the cabinet, clanging a metal pipe with a monkey wrench.

  “Should I even ask?” I inquire, glancing down at Charlie, who appears to be doing nothing but playing a jaunty tune on the kitchen plumbing.

  Mac shakes his head. “It’s probably best if you don’t.”

  I nod and return to my office. I fool around with my manuscript a little more, doing my best to scrub any and all Restoration Hardware references from everyone’s conversations. Then I glance down at my watch and realize I’m almost late for my call with Ann Marie. I dial quickly and she answers on the first ring.

  “How are you holding up?” she asks by way of greeting.

  “I’ve been better,” I admit.

  “Are things coming together at all?”

  What seems like a simple yes-or-no question really isn’t. “Somewhat? Sort of but not really? More items arrive every day, so that’s a bonus. Our new fridge came yesterday. I was so excited to be able to stock up on cold food that I even bought stuff without using coupons!”

  Ann Marie snickers. “Living the dream, eh?”

  “Ha. Hardly.”

  “Are you satisfied with the progress you’ve made on the house? Would you classify your living conditions more as ‘tar-paper shack’ or have you upgraded to ‘post-Katrina New Orleans’ yet?”

  I make a mental inventory of everything we’ve accomplished so far. Seems like every time we take a step forward, we take a step back. Like when we got the drywall up on the ceiling in the dining room finally? That felt like a victory. But then when Mac went up into the eaves to mount the chandelier, he slipped on a slat and his legs came crashing through the drywall and we had to start over.

  “I’d say post-Katrina. We don’t need FEMA anymore, although you can see it from here. Actually, after I threw the book at Mac—”

  Ann Marie sounds sympathetic, but she may just be breathless from taking in a lungful of smoke. “Big fight?”

  “No, not a euphemism—I mean after I pitched the new Gossip Girl at him—Mac shifted into gear. He’s not wasting nearly as much time preparing to work. Now he’s actually performing tasks with mixed results. Take yesterday, for example, when we plugged in the new fridge. Every time I touched it, I felt a weird, low-level vibration run through me.”

  “Like a shock?”

  “Yeah, but not painful, per se. But real, and I definitely felt it. So after the initial few shocks, I made Mac touch the fridge and he said he didn’t feel anything. Then I said I did and he said I was crazy and we ended up having a stupid argument over it. But I knew something wasn’t right, because refrigerators are not supposed to send pulses of electricity through your body. Although I bet you could sell fridges with a built-in electrical shock to dieters all over the country. Talk about your negative reinforcement!” I hear scratching in the background. “Hey, are you writing that down?”

  “Mia, I have no idea of what you speak.”

  Right. Swear to God, if some kind of dieter’s shock fridge comes on the market in the next few years, I’ll know who’s profiting from it.

  “Anyway, clearly something is wrong with the damn thing, so I go upstairs and start Googling different iterations of getting shocked while touching a household appliance. Turns out I was right! When Mac rewired the outlet, there was some sort of ground-fault reversal and I was, in fact, getting shocked.”

  “Let me guess,”Ann Marie interjects. “Mac didn’t feel it because he was wearing rubber-soled shoes and you were barefoot?”

  After all my run-ins with rusty nails, you’d think I’d have the common sense to wear shoes over my socks in this place. You’d think that, anyway.

  “Bingo. What infuriates me isn’t that he wired the outlet wrong—relatively speaking, that’s small potatoes. What pisses me off is that he refused to believe me.”

  “Frustrating, I agree.” When we talk, I get the feeling Ann Marie’s responses take the exact amount of time it takes her to exhale.

  “Then, after that little debacle, he goes to rewire another junction box. Now that he’s savvy enough not to cause a ground fault, that’s a step forward, right?”

  “I’d say so, yes.”

  “And here’s where the step back comes in. He had to cut a hole in the drywall. Oh, by the way, when we hung drywall last time, Mac learned the hard way that you’re supposed to cut it with a utility knife and not a saber saw. You would not believe the flying debris a couple of quick swipes with a power saw can produce. Anyway, so he slices open a big hole and then he wanders off. When he comes back, he finishes his wiring project and then he patches the hole.”

  “Was the fire department involved at any point in this little scenario?” Ann Marie asks.

  “No.”

  “Then you have to give him credit for his progress. The learning curve just got a little less steep.”

  I laugh but it comes out more like a snort. “No, it’s more like, ‘Congratulations on becoming king of the dipshits.’ And you know what? I hate talking about him like this, but I’ve already expressed all these opinions to him and he doesn’t seem to be taking the hint.”

  “Everyone can agree he’s a decent man, Mia, but no one ever said he can’t be dense about some matters.”

  “Exactly. But the wiring is not my point; he’s got that down finally, and God bless him for it. He’s not making the same mistake over and over—he keeps making new ones, because he refuses to accept the fact that he’s not automatically good at stuff he’s never tried before. He won’t touch any of the repairs-for-dummies books, preferring to figure it out himself. I guess because he was instantly good at being in the army and later at his job, he’s convinced that he’s somehow inherently skilled in all things, like home repair and cooking. He can’t seem to grasp that having the right tools and a positive outlook is only part of the equation.”

  I’ve been leaving HGTV on nonstop because I’m hoping he picks up some tips by osmosis. So far no luck.

  “Anyway, I’m in the kitchen unloading all kinds of yogurt and cheese and lunch meat into the new fridge, and I hear Agent Jack Bauer meow. I check and don’t see him anywhere, so I just assume he’s in one of the empty cardboard appliance boxes. Later, I feed the kittens dinner and he’s nowhere to be seen, but I can hear him.”

  “Is he fine? Don’t tell me any more of this story unless you can confirm he’s fine.” I forget sometimes that Ann Marie has a soft spot for cats. In related news, Ann Marie prosecuted a guy who now holds the state’s longest sentence ever given for animal cruelty.

  “Agent Bauer is in fine shape, no worries. But I went all over the kitchen looking for him and it’s like he was a ghost, all sounds and no sight. Then I heard the tiniest
little thud in the wall and I put the pieces together.”

  “No.”

  “Yes. Mac sealed the cat in the goddamned wall.”

  “What did you do?”

  I can’t stop clenching my fists as I relate this story. “We had to cut a cat-shaped hole out of the wall just like you see on cartoons! Fortunately, Agent Bauer was completely undaunted and we’re learning that drywall’s pretty simple to fix once it’s hung. A little joint compound, a little sanding, dry overnight, and voilà! Good as new.”

  “For what it’s worth, I’m sure Mac meant no ill will.”

  “Of course he didn’t! He felt awful, and he spent the whole night hugging Agent Bauer and giving him extra treats. But that level of carelessness just—” But before I can finish my sentence, the phone goes dead. I tap the switch hook a couple of times but nothing happens. Damn it.

  We’ve had a few connectivity problems—of course we have—and I’ve become an expert on how to fix them. I get up from my desk and trek down to the network area in the panic room. What I have to do is recycle the router, which is a fancy way of saying unplug and then replug it.

  Once I reach the networking area, this whole task shouldn’t take more than a minute. I get to the panic room and heave open the heavy metal door. I quietly fume that while this room helped sell Mac on this house, he hasn’t done much with it except to stow the most basic of disaster supplies and some of his second-tier tools. Should the unthinkable happen, we’re good for two days, tops.

  While I wait for the router to complete a cycle, Charlie pops into the room. “Mac sent me down for a different wrench.” I have to suppress a giggle—Mac treats his tools like his children, and I’m sure Charlie’s banging the pipes hurt him as much as it annoyed me. Mac’s sending Charlie down here for the old stuff tells me everything I need to know about Charlie’s plumbing prowess and the status of the sink installation.

  “The toolbox is over there,” I say, pointing to the corner nearest the door.

  “Got it!” Charlie grabs something off the top of the box and then trots out the door, shutting it behind him.