The Good House: A Novel (33 page)

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, and 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.”

I braced for the wave of anxiety to hit me, but … nothing.

“Peter wouldn’t just make something like that up,” I said.
Had I just dreamed that he had come by?

“Well, come inside now,” I said. “I’ll make some coffee.”

Tess followed me into the kitchen, and as I started to fill the coffeemaker, she said, “What happened to your other chairs?”

I turned and was surprised to see that there were only two chairs at the kitchen table. There are usually four. Four charming little antique chairs with hand-spooled legs and wicker seats that Scott had picked up at some estate sale or other. Now there were only two. This was perplexing.

Then I had a foggy memory.

I had carried a chair down to the cellar last night—those little kitchen chairs are so light, it was easy to carry by myself. I needed a place to sit. I figured I wouldn’t fall asleep on the floor if I was sitting upright on one of those stiff chairs. I placed the chair in my favorite corner down there and had just returned to the kitchen for a corkscrew when Peter arrived. The man was absolutely loaded. I don’t know where he had been, but it was obvious that he had been drinking before he arrived here, and he was quite amused when I invited him to join me in the cellar for a little wine. He carried another chair down for himself.

“I needed to have the seats refinished. The wicker was getting worn, it all needed to be replaced,” I explained to Tess as I measured the grinds into the coffeemaker. I was so relaxed. This was usually the time in the morning when the alcohol started to burn out of my system, when I felt those glass shards in my gut and a hammering in my forehead. But thanks to whatever Peter had given me, Zantax or Zanaz—whatever he’d called it—I was calm and felt no pain. And even the confusing news about Jake didn’t affect me the way it should have. I knew that Jake was safe. I knew it. Peter had told me so.

Tess placed Grady on the floor and then followed him as he toddled from my kitchen into the dining room and then on into the living room.

I had told Peter, the night before, about the time I woke up on the floor down in the cellar and he agreed with me that this was a clever solution. He sat on one chair and I sat on the one opposite, smiling at Peter. Dear Peter Newbold. We were so close that our feet almost touched.

Peter understood why we needed to stay in the cellar. He knew I didn’t want Frank to come back and see me drinking. I didn’t want anybody nosing around—the whole town was in snoop mode, unfortunately, with Jake Dwight missing. I just needed to drink off the night before. Peter understood this. I would stop drinking again, Peter assured me, taking a hefty swig from the wine bottle I passed him. We didn’t bother with glasses.

“I’m so glad you came back, Peter,” I had said when I was uncorking another bottle of wine. “Do you know, you’re the only person who’s ever come down here with me? I don’t like to drink alone. That’s why I liked drinking with Rebecca so much. OOOPS, maybe I shouldn’ta mentioned Rebecca to you, Peter. I’m … I’m so sorry.”

“No, don’t be, Hildy,” Peter said as I passed him the bottle. “Everything’s fine now.”

“It is? Oh, I’m so glad, Peter,” I gushed. “I can’t stand the idea of you two hating each other.”

“No, I never hated her,” he had said, smiling at the thought and taking a healthy sip of the wine. “I love her still.” What a difference in his demeanor since the day before. He looked so happy now.

“You know, I rather love her, too,” I admitted, giggling shyly into my hand.