Every Tom, Dick & Harry E-Book

Elinor Lipman

• Herausgeber: Lightning
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 369

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2025

Beschreibung

'I love Elinor Lipman's wit and lightness of touch' – Marian Keyes 'The perennially mood-lifting Lipman is equally revered for her lovable characters, spitfire wit and happily-ever-after romantic escapades' – Booklist Running her parents' estate-sale business in a small Massachusetts town is not the high-flying career that 32-year-old Emma Lewis imagined for herself. But her parents make an offer she can't refuse when they move to the coast and invite her to take over their home as well as the family firm. Their only condition is that she take a lodger, in the shape of her former maths teacher Frank, a widower in his early sixties whose unfaithful wife was recently struck by lightning. Reluctant at first, Emma discovers in him the ideal housemate: considerate, helpful and a romantic ally as they each start dating different generations of the same family. Frank also helps her out with the business, but they realise they may be out of their depth when Emma wins the contract to empty a noted local mansion, only to discover it operated for years as a high-end bordello. Will her sale of the contents reveal the secrets of half the town? This charming, laugh-out-loud tale of love and licentiousness behind a respectable façade is another pitch-perfect romantic comedy from the author of Ms. Demeanor.

Leseprobe

‘Elinor Lipman’s new novel is all comfort and joy… Every Tom, Dick & Harry is not a rom-com packed with LOL moments; instead, it’s a masterclass in writing about small-town life without tropes or judgment. You want to hang out with Lipman’s characters. Not just one of them, but all of them. They’re quirky, they’re unexpected and they remind you that life is good in a small town even when it’s not, because people care about you — even if they taught you algebra’

Washington Post

‘Lipmanland is a world adjacent to our own except the people there are more charming, the conversations are wittier, and love always prevails. Every Tom, Dick & Harry weaves together estate sales, good and bad cops and small-town houses of ill-repute with effortless glee. Add sparkling dialogue, an improbably hilarious funeral and one of the author’s most endearing love stories, and you have the Lipman Literary Landscape at its irresistible best’

Stephen McCauley, author of The Object of My Affection

‘Quirky and fun, with bawdy wit’

People

‘Enter a delightful small town of the kind only Elinor Lipman can deliver’

BookBub, ‘Most Anticipated’

‘Lipman’s fans and newcomers alike will be tickled’

Publishers Weekly

‘In the delightfully reassuring rom-com tradition of Nora Ephron, the perennially mood-lifting Lipman is equally revered for her lovable characters, spitfire wit and happily-ever-after romantic escapades’

Booklist

‘An estate-sale manager in a small Massachusetts town stumbles on its worst-kept secret… charming’

Kirkus Reviews

Elinor Lipman is the author of sixteen novels, including Good Riddance, On Turpentine Lane, Rachel to the Rescue and Ms. Demeanor, which was a finalist for the 2023 Thurber Prize for American Humor. Her debut, Then She Found Me, was adapted into a film directed by and starring Helen Hunt, with Bette Midler, Colin Firth and Matthew Broderick. She won the New England Book Award in 2001, and her novel My Latest Grievance won the Paterson Fiction Prize. She divides her time between Manhattan and the Hudson Valley.

Published in 2025

by Lightning

Imprint of Eye Books Ltd

29A Barrow Street

Much Wenlock

Shropshire

TF13 6EN

www.eye-books.com

ISBN: 9781785634499

Copyright © Elinor Lipman 2025

First published by HarperCollins Publishers, New York in 2025

Cover design by Ifan Bates

Typeset in Minion Pro and Agenda

The moral right of the author has been asserted. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Our authorised representative in the EU for product safety is:

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For Suzanne Gluckwith gratitude and love

Contents

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1

My new business card reads “Estate of Mind,” and below, in italics, “We empty your nest.” Though I’ve been working alone since my parents retired, I’ve retained the “we” for sentimental reasons, and to sound less like the one-woman operation I hope to keep afloat.

I’ve been estate-sale adjacent since I could add and give change, spending weekends at a table, wrapping and bagging purchases. If buyers tried to negotiate, I’d point to the stated price on the tag or sticker, and ask blankly, “Do you not want it?”

But the grown-up me has learned to be kinder and more psychiatric. I know when to hand-hold and when to hard-sell. Some clients can tell a story about every item in their house if I let them, and sometimes I do. If anyone is convinced that the unsigned portrait over the fireplace is an Old Master, I don’t argue. I let the small local auction house with which I have a relationship (I recommend them; they recommend me) be the bad guy. As ever, they agree that the work in question is either NSV (no sale value) or TFO (the frame only). Yes, I can get $100 for a decent still life by an unknown artist, but it’s small comfort to the surviving children, who grew up expecting that their inherited treasures would be auctioned off for millions.

I wish I could say that no two houses are alike, but Harrow, Massachusetts, has several subdivisions where only the paint colors differentiate one property from another. Inside, there are few surprises. I know what the big-city, apartment-dwelling beneficiaries won’t want: the gas grill, the Weber grill, the porch furniture, the fireplace tools, the lawn mowers, the rakes, the snow shovels, the hedge clippers, the left-handed golf clubs and warped tennis rackets, the recalled playpen, the crib bumpers, the furry toilet seat covers and crocheted tissue-box holders; the DVDs, the cassette tapes, the VHS tapes, the college textbooks, the shag rugs, the sewing machine, the electric typewriters, the souvenirs bought at airport gift shops, the aluminum saucepans, the grape-jelly juice glasses, the empty mayonnaise jars. To my constant amazement, almost everything finds a buyer and a home.

I’m proud of our excellent Yelp reviews complimenting our bedside manner and my parents’ talent for curing a lifetime of buyer’s regret. One written salute to their “Midas Touch” is now reproduced on my invoices. Still, it’s not my calling; the accolades don’t stop me from thinking, Just one more summer… just one more sale.

My parents are torn; they want their old business – formerly Finders, Keepers, renamed by me to a more zeitgeisty Estate of Mind – to thrive and to outlive their retirement, yet they want me to be fulfilled, and to put at least one of my degrees to good use.

My most recent one, attended online, in narrative non-fiction, makes them nervous. They ask, “If you’re supposed to ‘write what you know,’ wouldn’t that lead to a tell-all in very bad taste?”

I’m not going to do that. How could I forget my father, widowed young, smiling, shaking his head in something like wonder, asking as we loaded a cracked mirror or a wheelbarrow into a stranger’s car, “Did you ever think your dad would be having as much fun again in this lifetime?”

2

As to “my parents,” clarification is needed.

Nineteen months after his first wife, my mother, Annie, died, my father married Beth Williamsen. I’d known and liked her well enough, the way a child likes anyone who waves and smiles from her porch and doesn’t mind the neighborhood kids cutting through her yard.

Looking back, though not grasping it at the time, I sensed that she wasn’t the only woman who’d set her sights on my heartbroken young father. Even to me at seven, he seemed deaf and blind to the blandishments of the women in pursuit, except for the competent and pretty Mrs. Williamsen, who mowed her own lawn and hung her own Christmas lights.

She was divorced. Mr. Williamsen, I would eventually find out, had been a ladies’ man, and an indiscreet one. They had no children. She got the house.

Not long after my mother died, Mrs. Williamsen knocked on the back door while managing a cake on a cake plate. “For Emma,” she told my father. I was present, eating or drawing at the kitchen table.

“Emma,” my father prompted, “see what Mrs. Williamsen brought you. A beautiful cake! Can you say thank you?”

Saying thanks from the table was deemed inadequate. “Over here,” he prompted. I obeyed. At the door, my father stood behind me, both hands on my shoulders.

“I hope you like chocolate cake,” Mrs. Williamsen called, now at the bottom of the stairs, in polite retreat.

I nodded. My father said, “She’s quiet with strangers, but I know she’s touched.”

The tragedy of my mother’s death from breast cancer was handled as well as such things were dealt with twenty-five years ago. We checked out books about sick, dying, and dead parents from the library. The school psychologist sat me down with paper and crayons a few weeks in a row, and even at seven I suspected that the colors and pictures I drew were supposed to say something about my feelings. Appropriately sad or too sad? I didn’t want to make my father feel any worse. I put green leaves on trees, a big, beaming sun, a stick-figure daddy and a stick-figure little girl with a giant bow in her hair, and a dog not yet owned, in case this would be translated as aspirational. After four visits, I didn’t have to go back.

My father had devoted friends among his fellow teachers at Harrow High School. Even more protective were his three older sisters, my doting aunts, all living in neighboring counties, eager to mother me. As Beth was introduced in small social increments, the aunts were split on the coupling, two against, and one philosophical. He was so attractive, their heartbroken baby brother. The two sisters who were anti-Beth thought she was insensitive to the etiquette of mourning. “She didn’t wait a minute,” was the naysayers’ motto. The philosophical one said, “He knows her better than we do, which is not at all. Let’s give him some credit.”

Eight months after my mother’s death, my father brought Beth to Thanksgiving dinner, always at Aunt Unity’s, the eldest. When all three sisters were gathered in the kitchen, basting, chopping, advising, and I was pretending to be deeply engaged in cutting rounds of dough with a biscuit cutter, Beth took the opportunity to make the speech she’d prepared in advance. She knew John-Paul was still grieving. He’d never get over Annie’s death. She herself understood heartbreak. She’d never do anything to disrespect Annie or – her voice dropping – “your Emma.”

TheirEmma! The magic words. I was the youngest grandchild and only girl. Aunt Pamela was childless. Aunt Unity had big boys, old enough to drive and to be nice to a little cousin who worshipped them. Aunt Celeste had married a divorced man with a son who’d aged out of the every-other-weekend custody agreement.

My father and Beth were married at Harrow City Hall. At eight and a half, I wasn’t old enough to be an official witness, but I was there, in a new pinafore dress I adored, my hair in French braids, Beth’s handiwork. My three aunts and their husbands attended because we were not a family that would boycott the wedding of a beloved brother, no matter the doubts. Until that day, I’d been calling Beth “Mrs. Williamsen.” She asked if I’d like to call her Mom. My dad said, “Or maybe just ‘Beth’?” Beth said quickly, “Of course.”

The aunts came around. Beth remembered every birthday, not just with cards but with notes. She stepped up to host Thanksgiving the year Aunt Unity’s contractor missed the deadline for her kitchen renovation; contributed to every bike-ride and walkathon for Aunt Celeste’s favorite causes. When the aunts collectively offered to send me to boarding school at thirteen, my dad said no thanks, and that was final. And how would it look – a public school teacher sending his daughter to private school? He’d miss me too much. They both would – their only child!

Beth agreed wholeheartedly. Send the girl who’d lost her mother away for her all-important high school years, when “Finders, Keepers” told our story in two words: Finding, then keeping? As for the claim “We empty your nest,” no way; no takers here. Emma’s not going anywhere.

3

Finders, Keepers’s first client was Beth herself, after she’d sold her house and moved into ours. While shopping around for the best estate sale company, she’d interviewed Goldie of Goldie’s Oldies, which would soon become our main competitor. Did they advertise? she asked. What about flyers? Signage? Liability insurance? Did they have a mailing list (which at the time meant the actual mailing of postcards)? It didn’t take long before Beth was asking herself, How hard could such a business be?

That inaugural sale set the style that Finders, Keepers would be known for. Beth dressed up and greeted customers as if she were hosting a holiday open house. She made attractive groupings of unwanted knickknacks. She studied which rooms customers visited in what order, what sold and what was destined for Goodwill. Customers were invited to open closets and bureau drawers. They wanted the oddest things! A man who hadn’t even gone to the same high school as her ex bought his yearbook! It got her thinking…if John-Paul and Emma could help on weekends, she’d do the advance work, the photographing, arranging, pricing.

After conducting a half dozen sales, she quit her job at a Springfield furniture store. The experience she’d gained there as both bookkeeper and saleswoman served her new venture so well that it seemed foretold.

They managed with the help of my aunts when I had games on Saturdays through junior high and high school. Unity had the best eye, occasionally spotting something auction-worthy that Beth had underpriced. Pamela was the best mathematician, calculating sales tax in her head. Celeste viewed her time at the checkout table as a lark. “I can hardly keep a straight face when I’m wrapping up some hideous thing! Sometimes I want to say, ‘You’re kidding! You’re paying ten dollars for this?’”

Finders, Keepers didn’t make anyone rich, neither the homeowners nor us. Still, Beth and my dad persevered. His teacher’s salary got us by, plus the 40 percent commissions that the semi-monthly sales brought in. Though I was accepted at BU and BC, I went to UMass on in-state tuition and majored in art history, not with an eye to appraising future properties but because it seemed the polar opposite of commerce.

Summers I was back at the checkout table, already feeling as if I knew every person, every house, every cellar and attic in Harrow. After graduation I was of less and less help. I worked part-time at various retail jobs at Shoppers’ World, convenient to Framingham State where I was studying for my first impractical master’s degree, English. For years I dated my on-and-off college boyfriend, who finally joined Teach for America without asking me to consider the same.

Beth and my dad announced with some ceremony at my thirty-second birthday dinner that they were looking at a town house in Buzzards Bay.

“Winters are milder on the Cape,” said my dad. “And I might get a little dinghy.”

I asked what “looking at a town house” meant. As a rental property? Can’t be for summers, could it – Finders, Keepers’ high season? Surely not a full-time move, as in…retirement?

“That’s where you come in,” Beth said, raising her champagne flute. “The logical heir to the throne.”

They were asking, at this shockingly early juncture: how would I like to take over? Finders, Keepers was mine if I wanted it.

I didn’t want it. I’d helped out because I had to. I wouldn’t be good at wooing or charming clients. I wasn’t vivacious Beth or genial John-Paul. Who retires the second they turn sixty-five? They were busy and healthy. Buzzards Bay? A dinghy? They were Harrowites to the core, or so I thought. “You’d walk away from Finders? Isn’t it your baby, your nest egg?” I asked.

“No,” said Beth. “It was your college fund. It may seem out of the blue, but we’ve always loved the Cape.”

“And my back is telling me no more hoisting sofas onto people’s trucks,” said my dad.

“And no more Sunday nights leaving the property” – air quotes – “‘broom-clean.’ I hope I never have to hear that expression again.”

I said, “What about me, though? I’d be going for broom clean. I’d be hoisting sofas onto truck beds for people who should’ve brought along their beefy sons.”

“Sweetheart, at thirty-two you’d be the CEO of one of Harrow’s most beloved homegrown businesses. You’d be ready right out of the gate, no training needed,” said Beth. “And you won’t have a gap on your resumé between school, J.Crew, Nordstrom Rack…and whatever’s next.”

“You’d keep ‘family’ in ‘family business,’” said my dad. “No small matter.”

Our celebration was taking place at the town’s white-tablecloth restaurant, Beardsley’s, named after the British illustrator, judging by the black-and-white prints on every wall. It was the restaurant of choice for special occasions, and for my apparent doubleheader: Happy Birthday and Happy Keys to the Castle. As early as over salads, Dad and Beth exchanged a look that I recognized as Should I tell her, or should you?

It was my dad who delivered the bombshell. “We think this may provide an incentive and a cushion: you’ll stop paying rent on your apartment and move home. No, wait; listen: home but without the stigma. You couldn’t be a boomeranging adult child if we’re no longer under the same roof, right?”

With Beth nodding her encouragement, he continued. “With the mortgage paid off, it would be rent-free, and if you couldn’t swing the taxes, the utilities, the fuel, the upkeep…we have a solution.”

I was shaking my head, thinking their solution was throwing more cash at my unprofitable lifestyle. I said, “If you mean helping out once again, there’s only so much—”

But my dad was saying, “With three bedrooms, and as far as we’ve gleaned, no boyfriend/partner/companion on the horizon – why not a boarder! Not a roommate in the traditional sense; not someone to socialize and share meals with, but someone who merely rents a room. You’d take the master bedroom, and he’d get your old room.”

“And would keep to himself,” added Beth.

“Himself?” I repeated.

Of course they had someone in mind, practically lined up: Frank Crowley, my old algebra teacher and one of my dad’s colleagues, whom I’d known my whole life, recently widowed – but, they assured me, coping remarkably well.

“Recently widowed” told only half the tale. His wife had died instantly and famously on the golf course about a year ago, struck by lightning, front-page news for days.

“He would not be a gloomy presence,” Beth continued. “He just wants a room of his own.”

“But a roommate your age? I’ve never called him anything but Mr. Crowley.”

“On a trial basis,” Beth said, then let slip, “He’s very keen on the idea.”

My dad said quietly, “He was there for me. Most of my colleagues didn’t know what to do or say when your mother died, but Frank had lunch with me every single day for months after I returned to work. You’d be doing him a favor, and me, too.”

I must’ve looked slightly less disinclined because Beth coaxed, “How about breakfast with him at the Over Easy? You’ll talk; you’ll see if it feels right.”

“If I decided to move back home, I’d ask a friend. Or at least look for a roommate on Craigslist.”

But ex-bookkeeper Beth reached into her briefcase-size handbag and brought forth a sheaf of bills. Even just the levies from Harrow’s property and school taxes were scary. She said, “We’re figuring if a boarder brought in even a hundred dollars per week, it would make a nice dip in the red ink.”

“Or I’d keep my apartment and you’d sell the house.”

Ignoring that, Beth testified, “When I kicked Brad out, I had a series of roommates, one nightmare after the other. You can’t ask someone, ‘Are you a slob? Do you never wash a dish? Do you drink too much? Do you have the creepiest boyfriends? Do you throw things down the toilet that result in a three-hundred-dollar visit by a plumber?’ And not easy to kick out, either.”

“How do you know Mr. Crowley wouldn’t be a nightmare?”

“Frank Crowley is the least likely nightmare that ever walked on God’s green earth,” said my dad, his voice choking.

How could I say no to a breakfast with the man who moved my father to near-tears?

Beth added, “He wants to keep to himself, to read, to tinker, to watch football and baseball. He once told your father that Ginger made him watch Red Sox games with the sound off. I don’t mean with the volume turned down. I mean off! And he has a snow blower.”

They raised their glasses to toast my generosity of spirit, even if so far withheld. I said okay. The least I could do was have breakfast with the guy who’d been there for my dad, who’d been through so much himself, widowed by a strike of lightning. “But just Mr. Crowley and me at the Over Easy, okay?”

I didn’t need them putting their thumbs on the scale.

I was honest with him. I told him I didn’t understand why he’d want to be a boarder in someone else’s house rather than live in his own.

The waitress had just arrived tableside, pen poised. Frank closed his menu and said, “Just coffee and a cruller for me. Emma?”

“The Mexican scramble, extra jalapenos, and cocoa,” I said, which for some reason made him smile.

As soon as we were alone, he explained. “The house was in Ginger’s name. She left it to her two daughters.”

I might’ve muttered “What a bitch” in any other company, but Frank was looking more embarrassed than sad. He said, “They’ve given me a grace period. I can stay until I find something else.”

I asked if his wife’s non-bequest had come as a surprise.

“No. We had a prenup.” And with an apologetic smile, “I was husband number three.”

I hadn’t known Ginger. I did remember her wearing a fur coat to whatever math department family get-together I’d attended, evoking eyerolls from Beth. I was tempted to ask if he’d loved Ginger, meaning Are you devastated?, but said only, “I should’ve sent a note. I’m sorry.”

“Your dad was the first person I called after her death was confirmed.”

“I know it was sudden.”

He shrugged. “It’s sudden for us all, isn’t it? One second you’re alive, and the next second you’re dead.”

Very true, forensically speaking, but with a detachment that reinforced Beth’s claim that he was coping remarkably well. Across from me, he looked exactly like the high school coach he used to be, his gray hair a few millimeters longer than a buzz cut. Had I known Ginger’s daughters? Were they close to my age? Had they gone to Harrow High?

“Younger,” he said. “She sent them away to boarding school.”

Our food arrived, giving me time to frame my biggest worry. I buttered a half piece of toast in slow motion and finally said, “With this arrangement, I’d be living with my former algebra teacher. It might look funny.”

“You have to be completely comfortable with this. But at the risk of being hard-sell, please know I’d keep to myself. A room with a TV and a desk sounds just right. Oh, I would need a modest use of the kitchen, maybe one shelf in the refrigerator, but I’d know my place.”

His place…a stellar colleague and bosom buddy of my father’s who’d put on a tie for this meeting, talking about “his place”! I asked, “You’re sure this is what you want, a monk’s life?”

He closed his eyes. “Exactly.”

I was still torn, annoyed with my parents for dreaming up this potentially awkward home life, but already fond of this unassuming man in a crew cut and cardigan. He volunteered that he’d looked at a few places, studios, but all out of town. “I can afford a place of my own. That might still happen.” He smiled. “I could find out that I don’t want a monastic life.”

I was out of arguments, and empathy was winning out over fear of domestic discomfort. “What if we gave it a shot. A one-month trial?”

“Makes sense.”

“Did my dad mention a figure?”

“He did. But I didn’t take him seriously. It was almost a joke.”

What to charge someone who’s merely sleeping and watching TV in one room and using a single shelf in the fridge and the lesser bathroom with its fiberglass shower? Should I go higher than my parents’ bargain-basement $100? I did, but barely. “How’s a hundred twenty-five per week?”

“Five hundred a month? More than fair.”

“Deal,” I said.

4

I knew almost immediately that landladyhood was working. On day one, Frank corrected the time on my coffee maker and programmed it to brew four cups at 6:30 every morning. He took the trash and recyling bins to the curb the first Wednesday he was in residence, noticed what needed tightening or oiling, and performed tasks unknown to me, such as emptying the crumbs collected at the bottom of the toaster.

One evening he came downstairs, found me watching The Bachelorette in the den, and said the Sox were losing by ten runs in the eighth inning, too painful to watch. Did I have a minute? There was something important he wanted to discuss with me.

I paused my show, surprising myself by feeling worried. Was our arrangement not working out?

No, it was this: he was asking my permission to get something that had been unattainable when Ginger was alive. Could he get a dog?

“Unattainable why?” I asked. “Was she allergic?”

“No,” he said sadly. “She didn’t like dogs. She was afraid they’d shed and tie us down.”

I told him I’d always wanted a dog too.

He said he’d go to the pound; maybe there would be an older dog whose owner had died? Fully trained.

One day later, enter a squat little girl, part pit bull, part basset hound, brindled in brown and gold. She was orphaned, of indeterminate age – maybe two, maybe three years old, guessed the vet – and instantly in love with Frank and, to a slightly less ecstatic degree, me. She’d been named Sad Eyes at the shelter, which Frank softened to a relatable long-I “Ivy.” We placed one dog bed – a fleece-lined cave that looked like a pita pocket – in the kitchen, and another halfway between our two bedrooms. She stopped crying as soon as she was permitted sleepovers in Frank’s room.

Frank made Ivy soup from beef shin bones to moisten her mail-order premium kibble. As for his own meals, he made oatmeal every other morning, enough for me, alternating with English muffins. He had lunch at the Over Easy, and seemed content to make himself a cheese-and-tomato sandwich, a burger, an omelet, or a frozen turkey dinner at night. Not that I was any cook, but his choices made me sad. He ate early, leaving the kitchen to me at a later, more fashionable hour. The meal that changed our routine happened the night we were both twisting limbs off separate but identical roast chickens from the Big Y.

“What’s wrong with this picture?” I asked, pointing at the two carcasses side by side in their plastic boats.

“Maybe one would do, you mean?”

“I never finish mine,” I said. “Do you? After two meals in a row, I lose interest.”

That was one accommodation we made: a shared roast chicken, then soup with the carcasses, bones carefully drained for Ivy’s safety.

Frank took on more chores around the house, slowly, as if too many would be stepping over some line. Vacuuming? Did I mind? Did I have any new bags, or should he pop over to the house on Greenough – Ginger’s – to get a package? I announced that I was cutting his rent by $25 a week. How clean and orderly the house had become since he moved in! He didn’t agree or disagree, but when the first check came in, it was for the full, agreed-upon $500. I asked, waving the check, “Did you forget?”

It was my own fault. I had a bad habit of yelping when I opened bills – electric, gas, the whoppers from the town for real estate and school taxes. Heading out the door with Ivy, both of them smiling, or so it seemed, he said, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Unsolicited, Frank packed me a sandwich for the opening day of an unpromising sale.

“Why so glum?” he asked.

“For starters, it smells funny…urine-y. There were litter boxes everywhere. Air freshener didn’t help.”

“Did you open windows?”

“I tried.”

“What if I tried?”

He quickly assembled a second sandwich, put Ivy in her crate with her favorite stuffed buddy, came with me, and unstuck and opened windows. “Why don’t I stay?” he asked.

I told him I’d be hiring a teen, once I got around to that, to do what I used to do.

“As in…bag the purchases, take the money, give change?”

“And add up the sticker prices.”

“An ideal job for a retired mathematician with time on his hands, don’t you think?”

Suspecting that Ginger had chipped away at his self-worth, I asked, “It wouldn’t be like the retired teachers who I see ringing up my purchases at the Dollar Store?”

“Degrading? Embarrassing? I don’t know where you get these ideas.”

Next up: an estate sale at a house that had been built in the late 1700s. On a walk-through before the doors opened, Frank suggested some price adjustments. He knew his stuff. Ginger had loved antiquing but hadn’t driven since a parking-lot collision had caused her airbag to deploy. How many times had he spent whole weekends at the Brimfield Fair? Too many times. The accumulation…he wouldn’t know where to begin. The main reason he couldn’t live there.

Those antique garden tools? Rusted? So what? Rust could be beautiful. You can’t buy those any more. The weathervane I hadn’t lifted my eyes to notice? Surely two hundred years old. Let the buyer figure out how to get it down. And most helpful and profitable, the mysterious wooden thing that Frank recognized as a cheese coaster, explaining that all cheese used to come in wheels, and this is where they rested. I tore up the $5 sticker and with his urging priced it at $99, with a note explaining what this rare and valuable antique was.

Yet again we had a friendly, disingenuous squabble about compensation – me for, him against. His argument: he enjoyed seeing what people bought – it was an education, really – and the socializing. So many parents of ex-students! A pleasure! He was so happy to help.

No, he couldn’t accept an hourly wage. Too complicated for me, filing W-2s and such. But he agreed to one concession: he’d let me pay for the pizza and Chinese food deliveries, but no more than once a week.

That was it, his big ask. Of course I said yes, but it made me wonder once again: how beaten down by Ginger had he been, that this new spartan life was an improvement? Thirty-plus years his junior, I was feeling more and more maternal about my old algebra teacher, as if I were the shelter, and Frank the rescued Ivy.

I needed to make a gesture. I knew a present would embarrass him unless it could masquerade as something for the house. I looked around the kitchen. The Mr. Coffee had arrived with Beth when she and Dad married. And the soup he made for Ivy simmered for hours, requiring his attention. After research online, I ordered the Rolls-Royce of stovetop pressure cookers, and a coffee maker that boasted hot and cold foam technology. It needed whole beans, so I signed us up for a subscription to a coffee roaster in Seattle, starting with two pounds of a big seller with low acidity and heady notes of vanilla.

5

I came downstairs one morning to find Frank Swiffering the linoleum kitchen floor. “Hope you don’t mind,” he said. “Swabbing the decks was always my job.”

I wanted to say, Wasn’t your job being head of the math department at Harrow High School? Trying to sound light hearted, I asked instead, “And what were Ginger’s jobs?”

“Golf. And so-called collecting,” followed by a barely audible, “I knew what I was getting into.”

Instantly intrigued, I sat down and invited him to join me. He did; he said he was going to get the dust mop, the carpet sweeper, and all the cleaning products from Greenough Street. “I’m entitled to that much,” he added.

It was another reminder of Ginger’s unjust bequeathing. How to learn more, while sounding like a neutral party? I tried, “Your late wife…there’s so much I don’t know about her.”

His worried expression said Not that again. I forged ahead just the same, asking how and where they’d met.

“We were on some foolish Founders Day committee together. For reasons I never understood, she set her cap for me. I think it was because I was age-appropriate, single, straight. I was flattered.” After a pause, apologetically, “She was a very pretty woman.”

“And?”

“Hair colored to match her name…and a big yellow dress.”

I didn’t want to interrupt his narrative by asking what he meant by “big,” so I just nodded my encouragement.

“There was coffee and cookies after the meeting.”

Was I seeing a preemptive reddening of his face? It made me skip a few polite questions and ask a blunt, “Who came on to whom?”

“Ginger struck up a conversation with me.”

“About…?”

“I don’t remember. Probably about the tricentennial. And then…”

I could tell he was gauging what was appropriate, what might be crossing a line. I said, “Frank! I’m thirty-two years old. I’m not a kid. Did she ask you out for a drink?”

“No. She offered me a ride home because I’d walked. The community center was less than a mile from my house.”

“Okay…you got in her car. Then what? Did one of you make a move?”

Eyes averted, he said, “A rather big move.”

I waited. “Did she kiss you? Or try to?”

“Eventually.”

“That sounds sweet enough. Why are you turning purple?”

I could see him trying to counter that, to put a swagger into an unconvincing smile. “I’m taking a wild guess that she offered…to do you a big favor?”

He looked surprised. How had I guessed Ginger’s exact overture? “I was flabbergasted! Stunned. I’m still stunned now at how willing I was to…consent.”

“A pretty woman, someone upstanding enough to be on the Founders Day committee?”

“It was like something that happens in a movie. ‘So nice to meet you. Are you here alone? Do you need a ride home?’ What followed without any warning was behavior that was as bold and as, as – forgive me – libidinous as I’d ever experienced.”

I whispered, “Did you go back to your place? Or hers?”

He shook his head. “We went somewhere private that she knew. Along the river. I’d never been there.”

I didn’t admit that I knew exactly where they’d gone – where every Harrow teen took their girlfriend or boyfriend.

“I still can’t believe it was me – the parking and the…partaking. Me, of all people!”

“Stop it! Obviously she was attracted to you. She spotted you across a crowded room and probably thought, I’d like to get to know that guy.”

“Perhaps… I quit the committee after that night. I felt as if I had a big red A on my chest, even if neither of us was married.”

“But you must’ve kept going out on more…dates. Obviously you enjoyed her attentions.”

“Enjoyed? I was in a daze. I was like a teenage boy who was seduced by the high school prom queen and couldn’t get over his good luck!”

“Okay. But why so Scarlet Letter about it? You kept seeing her.”

“Kept seeing her? I married her! God help me!”

What does one say to that? Sorry/not sorry? “Previous girlfriends?” I asked.

“A few. It had been a while.”

He meant, of course, it had been a while since he’d had sex when Ginger undoubtedly took her hand off the steering wheel and reached for him. “Who proposed marriage, and when?” I asked.

“When? Six months? Despite what you’re hearing about her being a modern woman, she wanted that ring on her finger.”

“How’d you feel about becoming a stepfather?”

“I welcomed it. I thought it was a bonus. I’d always wanted kids. Ginger’s daughters were just eight and five. But they were shipped off for whole summers and then to boarding school, against their wishes; against my better judgment, too, but it wasn’t my decision.”

I retreated to one of my favorite Ginger grievances. “Do you think she left them the house as a way of saying ‘Sorry I sent you away’?”

“No. They got the house because her lawyer was protecting it from husband number two. She’d had an ironclad prenup, the same one I signed.”

“Can you apply one husband’s prenup to the next guy?”

“Same terms, but a new draft, with my name on it. I was still seeing through rose-colored glasses.”

I asked if he thought the daughters would move back to Harrow.

“Doubt it. They’re both in Manhattan.”

“So they’ll sell it?” I asked, as Beth would want me to.

“They can’t sell it,” Frank said. “If they don’t want it, it redounds to Stefan.”

“Stefan? Who’s Stefan?”

“Her first husband, the girls’ father.” And then with an uncharacteristic curl of his lip, he spelled S-T-E-F-A-N, adding, “The great love of her life.”

I winced. “She told you that?”

“She didn’t have to.”

“Did you know him?” I asked.

“He made himself known, believe me. And I can guess your next question: why’d she divorce the love of her life?”

“Because he did the divorcing?”

“No! Because she took up with husband number two while still married to Stefan.”

“And number two lasted how long?”

“Two years. He was young, a handsome specimen, and a liar.”

“But she didn’t get back together with Stefan?”

“He was done with marriage. He’d had his kids. I suspect he had other women. He was punishing her, so she punished him by marrying me on the rebound.”

What a job that floozy had done on Frank’s self-esteem! He sighed and sent a longing glance over to the idle Swiffer. It was my cue to give the topic a rest – at least for the time it took me to scramble an egg and talk about the weather forecast. Back at the table with egg and toast, twisting the peppermill, I said, “It helps to talk about it, don’t you think?”

“I never talk about this. Especially with an ex-student.”

“You have to get over that.”

After a long pause and much brushing of invisible crumbs off his placemat, he said, “I was away at school all day… He had a very recognizable car, a red Audi—”

“Who did?”

“Stefan! Even that name…” He shuddered. “Chuck Mendez, our next-door neighbor. His wife was home during the day and saw the car in the driveway for an hour most days. Sometimes more, sometimes less. A helluva thing for Chuck to have to tell me, but he said he’d want to know.”

I’d had Mr. Mendez for Spanish and sophomore homeroom. I also knew Mrs. Mendez, a Finders, Keepers devotee who never missed a piece of Wedgwood.

“Didn’t I already know her history? What a coward I was! I’d come home from school, and she’d be in a dressing gown! Not a word from me! No recrimination. No scene!”

I gave his nearest hand a quick pat. “But then she got struck by lightning,” I pointed out. “Kind of biblical.”

“I’ve thought of that,” he said. “Neither her caddy nor the friend she was playing with were hit. A direct strike. Just Ginger.”

I noticed he’d been twisting his wedding ring with various degrees of agitation from the moment I began my interrogation. I pointed at it. “Some widowed husbands might’ve taken it off by now.”

He looked down, gave the ring a meaningless tug. “I can’t get it over my knuckle.”

“But you’d take it off if you could?”

After a long pause he said, “I suppose. What’s the point?”

Unsaid: for some, the point would be remembrance and love, if the marriage had been happy.I gave the table a take-action slap, went to the sink, and motioned for him to join me.

“Left hand,” I ordered.

He offered it, turning away, bracing himself as if I had a needle poised to scrape out a sliver. First I tried liquid soap, then bar soap, then canola oil. Once the oil was on, one decent pull was all it took before the ring slid over the knuckle, went flying into the soapy water and down the drain.

“Oh shit!” I yelled. “I should’ve put the stopper in. Oh fuck!”

“What?”

“It’s gone. Down the drain. Shit! I’ll call a plumber. What an idiot!”

He reached in and swished the soapy water around, excavating, finding nothing, saying nothing. He wiped his hand on a dish towel, held up his naked left hand, and laughed.

6

My dad and Beth sent postcards from Buzzards Bay, from Race Point, from Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket, from cranberry bogs and whale watches. Retired life was great! They were walking two miles a day and eating more fish. What a luxury to attend estate sales as mere customers!

Win-win, they often said, meaning their enjoying life and me keeping Finders, Keepers alive. They wanted to hear everything. Was I managing, breaking even, covering utility bills? Occasionally and more delicately, they asked if I was writing.

I said not yet, but I’d be using the third bedroom as my study.

“Dating?” asked Beth. “I heard there’s a site where women make the first move. You’d be good at that.”

I said I’d look into it. I walked to the front door, opened it soundlessly, rang the doorbell. “Pizza’s here!” I said. “Talk soon!”

As the months went by, I reported in less and less detail about Finders, Keepers 2.0, skipping over some new wrinkles I’d introduced but confessing that it was now officially “Estate of Mind.” An easy, neutral topic was Frank as value-added times two, residentially and professionally. They loved hearing about his discoveries – the cheese coaster, the weathervane, a sled that had to be a hundred years old.

“Rusted runners, I bet,” my dad said. “How much?”

“Sixty-five. Hardly rusted. It was a beauty.”

“See?” said Beth. “I can hear it in your voice: the treasure hunt! You’re getting bitten by the bug.”

The bug that was biting me wasn’t job satisfaction but the novelty of answering only to myself. I’d begun tagging items with prices in dollars, pounds, and Euros, thinking it might add some international intrigue to the more valuable items. Frank did the calculations and conversions.

Also new to Finders, Keepers 2.0: the more careful inventory of clothes. Beth had believed that owners and/or beneficiaries wouldn’t bother washing or dry-cleaning anything left behind. She might make a sign saying “Items of clothing, $5” without noticing the vintage Gucci dress under a Dior trench coat, due to her low expectations, fashion-wise, in a town the size of Harrow.

Had she not seen the bridesmaids’ and prom dresses? A silk kimono, a vintage tuxedo, men’s cashmere and herringbone overcoats, a loden coat with toggle buttons, and once a stole of indeterminate fur that brought $100. I spotted hand-knit sweaters with such small moth holes that no one would notice; a wedding gown, an academic gown, a christening gown; scarves, pillbox hats, fedoras, and cowboy boots. At one sale, just to amuse myself, I answered the door in a green satin cocktail dress I wouldn’t have worn in real life, a price tag hanging from the armpit. Same for wearing a menagerie of rhinestone animal and bird pins, the more the better, to catch someone’s eye.