The Good House E-Book

Ann Leary

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

Seitenzahl: 499

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2013

Beschreibung

NOW A MAJOR MOVIE STARRING KEVIN KLINE AND SIGOURNEY WEAVER LONGLISTED FOR THE IMPAC DUBLIN LITERARY AWARD 2014 _______________________________________ Hildy Good has reached that dangerous time in a woman's life - middle-aged and divorced, she is an oddity in her small but privileged town. But Hildy isn't one for self-pity and instead meets the world with a wry smile, a dark wit and a glass or two of Pinot Noir. When her two earnest grown-up children stage an 'intervention' and pack Hildy off to an addiction centre, she thinks all this fuss is ridiculous. After all, why shouldn't she enjoy a drink now and then? But we start to see another side to Hildy Good, and to her life's greatest passion. Soon, a cluster of secrets become dangerously entwined, with devastating consequences...

Leseprobe

Ann Leary is the author of the memoir An Innocent, A Broad and the novel Outtakes From a Marriage. She has written fiction and non-fiction for various magazines and literary publications. She and her family share their small farm in Connecticut with four dogs, three horses and an angry cat named Sneakers.

First published in the United States in 2013 by St Martin’s Press, a division of Macmillan, New York.

Published in trade paperback in Great Britain in 2013 by Corvus, an imprint of Atlantic Books Ltd.

Copyright © Ann Leary, 2013

The moral right of Ann Leary to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.

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, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities, is entirely coincidental.

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

Trade paperback ISBN: 978 1 78239 320 7 E-book ISBN: 978 1 78239 321 4

Corvus An imprint of Atlantic Books Ltd Ormond House 26–27 Boswell Street London WC1N 3JZ

www.corvus-books.co.uk

For Denis

The Good House

Contents

one

two

three

four

five

six

seven

eight

nine

ten

eleven

twelve

thirteen

fourteen

fifteen

sixteen

seventeen

eighteen

nineteen

twenty

twenty-one

twenty-two

one

I can walk through a house once and know more about its occupants than a psychiatrist could after a year of sessions. I remember joking about this one evening with Peter Newbold, the shrink who rents the office upstairs from mine.

“The next time you get a new patient,” I offered, “I’ll sneak to their house for a walk-through. While you jot down notes about their history, dreams, whatever, I’ll shine a flashlight into the attic, open a few cupboards, and have a peek at the bedrooms. Later, when we compare notes, I’ll have the clearer picture of the person’s mental health, guaranteed.” I was teasing the doctor, of course, but I’ve been selling houses since he was in primary school, and I stand by my theory.

I like a house that looks lived in. General wear and tear is a healthy sign; a house that’s too antiseptic speaks as much to me of domestic discord as a house in complete disarray. Alcoholics, hoarders, binge eaters, addicts, sexual deviants, philanderers, depressives—you name it, I can see it all in the worn edges of their nests. You catch the smoky reek of stale scotch and cigarettes despite the desperate abundance of vanilla-scented candles. The animal stench oozes up between the floorboards, even though the cat lady and her minions were removed months before. The marital bedroom that’s become his, the cluttered guest room that’s now clearly hers—well, you get the idea.

I don’t have to go inside the house to make a diagnosis; the curbside analysis is usually enough. The McAllister house is a perfect example. In fact, I’d love to compare my original observations regarding Rebecca McAllister with Peter. She was depressed, for one. I drove past the McAllisters’ one morning in late May, not long after they’d moved in, and there she was, out in the early-morning haze, planting annuals all along the garden path. It wasn’t even seven A.M., but it was clear that she had been at it for hours. She was in a rather sheer white nightshirt, which was damp with sweat and covered with soil. People were starting to drive by, but Rebecca had become so absorbed in her gardening that it apparently hadn’t occurred to her to put on some proper clothes.

I stopped and said hello from my car window. We chatted for a few minutes about the weather, about how the kids were adjusting to their new school, but as we talked, I sensed a sadness in the way Rebecca planted—a mournfulness, as if she were placing each seedling in a tiny plot, a tiny little grave. And they were bright red impatiens that she was planting. There’s always something frantic about that kind of bold color choice for the front of a house. I said good-bye, and when I glanced back at Rebecca through my rearview mirror, it looked, from that distance, like there was a thin trail of blood leading all the way from the house to the spot where she knelt.

“I told her I would do the planting, but she likes to do it herself,” Linda Barlow, the McAllisters’ landscaper, told me later that day at the post office. “I think she’s lonely up there. I almost never see the husband.”

Linda knew I had sold them the house, and she seemed to imply that I had been derelict, somehow, in assuring the healthy acclimation of one of Wendover’s newest treasures—the McAllisters. The “wonderful McAllisters,” as Wendy Heatherton liked to call them. Wendy Heatherton and I had actually cobrokered the sale. I had the listing; Wendy, from Sotheby’s, had the wonderful McAllisters.

“It takes time,” I said to Linda.

“I guess,” she replied.

“Wendy Heatherton’s having a party for them next weekend. They’ll meet some nice people there.”

“Oh yeah, all the nice, fancy people.” Linda laughed. “You going?”

“I have to,” I said. I was flipping through my mail. It was mostly bills. Bills and junk.

“Is it hard going to parties for you? I mean . . . now?” Linda touched my wrist gently and softened her voice when she said this.

“What do you mean, ‘now’?” I shot back.

“Oh, nothing . . . Hildy,” she stammered.

“Well, good night, Linda,” I said, and turned so that she wouldn’t see how red my face had become. Imagine Linda Barlow worrying about whether it’s hard for me to go to parties. I hadn’t seen poor Linda at a party since we were in high school.

And the way she pitied Rebecca McAllister. Rebecca was married to one of the wealthiest men in New England, had two lovely children, and lived on an estate that had once belonged to Judge Raymond Barlow—Linda’s own grandfather. Linda had grown up playing at that big old house, with those gorgeous views of the harbor and the islands, but, you know, the family money had run out, the property had exchanged hands a few times, and now Linda lived in an apartment above the pharmacy in Wendover Crossing. Rebecca paid Linda to tend to some of the very same heirloom perennials—the luscious peonies, the fragrant tea rose, lilac, and honeysuckle bushes, and all the bright beds of lilies, daffodils, and irises—that her own grandmother had planted there over half a century ago.

So while it was laughable, really, that she might worry about me, it was positively absurd that she pitied Rebecca. I show homes to a lot of important people—politicians, doctors, lawyers, even the occasional celebrity—but the first time I saw Rebecca, the day I showed her the Barlow place, I have to admit, I was a little at a loss for words. A line from a poem that I had helped one of my daughters memorize for school, many years before, came to mind.

I knew a woman, lovely in her bones.

Rebecca was probably thirty or thirty-one at the time. I had Googled Brian McAllister before the showing and had expected to meet an older woman. People must think he’s her father is what I thought then, except for the fact that there was something very wise and understanding about her face, a sort of serenity in her expression that women don’t usually acquire until their kids are grown. Rebecca’s hair is dark, almost black, and that morning it had been pulled up into a messy ponytail with a colorful little scarf around it, but it was easy to see that when she let it down, it was quite long and wavy. She shook my hand and smiled at me. She’s one of those women who smiles mostly with her eyes, and her eyes appeared to be gray one minute, green the next. I guess it had to do with the light.

She was a little thin then, but her whole frame is tiny, and she wasn’t as gaunt as she later seemed. She was petite. She was beautiful. She moved in circles, and those circles moved, same poem, although I still don’t recall the name of the poet, but she was one of those effortlessly graceful women who make you feel like an ogress if you stand too close. I’m not fat, but I could lose a few. Wendy Heatherton is slim, but she’s had all sorts of liposuctioning and flesh tucking. I don’t know who the hell she thought she was kidding when she was carrying on about that gallbladder operation a few years back.

It’s a well-known fact that the McAllisters had sunk a fortune into the yearlong renovation of the old Barlow place. Brian McAllister, for those who don’t know, is one of the founders of R. E. Kerwin, one of the world’s largest hedge funds. He grew up in the bottom of a three-decker in South Boston, with four brothers and a sister, and had become a billionaire before he turned fifty. Had he married somebody else, he probably would have been living in a mansion in Wellesley or Weston with a full staff, but he had married Rebecca, who, having grown up with a staff, and distant parents, liked to do things herself.

How do I know so much about the McAllisters? It’s not just from their house. I know pretty much everything that happens in this town. One way or another, it gets back to me. I’m an old townie; the eighth- great-granddaughter of Sarah Good, one of the accused witches tried and hanged in Salem. My clients love it when I drop that into a conversation. That I descend from the witch called, so delightfully and ironically, Goodwife Good. (Yes, I always laugh with them, as if it had never occurred to me until they said it, Good ol’ Goody Good, ha-ha.) That and the fact that my family has been in Salem and here in nearby Wendover, Massachusetts, since the 1600s.

My husband, Scott, used to tell me that I’d have been hanged as a witch myself had I lived in another time. He meant it as a sort of compliment, believe it or not, and it’s true, I do rather fit the profile, especially now that I’m on the darker side of middle age. My first name is Hilda, which my children have always told me sounds like a witch’s name, but I’m called Hildy. I live alone; my daughters are grown and my husband is no longer my husband. I talk to animals. I guess that would have been a red flag. And some people think I have powers of intuition, psychic powers, which I don’t. I just know a few tricks. I have a certain type of knowledge when it comes to people and, like I said, I tend to know everybody’s business.

Well, I make it my business to know everybody’s business. I’m the top real-estate agent in a town whose main industries are antiques and real estate. It used to be shipbuilding and clams, but the last boatyard in Wendover closed down more than thirty years ago. Now, those of us who aren’t living off brand-new hedge-fund money are selling inflated waterfront properties to those who are. You can still clam here—the tidal marsh down by Getchell’s Cove is a good spot—but you can’t make your living off clams anymore. Even the clams at Clem’s Famous Fried Clams are poured into those dark vats of grease from freezer bags shipped down from Nova Scotia. No, the best way to make money up here now is through real estate: the selling, managing, improving, and maintaining of these priceless waterfront acres that used to be marshland and farms but that were recently described in Boston magazine as “the North Shore’s New Gold Coast.”

Brian McAllister happens to own Boston magazine. The day we met, after I showed him his future house, he pointed to a copy of it folded up on the seat next to me in the car and said, “Hey, that’s my magazine you got there, Hildy.”

“Really? Oh well, take it. My copy must be around here someplace.”

“No.” Brian laughed. “I own it. Boston mag. I’m the publisher. Bought it last year with a friend.”

You’re a wicked big deal, a real hotshot is what I thought. I hate rich people. Well, I’m doing all right myself these days, but I hate all the other rich people.

“It’s one of my favorite magazines,” I said.

I was showing him a two-million-dollar house, after all, a house that I knew his wife had already gutted and restored in her mind; had mentally painted and furnished and plumbed and wired and dramatically lit during the few short days since I had shown it to her.

“I bet we can give you a special advertising rate in the real-estate section, if you want,” Brian said.

“That would be great, Brian, thanks,” I said.

And I hated him a little bit less.

two

Wendy Heatherton always likes to throw a party for her wonderful clients. It’s her way of thanking them for their business and also a way of introducing them to other people Wendy thinks are wonderful. Her son Alex and his boyfriend, Daniel, always do all the preparations. Daniel is an interior decorator. Alex collects antiques. For the McAllister party, they decided that dinner would be in the garden. Alex and Daniel set a series of long banquet tables under a blooming magnolia tree. They hung paper lanterns in the tree’s branches. Then they covered the tables with some of Wendy’s antique white linen tablecloths, and used her best silver and china and crystal, which was rather unexpected and delightful at an outdoor dinner. They had bunches of fragrant lilacs flouncing over the sides of tall silver vases. Citronella torches lined the path from house to table and were also planted in the ground around the table, to keep the bugs away. It was “magical,” everybody told Wendy and Alex and Daniel. And it really was.

The party began at seven, but I didn’t arrive until close to eight, because I don’t drink cocktails anymore. I’m in “recovery.” I don’t go to a lot of parties, but when I do, I try to arrive just before dinner is served and I leave right after dessert. The night of the McAllister party, I arrived at the same time as Peter and Elise Newbold. Peter, Elise, and their son, Sam, live in Cambridge during the week because Peter is a psychiatrist at McLean Hospital in nearby Belmont. He has a small private practice in Cambridge as well as here in Wendover, but he sees patients in Wendover only on Fridays and the occasional Saturday.

As we walked up the Heathertons’ front steps, Peter clapped my shoulder and said, “Well, at least we’ll know one person at this party.” Then he said to his wife, “Elise, you know Hildy Good, right?”

Elise offered a sarcastic “No, Peter, I’ve never heard of Hildy Good.”

Peter had been renting an office from me, upstairs from my offices at Good Realty, for years, but I’ve really only met Elise a few times. She teaches writing workshops in Cambridge, but I can’t quite recall what kind of writing she actually does herself. Poetry maybe. Since Sam had become a teenager, he hadn’t liked leaving his friends to come to Wendover for the weekends, and I’d always had the sense that Elise never liked coming here at all, so in recent years, Peter had spent many weekends up here alone. He told me it was actually good for him, as he was writing a new book—The Psychology of Communities, I believe it was.

When we entered the house, a young woman ushered us through the living room and out onto the back patio, where cocktails were being served. She asked us what we’d like to drink and Peter asked for a beer. Elise asked what kind of white wine they were serving and, after wrinkling her nose at the two options, finally settled on the Pinot Grigio.

I ordered a club soda with a slice of lime.

My daughters, Tess and Emily, had surprised me with my very own “intervention” almost two years prior, the little dears. Emily lives in New York, but Tess lives in Marblehead, which is only about twenty minutes from here. One cold November evening, Tess and Michael, my son-in-law, invited me over for dinner. Their son Grady was just an infant at the time, and I was thrilled to go over for a visit. Tess had been distant since the baby had been born. Distant toward me, that is; she had Michael’s mother, Nancy, over all the time.

“I’d love to watch Grady, anytime,” I used to say to Tess. “You and Michael should go out to dinner and a movie some night. Leave Grady with me.”

“Nancy lives right here in Marblehead. I’d hate for you to have to come all that way,” Tess would say. I told her I didn’t mind in the least, but then, she never did ask, so I guessed she really didn’t want to bother me.

So that night I had driven to Marblehead and was surprised to see two cars in Tess and Michael’s driveway, in addition to their own cars.

“Hello?” I called cheerfully as I opened the door. I was feeling quite good. I had had a closing that afternoon and had celebrated with my clients at the Warwick Tavern afterward. I only had one or two drinks. Maybe three, tops. I wandered into Tess’s living room and was shocked to see that Emily was there, too, and she had brought her boyfriend, Adam, all the way from New York with her. And Sue Peterson was there. My secretary Sue. There was another woman, a stout woman with short, brassy hair. (Truthfully, the woman’s hair was orange.) Everybody had been sitting, but when I entered the living room, they all stood up. They were all smiling sympathetically at me, and my first thought was that something had happened to Grady. My legs actually became weak. It was hard to stand.

“Mom,” Tess said, blinking back tears. “Come sit down.”

I let her lead me over to the sofa, and there I sat, with Tess on one side of me, Emily on the other. I was still in a panic about the baby. That’s something about me that Tess and Emily have never been able to appreciate. That everything I have ever done is for them. That my first concern is always for their well- being. Theirs and now little Grady’s.

I think everybody knows what happens at these things. The girls took turns reading aloud the excruciatingly elaborate details of my alleged sodden crimes. The day I drank too much at Emily’s graduation party. The night I “passed out” (their words, not mine—I was napping) before Thanksgiving dinner. The times I had “staggered” out to my car and how worried they always were when I insisted on driving myself home. Then, of course, the DUI. I had been pulled over the summer before, on my way home from Mamie Lang’s. Mamie is my oldest friend—we’ve known each other since third grade—and one night we had a little too much to drink, and as I drove home, I watched the moon out of my passenger window. I was driving past the salt marshes and that bright orange moon seemed to tumble along the tips of the wispy sea grass, right alongside me, chasing me, like a playful balloon. I was on Atlantic Avenue, and when I came to the stop sign at Route 122, I saw the car. I was stopping. But I misjudged the distance, I guess, and rear-ended it. I barely tapped it. I put a tiny dent in the fender, that’s all, but, just my luck, it was a state trooper. Trooper Sprenger. Had to be Sprenger. Our other local trooper used to date Emily, and our only town cop, Sleepy Haskell, is my brother Judd’s best friend. I had never even met Sprenger before that night. He had no idea who I was.

So at my inquisition—oh, excuse me, intervention—I listened to the girls declare my various shameful lapses like tearful little magistrates. They had somehow convinced Sue to join forces with them, and she stammered something about how the clients were starting to notice. All the other brokers knew. She wept, too, and, like my daughters, she finished her statement by lunging at me so that she could encircle my shoulders with her arms and sob into my neck. I’m not a big hugger, but I placed my arms around each of them and tried to come up with the appropriate responses.

“Oh,” I think I whispered. “That’s an interesting point of view.”

Really, what are you supposed to say?

I knew there was no use in arguing. No point in stating my case. I had read the Betty Ford autobiography. You can’t prove you’re not an alcoholic once everybody has announced your affliction and tearfully told you how your “disease” has affected them. The more you protest—“deny,” as they say—the more they stoke the flames of shame that have been dancing around you since the inquest began.

But there was hope. Jenny, of the orange hair, was from Hazelden. She offered a solution: a twenty-eight-day program in Minnesota.

“I can’t,” I said. “I have a business to run.”

“I’ve taken care of everything,” chirped Sue. “It’s so slow right now, I’ll just have Wendy”—Wendy Heatherton was then my associate broker—“take over your clients. It’s just a month. We’ll say you’re in Florida.”

Sue did take care of everything, and I took care of Sue just a few weeks after I returned from Minnesota. I fired her.

At Wendy’s party, I stood with Peter and Elise, scanning the crowd to see whom else I might know, and almost immediately Wendy was upon us. Wendy, in addition to being slim and bubbly, is one of those women who must always clasp everybody’s hands. She won’t just shake your hand; she traps it between both of hers and cocks her head so that she can smile at you from what she seems to believe is a captivating display of her profile.

“Peter! Elise! Hildy!” she exclaimed, taking turns sandwiching each of our hands and tilting her head this way and then that. “I’m so glad you made it. You’re just in time. We’re about to sit down to dinner, but first, come. Come meet our wonderful guests of honor, the McAllisters. Well, Hildy, of course you know Brian and Rebecca.”

Wendy was leading us over to the far side of the crowded patio. She was still holding on to Peter’s hand, and he had reached around and grabbed Elise’s, and as I followed them, I had a passing thought that I should grab Elise about her slim waist to form a snaking conga line.

I hadn’t been able to admit it to Linda Barlow, but I really do hate parties now.

We finally reached a corner of the patio where a group had formed around Brian McAllister, who was talking about the Boston Bruins. Many people in the area know that Brian is a silent coowner of the Bruins, along with Jeremy Jacobs and some others, and, well, this is Massachusetts. Most people are hockey nuts. Everybody had questions about the new recruits and where the hockey team was headed. Mamie’s husband, Boatie, a slightly annoying Republican from an old Brahmin family, interrupted several times to bluster on about Phil Esposito and Bobby Orr and the good old Bruins of yore.

“Wait until this season,” Brian promised him, swigging his beer and smiling. “I think we’re gonna have a great season.”

I saw Rebecca standing a little off to the side, and I walked over to say hello. The Newbolds followed me and I introduced them. They all shook hands and then Rebecca sort of peered up at Peter in that way she has, the way of the petite, and she said, “Haven’t we met before? You seem so familiar. . . .”

“I’m not sure,” Peter said. He was looking at her carefully then. “I don’t think so. I have one of those faces. I’m always reminding people of somebody else.”

Rebecca was smiling up at him, still not convinced, when Peter said, “I’m sure your husband gets sick of people wanting to talk hockey all the time.”

“No, not really. He sort of gets off on it, actually,” she replied.

I saw Peter glance back at Brian and then smile at Rebecca, amused.

“What do you do?” Elise asked Rebecca.

“Um, well, nothing really,” Rebecca said, laughing nervously.

She seemed, suddenly, self-conscious, and I was aware of an impulse, which I of course resisted, but an impulse to pull Rebecca close to my side, the way a mother might shield a shy child from a stranger. Elise was asking Rebecca what she did so that Rebecca would, in turn, ask her what she did, and then Elise could carry on about her annoying writing.

“You’re so pretty,” Elise persisted. “Didn’t I read someplace that you model or something?” She said this in an almost accusatory tone, and there was a moment of awkward silence before Rebecca, clearly flustered, stammered, “No, I, well, I used to do some acting, but now I just, you know, take care of my kids.”

“Oh,” said Elise. “But before that?”

“Well, I paint,” Rebecca said. “I used to ride horses pretty competitively. Now I decorate our houses and . . . nothing really.”

In fact, Rebecca had been short-listed for the U.S. Equestrian Team when she was only nineteen. In fact, she was the daughter of Col. Wesley Potter, the former Carter administration cabinet member, who had once been a CIA agent, and whose appointments had enabled Rebecca to live in Germany and Africa during her youth. In fact, she was the great-great-granddaughter of J. P. Morgan on her mother’s side. You learn these things about a client. Her lawyer talked to mine. My lawyer talked to me. And, of course, we brokers all Google these days.

“How are the kids liking Wendover?” I asked Rebecca.

“Well, they love the beach and the new house. . . .”

“How old are they?” Elise asked.

I could sense Rebecca’s unease. Why wouldn’t Elise stop interrogating her?

“They’re five and seven. Excuse me,” Rebecca said, “I need to go inside . . . and wash my hands. I was in the garden all afternoon,” she said, and then she turned and made her way through all the wonderful guests to the dark house. A few minutes later, Wendy rang a little silver bell and announced that dinner was being served, and so we all followed the torch-lit path to the dinner table.

Brian was seated across from me. On my right was Peter New-bold and on my left was my friend Mamie. Now Mamie gets all self-conscious about how much she drinks around me. We’re still friendly when we see each other, but I haven’t been to her house in ages, nor she to mine. It probably goes without saying that in a town like this, when you disappear for twenty-eight days, everybody knows where you’ve been. While I was at Hazelden, I imagined the gossip. Yes, she did like her drinks. Remember the O’Donnells’ Fourth of July party? Remember the Langs’ Christmas party? Didn’t she get a DUI? There are plenty of people in this community who drink more than I ever drank, but I’m the one who is branded an alcoholic. If I had allowed the server to fill my glass with wine, there at Wendy’s party, I imagine that everybody would have gasped in unison and then there would have been a spontaneous and unanimous attempt to wrestle the glass from my grip.

Rebecca sat toward the far end of the table, several seats away from Brian, and to Brian’s right was Sharon Rice. Sharon is a lean woman in her mid-fifties who has allowed her hair to whiten naturally. She wears it cut in a bob. Sharon is the head of the Wendover Land Trust, which preserves all the beautiful woods and wetlands and salt marshes that run in and around our town. She is also on the zoning board and the school committee, is president of an arts program for underprivileged children in Lynn, organizes weekly activities at the Wendover Senior Center, and, every Election Day, drives the elderly and disabled to the polls. Her husband, Lou, is in insurance.

After quickly introducing himself to those seated around him, Brian stabbed at his salad with his fork. Instead of placing his napkin on his lap, he gripped it like a little cloth bouquet in his left fist, which he rested on the edge of the table.

After a few moments, Sharon cleared her throat and said, “Brian . . . Rebecca . . . I’m so happy to finally meet you after hearing such lovely things about you from Wendy.”

“Yeah? Well, nice to meet you, too,” said Brian, barely looking up from his plate.

“What brought you and Rebecca to this area?”

“Well,” Brian replied, rubbing his mouth with his napkin and glancing up at Sharon, “Rebecca went to boarding school here. . . .”

“Oh, Rebecca, you went to Wendover?” Sharon said, calling down the table to Rebecca.

Rebecca looked up at Sharon and was about to say something, when Brian said, “Yup. She loved it. Loved this area, and ever since we got married, she talked about moving up here. We lived in Boston until the kids were born, and while they were small, but Rebecca had horses that she was boarding up here, and, well, she grew up in the country, and that’s how she wants the kids to grow up, too.”

“How do you like it here?” Boatie asked. “Didn’t you grow up in Southie?”

“Yeah, I’m a city kid. My dad was a Boston fireman for forty years. Most of my relatives still live there. But we love it here. I don’t even mind the commute as much as I thought. Sometimes I stay in town a few nights during the week and then work from the house on Fridays and Mondays.”

“Well, I’d love to talk to you sometime about the Wendover Land Trust. Your name came up at a recent board meeting,” said Sharon.

“Sure, remind me to give you my card before we leave. I love all the work you preservationists do up here. It’s what keeps the area so nice. We’d be happy to get involved.”

This sent Sharon Rice into a sort of rapturous frenzy of praise, stammering about how fabulous that would be. How wonderful.

Those wonderful McAllisters!

Then Brian admired my watch. I had splurged the previous year, after a big commercial property sale, and bought myself a beautiful Cartier watch. I had never owned any fine jewelry and never a nice watch of any kind. But I had noticed this watch in a magazine and decided I had never seen anything so exquisite in my life. So I bought it. It was my little reward to myself. For my success. For my sobriety. I don’t wear it every day, so I was thrilled that somebody noticed it.

“Nice watch ya got there, Hildy,” Brian said. “I bought a Cartier for Rebecca, years ago, but she destroyed it. She’s one of those people who can’t wear watches. Something in her body chemistry, some static electricity or magnetic pull or something, makes all watches stop when she wears them.”

“I’ve heard of that,” Mamie said.

“Yeah,” Brian said, “well, don’t let my wife try on your watch, that’s all I have to say. She interferes with car electronics, too. She’s destroyed every goddamn stereo and GPS in every car she drives. Isn’t that right, Becky?”

Rebecca had been talking to Lou Rice, who was seated next to her, and she turned to Brian with a quizzical expression. She couldn’t hear him, apparently.

“I won’t let her sit in my car,” said Brian.

“I think I have that.” I chuckled. “Things are always breaking on me.”

“This is different,” Brian said. “We’re on our second TV in the den, and how long have we lived in that house, Becky? Three months? Now she doesn’t go near the thing. Oh, and we’ve never had a refrigerator that will make ice. In our house in Aspen, the apartment in Boston. Here. No matter how expensive the Sub-Zero or whatever, the ice maker dies once Rebecca tries to use it.”

Peter Newbold was laughing, too. “You don’t really think these things could possibly have anything to do with Rebecca’s body chemistry?”

Brian took a long swig from his beer and said to Rebecca, “BECKY . . . BABY . . . tell him about the time the cord on the brand- new toaster started smoking when you plugged it in. The thing was brand new. Hey, Becky?”

Rebecca had been about to take a bite of her salad, but she turned back to face Brian, and it was clear she didn’t find this as amusing as he did. There was an awkward moment before she laughed and said, “It’s because I’m a witch, apparently.”

We all laughed, but truthfully, it was a little awkward. Then Mamie made it more so by hollering across the table, “IS IT TRUE YOU DESTROY THINGS WITH YOUR MIND?”

Rebecca said, “With my mind . . . no. But I do stop watches.” Then she turned to those seated around her, and I could see her pointing to her wrist and shrugging some kind of explanation.

Peter was amused. “I hate to tell you this,” he said to Brian, “but your wife’s just had bad luck with watches and electronics.”

“Peter’s a doctor,” I explained.

“Yeah? What kind?”

“I’m a psychiatrist,” replied Peter. “I just think we might have touched on this type of thing in medical school if it existed.”

“I’m telling you, I’ve heard of this,” said Mamie. “I know I have. I’m gonna Google this when I get home.”

Peter just chuckled and shook his head. Then I saw him look down and across the table at Rebecca. She was playing with one of the rings on her slender finger, and when she looked up and saw his eyes on her, she looked away. After a moment, she looked back at Peter, who was still gazing at her.

“Sorry,” Peter said, smiling and blushing a little. “My wife is always criticizing me for staring. It’s what I do for work. I’m supposed to study the people I’m working with, so I end up studying everybody, everywhere we go.”

“It’s okay,” said Rebecca.

“I bet she can make you stop. WITH HER MIND,” shouted drunken Mamie.

“Maybe,” said Rebecca, and then she smiled at Peter, and this time, after a moment, he looked away.

“Speaking of doing things with your mind, Hildy’s a psychic!” Mamie exclaimed.

“Yeah?” Brian asked. “You a mind reader, Hildy?”

“No,” I said.

“She is so,” said Mamie. “It runs in her family. Her cousin, aunt, they all have psychic gifts.”

“Is that really true, Hildy?” Sharon asked. “I never knew that about you.”

“No, it’s not true. Sometimes I can make people think I’m reading their thoughts. It’s just sort of a parlor trick, that’s all.”

My father’s sister Peg was a “psychic” who once made her living off of the occult-hungry tourists down in Salem. She also did readings in her home. My cousin Jane and I grew up watching her, so we picked up a few tricks, which made us wildly popular on the slumber party circuit. I’ll still stage a reading for fun sometimes, just for skeptics, but I have to be in the right mood.

“Hildy, come on. Do Brian,” Mamie said.

“Yeah, Hildy, let’s see what you got,” said Brian, and soon everybody around us, even Peter, was cajoling me.

“Oh, okay,” I said. I wouldn’t have agreed if Brian hadn’t already proved himself to be a rather easy read. I paused for a moment, then said, “Okay, Brian, I’d like you to think about something that happened to you in the past. A memory. I’m going to present a few questions. Just try not to nod or give anything away with your eyes. It should be easy, here, by candlelight. Easier for you not to give me any signals.”

“All right,” said Brian.

“You’ll have to give me your hand,” I said.

Brian extended his hand as if for a handshake and I took it in mine and then turned it so that it was palm-up and resting on the table. His fingers curled in slightly toward his palm, and I smoothed them gently with mine so that they were lying flat on the table. I kept my hand resting lightly on his open hand, each of our fingers barely touching the other’s wrist.

“Just look at me. By keeping your gaze passive, you’ll avoid giving me cues. Sometimes people give cues, by kind of blinking or nodding. Try not to do that. Now think about this memory. Think about it. . . . Oh, it’s a happy memory,” I began.

I knew he was going to be easy, but not this easy.

“It’s from your childhood—no, don’t nod,” I said.

“I didn’t nod.” Brian laughed.

“I didn’t see him nod,” said Sharon.

“He gave a little nod,” said Mamie.

“Shush,” I said. Then: “It wasn’t a regular day. It was a special day. I’m not sure if it was Christmas. . . . No, it wasn’t Christmas. Was it . . . Yes, it was your birthday.”

Brian grinned. “You’re good.”

“Stop helping me,” I said. Then I said, “It was when you were still a child, not very young, not very old. Were you . . . nine—no, wait, ten. I believe you were ten.”

Brian was trying on his poker face now. Too late.

“It was something you were given. A present. Think about where you were when you first saw it. You weren’t in the house. . . . No, you were outside.”

Brian was trying not to smile.

“Outside. You were led outside and you saw it and you were very happy. Was it . . .”

Now I paused. I always find this a good place to pause and look intensely at the other person, look intensely into their eyes and cock my head a little, as if I’m trying to hear something. And if I’m in a group, as I was that night, you can hear a pin drop. You want people to think you’re still probing the other’s mind. You don’t want it to look too easy.

“Yes, I know,” I said. “Your memory is of your tenth birthday, when your parents gave you a bike.”

“Holy SHIT!” exclaimed Brian. “THAT WAS IT! That’s amazing.”

“EVERY TIME,” Mamie said.

“You’ve seen her do this before?” asked Sharon. “Is it always a birthday that a person thinks of? Is that the trick?”

“No, it’s always something different. She always nails it,” said Mamie.

“Not always,” Boatie said.

“I’m not always right,” I agreed.

“You’re almost always right, Hil,” conceded Boatie.

“That’s fucking freaky,” said Brian.

I released Brian’s hand and took a sip of my nonalcoholic beverage. I won’t lie; I was pleased with myself. I’ve struck out before, but this was easy. I’m so much better at this now that I’m not half- tanked when I do it.

“Why do you say you’re not psychic, Hildy?” Sharon asked. “I never would have been able to do that.”

“It’s really not mind reading, I promise you,” I said.

“It’s not even a major memory for me. It’s not something I’ve thought about in years, that bike,” said Brian. “I don’t know why I thought of it now.”

“Did you tell him to think of a birthday?” Boatie asked.

“No,” Mamie said. “Weren’t you listening? It could have been anything.” Peter said, “It could have been anything, but I believe that Hildy did tell him to think of a birthday. Am I right, Hildy?”

“Perhaps.” I smiled.

“Do you mind if I try to deconstruct what you just did?” Peter asked. “No. Go ahead. I’m the first to admit that it’s just a trick. Tell me what I did. This’ll be fun.”

“Well, first, I noticed that you said a few things that were suggestions. Like you said you were going to ‘present’ some questions, and then you said, several times, ‘Try not to give anything away,’ so maybe the word present along with give and away formed a suggestion—that he think of a memory about a present or a gift.”

“No, I don’t think she said those things,” said Brian. “I was listening to see if she was saying anything leading.”

“She said them,” Peter said.

“Did I? Hmmm.” I smiled. This was fun.

“So that sort of narrowed it down to Christmas or a birthday. I think you said something like ‘by candlelight.’ Right? Something like that. Candles. Candlelight.”

Mamie couldn’t help herself. She jumped right in. “Yes, Peter. You’re right. Who wouldn’t think of a birthday? Candles? Candlelight?”

“More than once,” Peter continued, “Hildy ran two words together. ‘By candlelight’ became ‘bycandlelight.’ Say it fast—‘BYCANDLELIGHT.’ It sounds like ‘bike and delight.’ The bike word came through a couple times. I think she said ‘by kind of.’ Again, ‘bike-kindof.’ These words weren’t apparent to the others on a conscious level, but you had sort of anchored him with your touch and were able to access his subconscious a little, and so it’s possible you made the suggestion.”

I just laughed. “I suppose anything’s possible.”

“After that, it was a classic cold reading,” Peter said to Brian. “She was asking you questions and reading your responses in the way your eyes moved. She had her fingers on your pulse. She knows a little NLP, some neurolinguistic programming techniques. . . . Do you know what that is, Hildy?”

I had never heard of it until then, so I shook my head.

“They’re techniques to decipher signals people give subconsciously with their eye movements and other subtle body language.”

“Oh, is that what it’s called?” I laughed. Imagine! There was actually a scientific term for something my cousin and I just figured out on our own.

“Yes, and you’re very good at it.” Then to Brian, Peter said, “She was basically asking you yes or no questions and you answered her with subtle signals.”

“I didn’t move my eyes, I know that. She told me not to move them,” said Brian.

“Which made it almost impossible for you not to move them,” Peter said. “Then, once you had told her that it was not an indoor present, it was quite easy. What present would a ten-year-old have to go outside to see?”

“That’s the part I don’t get. It could have been a pony,” said Mamie. “Anything.”

“In Southie?” scoffed Boatie.

“It’s all true,” I said.

Mamie said, “There’s more to it. I’ve seen her do this too many times; it’s always different.”

“Don’t get me wrong. I’m impressed, Hildy,” said Peter.

“Why, thank you, Peter,” I replied.

I really was flattered. Peter is another reader, after all. That’s what psychiatry is based upon, I presume. I wondered, then, how easy it would be to read him. I had never read another good reader.

I excused myself right after dessert, as usual, and was pleased to be heading out to my car dead sober. This is one of the things I’m truly grateful for the girls’ intervention. I used to float through the town in my Range Rover, quite drunk. I can admit that now. I thought I was being safe, that I actually drove better when I was drunk. I’d cruise along, tree by tree. House by house. Slowly. Slowly. Blinking and smiling. All aglow. Of course, it was like a bad dream the next day as I tried, in a mild panic, to recall the journey. But in truth, there were times I didn’t remember driving home at all, and now I was grateful that that craziness was all behind me. No more drunk driving. No regrets the next morning.

It wasn’t even eleven when I arrived home. The girls were thrilled to see me. I have two dogs, both bitches—Babs and Molly—both mutts. Babs is part terrier and she can be nasty. You wouldn’t want to approach her with an outstretched hand if you didn’t know her. Best to let her approach you, which she will, usually with fangs bared. Molly is a Border collie mix, which puts her IQ level just a few notches above my own, and that’s trying at times. She’s also one of those dogs who smiles when she greets you—she pulls her lips back to reveal her teeth and narrows her eyes in a show of ridiculous supplication, which I find equally trying, especially when she throws in some whining, as she did that night.

I opened the front door and the girls flew from the house and raced over to the garage ahead of me. Our garage is an old boathouse. I say ours, though it’s only the dogs and me who live here now. I’m right on the saltwater Anawam River, which feeds into the Atlantic just about a hundred yards downstream. I have my ex- husband Scott’s old MG out there in the boathouse. He left it behind. For the longest time, I kept badgering him to take it. At one point, Emily said he had given it to her, but she lives in New York, so I’m stuck with it in my garage. It hasn’t been driven in years. Mice have nested under its hood and bits of their nests can be seen on the front seat.

The dogs whined and pawed at the old wooden boathouse door until I raised it, and then they shot inside and sniffed excitedly around the corners of the leaning structure with their tails erect. I fumbled in my purse for my keys. Babs once killed a rat in the boathouse, and the girls have never quite gotten past that thrill. They’re always in hunt mode when we’re in there. Me, too, actually. My heart starts racing when I unlock the trunk, the “boot,” of the old MG. There I keep my wine. That’s all I drink now. Wine. No more of the hard stuff. I order wine online from a vineyard in California. I’ve developed quite a taste for California wine. I don’t know why I so rarely drank it before. I felt wine gave me a worse hangover than vodka. But now I try not to overdo it. I try, but in all honesty, sometimes I don’t remember going to bed at night. So what? I’d like to go back to Hazelden and bring that up in “group” one day. It might make for an interesting discussion. Is a blackout really a blackout if nobody is there to see it? Not even yourself? I say no. It’s like the tree falling in the woods. Who cares?

But most nights, I just have a few glasses. I’ve come to love my nightly party of one. I’ve no need to go out with others—all the bothersome others—with their judgments and their quick looks between them. Stolen pleasures are always more thrilling than those come by honestly. It’s what I imagine makes adulterous love affairs so exciting, having a wickedness concealed beneath one’s everyday mantle of goodness. Anyway, I’m not completely alone with my wine, since the girls are always there, too, and sometimes, if it’s a warm night and there’s a moon, I undress on the patio and walk down to the river, where the dogs and I go for a swim. The night of Wendy’s party was one of those nights, though there wasn’t much of a moon. It was just an unseasonably warm May night. Wendy had been ranting all evening about how she always “conjures” the best weather for her parties. Now I sat on the patio with my wine and my dogs, and after my second or third glass, I was, finally, blissfully, at home.

At Hazelden, all these AA speakers used to come to the meetings at night to tell us their stories, and some of them were quite funny, while others were heartbreaking, of course. One night, a guy started his speech by saying, “I was born three drinks short of comfortable . . . ,” and that’s when I actually wondered if my daughters might have been right about my drinking. Up until then, I was confident that I didn’t belong there. I knew I wasn’t an alcoholic. If my daughters wanted to see a real alcoholic, they should have met my mother. She wouldn’t drink for weeks at a time, but then she’d go on a binge and would be drunk for days. My dad would go out searching for her in local bars. Sometimes we’d find her passed out on the kitchen floor after school. I never drank before five. Never drank alone (before rehab). But I knew what that guy meant about the way he was born three drinks short. It made me think about the first beer I ever drank, down at North Beach with a bunch of kids one summer night. It made me think about that first exquisite relief. It made me think about my ex-husband, Scott, who always said I should stop after the third drink. “That’s when you get out of control,” he’d say. I had no idea what he was talking about. After a couple drinks is when I start to feel in control.

But everybody’s different. Why must we all be the same? I’d like to ask my daughters that. The way they carried on that night about all the damage I had done. Damage. Tess smoked pot all through high school and managed to get into Wesleyan and graduate magna cum laude. Emily, well, Emily’s a sculptor. She has a lifestyle in New York that she could never afford without my support. But do I get any thanks? Of course not. I know I sound bitter, but in truth, it’s fine. It’s better this way. No more worrying that the hosts will stop serving drinks before I’ve had enough. No more regrets the next day.

Now I stay at home in the evenings and slip serenely into myself. They’d think it was sad, my daughters, but those are some of the happiest moments of my life, when I can change comfortably back into myself. Not every night anymore. Not every night, no. But that night, after Wendy’s party, there was a rather cordial atmosphere in the lovely darkness on my terrace, and by the time I had poured the last of the bottle into my glass, I was fully transformed. I was myself. I was myself again.

I dropped my skirt and stepped out of my underpants. I pulled off my blouse and unhooked my frayed old bra. I’m sixty. My belly is flabby, my tits sag, and my legs are skinny. I haven’t worn a bathing suit in years, but I do like to swim. I love the water, always have, and I like the feeling of the night against my skin.

Like I said, there wasn’t much of a moon, but I know the trail by heart, and padding along the sandy, pine needle–strewn path with my dogs at my side, I felt like some kind of primitive huntress, like an Anawam squaw, perhaps. When I reached the river’s edge, I sipped my wine and felt the soft silt of the riverbed easing around my feet, then climbing up my ankles like a pair of ghostly silken stockings. I took a last sip, then dropped my empty glass onto the soft sand and poured myself into the icy river, which made me laugh and gasp and my dogs bark with the utter exhilaration of it all. How thoroughly delicious was that wine. And I had a case of it. There would be enough. There would always be enough for me.

three

Sometimes I wake up too early. It’s a problem. I read in a magazine that it comes with being middle-aged. Apparently, it’s a hormonal thing. I have no trouble falling asleep, especially after concluding an evening with a little wine, but I tend to awaken with a start at exactly three a.m. filled with dread and self-loathing. It’s my nocturnal sojourn to my own little hell, where I’m visited by the cast of demons who delight in reminding me of my daily wretchedness, my lifelong wickedness. An inventory of the previous day’s missteps is reviewed, followed by the unscrolling of a decades-long catalog of my own sins, spites, regrets, and grudges. Sometimes I turn on the TV and watch an old movie and fall back to sleep. I always feel better after dawn.

In the three a.m. blackness after the McAllister party, though, I just lay there and, instead of turning on the TV, thought about Rebecca, and this managed to keep the night monsters at bay. I was a little fascinated by Rebecca. I had been ever since the day I first showed her their future home. There had been a calamity during that showing and Rebecca had performed a bit of magic. (Magic almost always guarantees a sale; any broker will tell you this.) I had been rather captivated by Rebecca ever since.

The calamity had involved one of the Leighton ponies. Though a lot of us still call it the old Barlow place, the McAllisters didn’t buy the property from the Barlow family; they bought it from a rich Boston family named Leighton. Elsa Leighton had decided to raise Welsh ponies there. Very fancy Welsh ponies. The daughters were part of the horse-show set. The Leightons came up only on the weekends and they had hired Frank Getchell to run the farm for them. Wendover still has a number of horse farms. We’re only a short drive from the Westfield Hunt Club in South Hamilton, and Frank grew up working on a few farms. So the Leightons were the sellers when Wendy called me to say that she had these wonderful McAllisters looking for a house. She said that she had shown them all the best properties and they hadn’t seen anything they liked. So, she figured, why not show them the old Barlow place?

Most of the brokers in the area had just about given up on the Barlow place at that point. Some believed the Leightons were asking too much—it was listed at $2.2 million. Yes, it had almost twenty acres and was up on scenic Wendover Rise, with views of the tidal marshes and the Atlantic Ocean and the tiny Cape Ann islands beyond, but the house had been built in the early 1700s, and like all true Colonial homes, it was small, dark, and stood right on the road. Everybody who wants an estate in Wendover wants to have a quaint antique set far back from the road, with plenty of privacy. There’s really no such thing. Colonists needed to have their houses right on the road. They liked their neighbors to be able to see them. Buyers find this concept hard to grasp, for some reason, no matter how much you try to explain about the original owners’ fear of the Indians and wild animals that were wandering about when the house was built. I had sold the home to the Leightons, and now that they had listed it back with me, I told them to sit tight with their price. I always felt they had overpaid, and I didn’t want them to take too big a loss on the place.

But, well, the Leightons needed to sell. Their star had been rising when I had sold them the house—Tom Leighton had just made partner at Bear Stearns. Now it was falling. Bear Stearns had dissolved. The Leightons were divorcing. One of the young riders was in a drug-rehab place. That’s life. That’s how I make my living, anyway.

The McAllister showing was early on a spring morning, and when I pulled up, Wendy and Rebecca were already walking toward the front door and Rebecca’s two young sons were chasing each other around the yard. I wandered over to them and introduced myself, but I noticed Rebecca looking skeptically out at the road. Bubbly Wendy apparently noticed it, too, because she placed one hand on my wrist and one on Rebecca’s, forming a sort of human chain, with Wendy as its effervescent central link. “Hildy,” she gushed, “I was just telling Rebecca that the house is close to the road, but it’s such a quiet country lane. . . .”

Wendy’s been in the business long enough to know better than to offer up that little enchantment, and sure enough, no sooner were the words out of her mouth than a rattling diesel-engine pickup roared past the house, followed by a motorcycle and then, after a few beats, a rickety school bus.

“Liam,” Rebecca called to her elder son, “take Ben’s hand, honey. Don’t let him go near the road.” Liam was around six years old, and Ben around four. They were clearly adopted children, as I knew from Googling Brian that he wasn’t South American. The boys appeared to be South American or Mexican. “Hispanic,” my daughters would have corrected me. They were well- behaved boys, but I’m never overjoyed when people bring their kids to a showing. They just distract everybody.

“They’re so adorable,” I said to Rebecca, then, motioning toward the front door, added, “Let’s go inside, shall we?”

I knew the other places that Wendy had shown Rebecca. Basically, everything at the top of the market. The Leightons had made the Barlow house charming enough—exposing beams, refinishing the woodwork around the huge walk-in fireplace—but it was a weekend house. The kitchen was tiny, as were the bedrooms, and, the kiss of death, no master bath. But I showed her around anyway, and as we gazed out one of the upstairs windows, Rebecca said, “Are those ponies part of this farm?”

“Oh, yes, I forgot to tell you, Rebecca’s a horse person,” Wendy chirped.

“Well. Let’s go look at the barns and the paddocks, shall we?” I said.

Honestly, how could Wendy not have mentioned that? The best thing about the property was all the expensive horse fencing the Leightons had put in, and the massive barn they had restored. Wendy’s sales figures are surprisingly good. I don’t know how she sells a thing.

Rebecca’s boys were chasing each other from room to room when Rebecca called, “Boys. Come on, we’re going to go see some ponies.” They ran downstairs and out the back door with us.

We were all wandering up the drive toward the barn just as Frank Getchell, the caretaker, pulled up in his pickup.

Frank is an old hippie. He’s short and somewhat stocky. He wears his gray hair in a ponytail, but his tanned, weathered scalp is taking over. Soon there’ll be nothing for the ponytail to cling to. He always wears beat-up jeans and old cowboy boots. A flannel shirt covers his paunch.

“Hi, Frankie,” I said.