Good Faith (33 page)

“But why should they be fearful? Do they have something to be afraid of?”

“Oh, I doubt it.” But what about Mary King? “He always talks about them with affection and respect. He’s crazy about Justin.” I kept thinking of Mary King. Even a little kid could sense if his home life wasn’t quite as secure as it had been, as he would like it to be. “I’m an only child, so I don’t know much about it, but it’s the sister who strikes me as fearsome. Amanda. Maybe Justin thought you were Amanda and you were going to—”

“Rake my sharpened fingernails down his back?” She laughed. “Actually, I did that once, when I was eleven and my brother John was nine. I got my mother’s nail file and sharpened all my fingernails to points so I could draw blood the next time I caught him in my room.” She laughed again. “If I had to judge by my own experience, it isn’t good to have the girl first.”

That night I woke up for about the tenth time in a couple of weeks, worrying about the unheard-of farm payment. I rolled around for about half an hour, got up and read for a while, then went back to sleep and dreamt I was driving around looking for Felicity. I drove into a long driveway and found Sherry. She was doing some kind of construction—I could see excavations. I explained to her in a panicky way that I was looking for Felicity and drove off. Then it got dark, and I could see Felicity down the street, almost invisible, except that she was wearing a white sweater. When I came up to her, she leaned in the window of my car, smiling and very beautiful, and she put her hand on my face. She was loving and reassuring—not as energetic as the real Felicity, but softer and more soothing. She comforted me, and when I woke up, I felt well and truly comforted, comforted without any resistance, comforted as you could only be comforted in a dream. I turned over and went back to sleep. When I woke up the next morning, it seemed to me that I had experienced some kind of bona fide miracle, a visitation. I remembered that dream for days, a sign of how happy and how reassured it was possible to be.

CHAPTER

23

A
FEW DAYS AFTER
my conversation with Jane about Mike, I pulled into a parking place at Cheltenham Park, and when I got out of the car I saw that Mike Lovell         was leaning against a car—his car, no doubt—a few spaces down. When he saw me open my door, he came toward me. He said, “Trouble up there.”

“How do you mean?”

“When I got here this morning, the two of them were having a screaming fight. I could hear it all the way down the hallway. When I got to the door, I waited for a couple of minutes, but they were really going at it, so I just turned around and came back out. I been up there one time since, about twenty minutes ago. They were still going at it.”

“Could you make out what it was about?”

“Nope. She was calling him six kinds of a bastard, was all I heard, and he kept saying, ‘Goddammit, Jane! Goddammit, Jane!’ I don’t know if you want to go up there.”

“Well, why not? At least we can maybe see what’s going on. Or pull them apart if we have to.”

But when we got to the office, all was quiet. I opened the door as if I had no idea that there was anything wrong, and there was Jane, sitting at her desk. She caroled, “Good morning, Joey!” No bruises, anyway. Mike and I glanced at each other. The door to Marcus’s office was closed. Mike said, “He got anything for me?”

“You’d have to ask him that. I wouldn’t know,” said Jane.

“Okay,” said Mike. But instead of knocking on Marcus’s door, he went over to the mail basket and picked it up. He said, “I guess I’ll mail these things, since I have to go to the PO, anyway.”

“That’s fine,” said Jane.

Mike departed. I went into my office. I was preparing final instructions for the engineer, which involved writing up some things that we had been talking about—mostly heating and wiring changes in the clubhouse that would bring it up to code. I was also getting ready to call Gottfried and give him the job. We had been leaving each other messages for about two weeks. If we really wanted to talk to one another, we both knew how—I could go to his job site or he could call me at 6
A.M.
—but we didn’t really want to talk to each other at this point, so we left messages with each other’s services, saying that we did, during business hours. I put a piece of paper in my typewriter. Everything was quiet. After a bit, I heard the outer office door open and close; then, a moment after that, my office door opened and Marcus came in. He closed the door behind him.

I sat back in my chair. “Was that Jane leaving?”

“Yeah.”

“Are you and Jane having a disagreement?”

“A misunderstanding.”

“Was she leaving for good, by any chance?”

“Oh, God, no. She was going out to get her hair cut. She’ll be back in a hour and a half. What’s that?”

“I had a meeting with Ralph Hokanson yesterday about retrofitting the kitchen area. I’m just writing that up. He and Gottfried are going to meet with Jerry on Monday. Then Gottfried can get started. Say.”

“Say.”

“Say, do we have enough to pay those big payments on the farm that started to be due the first of this month?”

“We don’t have to pay yet.”

“How’d you manage that?”

“Crosbie got Bernie Wrightsman to reappraise the property, and they loaned us more money. They’re covering the payments themselves for an additional six months out of the loan amount. Until we’re in a position to sell some lots.” He said this as if it were routine, but two years before, or even a year, such a thing would have been unheard of. I was relieved, if a little suspicious. But Marcus had said from the beginning that it was a new world, and every time he turned out to be right. I said, “What did they appraise it at?”

“Five.”

“Five what?” I sat back and looked at him. He was smiling.

“Five million.”

“I don’t see how it’s doubled in value in a year, even with what we’ve done. Real estate around here’s only gone up about sixteen–eighteen percent. And that’s close to Deacon. Out by Plymouth—”

“Well, you know, I had a talk with Bernie about that, and he agreed with Crosbie that we’re so close to the permits that it really doesn’t make a lot of difference. A month or two, right?”

“That’s the best case; but, you know, the best case can—”

“Now, Joe. You have to be the positive thinker. You’re the one who meets with these people and does this sort of thing. If you look like you’re willing to wait, they’ll make you wait. I’m not talking about getting angry or irritable. It’s something different. It’s more like pulling them along in your wake. See what I mean?”

But he didn’t have his usual verve and fire. I nodded. I said, “You want to talk about the thing with Jane?”

“Oh, it was nothing, really. Family spat, not business. It’s amazing we haven’t done it before, really. What’s it been, almost a year since she got here? Anyway, we’re older, but we still have to blow off steam once in a while. That’s all.” I nodded. I was relieved about the payment, really relieved. And my relief felt exactly like it had after my dream of Felicity.

It took me about a day to realize that Jane and Marcus weren’t speaking, and by that time it was Friday. But they still weren’t speaking on Monday and on Tuesday. Jane sat at her desk in a state of high chill toward Marcus. When he came in or went out, she turned her back on him but glanced at him out of the corner of her eye. His demeanor was more interesting—he was never smoother, but not in the least abashed or embarrassed. It was impossible to tell from their behavior who owed whom an apology.

On Tuesday, standing in front of Jane’s desk, knowing Marcus was in his office with the door ajar, I said in a somewhat loud voice, “Well, I’m going to go find Gottfried and put him on this job.”

Jane nodded.

I said, “I have to go to his job site. I can’t find him any other way and I’m ready to commit.”

Jane glanced toward Marcus’s office. We waited. Normally, Jane would have called out “Marcus? That all right with you?” or “Marcus, you want to come in here?” but she didn’t say a word. We waited for another moment. I said, “Okay, I’m going. Time and materials. I guess we’re all agreed.” And I thought we were; we’d talked about this several times among the four of us, Marcus, Gordon, Jane, and myself. I looked at Jane. We shrugged and I turned and went out of the office.

As I was unlocking the door of my car, Marcus trotted up behind me. “Hey,” I said.

“Yeah. Everything’s fine about Gottfried. I guess we’ve got to think of something about the office, though, because Jane is really digging her heels in. Frankly, if it weren’t you and Mike, I’d be a little embarrassed, but I figure we’re good enough friends by this time that a little frost in the air isn’t really a problem. I mean, other than practical.”

“No big deal,” I said.

“To tell you the truth, it kind of puts a spoke in my theoretical wheel, because you know I kind of pride myself on making things go, greasing the skids, all that. You’re not supposed to say this, but women in the office can be a problem, just because of the way they do things. Frankly, I didn’t expect this sort of thing from Jane. It’s very capricious, but hell, what can you say?”

“What happened in the first place?”

He glanced at me. “It started with Linda. She said something and then Jane said something and then Linda said something back, and you know how that goes. Linda felt judged by Jane, and Jane felt offended by Linda. Well,
that
went on for two days. You know how women are. And then I thought I had to get in on it. Really, I was just kind of playing the mediator. But mediation is something I consider myself good at, so I was thinking just how great I was going to do with them, and now neither one of them is speaking to me, because they
both
think I’m on the other one’s side.”

“It’s been almost a week, Marcus.”

“Is that all? I thought it was three lifetimes. Now my strategy is to just keep my mouth shut.”

“Do you want to go with me to find Gottfried?”

He shook his head. I got in my car and pulled out of my spot.

The weather was dampish and brown. All the leaves were off the trees, and the countryside had a look about it that I liked, that made me think of the word
Umbria
. I’d had been in Italy during November once, with Sherry, and I’d enjoyed it—driving through the small towns, seeing game birds, rabbits, and deer hanging everywhere, along with piles of autumn vegetables and flowers. It had seemed very exotic and alluring to me, the raw materials of savory hot meals, provisions for the winter gathered everywhere. Sherry had liked it too, not being at all squeamish, and we had enjoyed those few days quite a bit. Once in a while, only for a day or two in the year, the color of my plain old American countryside was
Umbrian
.

I found Gottfried at the site of his second house, the one that was a little less finished. I hadn’t seen it since it was in the framing stage. This one was also in Blue Valley, maybe a mile from Marcus’s house. It was a beautiful place—a rambling American farmhouse style, white with a black peaked roof, with a porch that wrapped around three sides of the one-story section and a taller two-story section, white-accented with black shutters, that rose above that. It was sited on its lot in a very welcoming way. If I’d had the wife and the kids, I would have bought it from him right then. I had a single happy thought of Susan Webster as I turned into the driveway.

Gottfried and Dale were in the kitchen. As soon as Gottfried saw me, he charged. “Have you been up there?”

“Where?”

“To my house I built, the beautiful Queen Anne you sold to that asshole.”

“Marcus?”

“That’s the one.”

“I was there for dinner a few weeks—”

“Did you see what they did?”

I thought of several things but didn’t dare name any one of them. I held my peace.

“Did you?”

“I don’t know.”

“They put up a
red
roof! Why did they put on a red roof?”

“I think they had some tree damage from a storm—”

“But red! That house had a perfectly good black roof, the absolutely right black roof! They could have repaired it! I would have sent a roofer, but they reroofed the whole thing in this shitty red color.”

“It’s their house, Gottfried.”

“I never trusted that guy. He’s too sharp.”

“Taste isn’t a moral question, Gottfried.”

“Oh, you don’t think so?” He said this so pugnaciously I stepped back and looked at Dale, who gave me a maybe-yes-maybe-no sort of shrug. “I’m finished.”

I glanced at Dale again, who by this time wasn’t looking at me. I said, “What do you mean, Gottfried?”

“I’ve had it.”

“Had what?”

“I can’t work with you people. I can’t do the house at the farm. I can’t renovate it. That guy is going to be in my face all the time, telling me to change this and change that and try this and try that and this thing, whatever it is, won’t be so bad. I can tell you right now I won’t have a free hand, and between us all we’re going to screw it up. That house is a work of art. I won’t wreck it.”

“No, you won’t. You’re about the only person who won’t.”

“Who’s paying?” He almost shouted this.

“We are.”

“So I’ve got to do it
your
way. That’s the way it works. The guy who pays has the say. That’s the way it works. I can’t do that.”

I looked at him, then looked around the room. They had put up plain pine cabinets with black wrought-iron pulls in the shape of oak leaves. The cabinets had lots of knots in the wood and were a rich yellow color. The floorboards were of differing widths, also pine. Gottfried had laid the interesting knots in the middle where they could be appreciated. I said, “Well, you’ve never done that, that’s true, but you’re always complaining about the carrying costs of taking your own loans and building on spec. This is a way out of that. You finished these houses. I’ll sell them over the winter, and you just do this job. It won’t take long, and in the spring you’ll have plenty of money to go on to something you’d rather do.”

“I can’t do it. I knew you were coming out today. I told Marie you’d         be coming out today, and I said, ‘He’s going to ask me and I’m going to have to turn him down, so be ready, because it might be a hard winter.’ I already told Dale I might have to let him go for a few months.”

“Gottfried, you know, I’ve been putting up with you for years. One crazy thing after another. But this is the craziest thing you’ve ever said to me.”

“You think you can insult me and maybe it will change my mind, but—”

“You know what, Gottfried? I’m not insulting you. I’m telling you the truth. Anyone in the world would agree that it is crazy to turn down an indoor job in the winter and lay off your favorite co-worker and refuse to work in a place that you love and get lots of money for it just because someone else is paying for it, especially after complaining for years that you always have to front all the money and take all the risk yourself.”

Dale cleared his throat. I looked at him. He said, “I don’t like to say anything.”

“I know,” I said.

“Especially since, you know, I don’t want to seem like I’m trying to save my job and all.”

“Why not, Dale? It’s okay to try and save your job.”

“Okay. Well, then. Here’s what I think.”

We waited for a long moment while he looked out the window.

“You can’t always pick the guy you want to work for. I was reading about this artist: Poussin. I saw some of his paintings one day at a museum. Anyway, he was in Italy, minding his own business, and the king of France got him to come back to Paris and gave him lots of things to do that he had never done before, and he had a terrible time getting paid to boot, and then when he managed to get back to Italy and be his own boss again, he died.”

“I can’t tell whose side you’re on, Dale,” I said.

“Well, it just made me think of that.”

“I can’t compromise certain things,” asserted Gottfried.

I turned back to him. I opened my mouth. I started yelling. “Who says, Gottfried? Who says you can’t compromise? Who do you think you are? You’re a builder! You’re a small-time builder in a small place! You do good work, but you’re not Rembrandt! You’re not even this guy Poussin, who I’ve never heard of! You’re not rich! You’re not Frank Lloyd Wright! You build in a traditional style that is pleasing to people! So what? Get off your high horse and live in the real world!”