Authors: Ann Leary

The Good House: A Novel (37 page)

But I did end up coming back to Hazelden. I sold the Grey’s Point property three months after Peter died and then I made the call. The counselor who answered the phone, a recovering drunk named Fran, remembered me.

“What happened, Hildy?” she asked.

“Nothing,” I said. “I’m just ready to come back, that’s all.”

But something had happened. It was just a little thing; just the littlest thing really, when you look at my whole story.

It was the night before the Grey’s Point closing. Frankie had shown up at my house unannounced. I was having a little wine on my patio and I made some kind of snide remark about his appearance. He often shows up at my house straight from a job, covered with dirt and paint, and it annoys me.

“You could make an effort,” I had said. Frankie told me he wanted me to go somewhere with him in the truck. He wanted to show me something.

“Bring the wine,” he said when he saw me hesitate.

“I don’t
need
to bring the wine,” I said. It bothered me that he seemed to think that I
needed
it.

I stepped into an old pair of sandals. It was another hot night and I was wearing shorts and a T-shirt instead of my usual skirt and blouse. I thought Frankie was going to show me a house he wanted to buy.

That was Frankie’s new thing—real estate. By the way, it was Frankie who had been the anonymous buyer of the Dwights’ house, not the Clarksons. He bought it to fix it up and resell at a profit, he told me. I found out about it not long after the Dwights moved. Now he was letting Skully White stay there. Skully was too old to haul garbage and Frank was letting him stay in the house and do some work on it to pay his rent. I figured that Frank was finally seeing the wisdom of investing some of his earnings, rather than letting it all sit in some bank (or in some mattress—who knew what Frankie did with all his cash), so I was more than happy to go look at a property with him.

He drove me down to Getchell’s Cove. It was that time in the evening, in the summer, when the water is as still as glass and the sun has begun to set below the horizon, leaving just an aura of pinks and pale blues to light the sky in a sort of splendid tribute to the dying day. Frankie parked the truck, and when we got out, I saw it. It was a Widgeon, just like
Sarah Good,
my old sailboat, with a freshly painted red hull resting on the sand. The sails, new and brilliantly white against the darkening sky, had been rigged, and now they flapped lazily in the warm breeze. I wandered over and looked at the old worn wooden tiller and the sun-bleached wooden seats.

It was
Sarah Good.
You could still see the spot in the hull where Frankie had patched it all those years ago.

“Where did you find her?” I had asked finally. It was hard to get the words out. It was hard to take it all in.

“It’s been in my shed for years. Your dad must have gotten sick of havin’ it in his backyard and he hauled it off to the dump. I found it there, one day, years ago. Brought it home. Fixed it up, eventually.”

“So you salvaged her because you knew I might want her back someday?” I asked. We were pushing her along the sand toward the water now.

“No, you know I hate seein’ stuff get thrown away, Hil. I didn’t have any plans for it. I just couldn’t see leavin’ it there, a perfectly good thing.”

I’m not a nostalgic person. I don’t like the kind of sentiment people attach to
things.
I really don’t care about history and old things the way a lot of people do, so I don’t know why my legs went all rubbery on me when we slid her into the surf. It was just an old boat, but when I climbed aboard, I had to face the bow so that Frankie wouldn’t see my tears, and I barked something to him about hurrying up.

“We’re gonna lose the light,” I had grumbled at him.

“There’s plenty of light,” Frank laughed. “We’ve got time.” He pushed us off with a few running strides, then he leapt aboard, too, and I leaned back against his thighs and we set sail.

Frankie had been right to salvage the old boat. He was right; she was perfectly good. Why did tears spring to my eyes when he said those words—
perfectly good
? I guess that’s when I first had the idea to come back here. But I didn’t say anything to Frank about it. I just pressed my wet cheek into his thigh for a moment, and when I felt his rough palm against my forehead, I tilted my head up so that I could press my lips into his, and then I turned my face back against his thigh, still embarrassed about the crazy tears, but I was smiling too.

Frank trimmed the sails until the little old boat leaned herself into a headwind and then she really took flight. It was the golden hour. We sailed straight ahead, out of the cove, out into the quiet waters beyond. We sailed until we could see the lights coming on in the houses of Wendover, all along the waterfront and up on the rise. When Frankie finally brought her about, we found ourselves in irons in the still water, our sails luffing, but we just waited. We knew it would come. A fresh westerly breeze was all we needed, and it did come, all at once, filling our sails with a sudden exhilarating gust and pushing us back over the shadowy currents, over the black kelpy shallows, over the rows of frothy white surf until we rested our bow, finally, on the rocky familiar shore of Getchell’s Cove.

Acknowledgments

I wish to thank my agent and friend Maria Massie, who read this novel in various stages and offered encouragement as well as invaluable criticism along the way.

I am also deeply grateful to my editor, the lovely and brilliant Brenda Copeland, as well as the other great people at St. Martin’s Press: Laura Chasen, Sally Richardson, George Witte, Meg Drislane, Carol Edwards, Steve Snider, Stephanie Hargadon, and Laura Clark.

Many thanks to the following friends and family members—they know why: David Albert, Candace Bushnell, Jen Carolan, Marcia DeSanctis, Alice Hoffman, Judy Howe, Heather King, Julie Klam, Meg Seminara, Jane Risley, Carla and Antonio Sersale, Sherrie Westin, and Laura Zigman.

And, of course, my everlasting love and gratitude to my dear, dear family: Devin, Jack, and Denis Leary.

Also by Ann Leary

Outtakes from a Marriage: A Novel

An Innocent, a Broad

About the Author

Ann Leary is the author of the memoir
An Innocent, A Broad
and the novel
Outtakes from a Marriage
. She has written fiction and nonfiction for various magazines and literary publications and is a co-host of the NPR weekly radio show
Hash Hags
. Ann competes in equestrian sports and is a volunteer EMT. She and her family share their small farm in Connecticut with four dogs, three horses, and an angry cat named Sneakers.

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

THE GOOD HOUSE.
Copyright © 2012 by Ann Leary. All rights reserved. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

www.stmartins.com

“I Knew a Woman,” copyright © 1954 by Theodore Roethke, from
Collected Poems of Theodore Roethke
by Theodore Roethke. Used by permission of Doubleday, a division of Random House, Inc. Any third-party use of this material, outside of this publication, is prohibited. Interested parties must apply directly to Random House, Inc., for permission.

Cover design by Steve Snider

Cover photograph by Thayer Allyson Gowdy

The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:

Leary, Ann.

The good house: a novel / Ann Leary. — First edition.

pages cm

ISBN 978-1-250-01554-9 (hardcover)

ISBN 978-1-250-02225-7 (e-book)

1. Women alcoholics—Fiction. 2. Older people—Fiction. 3. Boston Region (Mass.)—Fiction. I. Title.

PS3612.E238G66 2013

813'.6—dc23

2012037901