The Land of Steady Habits: A Novel (22 page)

“Just a second.”

Through the door, he could see that almost nothing had changed. There were the same old sandy rugs; there was the same huge, drafty fireplace (which someone had gotten crackling quite nicely) and the same swinging door to an ancient industrial kitchen, and, behind the desk, which had been repurposed as a jumbo credenza, was the same old chart of the ragged Maine coast.

“She’s in the shower,” the woman said when she came back, and it occurred to him all at once that they were a couple. She shook his hand, introduced herself. “Is there anything I can do for you?”

Anders had come armed with a page of talking points, most of them focusing on the value of the building, in terms of both money and the community, whose scenic-calendar-ready New England charm was the engine of both its tourism and its identity. “I understand you have children,” he said. “And a young family certainly has needs, but I wondered if you were aware of the historical significance of this building.”

“The significance.”

“Yes. Supposedly Joshua Chamberlain, the Civil War general, lived here for a while. Did you know that?”

“No.”

“Also, for many years, the governor would hold a Fourth of July party here.”

“Seems like a good place for one.”

“I guess what I’m wondering is if you’ve considered the larger impact of destroying a building like this.”

“I’m sorry,” she said, taking a step onto the porch and letting the storm door close behind her, “but who are you?”

She had said her name when she shook his hand and he could have sworn it was Karen, or Sharon. Her eyes narrowed on him in a manner that showed she was comfortable with confrontation—she controlled the silences in the way of someone who was used to being in charge—and it was clear to him where all their money came from.

“All I’m saying is that renovation is cost-effective
and
would maintain the property value.”

“I understand what you’re saying. What I want to know is how you know about our plans.”

“It’s public record.”

“You looked them up.”

Anders could see how this appeared. “I did.”

“I’ll tell you what,” she said. “When you do something to your place, I’ll be sure to do you the favor of stopping by and telling you what I think.” She flashed him a bland smile and turned toward the house.

“Listen to me,” he said to her back. “It’s a piece of living history, it’s a
landmark,
it’s not—”

The storm door, it turned out, still slammed with quite a bang.

When he knocked again after a few hours had passed, he brought everything he had—newspaper clippings with photos of the porch full of men in hats and waiters in ties, of cigars and lobster bibs and bunting along the railing, all from the hundredth anniversary of the place, in 1934, as well as a study on the environmental impact of building something new so close to the shore, the delicate ecosystems that were destroyed and never regenerated, not to mention the economic impact. It was everything he had failed to communicate, just the facts, so they could at least engender a productive dialogue.

Karen answered, still in sweats. “Yes,” she said.

“I brought this for you.”

She sighed and took the folder. Behind her, they had decorated a tree in blue and white lights.

“You collected all this?” she said, flipping through it.

“I’m a visual person.”

She flipped past the photos of lobstermen and sailors, past a stump speech by a now-long-dead governor, and stopped at a chart about the impact of erosion on the Acadian hermit crab.

“The hermit crab.”

“I know it seems silly, but the hermit crab is a part of the lobster diet, and if you get rid of the hermit crab, you very well could get rid of the lobster. And if you get rid of the lobster—”

“My family is not going to get rid of the lobster.”

“Well, maybe not, but if you consider the aggregate effects—”

“Are you from an environmental group or something?”

“Not really.”

“A homeowners’ association?”

“No.”

“But you do own a home around here.”

Anders looked across the inlet. It was all trees and rocks.

“Listen to me,” he said. “I don’t care how much money you have, you can’t just show up here and start tearing apart history. You can’t
do
that.”

“I’ll tell you what.” She handed the packet back to him. “I’ll give you a minute to get off my property before I call the cops.”

Beside the inn, a patch of pines had been ripped out of the ground, to clear room for the equipment, he figured. There were holes where the big fists of roots had been and tread marks striating the frozen dirt.

“I’ll buy it,” he said.

“I’m sorry?”

“I’ll buy it,” he said again, this time feeling out the sound of it. Larry’s check was still sitting uncashed on the kitchen counter across the inlet.

“It’s not for sale.”

“You can keep the property. I just want the building.”

She squinted at him with her exacting eyes.

“The foundation’s cracked,” she said. “Crumbling. We didn’t want to tear it down either, but the whole thing’s sitting on a drying sand castle.”

“Look, I’m basically offering to
give
you the waterfront.”

“Are you serious?”

Behind her, across the inlet, a car had pulled into his driveway. Someone was getting out. The car door slammed. “I just want the building. You can build what you want on the rest of it.”

The woman thought about this. “Let me see if Emily’s available.”

Of all the news that could derail her preparations for the evening—preparations that had gone from a manageable list of beans to boil and silver to polish to an all-out scramble when she realized that once again her son had disappeared—none was as dramatic as the phone call from Sophie that announced she was baking. This was nothing new—Helene couldn’t remember a dinner party that hadn’t ended in everyone moaning politely as they chewed a square of one sort or another—but this time Sophie was “baking!,” a proclamation that indicated she was out of bed and bopping around the kitchen in flour-dusted yoga gear.

“I’m making éclairs,” she had said.

“You are?”

“They smell amazing, Helene. I wish you could be here right now to smell them with me, they smell like chocolate and bread and—oh, what’s that word, it’s on the tip of my—doughnuts, I guess. It smells like doughnuts.”

“Sophie, are you okay?”

“I’m great, I am
great.
I love you so much, you know that? Sometimes I think you worry too much. You take on too much but you are
such a good person.
”

Compared to Sophie’s catatonia of the last week, this was troubling. There was nothing quite as unsettling as seeing someone comatose with grief—unless, of course, it was hearing someone jabbering on about the loveliness of everything while baking a tray of pastries.

It turned out to be three trays, platters piled high and wrapped in foil, one of which, Helene was fairly certain, was a cake. The Ashbys came in with all the familiar hoopla—hugs and kisses and coats and drinks—and they were not only exactingly punctual (they even beat Tommy and the kids) but also, seemingly, remarkably stable. Their clothes had the pristine neatness of dry cleaning just out of the plastic, and although Mitchell’s floral tie and his fresh shaving nicks made it seem that Sophie had forced him out of the house, he carried it all with a convincing air of normalcy—a loyal soldier in their joint front of propriety.

“You
guys,
” Helene said, looking from one to the other. “You look wonderful.”

She brought them into the living room, where they sat on separate ends of the sofa and looked at her as if waiting to be told what to do.

Donny had put Bing Crosby on the stereo, a bounce of schmaltz from the ceiling speakers, and they stared forward at the long string of Christmas cards swagged along three walls—caps and gowns and beach homes, the occasional uncomfortably religious illustration, and one architectural rendering of someone’s planned addition. Mostly, though, it was kids—a semicircle of tooth-fairy grins and grandkids in Harry Potter costumes and adorable soccer players with jerseys that fit like dashikis.

“You know what,” Helene said, watching them scan the cards, “why don’t we go into the dining room?”

Neither of them moved.

“Listen,” she said in her softest voice. “You guys don’t have to stay. At any point, if you feel uncomfortable, just get up and go, okay?”

It was then that Sophie seemed to register Helene’s presence, and she leaned forward to speak as if she were about to reveal something urgent and private. “Is Preston,” she said and stopped herself. “Is he okay?”

“He’s fine.”

“Are you sure?”

“All riiight!” said Donny, charging in with three full goblets of wine. “Who wants red?” There was a long pause in which no one gave any indication of having heard him.

“No one asked for wine, Donny.”

“I’ll take red,” said Mitchell.

Sophie had reverted to the same mannequin stare she had had over the past seven days.

“You know what, Soph?” said Helene. “I’m not going to be drinking tonight, so there’s no need to—”

“I’ll have red,” Sophie said.

“Donny,” Helene said. “Can I see you in the kitchen?”

“What we want to know,” said Mitchell, his voice firm and tight, “is, Where is your son?”

For a moment her impulse was to lie. It was a reflex whenever anyone asked about Preston, but this time, perhaps the first time in thirty years, she didn’t think he’d done anything wrong.

“We don’t know where he is,” she said. “Actually.”

“I thought he lived here.”

“He’s staying here, yes,” she said. “But whatever it is you think he did—”

“Helene,”
said Sophie and before she’d spoke another word, Helene could see that something in her friend had shifted. It was something she couldn’t quite place, but it reminded her of the way Sophie had behaved when, not eighteen months after they had both given birth, Preston had come along and suddenly Helene was doing it all again. And what a weird thing! To feel resentment from your best friend for the distance your newborn baby placed between the two of you, an unspeakable undercurrent that came out in tipsy asides about how the only closeness with a child you could ever really trust was when it was living inside you, that everything after that was a total crapshoot, all said with a smile and punctuated by the commiserative clink of wineglasses.

But how was this for unspeakable: When Charlie had been willed into the world at a maternal age that Helene had privately found unethical, Sophie had refused a box of Preston’s baby blankets that Helene had been saving for her own grandkids, as though there were a germ of imperfection in it that her miracle baby might catch. And now that it was clear he had caught it anyway, Helene felt an irrational need for vengeance radiating from her friend, as though Sophie believed that since she had lost her second child, it was only fair that Helene should lose hers too.

“Knock-knock!”

Tommy arrived with a pre-dressed turkey on a silver platter (something he had brought her every Christmas Eve since his migration back home), a pair of hyperactive children, and a wife hauling their overnight bags. Lisa was a small, bony woman who refused to take Tommy’s last name and seemed to look down at Helene for taking Anders’s almost forty years before, even though Helene had maintained a career while raising her kids and Lisa had used her advanced degree to become a Pilates instructor, which was fine, although it seemed mostly like an excuse to wear elastic clothes and be passive-aggressive about things like processed sugar.

“Ho-ho-ho,” said Tommy as he led in the rest of the gang. “Hope you guys are hungry!”

As he passed her, Tommy leaned over and whispered, “You should answer your phone once in a while.” Before Helene had a chance to ask why, she noticed the two figures on the landing beside Lisa who, judging by their diminutive statures and blank masks of greeting, must have been Lisa’s very Lithuanian grandparents, up for a surprise from Teaneck, New Jersey.

“Welcome!” Helene said, muscling her way through the single-kiss, double-cheek dance and taking a pile of coats up to her bed, where she dropped them onto the mattress and had the sudden urge to curl into a ball underneath them. She went back downstairs and poured into glasses the remains of their meager supply of wine—a supply she had thought would be sufficient for a room of nondrinkers and Tommy, who tended to sip a single glass all night, as though he were chaperoning. Now she needed to send Donny to pick up reserves for Lisa, who, it turned out, happily drank when her discomfiting grandparents were around, and for the grandparents themselves, whose background and cultural norms she knew nothing of but who seemed to greatly enjoy petite syrah.

She cranked up the Bing Crosby to drown out their small talk and, before heading back into the living room, took a satisfying pull from their one remaining bottle.

“I have
cheese,
” she said, setting out the two wedges of manchego she had prepared for hors d’oeuvres. Mitchell and Sophie had wound up at the end of the sofa across from Lisa’s grandparents, a pairing that left all four locked in silence—which, now that Helene thought about it, wasn’t actually the worst thing.

“Tommy, can you help me for a second?” she said, and she was back in the incandescence of the kitchen with the only person she felt comfortable with.

She pointed out at the living room. “When?”

“Today,” he said. “I tried to call.”

Helene shook her head for a while. “In case you haven’t noticed, we’re having a somewhat different kind of event.”

Tommy closed his eyes. “I know. They look terrible.”

“They
are
terrible,” she said. “They are understandably terrible. But, listen, I need you to tell me where your brother is.”

Tommy stared at her blankly.

“He didn’t call?” Helene asked.

“He doesn’t call me mid-fuckup, Mom, that’s you he calls.”

Helene shook her head.

“Mitchell and Sophie are convinced,” she said, “they’re somehow convinced he was with Charlie.”