by Wendy Wax
She drew in soothing lungfuls of the warm, salt-tinged air and lost herself in the gentle rhythm of the water as it advanced and retreated. Everything slowed, her heartbeat, the swirl of her thoughts, the pitch of the panic that had consumed her since Steve’s confessions. She wished he were here with her now to share in the decisions that had to be made. The “old” Steve wouldn’t have been intimidated by Nicole or in awe of Avery. But then if Steve were himself, these decisions wouldn’t feel so much like brain surgery, and she wouldn’t be so horribly afraid that the wrong choice would put her family’s future at even greater risk.
Before she could stop herself she hit the speed dial for home and lifted the cell phone to her ear; the ringing was harsh and discordant against the wash of gentle sounds around her.
“Singer residence.” Her mother-in-law’s voice was not the one she’d been hoping to hear.
“Edna? It’s Madeline. Is Steve there?”
“Oh.” Madeline could picture the pinched lips that had produced the word. “He’s . . . resting.”
Madeline couldn’t stop the thought “from what?” that popped into her head. Ashamed, she drew in another breath of beach air and expelled it slowly. “Could you get him on the phone for me, please? I need to speak to him.”
“But he’s . . .”
“Edna, I have to speak to him. Now.” Madeline tried to focus on the feel of the sand beneath her feet and the warmth of the sun on her back. She did not want to think about the fact that her mother-in-law had started screening her son’s calls.
“Well!” Edna huffed. A few moments later Madeline heard the murmur of voices and then the blare of the television as Steve came on the phone.
“Hi,” he said, and she wondered how one word could convey such defeat. “Have you seen the house yet?”
“Yes. Yesterday,” she said. “It’s, um, it is, um, actually a really interesting house. And large—about eight thousand square feet. It was built in the twenties.”
“And?”
“And it’s beautiful. Well, it was beautiful,” she amended. “And apparently it’s a great architectural specimen. The style is called Mediterranean Revival.”
There was a small sound of surprise. “Really? That’s great.” It was the most enthusiastic she’d heard him in far too long. “How much can we get for it?”
“Well, that kind of depends on what we decide to do to it.”
“Do to it?” Wariness crept back into his tone. “I thought we were just going to sell it and take our third.”
Madeline stared out over the Gulf, processing his use of the word “we.” In the distance a person dangled from a brightly colored parasail tethered to a speedboat by a long umbilical cord.
“Yes, well, it’s not quite that simple. It needs work before it can be put up for sale. A good bit of work.”
“Jesus,” he said. “I should have known anything to do with Dyer would be bullshit.”
“The house is valuable,” she said. “And so is the land,” she interrupted, hating how quickly the enthusiasm had leached from his voice. “ ‘As is’ the house is worth about a million, but this apparently isn’t a good time to list it. The land itself is worth three million—it’s one hundred fifty feet of prime waterfront, but we’d each have to put in five thousand dollars to have the house torn down, and again, it’s not a great time to list the property. Or we can stay and spend the next three to four months getting it ready under the supervision of a contractor that Avery Lawford knows. He’s willing to get paid out of the proceeds from the sale.”
There was a silence, and in it Madeline had this wild hope that the old decisive Steve was going to choose one of the options and offer to take over. She waited, almost breathless, for this to happen.
When he finally spoke he said, “We don’t have an extra five thousand dollars.” As if she had somehow managed to remain ignorant of this fact. “And we don’t have any extra months to wait around for a return.”
“I know,” Madeline said, though what she really wanted to say was, “Ya think?” “That’s why I thought maybe you could come down and help, so that we could work on the house together. It might be good for us, for you.”
Again there was a silence.
“It’s beautiful here, Steve,” Madeline said. “And at least we’d be doing something constructive to get everything back on track. Andrew could come down when the semester’s over—that’s only a few weeks from now. The more people working, the faster we could get it ready.”
“Jesus, Maddie,” he said, and she could picture him running a hand through his hair. She wondered if that hair had been washed recently, if he’d showered and shaved. Before she’d left he’d barely bothered to dress. “We can’t all go traipsing down there to work on a house that we may or may not ever see anything out of.”
Did he have something more pressing to do? Was he perhaps out every day pounding the pavement looking for a job? “Why not?” she asked.
“My mother . . .”
“Your mother and Kyra can look after each other. Or they can come down and help.” She did not want to think about her daughter’s problems right now. Or her mother-in-law.
When he didn’t answer she said, “Steve, I need you. I need you to be a part of this.” She hesitated, hating the pleading tone in her voice, hating that she had to beg him to do the right thing. “Our marriage needs you to be a part of this.”
There was another silence. Through the receiver she could hear his mother’s voice sharp with concern. “What’s wrong? Are you all right, Steven?”
“I can’t, Maddie,” he said so quietly she had to press the phone tighter to her ear to hear him. “I’m sorry. I just . . . I just can’t do it. Not right now.”
“Steve, no, don’t hang up. I . . .”
The line went dead before she could finish. He hadn’t even done her the courtesy of allowing her to finish begging.
Slowly, she turned and headed back down the beach, but the pleasure she’d felt in her surroundings had evaporated. Picking up her pace, she concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other as the smarter seabirds scurried out of her way.
At the Paradise Grille Madeline, Avery, and Nicole ordered breakfast at the counter and then sat at a table that overlooked the beach, sipping coffees as they waited for their food. Nicole had once again slicked back her deep red hair and was dressed in the kind of expensive resort wear more appropriate to a high-end cruise ship than a picnic table. Avery wore an HGTV T-shirt and a pair of cutoffs, clearly unworried about her public image.
It took two cups of coffee apiece and the delivery of their meals to loosen their tongues. Eating and talking were made more difficult by the defensive posture required to protect their breakfasts from marauding seagulls.
“All right,” Avery said, still hunched over her plate after shooing off one of the bolder birds. “I guess we need to go ahead and see where everyone stands. All in favor of tearing down and selling the lot say ‘aye.’ ”
They contemplated each other carefully, assessing what, Madeline didn’t know, but she felt her pulse quicken. What would happen if they couldn’t agree? Before her conversation with Steve, Madeline might have gone for the option if she’d had the nerve to ask one of the others to loan her the five thousand. Now she couldn’t even imagine going home and watching Edna enable Steve while he deteriorated further. She felt once again like that Little Red Hen with a good deal of Chicken Little thrown in, because she could no longer pretend that any day now Steve was once again going to be . . . Steve. There was simply no question that her whole sky had finally fallen in.
Nicole sat very still; her patrician features might have been sculpted from marble. They continued to watch each other as carefully as the seagulls watched their uneaten food. After a protracted silence, Avery continued. “All in favor of working on the house and paying Chase back out of the proceeds from the sale say ‘aye.’ ”
Madeline noticed that Avery didn’t use the words “trained monkey” or “grun
t” as she laid out the option, though the motion itself did seem to be passing through heavily gritted teeth.
Almost in unison all three of them said, “Aye.” It took a moment for the reality of that to sink all the way in. Then Nicole picked up Avery’s cell phone from the table and handed it to her. Practically choking on the words, Avery told Chase Hardin that they accepted his terms. She also accepted his father’s offer of some mattresses and odds and ends of furniture from a model home they’d recently sold. Chase would bring the things with him when he came to discuss their job the next morning.
Avery ended the call and put down her phone as they all registered the fact that their gruntdom was now a mere twenty-four hours away. Nicole closed her eyes briefly before offering a rueful smile. ‘Oh, boy,” she said, “a whole summer here on the very tip of the back of beyond. Let the good times roll.”
Ten
They lingered over final cups of coffee trying, Nicole thought, to absorb the reality of their decision.
Getting up to throw out the paper goods and stack her tray on the counter, Madeline asked, “Are we really doing this?”
“Looks like it,” Nicole said as the three of them turned onto the sidewalk that paralleled the beach and headed back toward the house. “What are we going to do the rest of the day, work on our grunts?”
“I’m sure once we’re dealing with Chase the grunting will come naturally,” Avery replied as they passed Eighth Avenue.
“The first thing we have to do is get the house ready for habitation,” Madeline said.
“That’s going to take way more than a day,” Nicole pointed out, not at all looking forward to it.
“I mean ready enough to start sleeping there tomorrow night,” Madeline corrected. “If that’s still the plan?”
Nicole would have liked to stay in a hotel, preferably the Don CeSar and not the Cottage Inn, while they worked on the house, but she could barely afford another night in the old cottage with its ancient chenille bedspread and blonde fifties furniture. “Unless someone has a better one.” God, she’d love to hear a better plan; one that didn’t include all the unpleasant tasks that lay ahead.
They walked in silence for the next few minutes, mulling this over, but no one offered an alternative to the coming months of slave labor. An aging hippie pedaled by on a bicycle, offering a noncommittal wave, but car and pedestrian traffic was light. The long row of parking spaces fronting the beach were mostly unoccupied.
They all looked ahead rather than at each other, waiting for that first glimpse of Bella Flora. But when the multi-angled red roof line and upper story appeared over the unkempt front garden, the view, now that the rose-colored glasses had been ripped from their eyes, was not particularly reassuring.
“We can do this,” Avery said. “All we have to do is get a couple of bedrooms and a bath ready. The master’s unusable until we get the roof and ceiling repaired and that moldy carpet up.”
“Let’s make it all three of the other bedrooms,” Nicole said. “Camping out in that house is unappealing enough. I’m not planning on sharing.”
“And we’re going to want to use the kitchen,” Madeline added, her gaze skimming over the house rather than meeting theirs. “So we don’t have to run out to eat all the time.”
Nicole almost laughed at how careful they all were to sidestep the subject of finances. But would any of them be sleeping on a mattress on the floor if they didn’t have to?
“It is a great house,” Avery said, but it sounded to Nicole as if the blonde were trying to convince herself. “It would have been criminal to tear it down.”
Madeline wore a look of resignation. Nicole felt too much anger and fear to be fully resigned, but the decision had been made. There was nothing to be gained in second-guessing it. “So I assume the first thing we need is cleaning supplies,” she said without enthusiasm.
“Yes. In massive quantities,” Avery agreed. “If we get started this morning, we should be able to be ready for the mattresses and all tomorrow. But I’m sure we’re going to spend weeks cleaning. That house has been pretty much unoccupied for years.”
“Then we need to go to one of the warehouse clubs,” Madeline said, leading the way to the brick drive. “I’m sure there must be one in the area.”
Nicole stared at her blankly. “A warehouse . . . club?”
“You know,” she said. “Like Sam’s Club or Costco, where you get a membership so you can buy big quantities of things for less.”
“I’ve never really needed anything in a big enough quantity to join one,” Avery said. “Do they have cleaning supplies?”
“A whole section.” Madeline said this as if this were a good thing. “Industrial and commercial strength, which we are definitely going to need. They cater to small business.”
Nicole couldn’t think of a single thing to add to this conversation. She’d spent most of her life working so that she wouldn’t need to go to a place like that and cleaning supplies were pretty much the last thing she wanted to spend the last of her money on. But Madeline peered at them as if they were odd life-forms from some alien planet. Or spies from a foreign country who’d failed the slang test at some military checkpoint.
In the driveway, Madeline pulled her car keys from the pocket of her capris. “We’ll take my car. I’ve got the most cargo space.” She clicked her remote key and the locks sprang open. “We can look up the address for the nearest Sam’s Club or Costco on my GPS.”
Nicole and Avery made no move toward the minivan. Nicole took in its shape and size, its golden beige–ness. She’d never actually been in one before and wasn’t wild about getting in one now.
“What’s wrong?” Madeline asked, reaching for the door handle. “Do you need to get something out of the house?”
“No.”
“Well, go ahead and get in then.” She motioned Nicole to the passenger seat as she climbed in behind the steering wheel. With the click of another button the rear door behind Madeline’s seat slid open for Avery.
Nicole walked slowly around to the passenger door, pulled it open, and peered in. It had leather seats and all kinds of gadgetry, but it was about as stylish as a school bus. “Maybe I should just meet you all there,” she said. “Wherever ‘there’ is.”
Avery laughed. Madeline just patted the empty seat. “Come on. I’m pretty sure that just sitting inside a minivan won’t turn you into a suburban housewife.”
Avery laughed again. “Relax, Nicole. If you want, I’m sure Madeline will leave you off a couple of blocks away so no one will know how you got there.”
Madeline speared Nicole with a look. “We’ve got bigger fish to fry than our personal images,” she said. “And we’re running out of time.” She patted the seat once again. “Your secret’s safe with me.” Turning to the backseat, she asked, “What about you, Avery? Will you feel the need to let people know that the Nicole Grant rode in a minivan and value shopped in a membership club?”
Avery pretended to think. “I don’t know. It’s pretty explosive information, but I think I can keep it to myself.”
“Very funny.” Nicole climbed into the passenger seat and pulled the door closed, pointedly ignoring Avery’s laughter and Madeline’s triumphant smile as she backed the beige behemoth down the driveway. “But I have a bad feeling this is just the first in a long line of new experiences that I could have gone the rest of my lifetime without.”
Like the rest of the day, the hour and a half they spent in Sam’s Club turned out to be better and worse than Nicole had feared. On the plus side, no one recognized her or even noticed her for that matter. Largely, she suspected, because most of them seemed to be even older than the Realtor, John Franklin, and seemed focused on navigating their unwieldy flatbeds through the aisles or speed pushing their walkers from sample table to sample table. When she finally accepted the fact that there was not a potential client in sight and absolutely no chance of running into a former one, she began to relax and even kept her complaints t
o a minimum as Madeline masterminded their acquisition of every cleaning product and tool known to man.
“Load the brooms and mops in Nicole’s cart,” she said when the flatbed Avery was pushing was piled high with industrial-sized drums of Pine-Sol and Clorox as well as anything else that could be sprayed or wiped. “And let’s get another box of large trash bags and one of the outdoor kind. And a couple of those Rubbermaid garbage cans. Even if we have a Dumpster, we’re still going to have to get things to it. Oh, and what about those folding beach chairs?” Madeline asked as they wheeled by a display of cheap aluminum chairs with multicolored mesh straps. “We can use them out back and take them down to the beach if we want.”
Nicole kept her groan to herself as the chairs were balanced on top of the flatbed. Madeline then focused on filling up her own basket with more food and drink than Nicole would normally consume in a month. “I’m used to shopping for four, including a teenage boy,” Madeline said when Avery questioned the huge quantities of everything she chose. “We definitely need at least a case of Diet Coke to start and one of bottled water.” She eyed the mixed case of cheap wines she’d chosen. “Maybe we should get a bottle or two of the better wines for celebratory situations.”
As if. “You mean something intended for more than its numbing qualities?” Nicole asked.
“Yes, exactly.” Madeline smiled, ignoring or simply not noticing Nicole’s sarcasm. “Will you choose a couple?” And then to Avery, “Can you squeeze a few of those rotisserie chickens in the basket? We’re going to want to eat in as much as possible to try to keep expenses down.”
Now there was a real day brightener, Nicole thought as they pushed their bounty toward the front of the store. A summer full of cheap food, folding chairs, and home-cooked meals. Those good times were so going to roll.
As they neared the checkout lanes, Madeline waved them to a stop in the ladies’ clothing aisle—strategically located just past the automotive section—where Avery and Madeline selected some of the ugliest shorts and T-shirts Nicole had ever seen.
