Goodnight Beautiful Read online

  It was built in 1854 by the town’s founding family—five generations of millionaires hatched right here in this house, with its grand living room, its formal dining room, its library behind a pair of pocket doors—perhaps my favorite spot in the house. It has custom-built mahogany bookshelves that reach the ceiling, the highest accessible via a wooden ladder on a rail. Such a far cry from the last place I lived: a one-bedroom apartment above the Happy Chinese takeout restaurant on Broadway, the pink neon sign blinking on and off outside my window every night.

  I head toward the stairs, trailing my fingers along the original oak banister, counting my steps—twelve to the top, eight down the hall, past three spare bedrooms to the master. In the adjoining bathroom, I step into the shower and turn on the water, jolting the old pipes awake, my spirits rising. Forty-five minutes until happy hour, the highlight of my day. One stiff drink on the porch when Sam’s done with work—tonight it’s vodka and lemonade, freshly squeezed from eight of the best lemons I could dig out of the sticky bin at Farrell’s, Chestnut Hill’s Most Pitiful Grocery Store.

  Sam will ask what I did all day, coaxing out the details, forcing me to lie (a homemade bisque for lunch and a bike ride into town!), too self-conscious to admit the truth (an hour shopping at Amazon and another three leaving product reviews!). It’s not like I have a lot of other choices. I am a list person, and I’ve been keeping a running inventory.

  Ways to spend my days in Chestnut Hill: A List

  Improve my Amazon rank. I am the twenty-ninth-ranked reviewer on Amazon, thankyouverymuch. (I’m not bragging, that’s my user name.) Neck and neck with Lola from Pensacola, a woman I’m convinced is actually midwestern.

  Volunteer, so Sam stops wondering what I do up here all day.

  Fix the door to Sam’s office. He keeps complaining about it. It slams loudly every time someone comes or goes, disrupting the sessions. He’s said he’ll call the contractor himself, but I’ve assured him I’ll take care of it, that it’s the next thing on my list.

  But I have no intention of taking care of it, and it’s never made it to any list. The truth is, I like the reminder that he’s downstairs, that I’m not completely alone here, roaming a house with a storied past. Because that’s another thing about this place. The last owner, an unmarried sixty-seven-year-old woman named Agatha Lawrence, died here, lying blue-lipped on the floor of her study for five days before her body was discovered by the housekeeper. The story has become part of the town’s folklore: the wealthy spinster dying alone, every woman’s worst nightmare. All that’s missing are the nine cats.

  It’s no wonder I struggled with the idea of being alone here all day, and while Sam was originally intent on finding an office somewhere (air quotes) “downtown,” I convinced him to consider an office here, at the garden level of the house, in the large airy space once used for storage.

  “You could knock out the wall in the back and make it all windows,” I suggested, showing him the rough sketch I’d drawn. “Right here would be the waiting room.”

  “You’re right,” he said, having gotten a sense of the other options in town. “I think this is it.”

  And as it turns out, I was right; everything has worked out spectacularly. I found a contractor who (for a hefty price) agreed to a rush job, transforming the once sterile space into a gorgeous office with radiant floor heating, top-of-the-line light fixtures, and a floor-to-ceiling window offering a view of the rolling backyard and the woods beyond.

  I dress quickly and rush down the stairs, hearing the slam of Sam’s office door. In the kitchen I mix the drinks, and as I’m about to open the front door and step onto the porch, I see the patient through the pane of glass, Ms. Flimsy Sundress, loitering at the top of the driveway, absorbed in whatever’s happening on her phone. I step away from the door and silently will her to leave—Scram, lady! It’s my turn with him—and then Sam’s office door slams shut again.

  “You’re still here,” I hear Sam say.

  “Sorry, got distracted by some work thing.” I walk to the living room for a peek out the picture window that overlooks the porch and the driveway beyond, catching sight of Sam and Flimsy Sundress, noticing the dreamy look on her face. I’m accustomed to the way women respond to Sam and his square-jawed good looks, his face straight out of an Abercrombie & Fitch catalog. “It’s certainly nice to see this place become a home again, after the sad story of the last owner,” she says. “And thanks again for today, Sam. I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

  I hear the tinny beeps of her car door unlocking and wait until the sound of her engine disappears down the hill before opening the front door. Sam’s at the mailbox, sorting through the stack.

  “Hey there, heartbreaker,” I say. “How was your day?”

  He smiles at me, awakening that dimple. “Long,” he says. “I’m exhausted.”

  He mounts the porch steps and hands me the mail addressed to me as I give him his glass. “What shall we toast to tonight?”

  He looks up at the house. “How about to a new life for the Lawrence House?”

  “Yes, that’s perfect.”

  I clink my glass against his and then tip back my head to take a long sip, wondering if he can sense it, too. The wrongness of this place.

  Chapter 3

  Sam turns up the radio, a can of Brooklyn Lager gripped in his hand. “Bottom of the eighth, two outs,” the announcer known as Teddy from Freddy murmurs from the speaker, with that slow-rolling delivery that has made him famous across Maryland. “Bo Tucker takes the plate. Fast pitch. High pop up to right field. And . . . it’s an out.”

  “Damn it,” Sam yells, squeezing the can so hard he sloshes lukewarm lager all over his lap. The game goes to a commercial as the phone buzzes on the passenger’s seat. A text message from Annie.

  Hello dear husband.

  He checks the stopwatch on his phone—forty-six minutes—and opens another beer as a woman appears suddenly, walking toward Sam’s car. He slides the beer can, his third in the last forty-six minutes, between his knees, and she startles when she sees him, clutches her purse. He can’t blame her. He’s a dude drinking beer and listening to minor league baseball in the parking lot of a long-term elderly care facility. He understands the optics.

  She side-eyes him as she passes, and Sam smiles, a weak attempt to convince her he’s not as creepy as he looks. It’s the woman who runs the dining hall, Gloria something, whipping up soft foods three times a day, fettuccine Alfredo every Monday night for the residents of Rushing Waters Elderly Care Center, population sixty-six or so, depending on who died overnight.

  The commercial break ends, bringing listeners home to the bottom of the ninth. “What do you think, Keys fans?” Teddy from Freddy asks. “We gonna pull this one out?”

  “Of course we’re not,” Sam says. “We’ve won exactly fifty-eight games in three years. You know that, Dad.” Teddy from Freddy, a name that makes zero sense—nobody refers to the city of Frederick, Maryland, as Freddy—but it’s stuck. Twelve years now his father, Theodore Samuel Statler, has been sitting in the booth at Harry Grove Stadium, calling home games for the Frederick Keys, the worst farm team in baseball history.

  Of course, before Theodore Statler was known as Teddy from Freddy, he was known as Mr. S, the charming and handsome math teacher at Brookside High School who left his wife for the hot model on page twenty-four of the June 1982 Talbots catalog. Her name was Phaedra, the only name dumber than Teddy from Freddy. Someone on the baseball team got a hold of the catalog, where Sam’s father’s new girlfriend could be seen sitting on a beach in a bikini, her thighs covered with sand. It got passed around the locker room for weeks, everyone admitting that while the girls inside weren’t Sports Illustrated-level hot, they still did the trick.

  Ted met her at Camden Yards on September 6, 1995, the day Cal Ripken Jr. surpassed Lou Gehrig’s record for consecutive games played. Sam’s grandfather grew up in Baltimore, and like every Statler man since 1954, Sam was a die-hard
Orioles fan. He idolized Cal Ripken, and the tickets to the game were an early birthday present from Sam’s mother, Margaret—his dream gift, in fact—paid for with the money Margaret had been setting aside for months from her paltry secretary’s paycheck.

  Phaedra had the seat directly in front of Sam, and she kept banging into his knees, turning around to laugh at his father’s jokes, her ugly hat with the orange-and-black pom-pom blocking his view. Sam hated that his dad was barely paying attention to the game, and hated it even more when he suggested Sam and Phaedra change seats.

  Turns out that on top of the white teeth and long legs, she was also a Tupperware heiress with whom Ted Statler had a truly uncanny connection, something he chose to share with Sam and Margaret two weeks later, on Sam’s actual birthday. He stood up as Margaret cut into a Pepperidge Farm coconut cake, acting like he was about to make a speech at a wedding. Said he had no choice but to be honest with himself. He’d met his soul mate and could no longer live without her.

  It was 1995, the year of the first flip phone, the year before the minimum wage was raised to $4.25, which is what his mother earned after Ted Statler packed his bags and left for Baltimore. To a harbor penthouse built out of Tupperware, a little time to figure out what he wanted to do next, until landing his ideal job: sitting up high in a glass booth, providing the color for the Keys, managing to stay upbeat despite a three-year losing streak, including this game, which ends 9 to 3 with an out in right field as Ted invites his listeners to join him tomorrow night, when the team takes on the Salem Red Sox. Sam clicks off the radio and picks up his phone.

  Hello dear wife, he writes back to Annie.

  Typing bubbles appear right away, and Sam imagines her at home, flour-faced, the ties of the floral apron pinching her waist as she studies the Rachael Ray recipe she printed out last night. You at your mom’s? she writes.

  He glimpses the entrance to the nursing home. A woman is leading a man with a walker through the sliding doors. He can imagine the scene inside. A crowd of old people sitting on couches in the lobby, no purpose whatsoever, the furniture marinating in the scent of urine. He pictures his mom, the same place she was the last time he saw her: sitting at the small dining table in the corner of her private room, looking nothing like herself.

  Yes, I’m at my mom’s, Sam writes to Annie. (Technically.)

  How is she?

  Good.

  Much longer?

  Sam checks the stopwatch. Fifty-nine minutes. Not too much.

  Tell her I’ll see her tomorrow.

  Tomorrow, Annie’s day to visit. They take turns. Every month Annie clips a calendar into the back of his appointment book, one she draws herself at the kitchen table, guiding a black Sharpie along the edge of an envelope, a grid of shaded boxes. The blue ones are her days, the pink ones Sam’s. (Annie likes to subvert gender norms. It’s a thing.)

  “You think we need to go every day?” Sam asked when she showed him the first schedule.

  “Visiting your mother is the main reason we moved here,” she said. “Of course we need to go every day. She needs us, Sam. She’s got dementia.”

  Behavior variant frontotemporal dementia, or bvFTD, if you’d like to get technical, which Sam often does. The condition is characterized by prominent changes in behavioral disinhibition (trying to lick the waiter) and interpersonal relationships and conduct (repeatedly telling the cashier she’s an asshole), and is “an important cause of younger onset dementia” (in her case, sixty-four). That’s how the doctor explained it to Sam last year, as he sat beside his mother in a cold office on the fifth floor of St. Luke’s Hospital, an ache in his chest.

  It came on quickly. Spells of confusion, and then outbursts at work. They were minor at first, but the day came when she marched into the office of Principal Wadwhack (the sad sack) and told him that if he didn’t immediately adopt a dog with her, she was going to burn the school down. That was the day that his mom, Mrs. S, the sweetest secretary Brookside High had ever known—way too good for that loser of a math teacher who left her for a model (Talbots, but still)—lost her job, and Sam began the research, eventually landing on this place. Rushing Waters Elderly Care Center: Insured. Trusted. Sixty-six private rooms on eight shaded acres up a windy mountain road outside Chestnut Hill, his middling hometown in the middle of the state, the major employer a so-so private university with five thousand students. “Chestnut Hill: Keep It in Mind.” That’s the town slogan, printed on a signpost at the city limits. Keep It in Mind. That’s the best they could do.

  And yet here he is, local boy moving home after twenty years away. There’s even an article about it in the local newspaper, “Twenty Questions with Dr. Sam Statler.” His realtor, Joanne Reedy, suggested the idea. Her niece wrote the column for the local paper, and Joanne thought it would be good for business. Sam’s been spending the last few years trying hard to be a nice guy, so he agreed. Turns out the niece was a girl he’d slept with in high school, and she kept him on the phone for an hour, reminiscing about the old days before asking him a long list of inane questions about his interests. His favorite television show? (West Wing!) Favorite drink on a special occasion? (Johnnie Walker Blue!)

  Given a dearth of both art and entertainment, the article appeared on the front page of the Arts and Entertainment insert, including a color photograph of him, legs crossed, hands folded across his lap. Former resident (and renowned heartbreaker!) Sam Statler, is moving home. But don’t get too excited, ladies! He’s married!

  Annie hung the article on their refrigerator, Sam’s big, dumb smiling face on display every time he reached for the milk, the charming only son moving home to take care of his beloved and ailing mother.

  That’s the great irony of this whole thing. He supposedly moved back home to this shitty river town to take care of the mother who spent a lifetime doting on him, and now he can’t do it. In fact, he hasn’t set foot inside Rushing Waters in three weeks.

  He takes a long swig of beer, trying his best to avoid thinking about it, but like all mechanisms of defense, repression isn’t always reliable, and the memory of their last visit abruptly returns. He could see his mother’s confusion when he opened the door to her room, the few moments she needed to put together who he was. Her good days were becoming less frequent; she was angry most of the time, yelling at the staff. He’d brought her favorite lunch—ziti with meatballs from Santisiero’s on Main, the local joint still hanging on after thirty-two years. She ate her portion sloppily, asking him the same two questions again and again. What time is bingo, and where is Ribsy? He explained that bingo was every Wednesday and Friday at four in the recreation hall, and Ribsy, the family spaniel, dropped dead in 1999—the same week, the little fucker, that Sam left for college, leaving her completely alone.

  “You’re exactly like him, you know,” Margaret said out of nowhere.

  “Like who?” Sam asked, ripping the hard end off a piece of Italian bread.

  “Who do you think? Your father.” She put down her fork. “I’ve spent my whole life keeping this in, and I can’t anymore.”

  The bread lodged in his throat. “What are you talking about, Mom?”

  “You know exactly what I’m talking about, Sam. You’re selfish. Self-centered. And you treat women like shit.”

  He reminded himself it wasn’t her speaking, it was her disease. And yet even now, the beer has trouble going down as he remembers the look of disgust on her face. “And you want in on a little secret?” She lowered her voice conspiratorially. “You’re going to leave her, too. That nice new wife of yours. You’re going to end up just like him.”

  He pushed back his chair and walked out of the room, out of the building, to the parking lot. When he got home, he told Annie he wasn’t feeling well and went straight to bed. Sally French, the center’s director, stopped him in the hallway on his next visit, two days later, and asked him to come with her to her office.

  “Your mother has stopped speaking,” she explained from the other side of
the desk, assuring him it was probably a temporary symptom of her condition. But it wasn’t temporary. In fact, Margaret Statler never spoke a word again. None of her doctors had seen a case of mutism (“the inability to generate oral-verbal expression,” as explained in her medical report) come on so fast. Over the next week, Sam begged her to talk—to just say something, so those wouldn’t be her last words.

  But she’d give him an empty stare, the weight of her accusation hanging between them. You’re going to end up just like him. And so he did what he always did when life didn’t unfold the way he wanted: he walked away.

  He knows it’s cowardly, but he hasn’t been inside to face her since—a small detail he’s been hiding from Annie—choosing instead to avoid the heartbreak by sitting in his car, drinking beer, wondering how long he has to stay.

  He looks down at his phone—sixty-six minutes—and turns the key in the ignition.

  Good enough.

  Chapter 4

  It’s official. I’m bored out of my gourd.

  It’s not that I’m not trying, because I am. The other day, after Sam went downstairs to work, I put on an actual outfit and drove to the bakery, where I found the coffee burnt and the “lifestyle boutique” next door selling a scented candle called “Bookmobile” for thirty-eight dollars, and that was all I needed to see. Chestnut Hill, New York: zero stars.

  I’d never tell Sam that, of course. He’s settling in nicely, and business is thriving. A little over two months since he opened for business, and his days are filling, former New Yorkers lining up, desperate for one of their own to complain to. (His looks don’t hurt. I was roaming the aisles of the CVS the other day and overheard a woman in the diaper aisle, talking about him on her phone. “He’s so cute I’m considering developing a personality disorder just to get an appointment.”) That aside, I’m happy for him. He told me the first time we met that he’d been dreaming of this for a while—a quiet life, a private practice outside the city. He’d earned it. Since getting a PhD in psychology ten years ago, he’d been working in the children’s psychiatric unit of Bellevue Hospital, a very trying and difficult job.