Dream House (12 page)

Gina needed this routine to be the same as it was every day. She needed Ben to be here,
right now.
The car behind her honked. “Shit!”

“Mom!” Esther scolded. “They just want you to keep moving up.”

Gina inched forward, her eyes raking the sidewalk. Kindergartners she recognized were getting into cars in front and now behind her. Ms. Symington, Ben's teacher, strode toward the car and leaned her elbows on the open passenger window, revealing a lacy turquoise bra.

“Hi! Are you missing Ben?” she said. She was pretty, charismatic, and exuded the kind of confidence that could only be attributed to a happy and secure childhood. “Yes, I see you are,” she said. “Hmm. Keep moving up, and I'll go see where he is.” She trotted back to the building in her denim pencil skirt and red ballet flats.

Every part of Gina seemed to float away, as if being repelled by the heavy pounding in her chest. Something I ate, she told herself. Ben's probably in the bathroom or trying to find his sweatshirt. Keep moving. She kept her eyes glued to the sidewalk while Esther launched into a description of her day. Gina didn't hear a word.

Moments later, Ms. Symington returned without Ben, still not appearing worried. “So, Alex Bender thinks he went home with Luke Stern for a playdate?” she said, looking uncertain. “But you know they're only six, so you can't really . . .”

Gina reminded herself: intelligence was a must, but remaining rational was next to godliness. A low, growling “No!” erupted from her.

In the mirror, Esther looked aghast.

“Well, hang on. Let me investigate some more,” Ms. Symington said, and she left.

“Nothing to worry about, Estie,” Gina lied.

“I
know
that. Why is your face sweating? You know Ben. He probably just . . . forgot his lunchbox and went back to get it. He's so out of it.”

Esther's reasonableness did not reach Gina. Her body was in
a state of emergency, her heart drumming out the long minutes as she watched ecstatic kids run out to greet their parents. Finally, she couldn't sit in the car any longer. She pulled to the curb, got out, and went around to open Esther's door.

“Come with me, Estie, please.”

“No, Mom, you go look.”

“
Now
, Esther!” Gina barked, and when Esther didn't get out, she took her hand and pulled her.

“Mom!” Esther yanked her hand away, gaping at Gina. “What's wrong? Calm down!” She straggled behind her mother and Ms. Symington into the school.

Inside the building, Ms. Symington went one way and Gina and Esther went the other. Against the chatter of children in the hallway Gina concentrated on the amplified tap of her own shoes on the linoleum floor. She and Esther ducked in and out of every classroom on the first floor, the gym, the art room, the music room. With each empty classroom they passed, Gina felt the chest girdle squeezing. My son is missing!

She jogged up the stairs to the second floor. Esther skipped steps to keep up with her, every now and then pleading, “Mom!” The hallways blurred, colors of student artwork flashed strobe-like, faces they passed smeared into the noisy atmosphere. They reached a dead end, and Gina whirled around to see Ms. Symington coming toward them. She shrugged, so casually, thought Gina; how naive she is! Kids disappeared into thin air every day.

“He's here somewhere,” Ms. Symington said. “Please don't worry.”

“I
am
worried!” Gina snapped. “He's gone!”

Esther's mouth dropped open in a mortified
O
.

“Please, Mrs. Goodson, we have very good security, and there's really no place he could . . .”

“We'd better call the police!” Gina concentrated on her breathing
because, should her attention slip for a second, she felt it might just stop. She was coming apart—a concrete structure in compression, no rebar. She stumbled to the wall to lean into it so she could rummage through her purse for her phone.

“Are you okay? Please don't . . .” Ms. Symington began. “Mrs. Goodson,” she said too firmly, her good-with-six-year-olds face too close to Gina's. “Please calm down—we . . .”

Ms. Symington, all confident five feet eight of her, blurred; from the human smudge emerged a hand, snaking toward Gina.

“It's
Gilbert,
not Goodson!” Gina drew what felt like her last breath and thrust out her own hand, searching for an anchor. She felt the heat of Ms. Symington's thin wrist, the hard, cold metal of her bracelet. Recognized Esther's gasp. She turned to see her daughter's face, pinched with horror, and withdrew her offending hand. Ms. Symington's ballet flats clicked away down the hall. Beyond her, Gina made out first the tiny frame, the posture, the orange sweatshirt, and then the face, smiling now: Ben.

“I
told
you!” Esther yelled at her mother, and at last, the few gaping children in the hallway scurried away.

Gina wanted to make a fast retreat home, but now the milkshake outing seemed even more important; adhering to tradition might be her only shot at redemption as far as Esther was concerned. At the drive-in, she and Esther were silent while Ben prattled on about the distance of certain planets from the sun. Gina
oohed
and
wowed
while monitoring the sinking foamy chocolate in Esther and Ben's glasses. When the last strawful had been slurped, she stood and said, “Ready to go?”

Once home, she went straight upstairs to curl up in a ball on the bed. She heard Esther tell Paul loudly on the phone, “Mom grabbed
Ms. Symington and had a heart attack or something!” Minutes later, Paul came into the house and up the stairs. He poked his head into the bedroom; when she didn't stir, he quietly said her name. She breathed heavily to let him know she was sleeping, alive.

As he was about to shut the bedroom door, his cell phone rang. “Yes, Felicia,” he said. Gina's eyes popped open. Felicia was head of Ben and Esther's lower school. She strained to listen, but Paul's voice trailed off as he went downstairs.

She lay stunned and staring at the dusty ceiling medallion, wanting only to run away from herself, from her vibrating body. She'd done what she'd promised herself she'd never do: lose it in front of her child. Was she becoming her mother?

Her eyes fixed on the photograph she'd brought home from Maine, which she'd finally hung between the two windows. From the bed, it provided a third “window”—the view of the summer cove, its sinuous shoreline rimmed with pines and opening to the boat-studded harbor. She visualized Whit's Point in a kaleidoscope of other seasons, too: in fall, a sky dashed with geese; elms heavy with snow in winter; in spring, lush with lilacs and blossoming apple trees. She would not let herself dwell on any one of these landscapes, instead conjuring a slender ribbon of images to tow her away from her troubled thoughts. She felt herself slipping, gently sliding into the images, into the house in Maine, into sleep. Then, she was awake again, her heartbeat insistent.

The last good slumber she'd had, she realized, was on the chaise in the yard in Maine.

She needed to feel that peaceful prelude to sleep again. What had brought it on? Not just the soothing, familiar landscape. Something inside her had opened during those last hours alone. It was as if for the first time, without her mother's dominion over the house, without the noise of Cassie's extravagant emotions and snappish commentary, she could hear the house speak—just to
her.
After years
of keeping her hatches battened while there, she'd let the house in.

Her mother had slipped inside her, too. Even the falling shutter had seemed to convey what she always thought her mother felt, but wouldn't say: “What will become of us now that you are leaving?”

This time, imagining her mother's question had touched Gina with a pang, not of guilt pushing her away, but of protectiveness, pulling her back. Her parents had died long before she'd finished with them; as long as their presence still flickered in the house, she couldn't let them go, couldn't let the house go.

“For as long as I've known you,” Paul had said today, “you've been trying to leave that house.” Gina knew he was right. She was still trying to leave, to put the house and all that happened there behind her. But the only way to leave was to go back.

She slid off the bed and gathered the courage to face Paul, Esther, and Ben. Deciding a prop would be helpful, she retrieved the basket of clean laundry and carried it to the family room. Paul put down the paper and peered at her. From the couch, Esther and Ben looked up, wide-eyed.

Gina set down the basket, sat on the floor, and began folding. “I think I'll go . . . I'm
going
to Whit's Point for a few days,” she said without looking up.

“Are you going to stay at Gran and Granddad's house?” Ben asked.

“No!” Esther barked. “Gran and Granddad are
dead.
”

Ben ran out of the room and up the stairs. Esther put her hand over her mouth as if to say, “I don't know why, it just popped out.” Sobs sputtered from her. “I'm sorry! I'm sorry!”

“Shhh, it's okay.” Paul stroked her back.

“No, it's not!” Esther cried, raising her blotchy face. “
Nothing's
okay!” She glared at Gina with searing accusation, stood abruptly, and ran upstairs.

“Gina,” Paul said, “what happened?”

Gina heard emotion in Paul's voice, but she continued to fold with retail-like precision. The neat piles of clothes mocked her; within a few days, the same items would sit at the bottom of the laundry chute, and the cycle would start again. Finally she said, “I need to go to the house. I don't know if I can talk to Sid, with everything that's gone on between our families. But I'm not ready to just . . . I need to be there again.”

“Is this the right thing for you now? When would you go?”

“In two weeks, during the time we set aside to go camping. I know it screws up our vacation, but since I'd already planned to be away from the office then . . .. It would only be for a few days.”

Paul sighed. He was petting Stella, gathering handfuls of her hair, and in his slack posture, Gina read his disappointment and concern. She felt awful changing their family trip.

“Why don't we come with you?” he said.

“No,” Gina said firmly. “I need to be there alone.”

“Are you sure? I'm worried about you, Gina. What happened at school? Esther's really upset.”

Gina stopped folding and looked at Paul through flooded eyes. “The teacher was . . . I thought I was going to . . . I lost my balance.”

Paul's expression implored her to elaborate, but she looked away. He stood and walked to the window, then back again. “I would just feel so much better about your leaving if I knew what happened today. You've been really out of sorts and going to Maine has always been tough for you.”

Gina calmly tried in vain to smooth the wrinkles in the shirt she was folding. “Paul, I'm asking you to trust that I know what I need.”

Standing over her, Paul sighed. “Okay,” he said. “You should go. But don't tell me not to worry, because I'm going to.”

He leaned over and kissed her cheek. Gina smiled, picked up the laundry basket, and left the room, relieved that at least the awful day was over.

That is why people look to the past. Their nostalgia is not the result of an interest in archaeology . . . nor of a sympathy for a particular period . . . Nor is it a rejection of technology. People appreciate the benefits of central heating and electric lighting, but the rooms of a Colonial country home or of a Georgian mansion—which had neither—continue to attract them, for they provide a measure of something that is absent from the modern interior. People turn to the past because they are looking for something that they do not find in the present—comfort and well-being.

Witold Rybczynski,
Home

Chapter 6

After two weeks of uncomfortable business-as-usual—the kids at day camp, conversations with Paul focused on logistics—Gina was at the airport saying goodbye to her family. Esther and Ben were somber, unaccustomed to Gina's being away. She kissed them both, and Esther blinked back tears. Gina knew the scene she'd made at school would hang over Paul and Esther until she could offer an explanation, but she had none.

Paul hugged Gina. “I'm still sad you'll be having your birthday out there,” he said.

She flapped her hands against his back. Esther was watching them, her mouth pinched in concentration. “Me, too. But it's okay. I'll call you from Annie and Lester's tonight,” Gina said. She pulled away from Paul, her shirt damp with perspiration though the airport was cold.

As she walked away, she turned and called, “Love you, guys!”

Love you, guys: her cheerfulness sounded so phony! Feeling as she did, she wondered how in the world she would survive being without her family for four days.

At Logan Airport, she caught the bus that would take her an hour and a half north to Riversport, New Hampshire, one town south of Whit's Point, Maine. She'd been outside for only a few minutes, but already she was sticky from heat and relished the bus's chill as she slid onto the plush seat.