"We need to get a new goddamn number. We may as well have this one plastered across a billboard in
Times Square
." He glanced at the door to the basement. "What're they, just hanging around and shooting the shit down there? I heard you going on and on with one of them just now."
"Yes—Zack. But hardly on and on," Wendy answered, wondering at Jim's tone. He sounded almost jealous. She glanced at her son, still at the kitchen table. "
Tyler
, close the book and finish your breakfast. You said you were done with your homework."
"I am," he said withou
t looking up. "I'm reading ahea
d."
"Close it. Eat. Go."
With a melodramatic sigh the boy—an avid reader practically since birth—did as he was told and began shoveling his cereal as fast as his mouth would open and close, without necessarily swallowing.
Wendy turned back to her husband and said, "What
is
bothering you today?" She was afraid that he'd done something wildly impulsive again, something so reckless that even he was afraid to own up to it. She waited to hear the worst.
He looked ready to tell her exactly that, she realized with a surge of panic: his face twisted into an expression of sheer agony. But almost immediately he made an impatient, dismissive gesture and said angrily, "Where are we supposed to talk in this
f
ishbowl? Exactly where?"
She didn't know. There were men outside the kitchen windows downstairs, men outside the bedroom window upstairs. That left the bathroom, not exactly the place to confess and then argue afterward.
God, what
had
he done? Bought a football team somewhere?
Feeling vaguely as if they were trying to sneak around in an illicit tryst, Wendy said, "After Tyler gets off to school, why don't we take a thermos of coffee and walk down to the park?"
The park was a pocket-sized patch of green a couple of blocks from their house, with benches that overlooked the bay. It would be quiet there, and private enough to hash out their opposite views about money—because Wendy had no doubt that this was going to have something to do with money.
Jim looked doubtful about her suggestion, so she took his wrist and said with a cajoling tug, "C'mon
... when's the last time you walked down there with me?"
He shook his head, then wrapped his other hand around her wrist and gently removed it from his own. "I won't do it, Wen. I'm entitled to have a conversation with you in my own home—in private."
Tyler
muttered into his empty bowl, "Well, excuse me for living."
"Button it up, Ty!" he said sharply to their son. He turned back to Wendy and said, "We've got to move out of this house; the sooner the better. I've had all of this I'm going to take. If you want to do something together this morning, then let's go looking for a place to rent until they're done. You can see it's going to take a year and a day at the rate they're going. I'm sick of coming home to this. I'm sick of living in a fishbowl," he repeated.
Somehow, Jim had seized the advantage. If she wanted to know what was on his mind, she was going to have to let him have the house he craved. It was as simple as that. She took comfort in the fact that whatever seemed to be bothering him, it wasn't so urgent that he felt impelled to spill his guts that minute. Maybe it really
was
the mess and disruption that had him in such a foul mood.
Wendy sighed and said, "All right. You win. I give up. We'll try to find another place—but somewhere near."
"Yes!" said their son, raising his skinny arms in a victory clench.
Jim said, "I don't see why it has to be around the corner. That limits us."
"I want to stay close," she argued. "I've been worried about my father lately, and I want to be able to dash over here if there's a decision to be made, and Ty should be near his cousins
... and then there's school. We'll probably be living in whatever we rent right through next fall; staying on the east side would be the least disruptive."
Tyler
had grabbed a towel and was swinging it over his head and whisper-yelling, "Woo-woo-woo."
It annoyed Wendy a vast amount that no one wanted to live in her house. "If I'm not mistaken, Ty," she said in a deadly voice, "you have exactly six minutes and forty-three seconds to get to school. And I'm not driving you there. Do the math, my son."
The rent was scandalous, but the view was sublime: a white, sandy beach rolling i
nto the sparkling waters of
Nar
ragansett Bay
and the ocean beyond. Wendy, a Rhode Islander born and bred, had always been at home on a beach, but she never thought she would actually be at
home
on a beach; the concept still boggled her mind. She gazed through the huge multipaned bay window in the master bedroom at a small sailing dinghy that was pulled onto the backyard beach. The sail was raised and flopping back and forth casually in the breeze. It looked like a
prop.
"Does the little sailboat come with?" she asked the realtor, curious.
"Of course," said the agent. Her smile could easily be construed as condescending. "Everything that you see is included in the rental—including the geraniums in the window box."
There were at least a dozen of them, all a no-nonsense pink and as big as softballs, lolling with gaudy confidence in the dark green planter that lined the bay window of the gray-shingled house. Who had watered them? For that matter, who had hoisted that cheery red-and-white sail on the dinghy? Who had cut the grass and dusted all of the charming antiques that surrounded them?
It couldn't have been the owners; they were currently living in
Switzerland
. So there had to be a staff, or a service. Were the dusters and the waterers included in the rent? Wendy couldn't figure out a graceful way to ask. It all felt so unreal. She could have been perusing the featured home in an upscale shelter magazine. Her! Jim! What would they do with all that room? She felt as overwhelmed as she was enchanted by
the rambling six-bedroom, five-
bath expanded
Cape
.
Jim, on the other hand, was clearly in his element. Poised at a side window where he'd been taking in the view, he said with droll urbanity, "The best part about it is that you can sneeze without having a neighbor say God bless you."
The realtor, a gray-haired woman with big
gold
earrings, responded instantly to his tone. With a confidential smile, she said, "Yes, living in
Providence
, no matter how good the neighborhood, is bound to feel cramped compared to this."
The house was smack in the middle of
Barrington
's mile-long gold coast, just northeast of the country club and the Carmelite monastery and tucked among lanes with carefully obvious names like Bay and Water and Beach.
Oh, yes; Jim was in his element, all right. He came and stood alongside her in silence, letting the view work its magic.
They had looked at two houses on
Providence
's east side, both of them sophisticated, historic homes less than a mile from their house but with a must-vacate date etched in stone. In contrast, the house they were standing in had come on the market less than an hour before they had shown up at the realtor's office, and its date of vacancy was open-ended.
Barrington
was just minutes from
Providence
: a small price to pay, the realtor told them as she bundled them into her Mercedes, for a private beach.
"I've seen plenty of beaches in my life; why does this one look so much more spectacular?"
Wendy
mused.
It was the realtor who answered her. "Because
this
view, you would own," she said. "At least for the length of the lease."
Did Jim agree with that theory? Wendy wasn't sure he'd even heard
it
. He looked a million miles away—lost, she assumed, in the shimmering blues of the bay.
Wendy felt guilty for even considering renting the house; they'd done nothing, absolutely nothing, to earn something so special. And yet
...
"Jim
...?"
He had to shake himself free of his thoughts before he said almost wearily, "If you insist on living close to the house during construction, this is probably a fairly good place to do it."
"Oh, but the
rent,"
she blurted. She scarcely brought home in a year what the owners were charging a month.
He hated it when she sounded as if they were out of their league. It embarrassed him, and the flush in his face told her that this time was no exception.
He said coolly, "Would you rather just buy a house outright?"
Because we can do that, you know,
said the expression on his face.
He did look like someone who could. He was beautifully dressed; he carried himself well; he spoke the language of real estate. Wendy looked at him—really, for the first time—the way someone like the realtor would. Suddenly it hit her: Jim had grown into his wealth. She, on the other hand, was still wearing it self-consciously, like an ill-fitting dress.
In the meantime, the realtor's pleasant smile had become even more fiercely pleasant. She spoke not so much to Wendy as to Jim, in a lower, more confidential voice than she had used up until then.
"You know, I shouldn't be saying this, but there's some question whether the owner will be returning from
Switzerland
anytime soon—or at all. In our phone call, he did talk about the possibility of
... well. You can fill in the blank," she said, including Wendy in a glance that also took in the view. "This really is an exceptional property, and it's in fabulous condition. If you like, I can make an inquiry."
Jim said easily, "That's probably premature. First we ought to see whether my wife approves of it even on a rental basis." He turned to Wendy. "Well, Wen? What to you think? Could you stand to hang your hat here while you oversee the restoration of your family's little homestead?"
He phrased it so elegantly that for a second she wasn't sure what homestead he was talking about. More to the point, his question didn't seem to leave room for a no.
"Well
... it really is a beautiful house," she said, trying to get past her reservations and be on the same side that he was.
"One of the best that you'll find," the realtor assured them.
"Would
all
of the furnishings stay?" Wendy asked her, because she couldn't believe that people who owned such exquisite things would let strangers use them.
Jim said dryly, "Here we are: one couple and
a ten-year-
old child. Yes, Wendy, I imagine that will call for triple the stipulated damage deposit."
The realtor laughed pleasantly, and they moved on, but not before Jim shot his wife an angry and embarrassed look.
The tour ended in the last of the guest rooms, this one in the absolutely charming dormered attic. It featured pretty florals, white wicker, and a hand-painted armoire that made Wendy want to try that much harder to persuade Jim to make another baby, this one a girl. Odd, how something as simple as wallpaper could cause such a pang of longing for a bigger family. Jim had always argued that they didn't have enough room for more kids. Now he argued that they were too distracted to have more kids.
And meanwhile, her clock was ticking.
"Great place for Ty's cousins to sleep over," Jim remarked, ducking under an eave to check out the view through one of the deep dormered windows.
Emmy and Trish! He was right; it
was
a great place for little girls—anyone's little girls—to sleep over. One offhand remark by her husband, and Wendy felt the floodgates open and a wave of longing rush over her. Suddenly she didn't care if it cost three times the quote, she wanted to rent the house.
It was perfect. There would be bedrooms for visiting family, and small sitting rooms for quiet moments, and a library, and a den, and twin parlors, and a beach—an actual beach!—from which to launch a boat or go for a swim; and all of the rooms and everything in them would be hers, at least for a few months while she played at being a woman of sophistication and privilege and with lots of kids of her own. It would be like a trip to Disney World, a fantasy flight from dust and debris.
And after that, she would return, a satisfied Cinderella, to her own sweet, remodeled home to live happily ever after—hopefully with a larger family than she presently had.
She walked up to the gabled dormer where Jim was still standing and paused for a moment to take in the bright blue sky and the dancing, shimmering waves.
"Yes," she said softly to him alone. "I definitely think we should take it."
****
In a pocket-sized park on
Congdon Street
, Zack sat on a bench and watched the sun set over the massive capitol dome in downtown
Providence
. The capitol was a ridiculously impressive piece of architecture for such a tiny state, testimony to a time when civic-minded men built for the ages and not just for function. The imposing structure radiated high ideals, lofty morals, and above all, an abiding dignity.