“Why didn’t you call me, Val?” Eliza’s voice broke like a twig. “I should have done that.” It made her feel like the worst kind of daughter to think that she was downing cocktails at the club or, for God’s sake, maybe taking a barre class when her father was sick.
“He wouldn’t let me, Eliza. Of course I suggested that. But you never heard a man so determined. He didn’t want you to know…”
“But he’s got to come to Boston, Val. For treatment. He can’t stay here! That was April, and it’s almost July—Val, he’s got to see a neurosurgeon. Right away. He needs to see one yesterday.” Eliza looked around wildly, as though her father were hiding, diseased and untreated, under the table, and she could drag him out and drive him to a Boston hospital. “He’s got to go now, he needs to come back with me today. Val, do you have any idea how serious this is. Glioblastoma? It’s the worst kind of brain tumor you can have, the very worst. The most aggressive kind of brain cancer there is.”
“Yuh,” Val said fiercely. “Course I do. I heard everything that doctor said to him, Eliza, every word. He didn’t want you to know, Eliza. He still doesn’t. You know your dad, if he wanted your help he would have called you right up and asked for it. If he wanted you to know, he would have told you himself.”
Eliza slumped forward in her chair. “Oh, Val. Val. What are we going to do?”
9
NAPLES, MAINE
Rob
Mark Ruggman, the general contractor on Cabot Lodge, was slugging from a gigantic Dunkin’ Donuts cup, so Rob didn’t dare bring out his Starbucks grande cappuccino—he left it growing cold in the Pilot’s cupholder. Sissy drink. Worse if you took a good sniff and smelled the extra shot of vanilla. But, hey, in the words of Selena Gomez by way of Breaking Bad’s Uncle Jack, the heart wants what the heart wants.
“Hey,” said Ruggman, when Rob dismounted from the minivan, whose tires had bitten into the soft dirt surrounding the foundation of Cabot Lodge.
“Hey yourself,” said Rob. He winced a little at how eager he sounded. (Shouldn’t it be the other way around? After all, he had hired Ruggman.) Cabot Lodge, all seven thousand square feet of it, had been framed and Sheetrocked; it had windows, doors, a roof, siding, and you would think, if you didn’t know better, that this meant that the bulk of the work was done. (Rob knew better; Rob would bet a bundle of money that Ruggman knew better too.) Through the stand of pines along the edge of the water, Long Lake looked bright blue and inviting—it looked freshly scrubbed, like the cleaning people had just been there. Far to the left he could see the Songo River Queen II loading passengers for its noon voyage. Rob didn’t know where the Songo River Queen I was; perhaps, like Robert Barnes I, it had decided to move to Thailand years ago with its mistress.
Closer to Cabot Lodge, a lone stand-up paddleboarder glided by, then a trio of kayaks. A single cotton ball of a cloud hung low in the sky, and from a house a few docks down a motorboat whirred to life. It was all very On Golden Pond. Very paradisiacal.
“It’s coming along here,” said Rob approvingly. The day before, Ruggman had let him know that the cabinets were in, and Rob wanted to check them out.
Christine Cabot was hosting Thanksgiving for her extended family. Before the first snowflake fell she wanted the house shipshape for ski season at any one of the many accessible mountains. She wanted to put to use the ski racks she’d requested for the outside of the house, the bunk beds she’d ordered for her dear grandchildren, the crockery in which she planned to serve chili.
When Rob had first met with Christine Cabot he had croaked out something that wasn’t exactly a lie but wasn’t fully the truth either. Rob had said, “You’ll be in by Thanksgiving, no problem.” Christine Cabot had beamed at him, showing a perfect mouthful of they-couldn’t-all-be-real teeth, and he’d been once again the fatherless student at Buckingham Browne & Nichols, riding a wave of charm and optimism. He’d been the Ivy League undergrad, the willing husband and father, the jolly party guest. Give them what they want, and they will smile at you. His Achilles’ heel, if ever he had one: the need to please.
“Should we wait for Christine before we go in?” he asked Ruggman.
“She was here.” A modicum of satisfaction seemed to pass over Ruggman’s face slowly.
“Here? Already?”
“?’Bout ninety minutes ago.”
“Without me?” Now Rob felt like a boy stranded at a cotillion.
“Apparently.” Ruggman leaned over and spit into the dirt. You had to be a certain kind of man to pull off that kind of unapologetic dirt-spitting. Rob was not that kind of man; he never had been.
“And she—she saw the cabinets?”
“Oh, she saw ’em.” Another swig of coffee. Ruggman rocked back on his heels and squinted at the lake. The stand-up paddleboarder’s progress was impressive.
“Ruggman. Why do I get the feeling that there’s something you’re not telling me?”
Ruggman cleared his throat. “Thought she would have called you herself. Truth is”—he spit again—“she hates ’em.”
“What do you mean she hates them?” Rob made a great show of reattaching the th to the word.
Rob knew that this stage of the project could be the hardest part. After the framing came the finishes: the lighting fixtures, floors, trim work, built-ins. And the kitchen fucking cabinets. These, he knew, were the times that tried men’s souls.
“Dunno,” said Ruggman. “She hates ’em, she wants to start again.”
“But that means—”
“I know.” Ruggman looked almost sage.
“Possibly delaying move-in,” said Rob.
“Your words,” said Ruggman. “But, yeah.” He polished off the coffee and crumpled the cup in his meaty paw. “Gotta go check on the guys, holler before you leave and let me know where you want to go from here.” He eyed Rob’s pocket. “Phone’s ringing.”
“Oh. Didn’t hear it. Thanks.” Rob answered without looking—he assumed it was Eliza. He moved away from Ruggman, toward the back of the property.
“Robbie?”
Only one person on the planet besides Mrs. Cabot called him Robbie: she of the boundless energy and coiffed hair, charity chairwoman extraordinaire, doting grandmother to his two little princesses, alternately the bane of his existence and the reason for it. His mother. Judith.
“Hey, Mom.” A little voice said, Talk to her about the money. Now, do it now, straighten it out. Tell her you made a mistake.
“I just got off the phone with Christine.”
A miniature elf began knocking against Rob’s skull with the back of a hammer, from the inside.
“Is that right?”
“She’s frantic.”
“She’s frantic?”
“She’s got her whole family coming for the holidays.”
“She mentioned that, Mom. I believe she mentioned it more than once.”
“And she says the cabinets are hideous. She says she has to start over, finding new cabinets.”
“Well.”
Judith went on: “I haven’t heard her this upset since Jonathan Junior dropped out of law school.”
Rob sucked in his breath. “Jonathan Junior was a complete cokehead, Mom, that’s why he dropped out of law school.”
“Robbie!” said Judith.