All Adults Here(41)

Wendy was deciding what to do: She could nap on top of the made bed, she could fold laundry, she could make meatballs for the boys’ supper, she could do one of her exercise videos. She decided to nap, or at least rest her eyes, and walked back over to the master bedroom, which was a suite of its own—his and hers closets, even his and hers toilets inside the master bathroom. Astrid had been appalled when they’d showed her the plans—it was the biggest house Elliot had ever built, and like his office, significantly bigger than the house it was replacing. There were so many big old houses in Clapham, houses just like the Big House, that was Astrid’s argument, as if she were telling them to remember to recycle their paper and plastic garbage. But they hadn’t wanted someone else’s house. Wendy liked things clean as much as Elliot did, fresh, and it was his job, to build new things. Astrid had never understood Elliot—it felt cruel to Wendy to even think that about another mother, but it was true. It also felt good to remember that she and Elliot were united on some things, the way they used to be with everything. She fell back onto her side of the bed and scooched upward until her head was on the pillow. She could nap this way, without mussing herself or the sheets, for at least thirty minutes. Wendy had just closed her eyes when she heard the garage door peel open.

She scurried over to the window—no one should be coming in, unless something was wrong. She got to the glass just in time to see the back bumper of Elliot’s car pull in. Wendy looked in the mirror and patted her under-eye bags, squeezing the skin on her cheeks. She walked down to the kitchen and found Elliot sitting at the table.

“Hi,” she said.

“Where’s everybody?” Elliot said.

“The boys are asleep.” He could know the details if he listened.

“Okay,” Elliot said. He looked sweaty. September was still summer, after all, and still hot enough outside to make anyone glisten if they stood in the sun for more than a few minutes.

Wendy crossed her arms and waited for him to tell her why he was sitting at their table, and not at his desk, in his office. Instead, he leaned forward and rested his forehead on the wood.

“Are you sick?” Wendy looked at the clock—they had an hour left, maybe less. Did he not understand that her entire life was more carefully timed than a parking meter?

“Not exactly,” Elliot said. He sat up and made a face like he might have to put his head in a plastic garbage can. “I have good news.”

“You could have fooled me,” Wendy said. She cocked her head to the side. “What kind of good news?”

He gestured to some glossy folders spread out on the counter. “I got an offer. A real one.”

Wendy’s eyebrows shot up.

Elliot had bought the parcel of land on the roundabout a year ago. It was hard to keep a secret in Clapham, and hard to keep a secret in real estate, but it could be done. Still, Wendy was amazed that Elliot had managed to keep it from his mother. Astrid thought that she knew what was best for everyone—for Elliot, for the twins, for the whole town.

The idea was this: Bring Clapham into this century. Build the town a new anchor. Make it a destination. Elliot had a long list of things the town needed: an upscale boutique hotel, a bar that didn’t have a neon Budweiser sign, a Shake Shack, one of those movie theaters where you could eat dinner in your seat. Elliot had a million ideas and he wanted to build them all. He loved his town but not as much as he loved the idea of what it could become. It was what his father would have wanted for him: to make his mark.

“Who?” Wendy asked. For months, Elliot had been courting as many potential bidders as he could. It had been harder than he’d imagined, to transform Clapham into his vision of the future. He changed his pitch depending on who he was talking to—Clapham was the new Westport, the Hudson Valley was the new Hamptons. In the last year, six different businesses had made proposals: a Tractor Supply store, a vegan bakery, a store that sold model trains for adults, a pet groomer, and a Mexican restaurant. Some of them had slipped proposals under the door, others had mailed packets of paper to the address listed, Wendy’s parents’ house. Elliot knew both the Tractor Supply guy and the pet groomer—they’d both talked to him at the counter at Spiro’s, not realizing.

“Beauty Bar.”

“Shit.”

“What? They’re huge, it would be the destination for every woman in fifty miles!” Elliot still looked nauseated.

“Right, and it’s big and glossy and will be right across the street from your mother’s girlfriend’s salon. Is that not what you’re thinking about?” Wendy reached over and picked up the black folder—she could see the back-to-back lowercase b’s of the Beauty Bar logo embossed on the cover and ran her fingers over it. “Expensive.”

“It’s a good deal, I think. I need a lawyer to read it, but the person I spoke with, Debra, she told me it’s a really good deal. They want me to build it, they want to rent for ten years, they’ll pay more than anyone is paying on Main Street. Twice as much, maybe more. Enough for us to buy more buildings, to do the shopping center by the gas station.” Elliot wanted to make the valley into the Strick Brick Corridor, with his buildings and businesses running from New York City to Albany.

Upstairs, a wail, and then a thump. The twins should have slept another forty-five minutes, at least.

“I’m a lawyer, you know,” Wendy said.