Goodnight Beautiful(7)
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.
Meanwhile, I feel like a loser, hanging around this house all day, nothing to do except water the plants. Which is why I have resolved to be more productive, starting today, the day I tackle the project I’ve been avoiding for weeks: Agatha Lawrence’s study, the room where she died of a heart attack, which is filled with her personal papers.
It was the deal on this house. It came as is, and as the attorney representing the estate of Agatha Lawrence explained, this included “all furnishings and any other items left behind by the previous owner at Eleven Cherry Lane.” I didn’t know this was going to mean six file cabinets encompassing a complete history of the Lawrence family, going as far back as 1812, when Edward Lawrence established Chestnut Hill. I poked my head into the room a few times, wishing I was the type of person who could throw a dead woman’s papers away without even a look. But I’m not, and so each time I shut the door, and put it off for another day.
This day.
I finish watering the plants in the kitchen and take my tea down the hall, steeling myself before opening the door. The room is small and simple, with a window overlooking the garden, largely obstructed by a boxwood that needs a good trim. I peek inside the empty closet and trail my fingers along the yellow wallpaper. It’s an interesting color—chartreuse yellow, with a repeating pattern of shapes that seem to feed into themselves. Agatha Lawrence favored bright colors, and I’ve surprised myself by liking them so much I’ve hardly made any changes to the decor. Apple-green walls in the kitchen, bright blue in the living room.
I hear a buzzing noise and notice a dozen or so tiny moths fluttering against the window, trying to get out. I cross the room and nudge it open, careful to avoid a crack running down the middle of the glass, yet another thing to take care of. As I shoo the moths outside, I see that Sam’s car is gone. He’s probably off to the Y, where he goes during lunch sometimes, returning with a mop of wet hair.
Looking around, I consider my options. I could turn the study into a guest bedroom, but what’s the point? There are three spare bedrooms upstairs already, and who’s going to visit me here? Linda? I highly doubt anyone from the city would be enticed by a tour of the strip mall and the additions to the dollar menu at the Wendy’s on Route 9.
I decide to table the question and start with the papers, quickly realizing that this was a family that did not throw things away. Original drawings of the Lawrence House, designed by one of the most renowned architects of the time. Newspaper clippings from as far back as 1936, when Charles Lawrence was a confidante of FDR. Dozens of scrapbooks—stoic Europeans, posing straight-backed on the porch. I become so caught up in the family history—they made millions in oil and, later on, plastic—that it takes a few minutes before I register the noise coming from one of the boxes I’ve moved to the corner of the room.