An envelope lay facedown in a corner, and she stooped to pick it up. It was a letter from Ohio University that had never been opened. The name above the address was “Ava Turner.”
“Hon?” Myron called from the main living space. “You ready to get going?”
Margot emerged from the maid’s room holding the envelope. “What? I’m sorry, I wasn’t listening. How many days are we looking at?”
“Max here says about four months or so.”
Worry knit her brow. “Really? That long?”
“Well, we could move in after the demo is completed . . . along with the work in the bathrooms. Are you willing to live off paper plates and takeout for a month or two?” Myron flashed his wife a grin that looked more like a dare.
She sighed. Her flawless makeup and manicured fingernails sent the clear message that she was not one to rough it. Her heel tapped pensively against the floor. “I hate the idea of Hunter being stuck in some hotel . . . and classes start in August.” Her glance fell on the offending light bulb still burning in the maid’s bathroom, then back to the contractor. “What do you think you can get done in eighty days? That’s when we close on the Boston house, right, Myron?”
“July tenth,” Myron said with a nod.
“I tell ya, we can focus on getting the second floor finished and the bathrooms up. But that custom kitchen’s gonna take some time.” The man scratched his head with his pencil and reviewed his notes again. “Cabinets alone might take two months to come in. Electrical wiring, reinforcing the floor . . . You got any plans for the basement? Rec room? Man cave?”
Margot shook her head. “Just get the laundry up out of there and update whatever needs to be updated. We never plan to go down there. Do we?” She turned to Myron for confirmation.
“Oh, I don’t know.” The doctor’s eyes circled the attic, taking mental measurements for some plan he didn’t dare share with his wife. “Maybe a game room for Hunter? A place to hang out with his friends?”
“With all this space? I’m sure we can find a place aboveground for whatever Hunter needs. Lord knows we’re spending enough money, right?” This was a direct appeal to Myron’s frugality, and she fixed him with those wounded eyes. Please just make this easier for me. She turned to the builder. “So . . . can we say we’ll be done by early August?”
Max took a moment to study his notes again and let out a tortured sigh. “We can try. But there is a saying in this business, you know. You can have it fast. You can have it good. Or you can have it cheap. But not all three. I’d have to factor in an escalation fee if we’re gonna push the schedule.”
Myron raised his eyebrows at this and opened his mouth to protest but thought better of it. Margot’s pained expression hung like a weight around his neck. “Fine. Let’s just get it done.”
An uncomfortable sweat had sprung up on Margot’s brow and the small of her back. It was more than a lack of air circulation. It was more than the dust motes and cobwebs hovering around the yellow glow of the bathroom or the dull sky leaking in through the windows. She cocked an ear and turned as if she’d heard something. But what? The slightest chill prickled her skin despite the heat. Her fingers grazed the base of her neck, stopping at the vein pulsing against her throat.
“I think that’s it,” Myron said. “Right, hon?”
“Mmmm?” She turned to him blankly, then recovered herself. “Right. I can’t think of anything else.”
The doctor clapped a hand on the contractor’s shoulder and said, “So when can we expect an estimate? I have to decide how many organs to sell.”
Max laughed.
Margot ignored the two men as they tossed barbs back and forth. Goose bumps had risen over her skin. The college acceptance letter addressed to some strange girl still sat in her hand. Glancing down at it, she shook her head at either herself or the men and headed toward the stairs, not waiting for a lull in the conversation. “Could one of you do me a favor?”
The men stopped talking and turned to her. They had already said everything that needed saying anyway.
“Please get the light on your way down.”
5
A crew of workers showed up three days after Myron Spielman signed the contract to gut half of Rawlingswood down to the studs.
Within a week, everything that could go wrong did. Power tools went missing in the middle of the night. Mold was discovered in all three bathrooms on the second floor. Asbestos crumbled from the boiler lines, causing a work shutdown for a week. The cast-iron waste stacks fell apart during the plaster demolition. Flashings leaked around the chimneys. The water main burst in the basement on the sixth day of the work.
“It’s like this damn house is fighting us every step of the way!” Max threw up his hands every time he had to call the Damn Doctor. “Yes, we have contingency funds, but this is like Armageddon here. Just one thing after another. I’ve never seen anything like it . . . Save money? We could lose that ten-thousand-dollar refrigerator to start.”
There was a long pause as he listened to the doctor on the other end of the line.
“Of course. We’ll give the lady what she wants, sure, but I’m telling you . . . Yes. I know it’s in the contract, but these are hidden conditions. Did you see me pull out my x-ray goggles when we were doin’ the walk-through? . . . Lookit. I don’t see through walls, and I don’t have a crystal ball.” The fat man blew out a stream of cigarette smoke into the gutted kitchen and listened some more. “Why don’t you and the missus discuss it and get back to me? . . . Fine.”
He slammed down the cell phone and threw his cigarette butt onto the exposed planks of the subfloor. “Motherfuckers!” he growled and kicked the outside wall. The floor joists creaked menacingly above him as though threatening to collapse. He took a step back and shook his head in disbelief. Damn house. “Shit . . . Hey, Pete?”
A head poked down through one of the holes in the ceiling. “Yeah, boss?”
“You’d better tell that plumber to pack it up today. We’re waiting on change order authorizations.”
“You sure ’bout that, boss? It took ’em a week to fit us in.”
“Do I look sure?” Max glowered at him.
“Will do, but that’s gonna slide the schedule.”
“Not my problem. We can get it done fast or get it done well or get it done cheap but not all three, goddammit! And lock up the fucking tools this time. If one more circular saw walks off this son of a bitch, it’s your ass. Got me?”
“Sure thing, boss.”
No one said it, but the whole crew hated the house.
They refused to eat lunch inside the building. They even went outside to smoke, a rarity among contractors despite the site rules posted on the front door that forbade smoking. It hung next to a workers’ comp policy and the other state laws that none of them had bothered to read. They avoided the third floor altogether when possible. When left on their own somewhere inside, the workmen could be seen checking over their shoulders and flinching at every creak and groan the wood framing let out as they ripped the house apart with their power tools.
In the mornings, they arrived on site to find some new hellish sign that they were not welcome. Fresh cracks opened up across the plaster ceilings in the night. Floor joists split at the knots. Blueprints scattered onto the floor. Plastic sheets used to control the dust fell from the ceilings. Wires pulled loose from the junction boxes.