“Now, that’s a paint name,” Jake had said.
Perry wasn’t totally off the mark. Phoebe’s life was so chaotic, it was no longer recognizable to her. She knew how ungrateful that sounded. For starters, she had the twins. Two healthy boys whose legs pumped beneath their sturdy frames as they careened through the suburban square of their Connecticut backyard. A husband, whom she’d not only met and fallen in love with in college, but whom she remained deeply in love with, something her friends routinely commented on. Before starting their family, she’d worked as a copy editor for a local printing business, and Rob still worked for a marketing group. They’d bought their starter home, had kids, and unlike many of the couples they socialized with on the rare occasion when they weren’t too burnt out or busy, they were still stable and solid. But something had been missing, something that left Phoebe feeling edgy and itchy. It wasn’t being a stay-at-home mother, though that was exhausting and, in her opinion, far harder than her day job had been. It wasn’t anything about the boys, who were thriving. Or the husband, whom she adored. It was something else. Something that she needed yet could not name until that fateful fall day she stumbled across it while driving with the boys. It was a house.
In truth, she had not exactly stumbled across it. The lakeside cottage was a thing she’d admired since childhood. Back then, it had been the crisp white of new-fallen snow, its slate roof and cherry-red door bestowing upon it the air of a storybook cottage. Her childhood friend, Jessica, had lived three houses up on the same windy lakeside lane, and Phoebe had spent the better part of her elementary school years passing the house without giving it much thought. Until one summer day when the girls pulled their bikes up alongside the mailbox, which was teeming with soft pink balloons. “They just had a baby,” Jessica said. “Looks like a party.” Indeed, guests were arriving, arms laden with frilly gift boxes and wobbly Jell-O molds. A man in a seersucker suit walked by toting a giant stuffed giraffe. And there, on the front step, stood the young mother with the new baby swaddled against her floral dress. Phoebe had stared at the couple in their lush green yard, welcoming their well-dressed guests amid the haze of pink balloons, and thought to herself, That. That is what my future looks like.
Of course, she had forgotten the house and the party over the years, but not the feeling it had filled her with that summer day. So, on one dark drizzling autumn day when the boys were both sick with head colds and she’d been driving her Jeep Cherokee up and down the hills of Lenox in a desperate attempt to usher them to sleep in their car seats, she’d crested the hill and seen the For Sale sign, she’d slammed on the brakes. Both boys jerked awake, wailing in sleep-deprived protest. “It’s okay,” Phoebe had cooed as she stared back at the house from her childhood memory. Because, suddenly, it was.
The cottage was no longer crisp or tidy. It had the sad appearance of having not been lived in for some time, its lawn overgrown and its paint weathered. But still—there was the stone chimney. And the faded red door. And the sweeping view of the water. The memory of the beaming new mother clutching her bright new baby rushed back to Phoebe as she stared through the swish of her windshield wipers at the house. All it needs is a family, she thought. Like us.
She’d raced straight home and called the Realtor. While Rob and the boys were traversing the soccer field at practice the next morning, unbeknownst to him, Phoebe was exploring every inch of the creaky old cottage. By the time he came home, she was waiting for him in the kitchen, with a shy smile and a copy of the listing in hand.
“I’ve found our dream house!” she announced.
Rob halted in the entryway, one hand on each boy. All three were knee-high in mud splatters. “I didn’t know we were looking for one.”
“Before you say anything, please take a look. It’s a big place that needs a little work.” In truth, it was a little place that needed big work. She thrust the listing under Rob’s nose.
Rob’s eyes had skittered right past the image and down to the listing price, where they widened with amusement. “Did you win the lottery?” He laughed. “We don’t have that kind of coin.”
“But we do!” Phoebe insisted. She’d done her homework and prepared a small speech. “The Realtor says the market has improved. If we sell our place, we’ll have plenty to deposit on the lake house. And extra to fix it up. Just the way we like it!”
“But I like this house,” he said, tugging Patrick’s wet uniform over his head.
“No, you don’t. You just don’t realize it because you’re always at work. I live here with the kids day in and out. We’re busting at the seams.”
Newly freed from their soaked soccer gear, the twins bolted away and up the stairs. There was a thundering overhead and the kitchen ceiling shook. Phoebe gritted her teeth.
“Is this about the Warrens?” Rob asked.
Phoebe prickled. Don and Victoria Warren lived next door. Not to be confused with Vicky. Or Tori. “Vic—tor—ee—uh,” she’d told Phoebe the first time they’d met. “As in the queen. I don’t do nicknames.”
Don and Vic-tor-ee-uh had recently remodeled their entire house, from foundation to chimney top. Even before their long and noisy renovation Phoebe had struggled with what Rob called “neighborly bonds” with the Warrens. They were the kind of people who had their house decked out, within a twinkle light of being visible from space, for Christmas. And all before midnight on Thanksgiving. The decorative extravaganza kept Phoebe and Rob’s bedroom illuminated like a Walmart parking lot. But only until the twelfth day of Christmas, Victoria assured her. Which only served to piss Phoebe off further. What kind of person kept track of when it was the twelfth day of Christmas?
They hosted lavish parties with ridiculous themes. Like their annual Kentucky Derby party (“A soiree!” Vic-tor-ee-uh had trilled), where they served only mint juleps and made everyone don fancy little hats. Phoebe liked wine. And she loathed hats. What she loathed most was attending parties where people were required to do anything other than shower and show up. For her, as the mother of toddler boys, those two things, themselves, were reason to celebrate.
Rob, being the better sport, felt otherwise. “Come on, honey. Surely you can put on a hat for one party.”
“No. No, I cannot.” Phoebe was more from the Robert Frost school of thinking. The whole “Good fences make good neighbors” thing was written for people like the Warrens. She doubted Robert Frost ever had to don a Kentucky Derby hat for a “soiree.”
“They have a thing for holidays,” Rob had said, with a resigned shrug. “Think of them as jolly.”
Phoebe had rolled her eyes. “Jolly assholes.”
Just last weekend the Warrens had hosted an elaborate open house. A “Welcome Summer!” gathering, they’d called it, which just happened to coincide with the completion of their renovation. The handsome Dutch Colonial had been completely gutted, along with, in Phoebe’s opinion, much of its original character. The old brick fireplaces had been covered up and replaced with a floating gas wall insert of turquoise glass and metal. The antique hardwoods were ripped out, replaced by a cold gray tile meant to look like driftwood. Phoebe had dragged her best friend, Anna Beth, with her to the party.