I check my watch—4:16 p.m.—and ease off the couch, staying low as I approach the window and study her, Sam’s last patient of the day. Late forties. Bag is genuine leather. Blowout is recent.
And now it’s time for everyone’s favorite game: Guess the patient’s problems!
Two tween daughters, contemplating a divorce and a real estate license.
Wrong! A pediatrician, staring down menopause, still trying to figure out her own mother.
A steady buzz unlocks the door from the inside. She enters, and I wait for the slam of the outside door, imagining her stepping into his waiting room. I can picture it perfectly: Sam’s in his office with the door closed. She’ll take a seat on one of the four white leather chairs, place her bag on the glass coffee table next to the two neat stacks of In Touch and the New Yorker. (“I’ll know everything I need by which one they pick,” Sam joked when the first issues arrived in the mailbox.) There’s a Nespresso machine on a side table; small glass jars hold tea bags and both brown and white sugar. She’ll be wondering if she has time to make a cup of Earl Grey when Sam opens his office door, four thirty on the dot.
I asked him once what he and his patients talk about downstairs—them on the soft beige couch, him on the expensive leather chair he special-ordered from some Scandinavian company with a weird name. “Come on, just one,” I teased. It was happy hour, and I’d mixed us some drinks. “What sort of problems are the rich ladies of Chestnut Hill grappling with?”
He laughed. “I’m sorry to disappoint you, but that’s confidential.”
I linger at the window, taking in the front yard and manicured row of hedges, shielding the house from the street. My house, the Lawrence House, the noble Victorian three miles from the center of town, with a steeply pitched roof and wraparound porch. It’s one of just two houses here on Cherry Lane, accessible via a narrow wooden bridge that crosses the wide creek running along the side of the house, no official name assigned to it on any map I’ve seen.
It was built in 1854 by the town’s founding family—five generations of millionaires hatched right here in this house, with its grand living room, its formal dining room, its library behind a pair of pocket doors—perhaps my favorite spot in the house. It has custom-built mahogany bookshelves that reach the ceiling, the highest accessible via a wooden ladder on a rail. Such a far cry from the last place I lived: a one-bedroom apartment above the Happy Chinese takeout restaurant on Broadway, the pink neon sign blinking on and off outside my window every night.
I head toward the stairs, trailing my fingers along the original oak banister, counting my steps—twelve to the top, eight down the hall, past three spare bedrooms to the master. In the adjoining bathroom, I step into the shower and turn on the water, jolting the old pipes awake, my spirits rising. Forty-five minutes until happy hour, the highlight of my day. One stiff drink on the porch when Sam’s done with work—tonight it’s vodka and lemonade, freshly squeezed from eight of the best lemons I could dig out of the sticky bin at Farrell’s, Chestnut Hill’s Most Pitiful Grocery Store.
Sam will ask what I did all day, coaxing out the details, forcing me to lie (a homemade bisque for lunch and a bike ride into town!), too self-conscious to admit the truth (an hour shopping at Amazon and another three leaving product reviews!). It’s not like I have a lot of other choices. I am a list person, and I’ve been keeping a running inventory.
Ways to spend my days in Chestnut Hill: A List
Improve my Amazon rank. I am the twenty-ninth-ranked reviewer on Amazon, thankyouverymuch. (I’m not bragging, that’s my user name.) Neck and neck with Lola from Pensacola, a woman I’m convinced is actually midwestern.
Volunteer, so Sam stops wondering what I do up here all day.
Fix the door to Sam’s office. He keeps complaining about it. It slams loudly every time someone comes or goes, disrupting the sessions. He’s said he’ll call the contractor himself, but I’ve assured him I’ll take care of it, that it’s the next thing on my list.
But I have no intention of taking care of it, and it’s never made it to any list. The truth is, I like the reminder that he’s downstairs, that I’m not completely alone here, roaming a house with a storied past. Because that’s another thing about this place. The last owner, an unmarried sixty-seven-year-old woman named Agatha Lawrence, died here, lying blue-lipped on the floor of her study for five days before her body was discovered by the housekeeper. The story has become part of the town’s folklore: the wealthy spinster dying alone, every woman’s worst nightmare. All that’s missing are the nine cats.
It’s no wonder I struggled with the idea of being alone here all day, and while Sam was originally intent on finding an office somewhere (air quotes) “downtown,” I convinced him to consider an office here, at the garden level of the house, in the large airy space once used for storage.
“You could knock out the wall in the back and make it all windows,” I suggested, showing him the rough sketch I’d drawn. “Right here would be the waiting room.”
“You’re right,” he said, having gotten a sense of the other options in town. “I think this is it.”
And as it turns out, I was right; everything has worked out spectacularly. I found a contractor who (for a hefty price) agreed to a rush job, transforming the once sterile space into a gorgeous office with radiant floor heating, top-of-the-line light fixtures, and a floor-to-ceiling window offering a view of the rolling backyard and the woods beyond.
I dress quickly and rush down the stairs, hearing the slam of Sam’s office door. In the kitchen I mix the drinks, and as I’m about to open the front door and step onto the porch, I see the patient through the pane of glass, Ms. Flimsy Sundress, loitering at the top of the driveway, absorbed in whatever’s happening on her phone. I step away from the door and silently will her to leave—Scram, lady! It’s my turn with him—and then Sam’s office door slams shut again.
“You’re still here,” I hear Sam say.
“Sorry, got distracted by some work thing.” I walk to the living room for a peek out the picture window that overlooks the porch and the driveway beyond, catching sight of Sam and Flimsy Sundress, noticing the dreamy look on her face. I’m accustomed to the way women respond to Sam and his square-jawed good looks, his face straight out of an Abercrombie & Fitch catalog. “It’s certainly nice to see this place become a home again, after the sad story of the last owner,” she says. “And thanks again for today, Sam. I don’t know what I’d do without you.”
I hear the tinny beeps of her car door unlocking and wait until the sound of her engine disappears down the hill before opening the front door. Sam’s at the mailbox, sorting through the stack.
“Hey there, heartbreaker,” I say. “How was your day?”
He smiles at me, awakening that dimple. “Long,” he says. “I’m exhausted.”
He mounts the porch steps and hands me the mail addressed to me as I give him his glass. “What shall we toast to tonight?”
He looks up at the house. “How about to a new life for the Lawrence House?”
“Yes, that’s perfect.”