The Shaws’ Marblehead house was eerily familiar to Ann. That fateful summer she’d worked for them on Cape Cod, Maureen had hired a Wellfleet artist to paint a portrait of the house based on a professional photograph. Ann couldn’t understand why someone would pay good money to turn their house into art they hung inside of the place they went to escape their house.
The portrait reminded Ann of the home in The Amityville Horror, a cold-looking barnlike structure with a grand porch set atop large red stones, and winking eyebrow windows peeking out of the slate roof. But Maureen had loved that painting—she loved anything that made things seem better than they were.
Shortly after her parents died, Ann drove up to the Marblehead house and saw it for herself for the first time. She was focused and strangely calm after all the anticipation and anxiety she’d felt about Anthony over the years. That anxiety had been replaced with a loneliness that became more obvious to her now that she couldn’t call her mom twice a day or go for walks with her dad when they visited her in Boston, or when she and Noah spent long weekends with them in Milwaukee. It was strange how losing her parents made her brave. Her grief was without end; what more could happen to her now?
The cement walk that led to the front door was covered in cracks and patches of ice, and dead ivy snaked up the stone walls. When she walked up the steps of the massive porch, she noticed that the slate-blue paint on the stairs was peeling in broad strips, and had worn down entirely in the centers of the treads. A pile of yellowed newspapers sat in a corner, and a faded cushion had fallen off the porch swing. If it weren’t for the name SHAW on the mailbox, she might have thought the family didn’t live there anymore.
She steadied her nerves with a single thought: Noah. Just the thought of him gave her strength. She wanted to be able to sign him up for classes and camps. She wanted Noah to feel special and exceptional the way Toby and Brooks had. Why shouldn’t he get to go to whatever college he wanted without worrying about student loans? As for herself, she wanted a bigger apartment in Boston, and she had her own student loans to pay back. She didn’t worry about Anthony’s threats anymore. She wasn’t a scared teenager. Now she was a scared adult.
She walked to the big door, painted a cheerful yellow. What would Anthony look like now? In Boston, she thought she saw him standing on every corner. She did a double take at every businessman walking down the street with a leather attaché case, every homeless guy picking through garbage in the South End. She imagined him sitting at the restaurant table next to her or taking up a seat in the same Brookline movie theater. All these years she and Noah had lived in such horrifying proximity to this man who had changed her life forever, a man she wondered if she would even recognize. Was he fat and bald or fit? Was he repentant for what he’d done, or still smugly protective of his personal empire? Would he want to meet Noah? And what about Maureen?
Oh, man. Maureen. She would be deeply hurt. Devastated.
But Ann had been hurt. Devastated.
She’d survived.
She peeked through the thick glass window into the foyer and saw an enormous pair of cheap, plastic sandals under the bench, the kind you might buy at the CVS. Anthony’s? No, no. Anthony wasn’t the kind of person to wear cheap plastic shoes, and Maureen wasn’t the kind of person to buy them. Perhaps Maureen had divorced and taken up with someone simpler—Ann wished that were true. Maybe they belonged to Toby or Brooks, grown now.
She knocked on the thick door with a shaking hand.
She knocked again, this time harder. Nobody answered.
What was she thinking? She looked up at the wainscoting on the ceiling of the big old porch. The light fixture holding the yellow lightbulb was covered in spiderwebs and dead bugs. Ann found some relief that nobody was home. She’d come back another day, figure something else out. She’d turned around and begun to descend the stairs when she heard the lock click, and the giant door opened with a loud, spooky creak, as if the door hadn’t been opened in years.
Maureen.
The first thing Ann noticed was that she was wearing jeans. Jeans! And a loose-fitting Smith College sweatshirt. Her auburn hair was rusty gray, and pulled back into a ponytail. Given the condition of the house, Ann half expected to see her stumble out in a housedress with a bottle of Jack Daniel’s in the pocket, curlers, and fluffy slippers. Instead, Maureen’s lack of upkeep wasn’t a fall from grace but a slip into a more comfortable, casual life.
“Ann? Ann Gordon? I can’t believe it! You haven’t changed a bit.”
Ann couldn’t help but smile. Maureen made her feel young and special again.
“Good Lord, it’s been ages. You’re all grown up. Just look. Come here!” Ann slowly walked back up the steps. “Don’t be shy.”
Maureen’s warmth startled Ann. She put her hands on Ann’s shoulders and looked her in the eyes. “What on earth brings you to this neck of the woods? I’ve wondered about you all these years, how many, ten? No, twelve? Fourteen? Good Lord, my whole life is a blur. How are your wonderful parents? Did you know I used to send them notes? I was so embarrassed when you quit, all because I’d had too much to drink. I was positively mortified!”
Ann, trying hard to stay focused, stiffly leaned into Maureen’s hug. Already she was overwhelmed. Her parents never told her about Maureen’s notes. Anthony said she’d quit because Maureen had been drunk? It wasn’t bad enough to do what he did; he had to embarrass his wife, too.
“I’m sorry, I thought I’d—”
“Tell me, how is Michael?”
Michael’s name had been off-limits for so long that it sounded forbidden. “We’ve lost touch.”
“But you were so close. I don’t understand. He was so dear, and the hardest worker I’d ever met. He’d finish the day covered from head to toe in dirt.”
“We’re estranged now.” Ann’s voice was clipped. She didn’t want to invite any more questions.
“I’m sorry to hear that, I really am. I found him, and you, remarkable. Although if you want to know, he never paid us back the money we’d loaned him for college. That’s always surprised me.”
This was new. “You loaned him money for college?”
“Well, Anthony did. Anthony has always been one for large gestures. He saw a bit of himself in Michael. Wanted to help him out.”
So, Ann thought. Another story. “I’m not surprised he never repaid you,” she said.
“Funny we should speak of Michael. Just this morning I was rehearsing a monologue for Duchess of Padua.” She put her hand to her chest and looked off into an imaginary audience. “Here’s how it goes: ‘I read love’s meaning, everything you said touched my dumb soul to music, and you seemed fair as that young Saint Michael on the wall in Santa Croce, where we go and pray.…’ Saint Michael indeed! Let me get you something to drink. Come in, come in.”
Ann followed Maureen inside the home, so classic and elegant compared to their house in Wellfleet. The living room was stuffed with deep, masculine leather chairs, a fat couch, and antique side tables. Yet the cashmere throw was left in a heap on the hardwood floor, the bouquet had gone limp in the vase, and dead blossoms littered the coffee table, along with piles of mail and take-out containers. Maureen said, “As you can see, this place isn’t fit for company.”
“You weren’t expecting me, it’s fine.”
“No, but I’ve always felt a home should be guest-ready when nice surprises like this spring up. You’ve graduated from iced tea to something stronger, I hope? I’ve got a fridge full of beer from the cast party last week.”
Ann couldn’t drink, much as she would have liked to. Her nerves were jangled, and she was disarmed by Maureen’s sweetness.
“I joined a community theater and the members are an absolute riot! We had a party here last week. It was a wonderful time. Do you remember I started acting that summer you worked for us? It saved me, Ann. I couldn’t tell you then, but I’d reached a dark period in my life. I needed a new direction. It all started because of you, do you know that? I never could have snuck away to take those classes in Provincetown. I wouldn’t have left just anyone alone with the boys. The boys! Can you believe how big they are?” She pointed at a framed photo on her kitchen counter. Brooks and Toby stood next to each other in matching sports jackets, their ties loose, khakis wrinkled. “That was at Toby’s wedding last summer in Bar Harbor. His wife Celia is a nurse. She’s a keeper.”
Toby? Married? “What about Brooks?”
“He’s a—what do they call it these days? A player. How about you, are you married?”
“No,” Ann said, before Maureen could ask the next question she knew was coming: kids? She lifted the photo to inspect it more closely. “I’m still single.” The boys resembled Noah, and she was surprised by the tenderness she still felt for them. They’d finally grown into themselves, taller and fairer than Noah, but just as solid and broad. They could definitely pass for brothers, although Noah wouldn’t be caught dead in those outfits. He’d be more comfortable in a vintage bowling shirt.
“They’re handsome,” Ann said. “Brooks still has that little grin.”
Maureen busied herself putting dishes in the dishwasher. “Brooks doesn’t know how to work a comb. He was just here, in fact.” She opened the door of her refrigerator. “And as I recall, we were more fully stocked before he showed up for the weekend. I’ve got nothing but Sam Adams. Not what you’re used to drinking in Wisconsin.”
“Oh, I live in Boston now.”
“Just down 128? How long have you been there?”
“A while.” She didn’t want to say years—more than a few at that point, long enough that Boston felt like home. Long enough that she could have confronted Anthony sooner.
“Good! Now it will be much easier for us to stay in touch. I’ve always felt a special connection to the girls who babysat for us, and especially you. When else do we get into other people’s homes and see how they live? It’s such intimate work. And it was so nice not to be the only woman in the house.”
Maureen gestured for Ann to take a seat at the kitchen table in the breakfast nook overlooking the backyard. It was still decorated in vintage Maureen: bright Lilly Pulitzer fabric on the seat cushions and curtains.
“I’m so glad I heard your knock. I was in the basement folding laundry when you arrived.”
“You fold your own laundry?”
“Look around, my dear. I do my own everything these days. My cleaning lady is long gone. No more ironed linens. Let’s face it, nobody buys clipboards anymore.”
“Clipboards?”
“You didn’t know? That’s what the business made. My father even patented the spring clip. With computers and all that, who needs ’em? Anthony tried to think of a way to diversify into laminate, cookbook holders, that sort of thing, but it’s hard to diversify a clipboard. Enough about that. So, I have to ask. What brings you here? It’s lovely to see you of course, but so entirely unexpected.”
Ann wasn’t sure what to say, or where to begin. “I was in the area.”
Maureen was instantly skeptical. “My dear, nobody is ever just in this area. You either live here or you come here to visit someone who does. Why, just last week our neighbor called the cops because she saw a strange man sitting in a car. Turned out it was a housekeeper’s husband just waiting to pick up his wife while she cleaned. Of course they were black. It’s awful what goes on right here in this supposedly liberal place. I’m not sad I’ll be gone soon.”
Before Ann could ask what she meant—gone where?—she felt her stomach twist at the sound of footsteps above her. “Someone’s here?”
Maureen frowned. “Oh, that’s Tony.”
Ann’s body flushed with heat and fear. “He’s home? During the day?”
“All day, every day. He’s sick, Ann. Depressed. I used to be embarrassed to say that word but I decided I didn’t want to be that proud person any longer. Through acting I’ve learned to pay attention to how I’m acting all the time. I became a character in my own life. I decided not to be that character anymore unless I’m on the stage. I’m being me for a change. Tell me, does your family still have that wonderful old house in Wellfleet?”
Ann decided not to tell Maureen about what had happened to her parents. Any sympathy could derail Ann’s efforts, and her emotions were still so raw, who knew if she could keep from breaking down. “They sure do.”
“That’s a real Cape Cod house. So much character. I’ll bet they’d sooner die than sell it.”
Ann shook her head again and choked back the sob in her throat. “That’s true.”
“What can I say? Our place was built during a bad time for architecture. We hardly go there anymore. We’ve tried to sell it off and on for years to no avail. Nobody wants a house like that anymore. Thirty-some years old and already it’s dated. Your house, it’s timeless.”
The sound of water flushing through the pipes from the upstairs bathroom practically coursed through Ann.
“I should go,” she said. She wasn’t ready for an encounter with Anthony—then again, she’d never be ready for him, never.
“Oh, stay! You just arrived! I can make some egg salad. I want to hear about what brings you to Marblehead and catch up!”
The footsteps were on the stairs now. Slow, one step at a time. Ann’s stomach churned. That night on Duck Pond came back to her in little snapshots. Anthony’s calves, his wet hair, the moles on his back, his grunts, her protests. Her painted toenails. How many times had she blamed those painted toenails for everything that happened?
“Don’t let him scare you. He’s not accustomed to visitors anymore, I’m afraid, all cooped up in this house.”
“Who’s here?” Anthony’s voice was unmistakable. It brought out a feeling of sheer contempt. Her veins felt like they were filled with fire.
“Tony, you’ll never believe!”
Ann gripped her beer bottle in her hand so tight she might have been able to shatter it. She looked for the door. If she ran fast she could make a quick exit—
Anthony appeared in the doorway. He wore a V-neck undershirt and a pair of flannel pajama pants, barely the Anthony she remembered. His belly hung over his waistband, and his hair, what was left of it, was a wiry mess. He had dark bags like black pincushions under his eyes. It was hard for Ann to imagine she’d ever been attracted to him, hard to think he’d ever had power, harder still for Ann to imagine what it must have been like for Maureen to live with him in this condition.
“Look! Why it’s Ann, honey.”
“I have eyes.”
All these years, and here he finally was. Ann was shocked by his appearance, overwhelmed by his decline. She couldn’t look into his eyes, so she fixed her gaze on his bare feet. They were fat, with pads of hair on his toes and thick horns of nails that needed to be cut. It was hard to believe she’d once fantasized about him, swum naked with him. His genetic material had become braided with her own. She’d hated him for all these years, but now that he was standing in front of her, the hate felt different, like it had congealed into something more like pity. He was weak, damaged, pathetic, and she was glad.
“Well,” Anthony said. “Well, well. This is a trip down memory lane.”
“It’s his medication,” Maureen said. “His therapist is trying—”
“Please stop talking about me like I’m not here, Mo. I’m here. I’m so goddamn here I can’t stand it.”
Maureen frowned. “Of course you are.”
He looked at Ann. “She says I’m going through a ‘bad patch.’” He used his fingers for air quotes.
Ann let her gaze rest on the coffee stain above his belly. “I see that.”
“She also says she wants to divorce me, did she tell you that?”
Maureen, embarrassed, reached for Anthony’s arm and tried to steer him out of the kitchen. “This is of no concern to Ann. Let’s not—”
“Ever since she started acting she’s turned into just another artsy kook.”
“Stop it, Tony,” Maureen said. Her voice was strained, pleading. “Please.”
Anthony’s chest hair stuck out from the V in his shirt. “You still look good, Ann Gordon.” He stared at her breasts. “You always looked good. Healthy. Wholesome. You could have walked off the set of Little House on the Prairie.”
“Tony!”
“Tony!” He screeched, imitating Maureen. “Just think of it, Ann. Mo wants out. She’s cut me off. Now you can have me all to yourself. Remember when you strutted around our bedroom naked? God, you gave me a hard-on like a torpedo!”
Maureen looked at Ann in disbelief. “What is this about?” Ann didn’t reply. After a brief silence, Maureen added, “Ann, why are you here?”
“Yeah, Ann. Tell my wife what this is about. Go ahead. Nothing matters now. She knows I’m no saint, but I’ll tell you something: you were no saint either. You wrapped yourself around me like a snake.”
Anthony walked to the sink and filled a glass with water as if this were the most normal gesture in the world. He took a drink and made a loud gulping sound.
“Ann?” Maureen sounded painfully hopeful for a different story. Ann wished she could tell her this was a lie, a mistake.
“You want to come here and tell my wife I knocked you up, go ahead.” Anthony sounded like a suspect confessing to a crime after realizing the gig is up. “I feel bad, I do.”
He could have stopped right there. That might have been almost enough for Ann: honesty and remorse. But Anthony set his glass down hard on the granite counter, looked Ann straight in the eyes, and said, “But I still think that kid belonged to someone else.”
“Oh yeah?” Ann reached into her purse and pulled out a copy of Noah’s yearbook photo. His smile was so sweet, so innocent, it hurt Ann to look at it here. She hated to admit that he was the spitting image of Anthony. Anthony without the bluster. Anthony without the edge. Anthony without Anthony. She shoved it in his face. “Just look.”
Anthony pushed the photo away. It fell to the floor, and Maureen grabbed it. She looked at it long and hard, her hands shaking. “Oh, Ann,” Maureen said. “How could this be?”
“It didn’t happen the way he says,” Ann said. “I really need you to know that.”
Maureen’s expression sank. Suddenly every freckle stood out, and every line in her face seemed visible, worn deep from a lifetime of trouble. “Oh my God.” She showed it to Anthony. “She’s right. Look at this, Tony. Look! There’s no doubt.”
“What’s with his hair?”
“That’s how he likes it.”
“You agreed to stay away,” Anthony said. “I had it all worked out with that orphan.”
“How is Michael part of this?” Maureen asked. She looked at Ann in disbelief.
“Now you know why we’re estranged,” Ann said. “He said he was the father.”
“No,” Maureen said, shaking her head violently. “He wouldn’t do such a thing.”
“Sure he would.” Anthony stepped closer to Ann, so close that his nose almost touched hers, so close she could smell peanuts and whiskey on his breath. “There are people you can buy, and he’s one of them. I gave that little junkyard dog more money than he’d ever seen in his whole life.”
“You said that money was for college,” Maureen said. “I’m such a fool. That was my money, from my trust. Anthony, how could you?”
“I did it for you. So you wouldn’t know. And aren’t you glad? Think of all these years of blissful ignorance you’ve enjoyed.”
Maureen sank back. “Everyone keeps coming out of the woodwork for money. That’s why you’re here, isn’t it, Ann?” She was crying, and wiped her face with her sleeve.
A rage built up in Ann. She looked Anthony in the eyes. “You raped me.”
Maureen gasped. It was the first time Ann had ever said that word out loud, and it felt both awful and cathartic. Noah and his friends talked about triggers, of not saying words that might upset you at school. But saying that word out loud allowed her to call it what it was. It gave her power and strength after all those years of blaming herself, for thinking she’d asked for it. She could scream it through a megaphone and it wouldn’t be loud enough.
Maureen sank to the floor and rested her head against the wall. “Oh, Tony. She was our babysitter! She was just a girl.”
“She wanted it.”
It occurred to Ann that the person they were talking about—this “she”—was someone else, someone other than who she was now. “I said no.”
“You said it too late. You want me to say I’m sorry? I am. I got carried away. I got carried away with a lot of things in those days.”
“It never stops,” Maureen said. “It never, ever stops, not ever! All these secrets you keep. I should have divorced you ages ago.” She picked up a beer bottle and threw it at his chest, and it hit him, but not hard. The beer sprayed all over the room and the bottle shattered on the floor near his feet. The abruptness of the sound changed something in Anthony; suddenly it seemed he wasn’t even in the room with them anymore.
“I’ve seen the kid, you know that? I watched you walking with him to school.”
“What?” Ann wanted to clean out her ears. “Where?”
“In Milwaukee. I saw his Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle backpack. His blue hat. I followed you the whole way. It was all I could do not to say something. I just wanted, you know. I just wanted to see—”
“You had no right. No business.”
“I was different then.”
Ann thought about what Maureen had said, how people can become actors in their own lives.
“I felt bad, I did,” he said. “I never forgot.”
“You promised you’d leave me alone.”
“And I did. You promised the same thing, and here you are in my kitchen.”
“Stop it,” Maureen said. “For the love of God. Stop.”
“You want me to stop?” Anthony said.
Maureen nodded her head. “Yes. Yes, I do.”
“How about you, Ann? You want me to stop?”
“I wanted you to stop a long time ago.”
“OK, I tell you what. I’ll make both of you happy. I’ll stop.”
He left the room and pounded up the stairs. Each thud of his feet on the steps sounded like an asteroid hitting the earth. Ann wanted to run away but she was so shocked she couldn’t move.
“I’m sorry,” Ann said to Maureen, not sure exactly what she was apologizing for. Flirting with Anthony, letting it get out of hand? For not telling Maureen a long time ago? She was sorry she’d hurt Maureen, but she was also deeply sorry for her. She had to live with Anthony. At least Ann hadn’t been stuck with him.
“Why?” Maureen asked. “Why didn’t you tell me before, a long time ago, when it … when it happened?”
“I was scared,” Ann said, still shaking. “He threatened me. I was young. Young and stupid and scared. And pregnant. And then Michael came up with this plan. He’d say he was the—”
Maureen interrupted her. “My boys. They’ve had a brother all these years. They don’t even know, they never knew. I never knew.” It seemed to Ann that Maureen was speaking to herself instead of to her. Maureen snorted and wiped her nose with the sleeve of her sweatshirt. “Nobody takes me seriously.”
“I’m so sorry. You’ve always been kind to me. I can tell it’s been hard. I should go.”
“That’s what I’ve been saying for twenty-five years: I should go. And then he gets better, you know? He can be charming. For all his faults, for all his gruffness, he really could sometimes be a good dad. The boys adored him. I’d try to leave and they’d beg me to stay because he needs someone to look after him. He makes all these threats. The doctors can’t do much. Now here I am.”
At that very moment the house was rocked by a loud crack that made the walls shake. It stunned Ann and Maureen, who could only look at each other with questions in their eyes. The crack was followed by a heavy silence.
Maureen’s face turned white. “Oh dear, I thought I hid all the guns.”