The Carriage House

Four

It was chowder night at Jim's Place. By the time Tess slid onto the worn stool at the bar, her father had dipped her a heavy, shallow bowl of his famous clam chowder and set it in front of her. He had a bar towel slung over one powerful shoulder. "No beer for you tonight, Tess. You look done in."

"I am done in. It's been a long week."

The chowder was thick and steaming. Jim Haviland didn't skimp on the clams, and he didn't use canned. She watched the pat of butter melting into the milk. The good, simple fare and the old-fashioned pub atmosphere, with its dark, smooth wood and sparkling glasses, drew a diverse clientele, from construction workers and firefighters to university students and tech heads. Somerville might be on the road to gentrification, but not Jim's Place.

"You work too hard," her father told her.

"That's why I let you cook for me tonight."

"The hell it is."

He pinned his blue eyes on her, the same pale shade as her own, and she saw the jig was up. He knew about the carriage house. He had spies everywhere. Including Susanna Galway. Her grand-mother's place was just up the street, and she wasn't one to miss chowder night. Tess could imagine how it went. Often she and Susanna had chowder together, and when she didn't show up, her father would have asked where she was, and Susanna would have blurted, "Tess? Oh, she's up in Beacon-by-the-Sea checking out that damn carriage house of hers."

Tess hadn't told her father that Ike Grantham had paid her in the form of a haunted, run-down 1868 carriage house. Jim Haviland liked cash, too.

"You're here to fess up about that damn place up on the North Shore. Tess. Jesus. A falling-down carriage house?"

She let her satchel slide to the floor. "Susanna?"

"No, couldn't get a damn word out of her. I knew something was up, though."

"Davey."

Her father's mouth snapped shut. Tess groaned. She should have expected as much. Davey Ahearn was on his stool at the opposite end of the bar. He was a twice-divorced plumber, her father's lifelong friend and a constant burr in Tess's side. He took his role as her godfather far too seriously. She knew he was listening to every word between her and her father. "Damn plumbers. They mind everyone's business but their own."

"Hey," Davey said. "What're you saying about plumbers?"

Tess pointed at him with her soupspoon. "I'm saying you've all got big mouths."

"This has nothing to do with me being a plumber."

So that was it. Susanna had told Davey, and Davey had told her father. Or Susanna had told her grandmother and word had gotten out that way. That was one thing Tess had learned long ago about life in her neighborhood: word got out. She'd driven straight home from Beacon-by-the-Sea, jumped in the shower and hopped on the subway. And still word of her af-ternoon's adventures had arrived at Jim's Place before she had.

"Somebody has to tell Jimmy here what's going on," Davey said.

"And somebody could give me half a chance to tell Jimmy myself."

"Half a chance?" Davey snorted. He was a beefy man with a huge salt-and-pepper mustache and an amazing capacity for physical labor. His friends liked to joke he would die with a plunger in his hands. "You've had this place for a year. You've had a hell of a lot more than half a chance."

This was true. Tess returned to her soup. That Davey and her father could get away with treating her as if she were eleven years old was a feat on their part. Not that she put up with it.

"You've got yourself a mess, Tess," Davey said. "A damn barn. You know what barns have? Barns have snakes."

"It's an antique carriage house."

Her father pointed a callused finger at her. "Don't move. I have to wait on a customer."

"I'm not moving until I finish my soup. I don't care what you and Davey say."

"Truer words never spoken right there," her father grumbled.

Tess spooned up plump clams, potatoes, buttery milk. She'd worry about her fat intake another day. The Red Sox were playing the Yankees on a television above the bar. It was a home game. The patrons of Jim's Place didn't like the idea of shutting down Fenway, building a new park. But that was the nature of things, Tess thought with a fresh rush of frustration. They change. Even in her father's neighborhood. Even with his daughter.

At the tables behind her, a group of about a half-dozen men were arguing over who was the greatest president of the twentieth century. "Ronnie Reagan." A dark, young construction worker raised his beer glass in solemn homage. "Bow your heads when you say his name."

"No way. FDR was the man."

"Harry Truman."

Davey shook his head and glanced back at the men, all younger than he was by two decades or more. He weighed in, deadpan. "Adlai Stevenson."

"Get out. He was never president."

"Should have been," Davey said.

A kid in dusty overalls frowned. "Who the hell's Adlai Stevenson?"

"Ignoramus," his friend, the one who'd named Reagan, said. "He was that-who the hell was Adlai Stevenson?"

Davey sighed as Jim Haviland came back around the bar. "Country's doomed, Jimmy. Your daughter's stuck with an old barn that has snakes, and these dumb bastards never heard of Adlai Stevenson."

The conversation shifted to baseball, an even more dangerous subject in metropolitan Boston than politics. On another night, Tess might have joined in. Good food and a good argument were part of the charm of her father's pub, a contrast to the pace and complexity of her normal routine as both business-woman and designer. Unfortunately the last man in her life hadn't seen the appeal of Jim's Place and chowder night.

"Pop," she said, "it's not a barn, and I wasn't stupid not to take cash. This was a great opportunity. I never could have afforded something like this otherwise. It's a half block from the ocean. It just needs work."

He put together a martini, seemingly absorbed in his work. Tess knew better. It had been just her and her father for so long, she knew when he was on automatic pilot. She'd had ample opportunity to tell him about her carriage house, and she hadn't. And they both knew it. She was the daughter who'd lost her mother at six, who'd always told her father everything. Even as they'd carved out the landscape of their adult relationship, she and Jim Haviland hadn't abandoned their tendency to speak their minds. It didn't matter if the other didn't want to hear what had to be said.

But not this time.

Tess finished her soup while he pretended to concentrate on his drink-making. It wasn't that she needed her father's approval. They'd worked that out a long time ago. It was just that her life was easier when she had it.

"How much work?" he asked.

"A lot," Davey said.

Her father shot him a warning look, and Davey shrugged and finished his beer.

Tess opened a small package of oyster crackers. She never ate them with her soup, always after. "A fair amount."

He nodded. A place that needed work was something he could understand. "You've decided to keep the house?"

"I don't know. I think so. Pop, when I was up there this afternoon, I kept thinking of all the possibilities. There's something about this place-it fired my imagination."

That he could understand. Her imagination had put them at odds before. He grunted. "Well, if you decide to hang on to it, a bunch of these bums here owe me favors."

"I'll keep that in mind." She nibbled on a cracker, and added, "But if I go through with this, I think I'd like to do as much of the work as I can myself."

Davey gave an exaggerated groan. "If there's anything I hate, it's cleaning up after some do-it-your-selfer."

"Give me a break, okay, Davey? I'm trying to have a conversation with my father. This is important to me."

"True confessions," Davey said. "You're a day late and a dollar short, Tess."

She ignored him. "I've got pictures, Pop. Do you want to see? Ike Grantham gave them to me when he signed over the property."

"Ike Grantham." Jim Haviland snorted. "Now there's a piece of work."

"Pop."

"Yeah, sure. Show me your pictures."

Tess slid off the stool and picked up her satchel. Her father's pub was one of the rare places that made her feel short. She unzipped a side pocket and removed the best two shots of the roll Ike had taken. He'd been very proud. "It's a great place, Tess. I know I can trust you with it."

She passed the pictures across the bar to her father.

He put on his reading glasses and took a look. "Tess. Jesus. It is a barn."

"I'm telling you," Davey said, "it's got snakes."

Davey was getting on Tess's nerves. She almost told him the place was haunted by a convicted murderer whose descendants lived next door, never mind that one of them was a six-year-old who thought she was a princess. But she said nothing, because arguing with Davey Ahearn only encouraged him.

"It's in Beacon-by-the-Sea, Pop. Remember when we used to go up there for picnics on the beach?"

"Yeah. I remember." He took off his glasses and pushed the pictures back to her. "Long commute."

"It'd be a while before I could move in, and I'm not sure I would. If business keeps up, I could keep it as a weekend place."

"Old as it is," Davey went on, as if he'd never stopped, "it's probably got asbestos, lead pipes. Lead paint."

"So? I could buy a duplex up the street with lead paint and asbestos."

Davey eased off the bar stool. "Now, why would you want to buy a place in a neighborhood with people who've known you your whole life? That wouldn't make any sense when you can fix up some goddamn barn some goddamn rich nut gave you in a quaint little town up on the North Shore where not only no one knows you, no one wants to know you."

"That's pure prejudice, Davey, and I earned the carriage house. It wasn't ‘given' to me." Except she'd thought she'd have to do more work to really earn it, although Ike had never put that on paper. Technically, the carriage house was hers, free and clear of everything but taxes.

"You know I'm telling the truth." Davey walked heavily over to her, this big man she'd known since she was in a crib. Her godfather. "You've lost sight of who you are, where you come from."

"Davey, I'm sitting here eating clam chowder in my father's pub. I haven't lost sight of anything."

He snorted, but kissed her on the cheek, his mustache tickling her. "You need a plumber for that barn of yours, kid, give me a call. I'll see what I can do. If it's hopeless, I'll bring a book of matches. You can collect the insurance."

Tess fought back a smile. "Davey, you're impossible."

"Ha. Like you're not."

The guys at the tables ragged him about the bald spot on the back of his head, and he gave them the finger and left.

"You're thirty-four years old, Tess." Her father exhaled a long, slow breath, as if his own words had taken him by surprise. "I can't be telling you what to do."

"That's not what I was worried about. I was worried you'd talk me out of doing something before I could figure out for myself if it was something I really wanted to do."

"And since when have I done that?"

"It could have happened today."

"You want to keep this place?"

"I'm thinking seriously about it, Pop."

"Well, so be it. How 'bout a piece of pie?"

"What do you have?"

"Lemon meringue."

She smiled. "Perfect."

Davey Ahearn was smoking a cigarette on his front stoop across the street from the pub when Tess headed out into the cool evening. He walked over to her. "You take the subway?" He tossed his cigarette onto the street. "I'll walk you to the station."

There was no point in telling him she could see herself to the subway station. He'd walk with her, anyway. "Thanks."

He glanced at her as they headed to the corner. "You didn't tell him about the ghost, did you?" Tess hoisted her satchel higher onto her shoulder.

"I don't believe in ghosts." "Tess." "No, I didn't tell him, okay? For God's sake, I'm a grown woman. I don't have to tell you or my father that a few highly imaginative people believe my carriage house is haunted."

"Not a few people. It's in the goddamn guidebooks." She gripped her satchel with one hand. "How do you know these things?"

He grinned at her from behind his oversize mustache. "I know everything."

"If I decide to turn the place into a bed-and-break-fast, a ghost could be good for business."

"Not that ghost."

Tess didn't respond.

Davey grunted. "No wonder you still keep your old man up nights. He wants to go to his grandkids' Little League games, and he's got a daughter wanting to renovate a barn haunted by a murderer."

"I'm not answering you, Davey. Answering would only encourage you."

They turned onto the main road, traffic streaming past them, the last of the daylight finally fading. She thought of Beacon-by-the-Sea, how quiet it would be.

Davey eased back. "Go on. Go home, Tess. If you screw up, you screw up. You're smart. You'll figure it out."

She smiled at him. "And you and Pop will be there. Don't think I don't know that, Davey."

"Hell, no. I'm not cleaning up after this mess. You're on your own."

She laughed, not believing him. "Look, I'll invite you up for scones and tea one Sunday. Okay?"

"I'll wear garlic."

"That's for vampires."

He shrugged. "Close enough."