The House on Mermaid Point

Chapter Twenty-one

By the time they’d finished the tiramisu that had topped off the lasagna dinner and headed over to the television to watch season one, episode one, of Do Over, Will felt like the fatted calf. Except it was the women now seated around him who acted as if they were about to be slaughtered.

Though no one had room for another bite, Madeline set out bowls of popcorn and then settled on the sofa with Dustin, whose feet didn’t reach the edge. William watched Maddie’s arm wrap around the little boy’s shoulder to pull him close and he caught himself considering his own son, whose childhood he’d mostly missed. And whose teenage years had been spent at a succession of boarding schools, which Will had paid for but rarely visited. All those years on the road without thought for the cost.

The opening sequence showed the women arriving at a house on South Beach surrounded by a high wrought-iron gate barely taller than the grass inside it. The house was large and streamlined with nautical details, gouged plaster, and mismatched windows. It had been painted in a variety of colors that even Will didn’t think had ever been intended to go together.

The room went silent as the television screen filled with shots of Maddie’s, Kyra’s, Avery’s, Deirdre’s, and Nicole’s shocked faces. Their discomfort with the camera couldn’t have been more evident. A considerably younger Dustin, held in his grandmother’s arms, was the only one who looked good in extreme close-ups—of which there were many.

Despite the fact that Troy and Anthony were even at this moment shooting their reactions to the episode, there were gasps and groans from the women seated around him. Kyra’s fingers shook on her zoom lens; her lips formed a tight, angry line.

“Dustbin.” The little boy pointed at himself on-screen. “Thas Dustbin, Geema.”

The camera angle changed and the screen filled with a shot of the open front door of the house. A small old man with close-cropped white hair and matching caterpillar eyebrows teetered briefly on the front stoop and then began to walk toward the camera. He was dressed in a baggy white shirt and pants, which had been paired with an equally ill-fitting blue blazer. He held an unlit cigar in one hand and had a captain’s hat tucked under his arm. His welcome was delivered directly to the camera as if he were that captain welcoming people onto the Love Boat.

“Gax!” Once again Dustin seemed to be the only audience member who hadn’t gone silent in shock.

Will watched all that followed with interest. Max Golden was a ninety-year-old former vaudevillian with a warm twinkle in his eyes and a still-ready wit. But the thing that kept Will’s eyes locked on the screen was the women’s anger and discomfort in response to the clearly unexpected and intrusive camera. Equally riveting was the horrible state of the house, which had been chopped into apartments that they were somehow supposed to turn back into a single-family home.

“Jesus,” he said when the show cut to a commercial for some sort of drain cleaner. “The Millicent makes Mermaid Point look like a piece of cake.” He pushed back the unexpected sympathy he felt for them. It was bad enough to be on a reality TV show knowingly; how much more awful to end up there without any warning. Up until now he’d thought he was the one lacking options.

No one said anything right away. In fact, they seemed to be having trouble finding their voices.

“I told you those cutoffs and halter were a mistake,” Deirdre said to Avery, who gave her an eye roll in return.

“I can’t believe how stunned and frightened we all look,” Nicole said as she munched on popcorn. “It’s like watching one of those old cowboy movies where the settlers look up and see the entire pissed-off Comanche Nation riding down on their defenseless wagon train.”

“It looks like a frickin’ ambush all right,” Will said.

“We look completely stupid and inept,” Avery muttered.

Kyra glared at Troy. “You added way more shots of Dustin into the opening scenes than we agreed. That’s not what the opening sequence looked like when I left the edit session.”

“Lisa Hogan had final cut,” the cameraman said with an apologetic shrug. “And what the network head wants, the network head gets.”

Will and Tommy exchanged a glance. The cast and crew Will had envisioned as invaders and conquerors were starting to look a lot more like victims. If they weren’t a part of his son’s plan to turn his private retreat into a damned hotel, he might have felt sorry for them.

“Max looks like a nice guy.” Even Tommy seemed subdued by the intrusive nature of the video.

Will wondered if his son had given any thought to what this Do Over project might really cost in terms of humiliation and intrusion. Or maybe that was the point. Maybe he just hadn’t fully realized how public a payback this renovation might be.

Madeline’s discomfort was a tangible thing. He’d already discovered that she could get feisty when pushed, but she was about as thick-skinned as the little boy in her lap. How desperate did you have to be to open your family up to this kind of personal exposure? “You know, being that bug under the media microscope doesn’t get any easier. Max handles it pretty well. I bet he ate up the stage back in the day.” It was the only positive thing he could think of to offer. “What happened to him after the show?”

They looked at him blankly. Troy lowered his camera from his shoulder, set it on the coffee table.

“Max died.” Kyra’s tone was terse. Tears pooled in her eyes. “If you watch all eight episodes you’ll get to see him take a bullet meant for Dustin.”

“You’re shitting me,” Will said.

“Deirdre got shot, too.” Maddie said this quietly. Will turned to look at the older blonde, who was rubbing her arm almost reflexively. “Deirdre threw herself in front of a bullet to protect Avery.”

“Jesus.” Will studied the women around him; they were a mixed lot and yet they seemed somehow fused together. But then it sounded like they’d been through way more crap together than he had imagined. Still, the mood was way too somber for comfort. “So . . . the homeowner doesn’t always die in the end, does he?” He couldn’t quite keep a completely straight face. And he saw flickers of surprised amusement on theirs.

“We don’t actually know.” He could see Avery working to keep her tone deadpan.

“And why is that?” he asked, playing along.

“You’re only the second homeowner we’ve dealt with.” She smiled grimly.

He turned and caught Maddie’s eyes on him. He winked at her. “I guess I’d better be on my best behavior, then.”

The next morning after the debacle of the Do Over premiere, even the rooster’s cock-a-doodle-doo sounded subdued. Maddie left the houseboat to walk to the main house while the sun was still ascending and was drenched in sweat by the time she got there. The roofers were already at work, their clatter and clang echoing all over the island. She peeked at the pool and saw William cutting through the water, his strong arms flashing with each stroke. Letting herself in the unlocked front door she stood in the front hall, where the blast of air-conditioning hit her full force, chilling her damp skin.

In the kitchen she put on a pot of coffee, assembled the boxes Avery had left for her, and began to empty the kitchen cabinets, which were slated to be demolished.

The others had been sent out to the garage with bags of kitty litter meant to soak up the gasoline stains on the cement floors and sledgehammers to take down walls and remove the garage doors. She knew she’d been given the easier duty, but she also knew it came with a price—she was supposed to help talk William Hightower into lending his face and name and possibly some of his memorabilia to shore up the insufficient budget.

With all the noise on the roof she didn’t hear footsteps approaching and jumped when she realized Thomas Hightower was behind her.

“Sorry.” He was dressed in khaki shorts and a pale blue polo, but his feet were bare. “I didn’t mean to scare you. I knew they’d start early to beat the heat, so, well, sleeping in is definitely not an option.”

“There’s coffee if you’d like some.” Maddie snapped off a length of strapping tape and began to tape up the bottom of the box she’d been holding.

“Thanks.” He poured a mug and leaned against the counter to drink it. “It tastes a lot better than anything Will or I have ever brewed.”

“Your dad’s taste seems pretty . . . simple for someone so . . . famous.”

“Oh, yeah.” His tone was droll. “Sex, drugs, and rock ’n’ roll. That was always the holy trinity for him. Food wasn’t ever in the mix.”

Maddie kept her eyes on the box, unsure what to say.

“You seem like a nice lady. I’d be careful not to be sucked in by the ‘new leaf’ thing; my father’s turned over so many his branches are completely bare.”

Maddie felt the oddest urge to defend William Hightower. She resisted it.

“I can see you don’t want to believe it. He’s always had that effect on women. Or maybe it’s just that you can get away with almost anything if you’re famous enough.”

She busied herself folding another box. The distance between William and his son and their disagreement over the renovation had been clear from the day they’d arrived, but she hadn’t realized quite how great the distance was until now. She was reminding herself that this was not her business when Thomas said, “My mother was only seventeen when he spotted her at some concert. She followed him all over the damned world, acting like none of the other women he screwed meant anything. She hid from the truth in drugs and denial—just like he always has.” He shook his head, ran a hand through his dark hair. “He treated her like shit, but right up until the day she OD’d she was still telling herself that deep down he really loved her.”

“Maybe he did.” Maddie had barely renewed her vow to keep her thoughts to herself before she spoke. “Sometimes it’s hard for children to see adults through grown-up eyes.”

He snorted. “I don’t think there was anything particularly adult about either of them.”

There were thuds and thumps from the roof. The front door opened and Kyra came in with Dustin, who had his favorite truck and tool belt with him. His face lit up when Kyra set him down on his feet. He toddled to Maddie, arms outstretched. She swooped him up as Thomas Hightower watched.

“Can he stay with you for a while?” Kyra asked. “I want to go out and get some action shots in the garage. I don’t think I have any footage of Nicole and Deirdre swinging sledgehammers.” She smiled, and Maddie was glad to see that she seemed to have shrugged off some of the previous night’s anger. Now if they could all just forget about the humiliation.

“Sure.”

Maddie set Dustin on his feet and then buckled his tool belt onto his small hips as the front door slammed shut. Moments later Dustin’s head snapped up. He broke into another smile when he spotted Will. “Billyum!”

Droplets of water glistened in William Hightower’s dark chest hair. A striped towel had been tied around his hips. His abs were tighter than sixty-one-year-old abs had any right to be.

Thomas straightened. Maddie saw his surprise when Dustin toddled straight toward Will and threw his arms around the rocker’s bare legs. Thomas’s surprise turned to shock when William bent down and shook his head to spray droplets of water at Dustin.

“You wet!” Dustin reached out and tugged on William’s hair. Hightower laughed and shook his head again, spraying Dustin in the face. He looked like a healthy male animal. The laughter made him human.

William looked at her and Thomas. He smiled amiably. “Morning. Do we have any juice for my friend here? As I recall, he favors grape.”

“Gwape!” Dustin crowed.

A smile tugged at her lips. It fled when she saw Thomas’s eyes darken in . . . she couldn’t quite identify the emotion.

“Up!” Dustin let go of Will’s leg and reached out to be picked up.

William put his hands on Dustin’s waist and lifted him. He held him at arms’ length, chubby legs dangling, as if unsure what to do next. “I never was any good at this.”

“Now, there’s an understatement,” Thomas muttered under his breath.

“Here, sit him down.” She motioned to the bar stool next to Thomas. “Would you like some coffee?”

“Yeah, thanks.” William sat in the third bar stool, which left Dustin in the center of a Hightower sandwich.

Maddie pulled a juice box from the refrigerator, poked the tiny straw into it, and set it in front of her grandson. “When Thomas was little did he like to be in the water as much as Dustin does?” she asked, wanting to include the younger Hightower in the conversation.

William looked at her, every bit as surprised as his son by the question. “Are you kidding? I used to think he was part fish. In fact, I’m pretty sure he learned to swim before he could walk.”

There was a small exhalation of breath from Thomas.

“He used to love it when I sprayed him like this.” William leaned over and shook his head at Dustin. Her grandson giggled. “Tommy was only a little older than Dustin when I bought the island.”

Thomas’s brow furrowed.

“And he was fast,” William said to Maddie. “I used to have to chase him all over the beach to catch him when it was time to go inside. Even at dusk, when the mosquitoes were big enough to carry him off.”

Thomas looked at his father as if he had never seen him before.

“Are you telling me you don’t remember?” William asked.

“What I remember is that you were always gone. And that about two minutes after my mother died you shipped me off to boarding school.”

William studied his son’s face. “Seriously? That’s it?”

Thomas Hightower nodded slowly. “Yep, I’d say that pretty much sums it up.”

“Man.” William’s voice was tinged with irony. “I’ve spent a huge part of my life trying to blot out the bad things. It never occurred to me that anybody would want to blot out all the good stuff.”

Father and son contemplated each other out of identical brown eyes under identical slashes of brow. She waited for one of them to say something that might facilitate a more in-depth conversation, something that might bridge the distance between them; but neither man spoke. She didn’t know how the male species had survived when so many of them had so little clue. “Are you hungry?” she asked finally. “There are eggs in the fridge. I could scramble a few or maybe make you omelets. Kind of a last semiofficial meal before this kitchen gets torn out.”

They shrugged; same move, different shoulders. “I don’t think I’m all that hungry.” Thomas automatically began to decline as William asked, “Is there any of that lasagna left?”

“Um, yes.” Maddie knew this because she’d wrapped and put it away herself the night before. “But it is eight thirty in the morning.”

“There’s never a bad time for Italian food,” William said. “But morning’s the best time in the world for cold lasagna.”

“Okay.” She went to the refrigerator to retrieve the leftovers. “Is that some sort of Hightower family tradition?”

Will snorted. “I don’t think we had anything that could be called a tradition. Unless it was being stoned out of your mind.” He looked at Thomas thoughtfully. “Your grandmother wasn’t much of a cook. Actually, I don’t know how good a cook she might have been because she and my dad were usually too shitfaced to think about food.”

“Tit faced!” Dustin’s pronunciation was a bit off, but there was apparently nothing wrong with his hearing.

“Sorry,” Will said, but his gaze went back to his son. “The thing about the lasagna is I used to steal Stouffer’s from the Stop ’n’ Go in town whenever old Hyram would go to the men’s room and leave the store unattended. The freezer case was right near the front door.” He sounded quite pleased with himself. “It was your uncle Tommy’s and my favorite breakfast.”

Thomas’s eyes registered doubt, but his rigid expression softened. “You’ve never talked about Uncle Tommy. You gave me his name and acted like it was some great honor. But you never talked about him.”

“Yeah, well. I always meant to.” William ran a hand through hair that was still more wet than dry. “You look just like him. Every time I see one of his expressions cross your face . . . some things are just too hard to talk about. Hell, I’ve been doing my best not to even think about them all these years.”

In a movie the two might have embraced, past hurts and grudges magically forgiven. The music would swell. But this was real life. The only sounds here were the thuds, footsteps, and shouts that reached them from the roof and the slurp of the last of Dustin’s gwape juice coming up through the tiny straw.

Maddie pulled the leftover lasagna out of the refrigerator and carried it to the counter. Neither Hightower looked ready for a Hallmark moment, but neither of them had cut and run, either. She was prepared to count that as a victory. “What do people who eat lasagna for breakfast wash it down with?” Maddie cut the hunk of lasagna in half.

“Nowadays they wash it down with milk,” William said. “How about you, Tommy?” he asked. “Do you want some?”

Maddie pulled two glasses out of the cupboard, then retrieved the jug of milk from the refrigerator.

“All right,” Thomas said. His tone was skeptical, but Maddie thought there was a note of pleasure beneath it. “I guess I’ll give it a go. But I’m pretty sure there’s a reason you don’t see lasagna on the breakfast menu at IHOP.”