Housebreaking

Book : A Literary Drama

by Dan Pope

Genres: Family Life; Literary Fiction

Synopsis

In this gripping, gorgeous literary drama, two suburban families are hopelessly entangled during an explosive Thanksgiving weekend that changes their lives forever.

When Benjamin’s wife kicks him out of their house, he returns to his childhood home in Connecticut to live with his widowed father. Lost, lonely, and doubting everything he felt he knew about marriage and love—even as his eighty-year-old father begins to date again—Benjamin is trying to put his life back together when he recognizes someone down the street: his high school crush, the untouchable Audrey Martin. Audrey has just moved to the neighborhood with her high-powered lawyer husband and their rebellious teenage daughter, Emily. As it turns out, Audrey isn’t so untouchable anymore, and she and Benjamin begin to discover, in each other’s company, answers to many of their own deepest longings. Meanwhile, as the neighborhood is wracked by a mysterious series of robberies, Audrey seems to be hiding a tragic secret, her husband becomes involved in a dangerous professional game he can never win, and, by the way, who is paying attention to Emily?

Powerful, provocative, and psychologically gripping, Housebreaking explores the ways in which two families—and four lives—can all too easily veer off track, losing sight of everyone and everything they once held dear. Like the best from Tom Perotta and Rick Moody, who capture the darker truths of modern suburban life, this literary triumph from an immensely talented writer offers an insightful, funny, and terrifyingly authentic portrait of modern suburban life that reveals how little we know of one another’s lives.

Release date: May 12, 2015

Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Print pages: 288

Sample

Housebreaking

The last day of summer, 2007

THE NIGHT his wife kicked him out, Benjamin Mandelbaum took the dog and a bag of clothes and drove to his father’s house in Wintonbury. It was 10:00 P.M. on a Saturday, the suburban street as quiet as a graveyard. He got out of his car and felt the wind rise, stirring the leaves of the apple tree he’d climbed as a boy. He took the spare key from under the flowerpot and let the dog in ahead of him. The house smelled like mothballs and stale cologne, an old man’s lair.

A few minutes later Leonard appeared in his bathrobe at the top of the stairs. “Who’s there?”

“It’s me, Dad.”

“Benjamin? What’s going on?”

Yukon rushed up the stairs and sniffed at a stain on Leonard’s robe. Benjamin realized that, in all the commotion, he had forgotten to feed the dog its dinner. “I’ll be staying over, if that’s okay.”

“That’s fine. That’s fine.” His father had a habit of saying things twice. “Where’s Judy?”

“She’s home.”

His father’s eyes were bloodshot, his face puffy from sleep.

“Go back to bed,” said Benjamin. “We’ll talk tomorrow.”

“There’s some tuna salad in the fridge.”

In the kitchen, Benjamin filled a bowl with water while the dog went from room to room, inspecting. The refrigerator was practically empty: the bowl of dry tuna, a few brown eggs, mustard and ketchup on the side shelves, lemons and wilted lettuce in the crisper. His father had lost weight since Mom’s death, and now Benjamin could see why. In the cold-cuts drawer he found an unopened can of corn. In the freezer, among the frozen vegetables and meats, he found something even odder: a pack of Marlboros with only two cigarettes left. His father didn’t smoke. Had he started now, at eighty-four? And why keep them in the freezer?

After Myra’s funeral, Benjamin and his sister had tried to convince their father to sell the house and move into a retirement community. They thought it would be good for him: Leonard had always been a social creature; part of his job at the car dealership was going to restaurants and functions, handing out his business card. But Leonard wouldn’t hear of it. He kept up the house as if Myra were still alive. It became a shrine of sorts: her clothes still hanging in the closet, her prescription bottles in the medicine cabinet, framed photographs of her in every room. His sole occupation was maintaining everything as she had liked it. He hired landscapers, gardeners, and handymen. It all made Benjamin wonder if he would end up the same way: old, alone, going to bed early, living with the ghosts of his past.

He went into the den and stood before the wet bar. His father always had a fine selection of single malt—not Benjamin’s intoxicant of choice, but he’d left his stash of pot in the glove compartment. He poured a Glenlivet and added two ice cubes. His father had excellent taste in the good things—liquor, clothes, shoes. The old man had style, even if he now wore his pants cinched over his navel, shuffling around the house in his slippers. Benjamin eased onto the sofa and found himself exhaling after each sip of scotch, happy to be home.

Home. The word gave him some comfort. Sure, Leonard was eighty-four. But his father would take care of him, even if Benjamin didn’t need taking care of. He felt a luxurious heat rising from the liquor, and for the first time in a while he felt like he could breathe easily. Judy’s presence had weighed on him for so long. He’d been held accountable for nearly every moment; his cell phone rang ten times a day, a phantom chaperone. Where was he? Did he remember to pick up the dry cleaning? Her prescription? He sighed. Years ago, he’d found it endearing that she wanted their lives so intertwined.

Yukon came into the den and stood before him, panting. “Lie down,” Benjamin said. “We’re not going anywhere.” The dog obeyed, but was up again after a few minutes, padding out to the kitchen, roaming the first floor. Benjamin intended to walk the dog—their nightly ritual—but he dozed off after his third glass of scotch, and Yukon lay in the doorway, head between his paws, watching him. The dog slept, but not deeply. He whimpered throughout the night, unaccustomed to this strange house and its old man’s smell.

Outside on the front lawn, a mob of deer nibbled at the arborvitae, silent as ghosts, watchful as criminals. Somewhere deep in the woods, an owl warbled.

* * *

THE NEXT MORNING Leonard Mandelbaum came downstairs to find his son snoring on the couch, his hair covering his face. He had a fine head of curly black hair, Benjamin did. Leonard stood for a moment, admiring his son, who looked childlike curled in sleep, his hands tucked under his chin. Leonard saw Benjamin regularly at the office, but it had been a long time since he’d been able to watch his son sleep. Leonard noticed the bottle of scotch and the empty glass on the coffee table. Benjamin had been a beer drinker ever since high school, when his pals would come to the house to play Ping-Pong in the basement. To take up the hard liquor meant something was bothering him. More trouble with Judy, no doubt. It was a shame that they argued so often. Leonard had always liked Judy. She’d helped out with Myra during her illness, staying up nights when the late nurse didn’t show. You could always depend on Judy. A fine, sturdy woman. A good mother to the children. And she’d converted too, mainly to please him and Myra. How many gals would do that for their in-laws?

Leonard went into the kitchen to start the coffee and opened the Hartford Courant to the obituaries. Each day, it seemed, he knew one of the deceased, usually someone who’d bought a car from him. Leonard Mandelbaum never forgot the name of a good customer.

Today it was Manny Silverman. Above the obituary was a thumb-size photo taken in the 1950s, around the time Leonard had put Manny into his first DeVille. In lieu of flowers donations may be made to the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. Cancer, then. Poor Manny. Leonard had sold him another five Cadillacs over the next fifty years, most recently a top-of-the-line XLR. That had been when? Last year? No, longer than that. He recalled telling Myra about it—dapper old Manny in his seersucker suit, zooming off the lot in a seventy-thousand-dollar convertible.

Leonard went into the front hallway and sat at the mahogany desk, where he made his phone calls and wrote his personal notes and letters to the editor. When his grandchildren visited they treated his black rotary phone like some Ice Age fossil. Fingering the dial, David had once asked, Does this actually work, Grandpa?

Leonard took a sheet of his personal stationery from the desk drawer and wrote, In Memory of Manny Silverman. He checked the date on his calendar—September 23, 2007—and wrote a hundred-dollar check to the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. On another sheet of paper, he composed a letter to the editors of the Wintonbury Gazette.

Manny Silverman, who died recently, served this community for more than forty years as a dentist of great skill. He filled two pages with remembrances, then concluded: When we lose a man like Manny Silverman, we lose a small part of the qualities that he stood for: integrity, wisdom, professionalism. We will miss you, Manny.

He addressed the envelopes, pasted on the stamps, and brought them to the front porch. He checked his watch: not yet 8 A.M. As he put the letters in the mailbox, Benjamin’s dog appeared in the doorway, tail slashing.

“Stay,” said Leonard, trying to conjure the dog’s name. “Stay right there.” The dog wanted to go outside and run around, like all dogs, but he was well trained and would not disobey. Benjamin always trained his pets well. So many dogs and cats had come and gone, Leonard could not remember this animal’s name. “Good boy,” he said. “That’s a good boy. Now go sit.”

Benjamin would be up soon, and hungry. His son liked raspberry Danish from the Crown Market. He complained that he couldn’t find anything as good in Granby. Leonard picked up his keys and his wallet, got into his Escalade, and accelerated out of the driveway.

At the bottom of the street he noticed a few pickup trucks parked outside Eleanor Hufnagle’s place, with workmen milling around the yard. The farmhouse had been unoccupied for years, ever since Eleanor collapsed at her ironing board and the postman found her four days later. The woman had lived to ninety-nine alone in that house. He had one of her oil paintings hanging in his den. Loss of a great artist, Leonard had written, then, to the Wintonbury Gazette.

At the supermarket, he clipped the curb pulling into the handicap space. His physician had gotten him the permit for his arthritic knees. All those years of running—on the track team at City College, in boot camp in the Navy, then later on the tennis courts at Tumble Brook Country Club—had taken their toll. You’re rubbing bone on bone, the doctor had told him, and that was exactly what it felt like these mornings, worse in wintertime.

At this hour he had his pick at the bakery. Most days the challah went before noon, no matter how many times he complained to the manager about the shortage. He often had to go without challah or marbled rye if he got there late. And Benjamin was absolutely correct about the quality of the baked goods. You’d have to go to New York City to find a better challah. He picked out a couple of loaves, a few Danish, and a coffee cake. Orange juice, he remembered, which Benjamin drank like water. He examined the cartons in the cooler, feeling the chill of the refrigeration. Was it Tropicana or Minute Maid that Benjamin liked? Pulp or no pulp? There were so many different brands now, so many choices. Reaching for one of the cartons, he lost his grip on the challah, and it fell, followed by the marbled rye. “Dammit,” he hissed.

“Let me help you, Mr. Mandelbaum.”

Leonard turned to see a middle-aged man, dressed in sweat clothes and a baseball cap like a high school kid. He gathered Leonard’s items from the floor and rose to his full height. “It’s Dick Funkhouser,” he said, smiling.

Leonard took his hand. “I knew your father. A wizard with a nine iron. How’s your mother? I haven’t seen her at the club lately.” Terri Funkhouser, originally from Newark; she’d never lost the accent. Myra hadn’t liked her. Said she smelled like cheap perfume.

“She’s not a member anymore. Ever since Dad passed.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

The man carried Leonard’s goods to the checkout line and placed them on the conveyor belt. Leonard began fishing in his wallet for some cash.

“She doesn’t get out of the house very often,” said Dick Funkhouser. “She always speaks fondly of you.” He produced a pen and scribbled something onto a scrap of paper. Leonard pulled his reading glasses out of his breast pocket and examined the note: a phone number.

“She’d love to have dinner or see a show. You should call her.”

Leonard tucked the slip of paper into his pocket. Why would he call Terri Funkhouser? He hardly knew her. The woman hadn’t been a regular presence at the country club or synagogue. Dick Senior had once complained that his wife would rather stay home with a bottle of sherry than go to the Met. She has low tastes, he had confided.

“Are you a member of the club?” asked Leonard.

“I’m not much of an athlete,” said Dick Funkhouser.

“I see.” Leonard remembered now. The son had resigned from the club following the scandal at Funkhouser’s Dry Cleaning. After Dick Senior died, the son had ruined the business on bad loans, second mortgages, tax evasions. A shame, that sort of financial mismanagement. Dick Senior had put his life into dry cleaning.

“Let me take the groceries out to your car.”

Leonard shook his head. “I’m fine. I’m fine.”

Back at the house, he carried the brown bags up the front steps. Benjamin met him at the door. He looked puffy-eyed but otherwise his same boyish self, curly-haired, fit, more handsome than his dad ever was. The girls had always gone wild for Benjamin, as far back as junior high school. Fonzie, some of the gals called him then, on account of the resemblance.

“I’ve got Danish,” he told his son.

* * *

AFTER BREAKFAST a car horn blared from the street. Benjamin looked out the kitchen window and saw the familiar red pickup truck pull into the driveway; MARIANI LANDSCAPING, read the faded letters on the side. Two men got out, slamming the doors.

“Who’s that?” said Leonard, peering over Benjamin’s shoulder.

“No one.”

“Are those Judy’s brothers? Why are they honking the horn? It’s a Sunday morning, for goodness’ sake.”

“I’ll take care of it.”

Benjamin went out the front door in his socks. “What’s up, guys?”

Anthony, the youngest of the three brothers, glanced at him and went around to the back of the truck and pulled down the tailgate. There was a third brother, currently under house arrest on a DUI charge. In the winter they did snowplowing, and sometimes Lou worked maintenance for a guitar factory in New Hartford.

Anthony pulled a set of golf clubs from the bed of the truck and dumped the bag onto the lawn. A couple of yellow Titleists rolled out of the bag toward his dad’s Japanese maple.

“Here’s all your shit. Special delivery.”

The truck smelled of gasoline and grass clippings. Benjamin peered into the back, seeing a jumble of clothes, luggage, skis, books, DVDs, Rollerblades. Actually, those were his son’s Rollerblades. Judy must have gotten confused in her frenzy. He could picture her rifling through the closets in the basement and attic, plucking his possessions from the wreckage of their marriage. How exhilarated she must have felt, purifying herself of him. She’d always liked throwing things out. He noticed random clutter as well. Board games. A black-and-white TV with a broken antenna. Even some of her old clothes. He recognized a French maid’s costume, a Valentine’s gift from years ago. The brothers tossed it all onto the lawn, a showering of his worldly possessions, old and new. His Matrix trilogy hit the grass, and one of the DVDs slipped out of its case and rolled toward the street.

So this was payback.

He had played nice with the brothers all these years, sharing beers at family gatherings, listening to their inane opinions about Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, their crass jokes. He shouldn’t have tried so hard. They’d turned against him openly ten years ago, after the blowout with Judy over the Dutch au pair. But they’d never liked him. They were Italians; he was a Jew, and their sister had converted to marry him. Sometimes they’d even called him that to his face as a sort of joke: “the Jew.”

Anthony was wearing his usual ripped jeans and T-shirt. He had a closely cropped head with a long, thin string of hair growing from the nape of his neck, like a rat’s tail. He was the talker in the family; the other two rarely said a word.

“Twenty years you jerked my sister around,” he said.

“You’ve never been married,” said Benjamin. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“No?” He flicked away his cigarette and pulled a pile of clothes on hangers out of the bed of the truck and tossed them onto the driveway. Benjamin noticed his navy blue Brioni on the top of the pile, his best suit. He’d worn it to weddings and parties, never to work. On sale it had cost him eight hundred bucks.

“You ruined her life,” said Anthony, stepping close to Benjamin. “That’s what she told me this morning. Her exact words.”

Benjamin held his gaze, feeling vulnerable in his socks. Both brothers were wearing heavy boots flecked with cut grass. “Yeah, well. She had some things to say about you over the years, believe me.”

“Fuck you,” said Anthony.

Lou quickly stepped between them. “Cut the high school stuff.” He shoved his brother back. “Look,” he said to Benjamin. “You got no reason to go back to the house. This is all your junk right here. Judy doesn’t want to see you anymore.”

“That’s the way it’s going to be,” said Anthony. “Got it?”

Benjamin didn’t answer.

The brothers got into the truck and backed out, running over his suit.

Leonard joined Benjamin in the driveway, squinting into the sun. “A shame, throwing around private belongings like garbagemen. You should tell Judy what they did.”

Benjamin picked up his suit. There was a tire tread on the front lapel. Maybe the dry cleaner could get it out.

“Judy sent them.”

“Not Judy. She wouldn’t do that.”

“Well, she did.”

“She’ll cool off. She’s a fine woman. A good mother.”

Maybe she would cool off, but Benjamin doubted it. Temper, temper, he used to lecture, like a schoolmarm, whenever she lost it and started yelling at some slowpoke driver or snippy salesclerk. Maybe she hadn’t told her brothers to trash his stuff, but she certainly had packed it up and told them to take it away. Take him out of her life.

Benjamin gathered the rest of his clothes, his hands trembling with adrenaline. He was conscious of Franky DiLorenzo, watching from his front lawn next door, a water hose in his hand. Benjamin rubbed the tears from his eyes. It always happened when he felt angry or threatened, ever since he was a child, this sudden welling. He never cried when he was sad, not even when his mother died—not at her funeral, not even the night before her death when she’d told him in a moment of lucidity, You’re my love, Benjamin. You always were.

A car pulled up on the street. A man in shorts and a Hawaiian shirt got out and strolled up the driveway, pursing his lips. “How much for the skis?” he said.

“What?”

“The skis. What are you asking?”

Leonard and Benjamin stood staring at the man.

“This a tag sale, isn’t it?” the man asked.

Benjamin sighed. “Sure.” He hadn’t gone skiing for five or six years, not since the kids rebelled against weekends in the woods near Okemo with nothing to do, so far from their friends. “Twenty bucks.”

The man scratched the back of his neck. “Would you take ten?”

* * *

THAT AFTERNOON was the first day of autumn, technically, but it felt more like mid-July, the sky an endless canvas of pale blue, the temperature well into the eighties. After a few trips up and down the stairs, Benjamin felt the sweat dripping down his face and back.

“That’s a lousy delivery job.”

Benjamin looked up to see Franky DiLorenzo coming across the lawn. Benjamin forced a laugh. “I’ll say.”

They shook hands. In the silence that followed he became aware of Franky DiLorenzo eyeing his wrinkled slacks and button-down shirt, which he’d worn to work the day before. “A bit of trouble on the home front,” Benjamin explained. “I’ll be sticking around for a while.”

Franky’s eyes flashed with interest. “I’m sorry to hear that.”

“Part of life, I guess.”

Franky DiLorenzo was wearing a T-shirt, shorts, and flip-flops. He wore this same garb into November, sometimes December. He was horseshoe-bald, a bit stooped in the shoulders, and thin as a marathoner, yet he seemed impervious to the elements and he never tired of physical labor. He’d worked as a mechanic for thirty years at a garage in town. Now he spent his days in his yard, mowing, trimming, repairing. He also did chores for Leonard and Betty Amato and other elderly people in the neighborhood—taking out their garbage, fixing what needed to be fixed—and he refused to accept any payment in return. Benjamin considered him a godsend, the way he helped out his father.

“Did you see what’s going on at the Hufnagle place?”

“No.” Benjamin looked toward the bottom of the street, shading his eyes. He saw a couple of trucks parked in front of the old farmhouse.

“It finally sold,” said Franky. “Court-ordered, I heard.”

“That house has been empty for a long time.”

“Five years almost,” Franky said and nodded. “A lawyer bought it, a guy named Andrew Murray. He’s about forty-five. He gutted the place—kitchen, bathrooms, wooden floors, central air. A hundred grand in upgrades, minimum.”

“Is he going to flip it?”

“No, they just moved in. I met him and his wife a few weeks ago in the yard. She goes by her own name, Audrey Martin. A real pretty lady. They mentioned a seventeen-year-old daughter, but I haven’t seen her yet.”

“Audrey Martin?” It had been many years, but the name clicked instantly.

“Do you know her?”

“I went to high school with an Audrey Martin. She was in the class ahead of me at Goodwin.”

Franky shrugged. “It might be her. She’s about your age. They’re moving up here from Greenwich. He took a job at a firm in Hartford.”

“You’re amazing, Franky. Nothing gets by you.”

Franky smiled. “Well, I like to keep an eye on the neighborhood, with all the break-ins lately.”

“What break-ins?”

“I told your dad, but I guess he forgot to mention it. Somebody’s been smashing car windows, stealing things out of garages and toolsheds.”

“When did this happen?”

Franky DiLorenzo leaned in close and lowered his voice. “The trouble started last year, about the same time this family moved into a ranch on Lostwood Drive. They’re from Texas. The mother’s divorced with two teenage boys on her hands. The oldest is seventeen. Billy Stacks. That’s the punk. He assaulted some girl in Texas when he was fourteen, I heard. Too young to do jail time. You’ll see him riding around the neighborhood on a motor scooter. He’s got a shaved head, tattoos all over his arms, wears his pants down below his waist. I got my eye on that kid.”

“You think he’s the one causing trouble?”

“I can’t prove it, but I got my suspicions.”

Franky loved conversation, and with time on his hands, he was in no hurry to get back to watering his lawn. He was nearly fifty years old, retired early. He lived in a bedroom above the garage in his mother’s house, had lived there his entire life, a room Benjamin had never entered. All the kids Benjamin had known growing up—Mike Cosgrove, Diana Estabrook, Tony Papadakis, Timmy and Albert Amato—had moved away long ago; only Franky DiLorenzo remained, the mainstay, the keeper of the vineyard. Benjamin found it ironic that Franky would be concerned about this neighborhood troublemaker because, in his teen years, Franky himself had been the local delinquent, driving hot rods around town and raising hell at the bowling alley. But after Franky’s sister went off to college (rarely to be seen again) and his dad died, Franky had evolved, instantly, as far as Benjamin could recall, into the person they all knew—Franky the dependable, the squire of Apple Hill Road. He went back and forth to work at the garage, year after year. There had been girlfriends, but Franky had never married. Every night he and his mother had sat down to dinner, all those years, and when she died, a decade ago, Franky had remained alone in the house, unchanged, unchangeable.

“How’s Len?” asked Franky.

“Same.” Benjamin didn’t mention the unopened can of corn in the fridge or the pack of cigarettes in the freezer. Sure, Leonard was eighty-four, but he was still living on his own, taking care of himself. He got along fine. “Thanks for everything you’ve done for him lately.”

Franky waved away any credit. “I’m happy to help,” he said. “If he needs anything, you just let me know.”

“That means a lot to me.”

They shook hands, as if finalizing a contract.

* * *

BY LATE AFTERNOON Benjamin had hauled the last of his belongings up to his bedroom. Although he’d moved out of his parents’ house after high school, his mother and father had never encroached upon his childhood territory; they’d left the bedroom as it had always been—same furniture, same turntable and eight-track player on the desk, same posters thumbtacked to the wall (Elton John in six-inch platform shoes; Farrah Fawcett in her red one-piece). In the past, whenever he came back to visit, it had always pleased him to step into this time capsule, but now, unpacking his clothes and folding them into the dresser and closet, he felt unsettled and anxious. What was he doing back in his single bed, surrounded by these totems of his teenage self?—the baseball cards and field day trophies, the blue ribbons from forty-yard dashes he didn’t remember running, the stamp albums, LPs, and textbooks he hadn’t touched since high school.

From the bookshelf he pulled down one of his high school yearbooks. The Goodwin Academy was a prep school located on the grounds of a nineteenth-century estate in the woods along the rise of Avon Mountain, less than a mile away. There were seventy-five students in his graduating class, most of them boarders. Benjamin had been one of a handful of day students. Every afternoon he’d taken the bus home after sports period, feeling left out of the rituals and shenanigans that took place in the woods and dorm rooms during the evenings. He had been popular and athletic, a standout on the soccer and lacrosse teams, but he remembered Goodwin primarily as a place of loneliness and longing and missing out.

He turned to the page he was looking for: Audrey Martin’s senior photo. She had been one of the senior prefects, the editor of the school newspaper, and cocaptain of the gymnastics team. Her senior photo displayed her sparkly blue eyes and auburn hair, but she had been most revered for an attribute the photographer hadn’t captured: the best ass at Goodwin, full, round, and deep, but not wide. From the front, you would not suspect. But when she turned in profile, her bottom bulged into a perfect C. Often the guys would stand outside the gym, gawking as she did splits and backflips in her blue leotard.

He couldn’t claim they had been friends in high school. She probably had never noticed him, a pimply underclassman. She’d regularly passed him in the hallway without saying hello. He’d never spoken more than two sentences to her, but along with every male in his class he had admired her from afar all those years of high school, had lain awake at night thinking about her smile, her ass, imagining silly scenarios to gain her affection—saving her from thugs in a dark alleyway, or rescuing her from drowning. Back then, he’d studied the pretty senior girls as if they were exam questions. He used to make lists: who had the best legs (Gretchen Peters), best hair (Diana Castenda), best boobs (a tie, Wendy Brewster and Wendy Yelton). The two Wendys had been inseparable, one blond, one dark-haired, often walking arm in arm, hugging or leaning against each other; you could practically hear the boys groan when the two ran up and down the soccer field. Their particular shapes, and the shapes of the other girls of his school, remained fixed in Benjamin’s consciousness like graven images, as clear in memory as if they were standing in the room with him now, his first exemplars of the contours of womanhood, a