The next morning, a very hungover Cal turned into the driveway of the White Pines, a rustic Alpine-style resort built in the 1930s on twenty-five acres of waterfront property on one of the lake’s most scenic bays. Cal had been here before in summers past. It was the only place on Butternut Lake that was even remotely formal, and when he was growing up, his family had celebrated special occasions in its clubby dining room overlooking the water. Now, though, as he followed a winding gravel drive past the beachfront, the main lodge, and the guest cottages, he didn’t feel any nostalgia. He felt only the throbbing pain in his head that was the result of the five scotches he’d drunk the night before.
Allie had given him a ride into town this morning to pick up his car, and during the drive, she’d asked him to stop by the White Pines. Her friend Caroline’s husband, Jack, had a contract to renovate the cottages there, and he’d told Allie that he’d like to hear Cal’s thoughts on the project. (According to Allie, Cal already had a measure of celebrity in Jack’s eyes. He wasn’t only Allie’s brother; he was also an award-winning architect.) Cal hadn’t really wanted to come, but it was better than sitting around the cabin all day feeling terrible.
When he reached the resort’s last cottage, which was on a sandy point of land that jutted out into the bay, he parked next to a red pickup truck coated with dust. This was pretty, he thought of the wood-and-stone chalet-style cottage with water on three sides and northern pines towering above it. He followed the sound of hammering onto the front porch and called through the open door. “Hello?”
The hammering stopped, and a moment later, Jack Keegan appeared. “Hey,” he said, pulling off a work glove and extending a hand for Cal to shake. “Thanks for coming over.”
“Sure,” Cal said.
“Do you have time for me to show you around?” Jack asked.
Nothing but time, Cal thought. But to Jack he nodded and said, “Yeah, I’d love to see what you’re doing here.”
Jack gestured for him to follow. Cal walked into the cottage, remembering now what he’d heard about Jack from Allie. Apparently at one time he’d been a drinker and a womanizer. When his daughter, Daisy, was three, he’d left her and Caroline and hadn’t returned to Butternut until Daisy was in college. Now, though, he was a changed man: clean and sober, and devoted to the wife he’d remarried two and a half years ago and the daughter he’d given away at her recent wedding. Cal had liked him when he’d met him at the reception. He liked him now, too, as he talked animatedly about the improvements he planned to make to the cottage.
“Don’t get me wrong. This place is rock solid,” Jack said, reaching up and thumping on one of its rafters. “They literally don’t build them like this anymore. The foundation is still in perfect condition, and the framing is premium Douglas fir. The trouble is, we need to open the floor plan up. Otherwise it’s too dark, too claustrophobic. These non–load-bearing walls need to come down,” he said, tapping on a wall. “These windows”—here he stopped in front of a modest window that looked out on a slice of lake—“these windows have got to go. This whole wall should be glass,” he added of a wall facing the lake. “I mean, what’s the point of having a view if you can’t see it?”
Cal agreed. Jack’s plans were solid. And, once executed, should improve on the natural beauty of the cottages. Cal noticed, though, that Jack didn’t seem to have anyone working with him. There was no way he could do this job alone.
When Cal brought this up, Jack explained that he’d recently had to fire his full-time employee. “I met him at an AA meeting,” he said. “He’s a good guy. But after he showed up drunk, I had to let him go. Now he’s working with my sponsor, Walt. So we’ll see. I’ve got some new leads, though. Hopefully I won’t have to keep working weekends.”
He and Jack talked for a little while about the project. Finally Jack said he had to get back to work. Cal asked if he could take another look around. He went out on the back porch. The cottage and the view of the lake could hardly have been prettier. They reminded him of the first construction site he’d ever worked on. He had just turned sixteen, and his dad, a builder, was renovating a cottage on Cedar Lake. The year before that summer, Cal and his dad hadn’t been getting along very well. Cal, who’d always excelled in math and science, stopped working hard in school. His real interests were girls and sports. He and his dad had numerous skirmishes about his grades, his drinking and going to parties, his running around with girls, and what his dad referred to as his “general lack of seriousness.” Adding to the tension between them was the fact that Cal showed virtually no interest in his dad’s business.
That summer he turned sixteen, Cal was crazy about a girl named Victoria. They’d been going out for six months, and he wanted to buy her a piece of expensive jewelry for her birthday in August. She’d dropped more than a few hints about a bracelet on sale at the mall; Cal could still remember the three tiny rubies set in a braided gold band. Victoria was what Cal’s mom referred to as “high-maintenance.” He didn’t dare tell her that he was saving up to buy a ruby bracelet for Victoria. His mom would have thought it a frivolous expense. Besides, she already disapproved of Victoria’s focus on money and status.
In June, Cal had gotten a summer job lifeguarding at a country club in St. Paul. And though the view from his lifeguard stand was great, the pay was not. So when he overheard his dad telling his mom that one of his workers had quit, Cal said half-jokingly that he’d be interested in the job. His dad, not one for joking, had leveled a stern look at him. “If you’re really interested, I’ll hire you. The pay is much better than you’re making at the country club. But it’s hard work. And you won’t get any preferential treatment just because you’re my son.”
If it hadn’t been for Victoria, Cal probably wouldn’t have taken the job. He knew his dad was serious about making him work hard. And he wondered what the point was of sweating on a construction site if he could spend the summer watching girls in bikinis. But he took the job; he had that bracelet to think about. As it turned out, Cal was right—his dad was demanding—but he was also surprisingly patient, and he took the time to teach him how to do the work correctly. Cal discovered something about himself he hadn’t known. He loved the whole process of building—putting up a wall, laying a new floor, installing a window. More than that, he was fascinated by the possibility of designing spaces for people to live in. Of course, he was still years away from being able to do that. But the idea of it began to take shape that summer.
By early August, Cal had saved enough money to buy the bracelet and then some. The problem was, he was so tired by the time he got home from the construction site that he’d canceled more than a few dates with Victoria. When he tried to tell her about the work he was doing, she looked hopelessly bored. Or worse, sulky. In retrospect, maybe it was asking too much of her to care about the challenges of installing an eyebrow dormer, or creating an interior archway, or building bookshelves under a stairwell. These things fascinated Cal. They were what had transformed a small, dark cottage into a charming summer retreat.
In any case, the day before Cal was planning to buy the bracelet, Victoria called and told him she wanted to break up. Peter Marshall, a senior at their high school, was going to be her new boyfriend. Peter’s family had plenty of money, she explained. He didn’t need a summer job.
The summer was a turning point for Cal. Though he’d lost the girl, he’d gained a sense of direction. That fall he worked hard and pulled his grades up. He spent hours looking at buildings online. He continued working with his father, and by his senior year, he’d applied to colleges that offered undergraduate architectural courses. His dad, with whom he’d had an antagonistic relationship before, gained a new respect for Cal’s work ethic and drive.
Now Cal looked out over the lake and prodded the porch railing, which was wobbly. That would have to be replaced, he thought. And for some reason, an image of Billy last night flashed into his mind. She’d been flustered after she’d asked him if he was married. Was Billy interested in him? He’d thought so, but then again, the large quantity of scotch he’d drunk at the Corner Bar had probably clouded his judgment. He’d need to see her again, this time sober, if he wanted to find out.
He returned to the living room to say good-bye to Jack, who was taking down one of the interior walls. Cal remembered doing this on that first cottage so many summers ago. Almost without realizing it, he picked up a pry bar and started to help Jack tear the wood panels down to the studs. “Do you have an extra pair of gloves?” he asked Jack.
Jack told him where he could find them in his truck. And then the two of them spent a couple of hours working. It was harder than it looked. These weren’t the laminate, adhesive wood panels Cal had seen so often in midcentury houses. These were made of old-growth hardwood, and each panel was individually nailed into the studs. They worked in silence, and by the time they were done, Cal had broken a sweat and could feel the ache of muscles he hadn’t worked out at the gym in Seattle.
After they’d carried all of the old panels out and loaded them into a Dumpster, Jack wanted to know what he thought of the cabin now. “It’s much lighter,” Cal said approvingly as he took off the work gloves and left them on a tool tray.
“Thanks for helping out,” Jack said, shaking hands. “You probably didn’t expect to be using a pry bar on your vacation.”
“It turns out I’m not very good at being on vacation,” Cal said.
“No? Well, stop by anytime you want to,” Jack said, heading back into the cottage. “I’m going to need someone next week. On Wednesday I start putting in the windows.”
“What are you doing tomorrow?” Cal called after him.