Read Online McMansion by Justin Scott - Free Book Online

admitted knowing how to drive a bulldozer.
    More promising was a guy who had been suing Billy for shoddy construction work on his nine-hundred-and-fifty-thousand-dollar McMansion. It didn’t sound like a thing that would go to bulldozers, but when I learned that the homeowner had rented a backhoe to excavate a pond in a wet spot in the back of his property—a wet spot that had already been a pond before Total Landscape filled it in one dark night to preempt a wetlands-protection challenge to that particular development—I figured I better talk to him.
    Billy had named the development Equestrian Ridge.
    The houses were wedged in a dark hollow and nine hundred and fifty thousand hadn’t bought much space. The big guy who opened his front door and stepped back to let me enter tripped on the curving staircase Billy had pried into the two-story entryway. I helped him to his feet. Something loud began to roar somewhere in the house and we both looked at the ceiling.
    A crystal chandelier shook musically.
    â€œMy wife’s in the Jacuzzi,” he explained.
    I was tempted to ask with whom? Framed posters were shifting on their moorings. The floor vibrated underfoot.
    â€œI grew up in apartments. I never owned a house before. Is this supposed to happen?”
    I backed out from under the chandelier. “Depends on your builder. Not if he’s a craftsman like Ed Soares or John Blomberg. Or even Louie Minalgo,” I added, naming a cantankerous Yankee who did superb work if it wasn’t trout, deer, or turkey season. “Guys like them still build a solid house. Your wife could teach line dancing upstairs and we wouldn’t feel a thing.”
    â€œThat’s what I kept telling my idiot lawyer. Billy Tiller was a chiseling shoddy crook.”
    â€œHow was your lawsuit going?”
    His face fell. “The lawyer told me she thought we’d lose. I was feeling pretty bad, before that kid killed him.”
    â€œI heard you dug a pond.”
    â€œI tried. I figured a backhoe was like driving a car. But it sunk in the mud. I finally had to bring in a pro. Dave Charney.”
    â€œThe best.”
    He walked me out onto a scruffy lawn, the hallmark of a building lot scraped clean of natural topsoil, and showed me his pond. I told him it would look wonderful in a few years. Which it would, if the plants he had bought at the nursery to replace the mountain laurel flattened by Total Landscape matured before the deer ate them.
    Back indoors, his wife came down all flushed and pretty in a terry bathrobe. She complained to her husband, obviously not for the first time, that their Jacuzzi had consumed all their hot water, and insisted that I stay for coffee. On the way to the kitchen, we passed a living room which was empty but for a baby grand piano with the lid wide open and dust thick on the strings. She noticed that I noticed and said, “They told us to close it, but it looks so pretty open.”
    â€œWho plays?”
    â€œWe’re going to get lessons for the kids.”
    The kitchen, the usual lineup of granite, stainless steel, cherry, tile, big screen TV, and marble bar leading to the family room, reeked faintly of bacon grease as a Billy Tiller “gourmet chef delight” was designed more for unwrapping takeout than actual cooking with a real exhaust fan that vented outdoors. Over excellent coffee, they both talked about how lonely they felt moving to Connecticut. I told them that Yankees warm slowly, and recommended volunteering at the high school or joining the community theater. Pitching in was always welcome. I did not mention that new people living in expensive houses on quiet cul-de-sacs often took the heat for the developers.
    â€œWe’ll settle in,” the woman said. “We’ll make it home.” Then she smiled, “I always dreamed of living in a new house. With fresh paint and lots of room.”
    ***
    Ira Roth was wearing his wireless headset.