Lipman Every Tom, Dick & Harry

the 15th whip-smart romcom from the Thurber Prize-shortlisted author of Ms Demeanor
1. Auflage 2025
ISBN: 978-1-78563-458-1
Verlag: Lightning
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 320 Seiten

'I love Elinor Lipman's wit and lightness of touch' - Marian Keyes 'The perennially mood-lifting Lipman is equally revered for her lovable characters, spitfire wit and happily-ever-after romantic escapades' - Booklist Running her parents' estate-sale business in a small Massachusetts town is not the high-flying career that 32-year-old Emma Lewis imagined for herself. But her parents make an offer she can't refuse when they move to the coast and invite her to take over their home as well as the family firm. Their only condition is that she take a lodger, in the shape of her former maths teacher Frank, a widower in his early sixties whose unfaithful wife was recently struck by lightning. Reluctant at first, Emma discovers in him the ideal housemate: considerate, helpful and a romantic ally as they each start dating different generations of the same family. Frank also helps her out with the business, but they realise they may be out of their depth when Emma wins the contract to empty a noted local mansion, only to discover it operated for years as a high-end bordello. Will her sale of the contents reveal the secrets of half the town? This charming, laugh-out-loud tale of love and licentiousness behind a respectable façade is another pitch-perfect romantic comedy from the author of Ms. Demeanor.

Elinor Lipman is the author of sixteen novels, including Good Riddance, On Turpentine Lane, Rachel to the Rescue and Ms. Demeanor, which was a finalist for the 2023 Thurber Prize for American Humor. Her debut, Then She Found Me, was adapted into a film directed by and starring Helen Hunt, with Bette Midler, Colin Firth and Matthew Broderick. She won the New England Book Award in 2001, and her novel My Latest Grievance won the Paterson Fiction Prize. She divides her time between Manhattan and the Hudson Valley.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Lipman, Elinor

Leseproben

3

Finders, Keepers’s first client was Beth herself, after she’d sold her house and moved into ours. While shopping around for the best estate sale company, she’d interviewed Goldie of Goldie’s Oldies, which would soon become our main competitor. Did they advertise? she asked. What about flyers? Signage? Liability insurance? Did they have a mailing list (which at the time meant the actual mailing of postcards)? It didn’t take long before Beth was asking herself, How hard could such a business be?

That inaugural sale set the style that Finders, Keepers would be known for. Beth dressed up and greeted customers as if she were hosting a holiday open house. She made attractive groupings of unwanted knickknacks. She studied which rooms customers visited in what order, what sold and what was destined for Goodwill. Customers were invited to open closets and bureau drawers. They wanted the oddest things! A man who hadn’t even gone to the same high school as her ex bought his yearbook! It got her thinking…if John-Paul and Emma could help on weekends, she’d do the advance work, the photographing, arranging, pricing.

After conducting a half dozen sales, she quit her job at a Springfield furniture store. The experience she’d gained there as both bookkeeper and saleswoman served her new venture so well that it seemed foretold.

They managed with the help of my aunts when I had games on Saturdays through junior high and high school. Unity had the best eye, occasionally spotting something auction-worthy that Beth had underpriced. Pamela was the best mathematician, calculating sales tax in her head. Celeste viewed her time at the checkout table as a lark. “I can hardly keep a straight face when I’m wrapping up some hideous thing! Sometimes I want to say, ‘You’re kidding! You’re paying ten dollars for this?’”

Finders, Keepers didn’t make anyone rich, neither the homeowners nor us. Still, Beth and my dad persevered. His teacher’s salary got us by, plus the 40 percent commissions that the semi-monthly sales brought in. Though I was accepted at BU and BC, I went to UMass on in-state tuition and majored in art history, not with an eye to appraising future properties but because it seemed the polar opposite of commerce.

Summers I was back at the checkout table, already feeling as if I knew every person, every house, every cellar and attic in Harrow. After graduation I was of less and less help. I worked part-time at various retail jobs at Shoppers’ World, convenient to Framingham State where I was studying for my first impractical master’s degree, English. For years I dated my on-and-off college boyfriend, who finally joined Teach for America without asking me to consider the same.

Beth and my dad announced with some ceremony at my thirty-second birthday dinner that they were looking at a town house in Buzzards Bay.

“Winters are milder on the Cape,” said my dad. “And I might get a little dinghy.”

I asked what “looking at a town house” meant. As a rental property? Can’t be for summers, could it – Finders, Keepers’ high season? Surely not a full-time move, as in…retirement?

“That’s where you come in,” Beth said, raising her champagne flute. “The logical heir to the throne.”

They were asking, at this shockingly early juncture: how would I like to take over? Finders, Keepers was mine if I wanted it.

I didn’t want it. I’d helped out because I had to. I wouldn’t be good at wooing or charming clients. I wasn’t vivacious Beth or genial John-Paul. Who retires the second they turn sixty-five? They were busy and healthy. Buzzards Bay? A dinghy? They were Harrowites to the core, or so I thought. “You’d walk away from Finders? Isn’t it your baby, your nest egg?” I asked.

“No,” said Beth. “It was your college fund. It may seem out of the blue, but we’ve always loved the Cape.”

“And my back is telling me no more hoisting sofas onto people’s trucks,” said my dad.

“And no more Sunday nights leaving the property” – air quotes – “‘broom-clean.’ I hope I never have to hear that expression again.”

I said, “What about me, though? I’d be going for broom clean. I’d be hoisting sofas onto truck beds for people who should’ve brought along their beefy sons.”

“Sweetheart, at thirty-two you’d be the CEO of one of Harrow’s most beloved homegrown businesses. You’d be ready right out of the gate, no training needed,” said Beth. “And you won’t have a gap on your resumé between school, J.Crew, Nordstrom Rack…and whatever’s next.”

“You’d keep ‘family’ in ‘family business,’” said my dad. “No small matter.”

Our celebration was taking place at the town’s white-tablecloth restaurant, Beardsley’s, named after the British illustrator, judging by the black-and-white prints on every wall. It was the restaurant of choice for special occasions, and for my apparent doubleheader: Happy Birthday and Happy Keys to the Castle. As early as over salads, Dad and Beth exchanged a look that I recognized as Should I tell her, or should you?

It was my dad who delivered the bombshell. “We think this may provide an incentive and a cushion: you’ll stop paying rent on your apartment and move home. No, wait; listen: home but without the stigma. You couldn’t be a boomeranging adult child if we’re no longer under the same roof, right?”

With Beth nodding her encouragement, he continued. “With the mortgage paid off, it would be rent-free, and if you couldn’t swing the taxes, the utilities, the fuel, the upkeep…we have a solution.”

I was shaking my head, thinking their solution was throwing more cash at my unprofitable lifestyle. I said, “If you mean helping out once again, there’s only so much—”

But my dad was saying, “With three bedrooms, and as far as we’ve gleaned, no boyfriend/partner/companion on the horizon – why not a boarder! Not a roommate in the traditional sense; not someone to socialize and share meals with, but someone who merely rents a room. You’d take the master bedroom, and he’d get your old room.”

“And would keep to himself,” added Beth.

“Himself?” I repeated.

Of course they had someone in mind, practically lined up: Frank Crowley, my old algebra teacher and one of my dad’s colleagues, whom I’d known my whole life, recently widowed – but, they assured me, coping remarkably well.

“Recently widowed” told only half the tale. His wife had died instantly and famously on the golf course about a year ago, struck by lightning, front-page news for days.

“He would not be a gloomy presence,” Beth continued. “He just wants a room of his own.”

“But a roommate your age? I’ve never called him anything but Mr. Crowley.”

“On a trial basis,” Beth said, then let slip, “He’s very keen on the idea.”

My dad said quietly, “He was there for me. Most of my colleagues didn’t know what to do or say when your mother died, but Frank had lunch with me every single day for months after I returned to work. You’d be doing him a favor, and me, too.”

I must’ve looked slightly less disinclined because Beth coaxed, “How about breakfast with him at the Over Easy? You’ll talk; you’ll see if it feels right.”

“If I decided to move back home, I’d ask a friend. Or at least look for a roommate on Craigslist.”

But ex-bookkeeper Beth reached into her briefcase-size handbag and brought forth a sheaf of bills. Even just the levies from Harrow’s property and school taxes were scary. She said, “We’re figuring if a boarder brought in even a hundred dollars per week, it would make a nice dip in the red ink.”

“Or I’d keep my apartment and you’d sell the house.”

Ignoring that, Beth testified, “When I kicked Brad out, I had a series of roommates, one nightmare after the other. You can’t ask someone, ‘Are you a slob? Do you never wash a dish? Do you drink too much? Do you have the creepiest boyfriends? Do you throw things down the toilet that result in a three-hundred-dollar visit by a plumber?’ And not easy to kick out, either.”

“How do you know Mr. Crowley wouldn’t be a nightmare?”

“Frank Crowley is the least likely nightmare that ever walked on God’s green earth,” said my dad, his voice choking.

How could I say no to a breakfast with the man who moved my father to near-tears?

Beth added, “He wants to keep to himself, to read, to tinker, to watch football and baseball. He once told your father that Ginger made him watch Red Sox games with the sound off. I don’t mean with the volume turned down. I mean off! And he has a snow blower.”

They raised their glasses to toast my generosity of spirit, even if so far withheld. I said okay. The least I could do was have breakfast with the guy who’d been there for my dad, who’d been through so much himself, widowed by a strike of lightning. “But just Mr. Crowley and me at the Over Easy, okay?”

I didn’t need them putting their thumbs on the scale.

I was honest with him. I told him I didn’t understand why he’d want to be a boarder in someone else’s house rather than live in his own.

The waitress had just arrived tableside, pen poised. Frank closed his menu and said, “Just coffee and a cruller for me. Emma?”

“The Mexican scramble, extra...