Crestmont (39 page)

She hunched over, her arms draped down in front of her, and nodded.

In an attempt to comfort her, PT filled in more details about his home life. Both parents ignored him. His mother was so busy protecting herself from his father; she had no energy left to pay any attention to PT, and when his father did notice him, he was drunk and dangerous.

“Remember you told me how your parents made fun of you wanting to sing and all? They smacked you around by keeping you from figuring out your life. My old man used his belt. Same difference. Don’t feel guilty. It’ll kill you.”

“I was starting to be really happy here.”

“Then be happy. Gracie. You lost your parents a long time ago.”

They smelled the dampness of a front coming in and walked together back to the
Crestmont
, stopping to watch a white deer feed in the bushes. After saying goodbye, PT turned up the drive to the bowling alley.

III

“Anything amiss,” Mr. Woods had said. Broadcasting the
Paperbag
poems to the whole staff rankled Gracie, but Bessie had not consumed any alcohol as far as they could tell, so there was nothing to report to the Woods. Thursday was still Gracie’s day off. Grateful that Dorothy busied herself in the dining room late in the afternoon and Bessie was off doing goodness knows what, Gracie sat alone in their room, composing a letter to her mother and sister.

The front door of the Evergreen Lodge was propped open to allow some ventilation and the housemother’s door was closed.

Shadow brushed by Gracie’s leg. “Get out of here, silly.” Setting aside her letter, she picked up the cat and set it outside the front door, but it shot back inside the dorm. Gracie followed it down the hall into the bathroom. She heard water running.

Bessie leaned over a sink, one hand massaging her abdomen. The other laboriously turned something over and over in the water.

“These sheets. Can’t let Mrs. Woods know,” she whimpered. Drops of perspiration from her pale face dripped into the pink water.

Stunned, Gracie stood there awkwardly until she realized what had happened. “I’ll get the bleach.”

She started down the hall, stopped short, and returned to the bathroom.

“Bessie, go lie down. Don’t try to climb up to your bunk. Use mine. I’ll take your sheets to the laundry.”

“No. That old battle-
ax’ll
turn me in.”

“Here, give them to me. Don’t worry; I know how to use the machines. I’ll go tonight when no one is there.” Gracie helped her walk back to their room and settled her in the bottom bunk.

“Thanks,” Bessie said weakly. “I’m sorry about your father.”

“Thanks.” Gracie said.

“I’m even sorrier about mine.”

****

“Go. Go!” William Woods waved his arms, shooing away the black clouds that rolled in from the west. He laced his hands on top of his blond head in frustration when thunder rumbled in the distance. Sid Fox stood next to him on the tennis court.

“It’ll blow over, sir. If we get the nickel-size hail the radio predicted, we’ll just sweep it off the courts. Maybe we’ll be lucky and it’ll just rain a bit. I told Otto to get the mats ready to put on the bleachers if they get wet.”

“Good, Sid.” William checked his watch. “We’ve got doubles on one court and singles on the other in an hour. I suppose we could start late, but they can’t play in the dark. Next year I’m putting up electric lights out here and a huge
Windsor
clock right there in full view.” He framed a circle with his hands against the clubhouse wall.

The lightening and hail never came. The pros suited up to practice at 3:30 were so busy compensating for the wind that they were oblivious to the storm clouds it blew away.

****

“Celeste Woodford said we have lost all gentility.” Margaret chuckled as they sat in bed that night, their books abandoned on their laps. “You should have seen her face when she saw the ladies out on the courts in their cotton frocks with their white stockings rolled to their knees. Of course, she didn’t actually go watch them play; she merely strolled down the driveway with her parasol, pretending not to notice. I doubt if she has ever seen a tennis court before in her life.”

“Margaret, I scheduled those tournaments to coincide with our country’s most famous in
Forest Hills
,
New York
. We would have lost all clout if we had to cancel because of weather. I can’t believe the storm blew over.”

“But it did, thank God. You were right, William. The tournaments were a huge success. I admit I was dubious at first, but you certainly pulled it off. And the clock will be a perfect addition.” She poked him in the ribs. “You asked me to remind you to call
Sterling
and
Windsor
to place the order.”

“Yes, dear, I shall have to remember to do that tomorrow.” Wordlessly, his wife handed him a pencil and a piece of paper from her nightstand.

William removed his arm from around her shoulders, wrote himself a note, then fiddled with the top of the sheet, folding and unfolding it over the blankets so it was perfectly even. “I had to fire Julius today. He was dithering away his time. When I asked him to mow the front lawn he told me that wasn’t his job. Worst thing you can say to your employer.”

“I am glad you let him go. I doubt if he ever called the state about those disability payments he was collecting, but I wish you had talked it over with me first, William. If
Magdalena
quits over this, we will lose a valued and trusted employee.”

“Don’t fret, Margaret. I will talk with her.” He knocked playfully on the side of her head. “I need to recalibrate your worry meter.” Trying to steer her off course, he said, “You look mighty fine in a canoe, Margaret. What a good move to ask Dorothy to hostess on Thursday so you can have a quiet paddle around the lake.”

“You are so right, William. One can abide the banality of chatting with guests about mealtimes, amenities in rooms and the evening activities for only so long. Do you remember that letter Daddy wrote about the money in the safe? I’m trying to take his advice about finding myself some kind of respite.”

“Your father found a gold mine when he saw Cyclone Hill. He told me he wouldn’t have had the money to both take down the trees and build the inn. God stripped the hill for him and look at where we are now. Next year we’ll have to put up a fourth sleeping floor for the tennis pros. By Jove, if Charles Lindberg can fly ‘The Spirit of St. Louis’ across the Atlantic, we can be the Tennis Tournament King of
Pennsylvania
. A harbinger of things to come, Margaret, my love.”

****

Isaiah stuck his lower lip out blowing bugs off his face away as he drove the last nail into the wooden ice cream cone to be featured on the staff float. “What’d you say, Eleanor?”

“Colored sprinkles on the ice cream cones. That’s my job.” Eleanor sat watching him the day before the Water Carnival, with her legs crossed on the dock, her little toy boat cradled in her lap.

“You mean those huge colored cotton candy balls Peg wants to put on top of these fake wooden cones?”

“Yep. But you need to paint little brown intersecting lines on the cones so they look more like the ones you actually eat.”

Isaiah lifted her up and set her on the float. “Now you are a detail-oriented woman, Miss Eleanor Woods, if I ever saw one. And just how are you going to make these sprinkles?”

“You’ve never seen me with scissors and construction paper. I can make anything. They’ll be ready for sprinkling before lunch.”

Chuckling, Isaiah, put his tools back in the tool box. “I’ll bet they will. I will inform the rest of the staff that Eleanor has colored sprinkles under control.”

****

The Annual Water Carnival was one of the most anticipated events in Eagles Mere. A spirit of friendly competition pervaded the town the second week of August because many civic organizations and hotels participated in the float contest. People came in droves to feast at cookouts open to the public, admire fireworks on the lake, and watch the famous flotilla.

Individual hotels held their own festivities. Hammer in hand, William stood back to admire the poster Peg had designed for the
Crestmont’s
water games. Under the usual listing of swimming, diving and boating activities, she had added “Canoe Tilting, Tug of War, Swimming Races, Illuminated Floating Parade.” Her multicolored drawings of shooting fireworks added pizzazz to the poster.

Her father had reluctantly agreed to stretch a rope underwater from the shore to the floating dock fifty feet out. The contest was to see who could pull themselves farthest on the rope while keeping their head underwater. She wanted to name it the Underwater Pull.

“The Underwater Pull is an experiment whose future is yet undetermined,” he told her.

****

Eleanor sat, telephone to her ear, lazily swinging her legs over the side of her father’s desk.

“Miss Eleanor, you get off that telephone right now. I have business calls to make,” her father said, slamming the door.

“Bye. Call you later.” She clicked off the connection and held the receiver calmly in her lap.

“Who were you talking to?”

“Just Dora, Papa.”

“You put a call in to
New Jersey
? How did you convince the operator to do that?”

“I pretended I was Peg ordering supplies for the carnival.”

William recognized it had been a hard summer for Eleanor. He was preoccupied with the tennis courts, and Peg, Eleanor’s primary summer companion, was absorbed in water activities. Eleanor had her friends on staff—Gracie, Isaiah, and Sam—but no child her age was around for more than a week or two on vacation. Foregoing a punishment, he removed the receiver from her hand, set it in the cradle and said, “No more.”

“Papa, Dora’s family is all sad now that Philip is so sick. That’s why they’re not here this year. Can we all pose on the float this afternoon so I can send her a photograph? I want to be taking a big bite out of the pistachio cone.”

“Eleanor, that cone is going to be six feet tall. Very well, I could hold you on the step ladder and place staffers in front so no one knows how you got up there. You may be on the float for the ice cream photograph, but you may not be in the flotilla. It is much too dangerous out there after the sun goes down.”

She jumped off his desk chair, flung her arms around his waist and bolted out the door.

****

Preparations were underway all over the
Crestmont
campus for the evening’s celebration. Hank and Otto carried picnic tables down near the water and strung electric lights around the eating area. The Woods family made oversized blue, red and yellow ribbons with pins attached. Three extra trips to
Williamsport
were needed for all the food. Waitresses secured tablecloths on the picnic tables and laid out china buffet-style, covered with sheets secured with rocks, until serving time.
Magdalena
and her crew ironed dresses for the ladies and Olivia attached matching bows to straw hats.

William Woods announced each event through a big megaphone. People cheered through cupped hands for their favorite contestants, their shouts amplified by the water. Echoes from similar events at other hotels along the lake mixed with the splashing and applause on the
Crestmont
waterfront.

When each event was won, Sid clanged a big brass bell. Mr.
Swett
strutted around the beach, proudly displaying the Canoe Race winner’s plaque with his named etched in first place for the fourth year in a row. Buddies of the Underwater Pull winner carried him around on their shoulders, hooting and hollering while dumping him off the end of the dock.

After the water games, the staff docked the SS Sundae in full view of the big house, but the guests had covered their own float with canvas and moored it down the shore. They wanted it to be a surprise for Mr. Woods.

A ham turned on a spit over an open fire. Sam and Isaiah lay huge pork ribs lathered with barbeque sauce on the outdoor brick grill. Aromas of cooking meat and roasted corn coaxed people away from their bathing suits, horseshoes and croquet mallets. Soon men in linen suits and women in pastel dresses and straw hats leaned over the porch railing, hungrily awaiting the dinner bell.

Dusk settled. People waved away mosquitoes while they
ooh’d
and
aah’d
at the town fireworks set off from the north beach, signaling the beginning of the flotilla. Built with wood, paper
maché
, and other concoctions, the floats were lit by Japanese lanterns. The Volunteer Fire Department had done a tribute to the Pittsburgh Pirates. The Eagles Mere Inn featured a bald eagle in flight with Lindberg’s plane in tandem. Women’s Suffrage came from the Ladies Auxiliary. A fake raccoon with a fish stuck in his mouth represented the Chamber of Commerce. Zeke played his harmonica on the SS Sundae. A paper
maché
Palomino sporting a black baseball cap and a sash that read “The Forest Inn” stood in a fake canoe. The guests of the
Crestmont
had fashioned a huge golden trophy with two men standing on either side, arms linked through the trophy handles, swinging tennis rackets in their free hands. The flotilla ended at the
Edgemere
dock for judging.

The raccoon got first place, but the SS Sundae returned to the
Crestmont
with a big red ribbon while the town band played. Crowding around their float, the staff congratulated themselves as they served ice cream to the children. Gracie saw someone peek out from behind one of the huge fake cones on the float and realized it was Eleanor.

No one heard the golf balls hit the lake because there was too much noise. Then the band stopped.

“Crack!” The ominous sound was duller than a residual firecracker.