The Beach Club (15 page)

An hour later, Mack went into bed. He found Maribel fast asleep in her clothes, holding the receiver of the phone to her chest. Her lips parted and she gave a sudden kick.

“Jump-starting your motorcycle,” Mack said softly. He kissed her forehead. “Sweet dreams.”

Maribel’s eyes flew open. “What am I doing?” she asked.

“Running in place,” he said. He wasn’t sure if she was awake or not. “What did you and Cecily talk about?”

“Nothing,” Maribel said. Her eyes fell closed again. “Love.”

Mack saw Cecily the next morning after breakfast. He was standing on the front porch of the lobby when she popped out of her house. She was in bare feet, wearing baggy Umbro shorts and a Middlesex Field Hockey T-shirt. Cecily was tall and lanky and had long red curls, two shades darker than her mother. She walked toward Mack gingerly, over the asphalt and the broken hermit crab shells.

“You need to toughen your feet,” Mack said.

“I liked being in a place that had grass, you know. Don’t you ever miss grass, Mack?”

“If we had grass, I’d be mowing it,” he said. He met Cecily on the first step and hugged her. “I missed you, though. And hey, congrats on getting into UVA. We have a bellman here from Virginia.”

Cecily lifted her leg to inspect the sole of her foot. “I know. Mom told me.”

“So when do you leave for college?”

“Geez, Mack. I just got here. Can’t you let a person relax for a minute? College isn’t exactly an exciting prospect for me. I just spent four years in a dorm, okay? We’re talking about more of the same.”

“Sorry,” Mack said. “I thought college was pretty cool and I was only on the Cape.”

“College is college,” Cecily said. She squinted at him. “I can’t believe you haven’t proposed yet.”

“How rude of me.” He dropped to one knee. “Cecily, will you marry me?”

Cecily slouched, hip thrown out. “I don’t know how Maribel puts up with you.”

“That makes two of us,” Mack said. “I’m impossible.”

“Not an excuse,” Cecily said. “When are you going to ask her?”

“I don’t know,” Mack said. “Maybe around the time you graduate from college.”

“You are impossible,” Cecily said.

“So,” Mack said, “tell me about the boyfriend.”

“He’s smarter than you and much better looking,” Cecily said. “But you’re changing the subject. When are you going to ask Maribel to marry you?”

“Did Maribel send you out as her scout?” Mack said.

“No.” Cecily avoided his eyes by inspecting her other foot. “We just want to know.”

“Who’s ‘we’?” Mack asked.

“The world,” Cecily said. “When are you going to marry her, Mack?”

“I don’t know,” Mack said. “One of the things you’ll learn as you grow up is that sometimes ‘I don’t know’ is the only answer you’re going to get.”

“Please spare me the growing-up bullshit,” Cecily said. She looked past him into the lobby. “Can you believe Mom and Dad won’t let me work the front desk? Dad’s putting me on the beach. At least I’ll get a tan. Who’s that working?”

“Love O’Donnell,” Mack said. “She’s nice. You’ll like her.”

“I’ll have to like her later. I’m going back to bed.”

“The Beach Club opens today, Cecily. That makes this your first day of work.”

She waved at him and headed back through the minefield of shells to her house. “I’m the owner’s daughter,” she said. “I do what I want.”

Andrea Krane and her fifteen-year-old son, James, arrived on the late ferry, which docked at 10:30 P.M. Mack was working the desk, giving Tiny the night off, and he let Jem go home early. The lobby was quiet. From the front porch, Mack watched the lights of the ferry approach the island. Andrea was on that boat, standing on the upper deck trying to pick out the lights of the hotel from off the dark coast.

I’m right here where you left me
. Last July he watched her boat leave from this very spot. It was morning then and Mack waved his arms, although he knew she couldn’t see him.

When the ferry headed around Brant Point and Mack heard the long, low horn announcing the boat’s arrival, he went back inside and sat behind the desk. Twenty minutes later, Andrea walked in the door. She was in sweatpants and a navy blue windbreaker, her hair pulled back in a ponytail. She carried a huge duffel across her back and a suitcase in each hand. Mack scrambled to help her.

“I got it,” she said irritably when he reached for her bags. “If you help, you’ll throw me off balance.” She made it to the front desk and let everything drop. “Here I am.” She took a deep breath and looked at the quilts, the wicker chairs, the fireplace, the plants. “God, I love this place. I’d like to buy this place. Do you think Bill and Therese would sell it to me? No, don’t say anything. Just let me take this all in. In a minute, it’s going to feel like I never left.”

Mack hadn’t seen Andrea in eleven months, he hadn’t heard her voice or smelled her scent, and yet here she was in front of him, exactly as she had been when he last kissed her.

“Okay,” she said. “I’m ready.”

Mack kissed her.

“Do that again,” she said.

Mack kissed her with more intensity, although still not the way he wanted to kiss her. If it weren’t in violation of her rules, he would carry her back to room 18 and make love to her right then and there. Instead, he stepped back.

“How was your trip?” he asked. “And where’s James?”

“He’s in the truck, rocking,” she said. “That should give you some indication of how the trip went. As soon as he gets out of his routine, he starts to panic. I bought him a book about airplanes to keep him occupied. His new thing is planes. We’ve been getting up at six o’clock each morning and driving to BWI to watch them take off.”

“Let’s go get him,” Mack said. “I have his room all set up with the bedspread. That might make him feel better.”

“You’re a doll,” she said. “And remember, don’t let him upset you.”

Mack had known James since he was five years old when he was afraid of toilet seats and he held his hands over his ears and screamed in a strangled voice. Every year Mack hoped James would become cured of his autism. Dealing with James was frustrating and even a little scary. Mack felt a familiar dread as he followed Andrea out to her truck.

James sat in the passenger side of Andrea’s green Ford Explorer with his head bent, rocking back and forth. Andrea opened the door, but the rocking continued. James’s rocking blocked out all other stimuli; it was his way of keeping himself under control.

“Climb out of the truck, James,” Andrea said. She waited a few seconds. “Climb out.”

James stopped rocking and got out of the truck like an automaton. He was such a handsome kid, with Andrea’s honey-colored hair and gray-green eyes. Puberty had come to James this year—he was taller, with faint whiskers above his lip.

“Say hi to Mack,” Andrea prompted.

“Hi, Mack,” James said.

“Hi, James. I’m glad you got here safely.” Mack looked at Andrea. “Are there other bags?”

“I’ll get them,” she said. “You take James to his room.”

“Follow me, James,” Mack said. He took the boy’s arm but James pulled away. James opened the door to the truck and Mack thought he was going to climb back in and start rocking again but all he did was pick up a book.

“
Understanding Aeronautics
,” James said. “Three hundred twenty-five pages, illustrated, heavy stock laminate paper. Copyright 1990. Reprinted 1992, 1994. This copy belongs to James Christopher Krane.” He tucked the book under his arm and followed Mack through the lobby, out the back door and along the boardwalk to room 17.

Mack stepped into the room and James followed. “This is your room, James.”

James sat immediately down on the bed and started stroking the bedspread. “James’s blanket,” he said.

“That’s your blanket,” Mack said. “Nobody uses it but you.” It was a green chenille bedspread, the kind the hotel rooms had ten years ago. Now all the rooms had hand-stitched quilts, but Mack stored one chenille bedspread in the utility closet for James.

Andrea opened the door that connected with room 18. “Mom’s room is right here, remember, James?”

James turned on the TV.

“James, please put your clothes in the dresser,” Andrea said. “We’re going to be here for three weeks.”

“Twenty-one days,” James said.

“That’s right. Twenty-one days just like always. Let me show you where the bathroom is.” Andrea turned on the bathroom light. “It’s right here. And Mack took off the toilet seat. There’s no toilet seat in here, okay, buddy?”

James stared at the TV. “No toilet seat,” he said.

“That’s right, no toilet seat. No reason to be afraid. You’ve stayed in this room many times before. Do you feel comfortable?”

James stared at the TV.

“James, I asked if you felt comfortable here.”

“Are we going to the airport in the morning?” James asked.

“Yes, we are, we’re going to the Nantucket airport.”

“Okay,” James said.

“Okay. Mom is going to unpack and then go to sleep. Knock on my door if you need anything.”

Andrea beckoned Mack into her room.

“Good night, James,” Andrea said.

“Good night, James,” Mack said.

“Good night,” James said. “Good night.”

Andrea shut the door and fell back onto the bed. “What an exhausting day. Every day with James is exhausting but travel really drains me.” She unzipped her windbreaker. Underneath she wore a red T-shirt. “Do you notice a difference in him?” she asked.

“That’s not fair,” Mack said, plunging into the leather chair. “You know him much better than I do.”

“I’m so close to him that I can’t notice any changes. Tell me what’s different from a year ago. Maybe I shouldn’t ask you until tomorrow. He wasn’t exactly the best version of himself tonight.”

“Well,” Mack said. He wasn’t thinking of James, but of the lobby, which he had left open, and of the phone, which he left unattended. “Let me use your phone.” Mack forwarded the hotel’s calls to Andrea’s room. Then he sat back down in the chair. “He’s taller,” Mack said. “He’s getting a beard in, have you noticed that?”

“I’ve been ignoring it,” Andrea said. She hugged her knees to her chest. “Really, as if it weren’t difficult enough for me to raise a special-needs child on my own, now I have to raise a man? I have parents asking me questions all the time, about toilet training and school and what kinds of vitamins their kids should take, and I give them answers but I feel like such an impostor. Because meanwhile I’m watching James grow up and I don’t know what to do about it. I don’t know what to tell him about shaving, or about girls and sex. He loves to masturbate, and every time I find him doing it, I hide in my walk-in closet and cry. In a couple of years, I’m going to have to help him find a job and another place to live. There are hurdles in front of me and I can’t even see how high they are.”

“Do you hear from Raymond?” Mack asked.

“I heard his wife just had her third baby. He sends me large sums of money, really enormous sums that I’m simply socking away. But he won’t see James, nothing’s changed there. It’s like the kid doesn’t exist for Raymond, except as some kind of charity case to throw money at. Being rejected by your father is enough to break a normal kid. I don’t know how it’s affecting James.”

“I can teach James to shave,” Mack said. “Later in the week, once he’s gotten used to me again.”

Andrea flashed her green-grays at him and then she started to cry. “Thank you,” she said. “I was hoping you’d offer. It’s so horrible of me to depend on you, but you know what? I like having three weeks out of fifty-two when I know there’s someone I can count on. It’s nice to know I’m not completely alone.”

“You’re not alone,” Mack said. He sat next to Andrea on the bed. He put his arms around her and she pressed her wet face into his chest. Mack closed his eyes and inhaled the scent of her hair. He loved Andrea’s sadness. Her sadness was about the inscrutable mixed-up messages in her son’s brain, and about being left to bring him up by herself, but Andrea’s sadness was generous enough to encompass everything, including an eighteen-year-old Iowa farm boy losing both his parents in a single moment. And somehow she managed to make sadness, her own and everyone else’s, seem necessary, right.

“I love you,” Mack said.

She sniffled. “I know.”

They had never made love. This was Andrea’s rule from the beginning—it would make things too complicated, she said, and there was also the issue of logistics, because of James. There was always James—and long ago Mack suspected that after the ferocity with which Andrea loved James, there was little left over for anyone else. Andrea never told Mack she loved him—always she responded by saying “I know.” She let him hug and kiss her and once or twice a summer when James was asleep in the other room they fell back on the bed groping for one another and Mack ground against her, sweating, crazy, aching. But she never gave in, she never let go.

The phone rang and Mack stood to answer it.

“Who could be calling me?” Andrea asked.

“It’s Maribel,” he said. He checked his watch. “It’s almost midnight.” He picked up the phone. “Nantucket Beach Club.”

“Mack,” Maribel said, “it’s late.”

“I know,” he said. “I had a late check-in. I’ll be home in a little while.”

“I might be asleep.”

“Okay,” Mack said. He paused before he hung up, thinking about Maribel the night before as she lay asleep with the phone on her chest; he thought about the little kicks and twists she made in the night. He knew her so well. She was like another part of him. As Mack replaced the receiver he thought,
I love them both
. It happened, he supposed; he was just glad he didn’t have to choose between them, not tonight, anyway.

“I should go,” he said to Andrea.

“When are you going to marry her, Mack?”

“I don’t know,” Mack said. “I kind of wish people would quit asking me that.”

Andrea smiled. “Would you like to come to the airport with James and me tomorrow? Normally we leave at six but since I’m on my much-needed vacation, we won’t leave until seven. Want to join us for an hour?”

“Sure,” Mack said. “I’ll meet you in the parking lot, how’s that?” He kissed Andrea, and stepped out onto the deck. “Good night.”