The Beach Club (16 page)

Andrea closed the door behind him, and Mack walked over the boardwalk into the sand. He looked at the stars and listened to the waves rushing onto the beach. He wondered if his parents could see him, and if they could see him, he wondered what they were thinking.

Not only was Maribel asleep when Mack got home, she was asleep when he rose at six-thirty the next morning. He considered waking her to let her know he was leaving early, but she looked peaceful, a strand of blond hair caught in the corner of her mouth, flutters underneath her eyelids.

“What are you dreaming about?” he whispered. But she didn’t waken, and Mack got up to shower. Before he left the apartment, he picked a yellow zinnia from the flowerbed and put it on his pillow, where she would see it when she opened her eyes.

When Mack got to the hotel, Andrea was already behind the wheel of the Explorer with James in the passenger seat, reading his book. Mack hopped in the backseat.

“I hope I’m not late,” he said.

Andrea smiled wearily. “Old habits die hard,” she said. “We’ve been waiting since six.”

“Since six,” James said.

On the way to the airport, Andrea said, “James, the planes at this airport are going to be smaller than the ones we’re used to seeing in Baltimore.” She looked over the seat at Mack. “I don’t want him to be disappointed.”

“Maybe we’ll get lucky and see a jet,” Mack said.

“I see jets every day,” James said. He paged through his book. “Boeing 747, 767, DC-10. Is there a tower at this airport?”

“I don’t know,” Mack said. “I can’t remember.”

James laughed. “
All
airports have a tower. It’s where the air traffic controller sits so there are no crashes.” James made an exploding noise and smacked his hands together.

Once they reached the airport, Andrea parked at the far edge of the field so they could watch the planes land. She turned off the ignition, leaned her head against the headrest, and closed her eyes. James, however, became extremely alert and animated; he was a different kid from the one Mack had seen the night before sitting in front of the TV.

“Here comes one!” James shouted. He riffled madly through the pages of his book.

Mack leaned over the front seat. He massaged Andrea’s shoulder with one hand and looked through the windshield. “What kind is it?”

“I can’t tell yet,” James said. The sun was bright and James squinted. Mack offered James his sunglasses and James happily put them on.

“Mom, look!” James said.

Andrea opened her eyes for a second and smiled. “Very handsome,” she said.

The plane landed, its wheels skidding and smoking on the runway. James clapped.

“Turboprop,” he said. “Gets most of its thrust through the propellers.”

“Have we seen those in Baltimore?” Andrea asked.

“Yes, Mom,” James said. Something in James’s tone of voice—(“
Yes, Mom, of course, Mom, don’t be silly
”)—sounded like a typical teenager. This was what made James so frustrating. He could be so normal—and at other times so impenetrable. Andrea once told Mack that the messages in James’s brain were a code she could only crack randomly, with luck. A code without a key.

“Here comes one!” James said. The plane landed right in front of them, like an actor taking a bow, and James applauded. “Safe landing!”

They watched planes land and take off for forty minutes. James applauded for both occasions and during the lulls he paged through his book, reciting facts about planes for Mack.

“Planes are heavier than air,” he said. “They need wings in order to fly. Planes have three kinds of motion: yaw, roll and pitch.” He moved his hand through the air and made a noise with his lips.

“You sure know a lot about planes,” Mack said.

“Yeah,” James said. “I know it all.”

Andrea was quiet, and finally she turned the key in the ignition.

James’s spine stiffened. “Is it time?” he asked.

“It’s time,” she said.

James pointed to the blue numbers of the digital clock. “It’s
not
time,” he said. “We have until eight o’clock. This says seven-forty-five. Right here, Mom, see?”

“We have a visitor,” Andrea said. “And Mack has to get the doughnuts so the rest of the people staying at the hotel will have their breakfast.” She pulled away.

“Get the doughnuts,” James said. “Getthedoughnutsgetthedoughnutsgetthedoughnuts.” He rocked back and forth.

“James,” Andrea said sternly, “we’re coming back tomorrow. And tomorrow we’ll stay until eight. Please don’t get upset.”

“Getthedoughnutsgetthedoughnutsgetthedoughnuts,” James said.

Mack leaned forward. “Thank you for letting me come with you today.”

“Getthedoughnuts,” James said. “Airport, then shower.”

“We have to get back to the hotel first, James,” Andrea said. “There’s no shower in the car.”

“Airport, then shower,” James said.

“That’s right, James. When we get to the hotel, you can take a shower.”

James rocked back and forth, saying under his breath, “Doughnuts, shower, doughnuts.” Mack caught Andrea’s face in the side-view mirror. She smiled weakly and shook her head.

When Andrea pulled into the Beach Club parking lot, she said, “Thank you, Mack, for coming with us. James, would you thank Mack?”

“Airport,” James said. “Then shower. Thank you.”

“Sounds like somebody wants to get in the shower,” Mack said,

“How could you tell?” Andrea said. She got out of the car. James was already headed for his room. Mack looked up at Bill and Therese’s house but saw no sign of stirrings and figured they were still in bed. Vance hadn’t arrived yet, nor Love, nor the new beach boys. Mack followed Andrea to her room. Andrea unlocked James’s door and James stripped his clothes on the way to the bathroom, including Mack’s sunglasses, which fell to the floor.

“I thought you had to get the doughnuts,” Andrea said. “Don’t make a liar out of me. James, close the door, please!”

The door closed and the water came on.

“I do,” Mack said. “But I feel bad for throwing off your routine.”

“Flexibility isn’t James’s strong suit,” Andrea said. “I should have thought of that before I invited you.”

“And you were quiet in the car,” Mack said. “Is everything all right?”

She picked up Mack’s sunglasses and fingered them idly. “Going to the airport is good for James but it sure is lousy for me,” she said. “I can’t help thinking that James will never be able to just choose a place off the map and take a trip there. He’s not safe in the world, Mack, and he’s never going to be. I’m the only person who’s going to love him enough.”

Mack hugged her. “You don’t know that.”

“For a while taking care of him was getting easier,” she said. “Now it’s getting harder. And seeing you makes everything worse.”

Mack held her at arm’s length. “Worse? Why’s that?”

“Because you make me remember that I’m not just a mother but a woman, with needs.”

“You’re not saying…”

“No,” she said. “I haven’t changed my mind about that.” She sighed. “I’m having a hard time switching into my vacation mode. I promise I’m going to try and relax, okay? I’m going to sit under my cool blue beach umbrella and read my trashy novels and watch James as he decides if it’s okay to go in the water. I’m going to order a couple of cheeseburgers from Joe’s Broad Street Grill and have one of the darling college boys deliver them right to my umbrella. I’m going to try and have fun, dammit.” She raised her face. “Do I say this every year?”

“Yes,” Mack said. “And every year you succeed.” He kissed her. If Maribel were a yellow zinnia, what would Andrea be? A red rose maybe, something a little more somber, a little more serious. “I’ll see you later.” He slipped from James’s room out the back door and looked both ways. No one was around. It took him a split second to remember about the doughnuts, to remember that he had a hotel to run.

The reason Mack forbade his staff to date the guests was this: It was distracting. It was distracting to work in the same place that the object of your affection lay in the sun, swam, showered, ate breakfast, and slept. Because you wanted to join them, because you wanted to check on them every ten minutes, because you wanted to have fun with them—slip under their umbrella, join them for a nap, share a bagel. But you couldn’t; you were at work. And so, Mack told his staff there would be No Dating the Guests. I’m making your life easier, he said. Trust me.

After all the years with Andrea, Mack had his distractions under control. She and James ate breakfast on their deck and Andrea, true to her word, rarely moved from her place on the beach, so Mack never wondered what she was up to. He did take a few more night shifts on the front desk from Tiny than usual, but he did this every June and Tiny never asked why.

Mack tried, most especially, to pay enough attention to Maribel. Nights he was home he took her out for dinner, he drove her down the beach to see the sunset, he made love to her with the windows open and the sounds of crickets floating around their dark bedroom. He tried not to think of Andrea while he was with Maribel, he tried not to think of Andrea’s sad gray-green eyes, but it was impossible. He wondered if he were acting like someone with a guilty conscience.

One night as Mack and Maribel had dinner at Le Languedoc, Maribel reached over and took Mack’s hand.

“I want to ask you something,” she said.

Instantly, Mack started to sweat. “What’s that?”

Maribel leaned in closer. “It’s less than two weeks until the Fourth of July. The summer is flying by. And I want to know if you’ve thought any more about the profit sharing.”

Mack blew out a stream of air. His body felt cool and tight. “Hmmmm.” Under other circumstances, he might have been angry with Maribel for pushing this issue, but now there was Andrea. Mack had told Andrea about the phone call from David Pringle, and about the farm. He told her he might ask Bill to profit-share and Andrea said, “I’m surprised he hasn’t offered it to you.” Mack felt the same way: that Bill should
offer
him part of the profits.

“I haven’t asked Bill yet,” he said. “I’m still thinking it through.”

“You have to give David an answer about the farm, Mack.”

“I’m aware of that, Maribel,” Mack said. “It’s my farm. I have until fall anyway.”

“Asking Bill about the profit sharing should make your decision clear. If he says yes, you sell the farm. If he says no, you run the farm.”

“Nothing is clear,” Mack said, although he realized it would seem that way to Maribel, or to anybody else for that matter. “I don’t know if I want to run the farm. And I don’t know if I want to sell it.”

Maribel retracted her hand. “King of the I-don’t-knows,” she said.

She was baiting him, but Mack wouldn’t argue. She was right. He didn’t know a lot of things. For example, he didn’t know how he could possibly be in love with two women. Had he felt this way last year? The year before that? Why was it hitting him so squarely in the jaw this year? Was it part of being thirty? Mack supposed he could confide in Bill, but for Bill, there had only been Therese, and no matter how much poetry Bill read, he wouldn’t understand when Mack said, “I love them both.”

At the end of Andrea’s first week, Mack had his usual Sunday night dinner with Lacey Gardner.

“What do you want to drink, dear?” Lacey asked him. “Dewar’s or a Michelob?”

“I love them both,” Mack said.

Lacey looked at him as though he’d just burped the alphabet. “Would you like me to pour you one of each, then, and you can drink them side by side?”

“I’m sorry,” Mack said. “Michelob. Actually, better make that a Dewar’s.”

“Uh-oh,” Lacey said. “Do we have a problem?”

“A couple of them,” Mack said, taking a seat on the couch. The Sunday dinners weren’t formal; Mack and Lacey each had about nine cocktails apiece and then if they remembered, they ate a sandwich, some cold meatloaf, or Lacey heated up a swordfish potpie.

“How big are these problems?” Lacey asked.

“The biggest,” Mack said. “Love and work.”

“Those aren’t the biggest,” Lacey said. “Health is the biggest. If we have our health, we’re okay. Agreed?”

“Agreed,” Mack said, thinking of James. “Agreed. But are love and money the second and third biggest?”

“Definitely top ten,” Lacey said, bringing Mack his drink. She settled into her favorite leather armchair. She always dressed up for the Sunday dinners that weren’t really dinners—tonight in a bright blue pantsuit with a gold Nantucket basket pin on her lapel. She’d been to the hairdresser and her white hair was fluffed and styled.

“You look great tonight, Gardner,” Mack said. “Have I told you that already?”

Lacey waved at him. “You know why I invite you over here, don’t you? Good for the ego. So, where shall we start?”

Mack sipped his drink. All Dewar’s and no water. “I’m thinking of asking Bill to profit-share.”

“You’re speaking to the oldest of women,” Lacey said. “What does that mean, profit-share? It sounds like one of those horrible terms from the 1980s.”

“It just means that I get a portion of the bottom line. So my salary would depend on how well the hotel does. And we know the hotel does very well.”

Lacey nodded. “What does Bill get in return for giving you his profits?”

“He keeps me happy,” Mack said. “I stay.”

“You’re not happy?” Lacey asked. “That’s news to me. And it’ll be news to a lot of other people, I assure you.”

“I’m happy and I’m not. I’m thirty years old, Lacey.”

“And I’m eighty-eight,” Lacey said. She pointed a manicured fingernail at him and smiled. “Gotcha there, didn’t I?”

“Some things are happening back home,” Mack said. “In Iowa. The boss on my father’s farm is retiring and my lawyer wants me to sell the farm or go back and run it myself.”

“I thought you were all finished with Iowa,” Lacey said.

“There’s five hundred acres with my name on it. I have to go back sometime.”

“That’s the argument for Iowa,” Lacey said. “What’s the argument for Nantucket?”

“I love it here.”

“I concur. Where is better than Nantucket in the summer?” Lacey asked. “If there’s a place more desirable than where you already are, Mack, do tell me about it.”