The Beach Club (25 page)

“I’ll be moving back to the apartment,” he said. “But we’ll still have our Sunday night dinners. I told Maribel that was part of the deal. Sunday nights are for you, Lacey.”

“Well, good,” she said.

Mack was getting married.

Lacey remembered back to September of 1941 when she and Maximilian drove Sam Archibald’s dune buggy out to Madaket. Sam Archibald wasn’t on Nantucket that summer because he’d enlisted in the army and was at training camp in Mississippi. Maximilian received a postcard from him that said, “
Half the gents here have never seen the Atlantic, much less played croquet in ’Sconset. Take the old girl around in the bug and have a good time for me
.” On September 16, that’s what they were doing—driving to Madaket. The mood between Lacey and Maximilian was more serious than normal, because of the war. Everyone sat by their radios listening for word on Hitler. The military used Tom Nevers Field as a training ground for landing in the fog; the coast guard patrolled the beach, looking for U-boats. There were piles of sandbags in the streets of town and all around them, men enlisting in the service. Lacey supposed it wouldn’t be long before Maximilian went away also. Then she would be left to drive the dune buggy to the beach alone.

When they reached Madaket, Lacey and Maximilian walked through the sand barefoot.

Maximilian said, “I brought you out here for a reason.”

Lacey laughed, but it was so windy her laughter was carried away. “You brought me out here because Sam wrote and said you should. You men, always sticking together!”

Maximilian’s necktie lifted in the breeze. “No, Lacey, that’s not it.”

And then, of course, she thought he was telling her that he was off for the war as well.
You men
, she thought,
always sticking together
. No wonder the armed forces worked. Men loved each other’s company; they loved a group, the bigger the better. And she thought,
If Maximilian is going, I’ll enlist too. I won’t be left behind with the women, I just won’t
.

But Maximilian said, “Lacey, I brought you here to ask for your hand in marriage, both hands, and the rest of you, for that matter, if you’ll have me. I promise to provide you with a home, and to give you the life you’re accustomed to as well as I possibly can—”

Lacey interrupted him by putting her fingers to his lips. She remembered that too, the way his warm lips felt under her fingertips. “Yes,” she said. “The answer is yes.”

She held tight to that memory, and to the flood of happiness it brought her, even though two months later Maximilian did join the service and was gone from her for three years. Those were days when love meant something because it stood side by side with life and death. Those who survived had a reason to be nostalgic, and she, Lacey, had survived.

Mack waited for her to speak. What could she say? Things were so different these days she could hardly understand them. “You’re doing the right thing,” she said finally.

Relief crossed his face like a ray of light.

“Thank you,” he said. “I was hoping we’d have your blessing.”

“You always have my blessing, Mack Petersen,” Lacey said. And that much, at least, was the truth.

When Cecily found out Mack and Maribel were getting married, she experienced envy like a slap across the face. She heard the news from Maribel, over the phone.

“He’s going to marry me! Mack and I are getting married! Can you believe it? Married, married,
married
!”

Cecily stared at herself in the mirror, a bad habit of her mother’s. “You’re so fucking lucky,” she whispered. But Maribel blabbered something about a church and flowers, and didn’t hear. Cecily quietly hung up the phone and took it off the hook. Then she fell facedown on her bed and cried. She should be
happy
; she had wanted this for both Mack and Maribel. But the truth was, she liked it better when Mack and Maribel were miserable. She liked it better when she was the one lucky in love. Now Mack and Maribel were beyond lucky; they’d hit the jackpot.
Married!
Cecily cried bitter, jealous tears. She knew Maribel would be trying to call back, but she didn’t care. She couldn’t talk to Maribel, and she couldn’t face Mack. It was completely irrational—their good news didn’t mean bad news for Cecily. Lots of people could fall in love and get married at one time. But that thought didn’t make anything better, not with Gabriel thousands of miles away and Cecily stranded here, on this dinky, go-nowhere island.

Could it be she was so upset because
she
wanted to marry Mack? When Cecily was younger she’d had a terrible crush on him. Every day she wrote in her journal what Mack said to her: “Hey, there, Sunshine, whatcha up to?” “Cecily, babe, let’s see you turn a cartwheel.” She wrote down every time he pulled her curls or flung her over his shoulder like a sack of flour. Nights when he went on dates she stayed in her room without turning on the radio or TV, convinced that if she was having a miserable time, he was, too. Then the next day she pestered him for the name of the girl, what she looked like, what they did on their date. Dinner? Movie? Dancing? And then shyly, Cecily would ask, “Did you kiss her, Mack?” And Mack would either say, “Sure did, Sunshine,” or “Nope, not that one, too ugly.” Cecily always prayed for the latter answer. She prayed that all of Mack’s dates had a faint mustache, or bad breath. She hoped he would realize no girl was as pretty as Cecily.

By the time Cecily was old enough to go on dates herself and Therese grabbed hold of the idea that Mack and Cecily should be together, Cecily was N.I.—Not Interested. By that time too, Maribel was in the picture, and Cecily fell for Maribel almost as hard as she’d fallen for Mack. Cecily imitated the way Maribel talked, the way she wore her hair, the way she dressed. From the beginning, Maribel treated Cecily like an equal, and it worked like magic. Cecily was hooked.

Was Cecily so upset because she was in love with Mack, or Maribel? She’d read Freud and other dead European males at Middlesex, and some would say she wanted to be married to both of them. Gobbledy-gook. She wanted to be married to Gabriel, that was all there was to it. But Mack and Maribel had separated themselves from her.
We’re getting married. You’re staying single
.

For the time being.

Cecily opened the drawer of her bedside table and counted her money. She was getting closer, but still not close enough. She snuffled, blew her nose, and went into the bathroom to splash water on her face. She was due on the beach in half an hour and as much as she wanted to stay hidden in her room, missing a day’s work meant missing a day’s salary, and money was the only thing keeping her from Gabriel.

She stomped upstairs to the living room and found her father staring out the bay window at the activity below. This was his quiet time, while Cecily’s mother was busy with the chambermaids, and Cecily never interrupted. Plus, whenever Cecily talked to either of her parents now, they clung to her words as though she might never speak again. They must have thought if they paid her more attention, she wouldn’t leave, but that was completely fucking erroneous on their part.

Cecily cleared her throat. Her father snapped to attention.

“Good morning,” he said. “How are you this morning?”

“Mack and Maribel are getting married,” Cecily said. The inside of her mouth was dry and chalky.

“I’m sorry?”

“They’re getting married.” Saying it aloud was the worst kind of pain—worse than menstrual cramps, worse than falling down and skinning her palms. “Maa—reed.”

“They’re getting married?” Bill said. “You know this for a fact?”

Cecily couldn’t bring herself to say anything further. And if her father made a big, happy deal over it, she would leave immediately, tonight, today. But thankfully, he didn’t. He took the news quietly and then seemed reflective, but not in a glad or happy way.

“Well,” he said. “How about that?”

Bill Elliott knew the instant he heard the news about Mack and Maribel getting married that Mack was going to leave. Part of Bill cheered Mack on—
Good for you getting married, good for you returning to the land that’s yours, good for you!
But then the reality of the situation hit and Bill felt a familiar tightness in his chest. He left Cecily banging cabinets, muttering, “There’s never any fucking food in this house,” and went into his bedroom to lie down. Mack leaving spelled disaster for the Beach Club. He was the manager and he managed like nobody else. Kids loved him, adults loved him, the crotchety old ladies of the Beach Club loved him. Most importantly, Bill loved him, and if it weren’t for the fact that he had a daughter of his own, Bill would not only have profit-shared with Mack, he would have left the hotel to him without a second thought. He lay on his bed, and thought,
I have survived worse. I survived losing my son
. But thinking about Mack leaving gave Bill an oddly similar feeling—empty, sad, hopeless. He closed his eyes. Why not sell the hotel then? Cecily didn’t want it and how could Bill run it without Mack? S.B.T.’s face appeared to him, a demon.

Later, his fears were confirmed. Mack was talking with a guest in the lobby and Bill touched him on the elbow, and said, “When you get a second.”

Then Bill sat at his desk and looked out the window. The most beautiful beach in the world—the blue water, the white sails in the distance, the brightly colored umbrellas in the sand. It was glorious here.

Mack knocked lightly, pushed open the door. “I guess you heard?”

“Why don’t you tell me yourself,” Bill said.

Mack stuffed his hands in the pockets of his khaki shorts. “I’m going to marry her.”

“Getting married was the best thing I ever did,” Bill said. “By far the best thing.”

Mack jingled his key ring. “I know you feel that way. You and Therese have had a big influence on me. I really appreciate that. You’ve been role models.”

“That sounds like a good-bye,” Bill said. “Is that a good-bye?”

“Did someone tell you I was leaving?”

“No one needed to,” Bill said.

Mack looked out the window and Bill followed his gaze, willing him to see how beautiful it was, hoping he would understand that the rest of the world was not this beautiful.

“I’ll stay through the season,” Mack said. “I would never strand you midseason.”

“But next year?…”

“Next year, no. This will be my last year. This is it.”

The demon face of S.B.T. shimmered on the horizon. “I just can’t picture you as a farmer,” Bill said. “But I want you to know I understand why you’re going back. In the end, you have to protect what belongs to you and your family.”

Mack’s lower lip dropped. “Oh…no. Whoops.” He laughed. “Well, you got it half right anyway. I’m leaving, but I’m not going back to Iowa.”

“You’re not?” Bill said.

“No,” Mack said. “I’m going to work for Howard Comatis. For the Texas Rangers. It’s a baseball team.”

“A baseball team?”

“Howard Comatis, room one. He’s president of the Texas Rangers. He offered me a job yesterday. And I thought about what you said, about wanting to give the hotel to Cecily. So anyway, it just seemed right. And I’ll still have winters off. So it’s not as if I’ll never see you again. We can visit you in Aspen. You can finally teach me to ski.”

“Howard Comatis?” Bill said. “The big hairy guy? The loud obnoxious guy?”

“That’s him.”

“You’re going to work for
him
?” Bill asked. This news affronted him. Mack working on his family farm was one thing, but a guest snatching him away was another. Guests had been trying to hire Mack away for years, but he’d always turned them down. “What will you be doing?”

“Hotel rooms, dinner reservations, travel plans. Getting the team from place to place, that kind of thing.”

“How much is he paying you?” Bill asked.

“A lot,” Mack said. “We haven’t talked actual numbers but it’ll be a lot.”

Bill nodded. It must have been a lot for Mack to give up Nantucket.

“I’d do anything to keep you here, Mack,” Bill said. “I’ll give you a raise right now.”

Mack put his keys back in his pocket. “Not this kind of raise. Besides, you made it clear that your first concern is Cecily, and that’s okay.” He knocked on Bill’s desk. “Bill, that’s okay.”

Bill rubbed his forehead. “If Cecily weren’t threatening to leave, if Therese and I hadn’t already lost a child, all that, things would be different.”

“But they aren’t different,” Mack said.

“I don’t know what I’m going to do without you,” Bill said.

“We don’t have to say good-bye right now,” Mack said. “It’s only July. We still have lots of time.”

Bill looked back out at the beach. Dutifully, Cecily started to circulate among the umbrellas; a ferry approached on the horizon.

“We have time,” Bill said. “Okay, you’re right. We have time.” He stood up and stuck out his hand and when Mack shook it, Bill embraced him. “Congratulations,” he said.

Four bridesmaids in room 19 destroyed the place. Therese put down her clipboard. Empty diet Coke bottles rolled around on the floor, potato chips were ground into powder in the carpet, three wet bikini bottoms sat in soggy clumps on the bathroom tile. The top bedsheet had been ripped in half, hair spray scum covered the mirror, a nail polish spill pooled like blood on the dresser. These girls had requested extra towels. Extra towels! They were lucky they were here in the name of love. Therese had half a mind to kick them out.

Elizabeth appeared in the doorway with her cleaning cart and her vacuum. “Gross.”

“Gross, you’re not kidding,” Therese said. A pair of stockings fluttered over the brass reading lamp by the bed, a swollen tampon floated in the toilet. “This is the most disgusting room I have ever seen.”

“Really?” Elizabeth asked. She seemed encouraged by this news. “This is the worst?”

“You don’t have to clean this room,” Therese said. “I’ll do it.”

“
You’re
going to clean it?” Elizabeth said. She peered into the room. “They sure did drink a lot of diet Coke.”

“Go on to eighteen,” Therese said. “But leave me your vacuum.”