The Beach Club (35 page)

Instinctively, Love touched her abdomen. “You might feel differently if you had your own child,” she said.

“My kids are going to be out of the house by eighteen,” Vance said. He took out a navy bandanna and wiped his head. “But, listen, I don’t want to talk about having kids right now.”

I don’t want to talk about having kids right now
.

Love made a decision: She would tell Vance about the baby if she went home and found the picture of Swami Jeff restored to a whole.

“Me either,” she said.

On her way to the front desk, Love peeked into Bill’s office. He sat at his desk with his eyes closed, his hands folded in front of him. The volume of Robert Frost was nowhere to be seen.
We are at the two ends of parenthood
, she thought.
I have just started to hold on, and Bill is letting go
. She wondered what that kind of pain must feel like. She couldn’t imagine.

When Mack heard Cecily was gone, his hand itched to call How-Baby and turn down his brand-new job. Bill was bereft, a man lost at sea, his heart floating on a refugee raft somewhere between Nantucket and Rio de Janeiro. Bill, his almost-father. Mack admired Cecily’s courage for leaving. He’d run away once, twelve years before, but then Mack had run from emptiness. Cecily ran from a home where people loved her. When his turn came, Mack wondered, would he be brave enough to go?

Jem called Maribel at the library.

“If you don’t want to go to Southeast Asia, how about Brazil?”

The funny thing was, Maribel had just scoured the shelves for novels about Brazil, and finally found one by Jorge Amado called
Gabriela, Cinnamon and Cloves
. She hid in the stacks and read several passages, thinking,
This doesn’t sound bad. This doesn’t sound bad at all
.

“It’s hotter in Brazil than it is here!” Lacey exclaimed, when Mack told her of Cecily’s escape. “What was the dear girl thinking?”

Secretly, Lacey was elated. She was all for chasing a dream; she was all for chasing love.

Bill put his volume of Robert Frost back on the shelf in his bedroom; it had done him no good. His daughter was gone, Mack was leaving, Bill’s health was slipping away, and what did his wife want more than anything else? Rain. In the end, Bill decided, it was very Frost-like of Therese. To stare in the face of all this emotional anguish and want nothing more than a simple rain.

September: It used to be Bill’s favorite month of the year. After Labor Day weekend, the Beach Club closed and the property quieted down; it gained serenity. But Bill couldn’t enjoy September without Cecily. He couldn’t stomach listening to one more back-to-school-sale commercial on the radio, knowing that Cecily wasn’t matriculating at the University of Virginia that fall. Bill didn’t know where Cecily was or what she was doing. He had a horrible, recurring image: Cecily wandering through the streets of Rio, trailed by a gang of brown-skinned Brazilian boys wearing gray camouflage, carrying switchblades and razors, intent on raping and killing her.

He read and reread his latest letter from S.B.T. Who the hell was this guy, some kind of spy? That ass Comatis who had hired away Mack? Bill ran through the list of Beach Club members, but he came up empty. One thing was for sure: the letters from S.B.T. were eating at him.
What are you waiting for? A sign from God?
Yes, he thought. Exactly.

Bill had lost all his energy, and worse, his chest pain returned, a dull ache around his heart. He missed his daughter and he feared for the future of his hotel. The only thing he could do with ease was lie in bed with the remote control, flipping between channels to make sure there were no news stories about young American girls raped and killed abroad. It was far easier to watch TV than it was to read poetry. TV was colorful, silly, full of laughter and melodrama. TV made Robert Frost seem as exciting as a pile of dry twigs. Mornings after Cecily had left, Bill let himself get sucked into the TV.

That was how he first heard about Freida.

September 8, the Tuesday after Labor Day, Frieda was born in the West Indies. The National Hurricane Center in Miami posted a bulletin: She was a mean storm. The newscasters on the weather channel showed fancy graphics—Freida, a swirling, multicolored eye, 210 miles wide with sustained winds of 93 miles an hour, moving up the eastern seaboard. They expected her to make landfall around Cape Hatteras, but the following areas could expect trouble from Freida as well: the Chesapeake Bay, Long Island Sound, Nantucket.
Nantucket
. The newscaster said the name of the island and Bill felt a surge of recognition, as though his own name were being spoken aloud on national TV. He wondered if Cecily was listening.

“Nantucket?” Bill said.

“Of course the storm may miss Nantucket altogether and head northeast out to sea,” the newscaster said.

By the time Bill made it down to the lobby, everyone was abuzz about Freida’s arrival. Love talked to a couple about where the experts tracked Freida, and how she might move along, or might lose energy and scatter, dissipate. They discussed Freida as though she were a person. Was she organized? Did she have weak spots?

Mack waited in Bill’s office, tensed, pumped up, ready to pounce. “Did you hear?” he said. “We’re going to get creamed.”

Out the window, it was the perfect September day, though still hot at eighty-five degrees. The sky was blue, the water flat. No clouds.

“We’ll see. They said it might veer off into the North Atlantic. That’s what they usually do. This island hasn’t seen a bona fide hurricane since 1954.”

“What’s our plan of attack?” Mack asked.

A wave of exhaustion swept over Bill. It was ten-thirty and he wanted to put his head on the desk and sleep. “We’re not going to do anything.”

“What do you mean?” Mack said. “We have to board up. We have to bring everything inside. It’s a hurricane, Bill.”

Bill took a deep breath and closed his eyes. The Brazilian boys were gaining ground on Cecily, getting closer. They were after his daughter. Somehow, Bill had to flush that image.

“Bill?” Mack said. “Freida is going to hit the island from the west. She’s two hundred miles wide. Do you realize how big that is?”

“It sounds like you
want
this hurricane to come,” Bill said. “It sounds like maybe you want to watch the place get flooded. That would be fun for you, wouldn’t it? Watch the place wash away and then take off for Fenway Park.”

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Mack said. “I don’t
want
the hurricane to come. But I’d like to be ready. There are people sitting in the rooms, facing the water.”

“What do you care if the hotel gets wrecked? You’re leaving at the end of the season.” Bill was short of breath. “Tell me,” he said. “I’d really like to know. What do you care?”

“I care,” Mack said. “I’ve worked here for twelve years. Believe me, I care.”

“Obviously not enough,” Bill said. His chest was on fire. “Get out.” He pointed to the door. “I don’t want to talk about the storm. Now get out!”

Mack’s eyes widened. He pressed his lips together and left the office.

Bill leaned back in his swivel chair and tried to take several deep breaths. In, out. In, out. His heart thrummed in his ears. He picked up the picture of Cecily that he kept on his desk. Cecily at fifteen, wearing her Middlesex Field Hockey T-shirt over her bathing suit, sitting in an Adirondack chair, on the pavilion, her bare legs tucked underneath her (scab on one knee), her red hair crazy and curly around her face. An heiress sitting on her throne.
Where was she?

By Thursday, Freida had wreaked havoc in the Bahamas, and she moved along the eastern coast of Florida where she hooked up with a local low-pressure system and increased in size and speed. Class four, 230 miles across, sustained winds of 101 miles per hour. The newscaster hadn’t said “Nantucket” in twenty-four hours. Instead they showed clips of the Caribbean: palm trees with their heads ripped off, washed-out bridges, whole houses floating away. Every hour at fifty past, they flashed the international forecast. Rio was sunny, thirty-three degrees Centigrade.

Bill lugged his body out of bed and walked straight down to the beach. People lounged under the umbrellas, a man was swimming. No hurricane here. Then Bill heard someone coughing and he turned to see Clarissa Ford standing on the deck of room 7, smoking. She waved to him. He waved back. She waved
at
him, beckoning. Bill groaned inwardly. Clarissa was seventy years old, a widow, her very wealthy husband killed years ago by half a million cigarettes, and yet Clarissa continued to smoke. She stayed at the hotel for the whole month of September, spending over sixteen thousand dollars. A year’s worth of the college tuition that Bill would not be paying to the University of Virginia. He slogged through the sand until he was a few feet from her deck.

“Bill,” she said. Clarissa Ford’s face was tan and wrinkled; she looked like dried tobacco. “Bill, how are you, my dear?”

“I’m okay, Clarissa, how are you?”

“Fine, dear, wonderful.” She inhaled on her cigarette. “You see I’ve been obeying the little rule your wife set up for me this year. I’ve not smoked in the room once.”

“I find that hard to believe, Clarissa,” Bill said. Last year they had to air the room for three days after she left. And still room 7 had the faint smell of an ashtray.

“It’s
true
,” she said, “I’ve been out here morning, noon, and night.”

“Thank you,” Bill said. “We appreciate it.”

Clarissa ashed into the sand just off the deck. There was a gray spot the size of a saucer already. “How’s my darling Cecily?”

Bill looked out over the water. A ferry approached from Hyannis. “I don’t know,” Bill said. “She ran off to South America.”

Clarissa’s laugh sounded like wagon wheels rolling over gravel. It sounded like someone balling up a cellophane bag. “Tell her to come over and visit me when she gets a free second,” Clarissa said. “I haven’t seen her in eons. She must be all grown up! Is she ready for college?”

“I told you, Clarissa. She’s run off to South America.”

“Honestly, Bill. Will you send her over? I have some valuable wisdom to impart.”

“Impart it to me,” Bill said. “I could use it.”

“You take yourself so seriously, Bill, dear,” Clarissa said. She waved her cigarette like a magic wand. “Lighten up!”

“You know we’re getting a hurricane?” Bill said. “The hotel could wash away.”

Clarissa crushed her cigarette out on the railing of the deck. Bill winced. “Pshaw!” she said. “That’s exactly what I mean by too seriously, Bill. It won’t be a hurricane! It’ll just be a little rain here in paradise.”

On Friday, a phone call came to the house. It was Nantucket’s fire chief, Anthony Mazzaco.

“We’re going to get some weather here, Bill. It’s not a pretty picture. You need me to send someone down to help ya? Mack tells me you haven’t made a move. Now, you got people in those rooms, Bill, you have to make a move.”

“Look outside, Tony,” Bill said. “Do you see rain? Do you see a storm?”

“She’s coming,” Tony Mazzaco said. He, too, sounded excited. “She’s coming.”

On Saturday, Freida made landfall in Norfolk, Virginia. The newscaster on the weather channel drew a yellow arrow off the coast of Long Island, heading out toward the North Atlantic.
Good
, Bill thought,
let Long Island take the hit
. But for some reason, the man said, “Nantucket is in a position to catch Freida’s wrath. Nantucket is in her way.” Nantucket again. Bill sat up, and saw how, as Freida moved for the chilly North Atlantic waters, she would sideswipe Nantucket. She was huge, two hundred plus miles wide. The island was thirteen by four. Freida could gobble them up.

Freida, the mean woman. Only in Bill’s mind, Freida was a girl with crazy red hair—she was an angry teenager throwing a tantrum. The room blurred.

He sat in bed, trying to focus. He hadn’t showered in two days. The bedsheets had a smell. Bill tried to care about the storm, about the hotel, about himself. He tried to care, but he couldn’t. He would let her come.

It was all over the TV and radio; everyone in town was talking about it. Tourists booked flights and hopped on the steamship. Stop & Shop’s parking lot overflowed with people buying bottled water, bread, candles, Duraflame logs. Boats came out of the water, houses were shuttered, deck furniture stored. The Nantucket police and the fire station answered worried phone calls. There was a small-craft advisory and as of Sunday morning, the ferries were canceled. A hurricane watch and coastal flood warning were issued by the National Hurricane Center for the island of Nantucket. Hurricane watch became hurricane warning.

And Bill would do nothing about it. Mack had never seen him act like this. Since Cecily left, the guy had crumbled, caved in. He accused Mack of wanting this storm,
wanting
it! But nothing could be further from the truth. Mack loved the hotel and he would do whatever he could to protect it.

Even if it meant going over Bill’s head.

Mack found Therese bringing her plants in from the front porch. A good sign—maybe she believed in Freida even if Bill didn’t.

Mack kicked a hermit crab shell across the parking lot. “I’m going to gather Vance and Jem and start shuttering this place if that’s all right with you.”

Therese ran her hand through her pale orange hair. She looked tired, and sad. “What does Bill say?”

“He says don’t do it. He doesn’t seem to care what kind of hit we take.”

“You’re right,” Therese said. “He doesn’t care. Why should he care?”

“When Cecily comes back, Therese, it might be nice if there was a hotel left to pass on.”

She touched the leaves of her geraniums. “I wish you’d asked her to marry you…just
asked
her, you know?”

“Therese,” Mack said. “Can I please do my work?”

“Go ahead,” she said. “Do what you have to do.”

Mack began the time-consuming task of screwing wooden shutters over every window. It only took two or three minutes to put up a shutter—but there were so many windows. He raced to finish the lobby and office before it grew too dark to work. He hauled the wooden shutters out of storage, grabbed fistfuls of screws and kept two or three pinched between his lips as he worked. Just as he was finishing the windows of the lobby that faced the water, he smelled smoke. He looked around. Clarissa Ford stood behind him in the sand, the ubiquitous cigarette dangling between her fingers.

“You’re not going to shutter my room, are you?” she asked.

“Tomorrow,” he said. “Not tonight.”

“Not tomorrow,” Clarissa said.

“Yes, tomorrow. I’m sorry, but there’s a storm coming.”

“I don’t want you to shutter my windows. And certainly not my door.”

“I’ll leave the back door alone,” Mack said. “I don’t want to trap you in there. But I’m sealing up the front. Especially your room, Mrs. Ford. Your room faces the water.”

“I don’t want you to do it. I’ll sign whatever I have to, a release for my safety.”

“Your safety’s important to us, Mrs. Ford,” Mack said. He wiggled his feet in his boots; talking to her was slowing him down. “But we’re also concerned about the hotel room.”

“I’ll talk to Bill,” Clarissa said. “He’ll say to leave my room alone, I guarantee you.”

Mack shrugged. “You’re right,” he said. He turned back to the shutter in his hand. “Fine, then. You’ll go without.”

At dusk, Jem and Vance came off the beach, sweating. They’d put up snow fencing, and stored the deck furniture from every room. Mack finished with the lobby windows and called it a day. He looked over at Bill and Therese’s house before he pulled out of the parking lot. It was dark and still, as though nobody lived there anymore.

At home, Maribel cooked a huge lasagna. “We can eat it for dinner over the next few days,” she said.

“I may have to stay down at the hotel tomorrow night,” Mack said.