The Beach Club (36 page)

“
Stay
at the hotel?” she said. “Are you kidding?”

“As it is, I left forty windows facing the water totally exposed. One of them could shatter. Someone could get hurt. I probably shouldn’t have left tonight. I should have stayed down there.”

“And worked in the
dark
?” Maribel said. She took a bite of lasagna. She’d been argumentative lately, like she didn’t believe a word he said about anything anymore. “If you’re staying at the club, I am, too.”

“You’ll be safer here,” Mack said.

She stabbed a piece of lettuce. “I’m not staying here without you.”

“Maribel, you’ll be safer here. That’s the only good thing about living mid-island. Away from the water you should be okay.”

“Okay?” Maribel put her fork down with a clang and stared at him. “I should be
okay
here alone during the biggest storm this island has seen in forty years? What if a tree falls down? What if we lose power?”

“You probably will lose power,” Mack said. “But you have candles and a flashlight.”

“Great. So I spend three days in the dark by myself. We’re
engaged
, Mack.” She flashed her diamond in his face. “See this? It means we’re part of a team. And I’m coming to the hotel with you.”

“No, you’re not.”

“You don’t want me around,” she said. “You don’t want anything to do with me.”

“I’m thinking of your safety.”

“You’re thinking of yourself. As always.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” he said.

“What do you
think
it means?” she asked. Her mouth twisted in an ugly way. “It means you only think about yourself and your stupid fucking job.”

Mack tried to keep his voice steady. “You’re not staying at the hotel, Maribel,” he said. “Now stop acting like a five-year-old.”

Maribel stood up. She pushed Mack’s shoulders back, and then she moved to hit him. He raised his hands to shield his face. “What are you doing?” She clawed his arm so ferociously that he started to bleed. “What’s
wrong
with you?” he asked. He went to the kitchen sink and washed his arm. Maribel collapsed in her chair, crying. Mack was afraid to look at her; he examined the marks on his arm. Then he heard a clatter, and he saw Maribel put her bare elbows in her food as she cried into her hands.

“Maribel, what’s going on?”

She picked up her plate and threw it across the room. It crashed against the coffee table. The plate broke; lasagna and salad went everywhere. “What is wrong with you?” Mack said. “You scratched me. Do you see this? You made me bleed. Are you crazy?”

She nodded; her elbows were greasy with red sauce and salad dressing. “You don’t love me,” she said. “You’ve never loved me.”

“I do love you,” Mack said. “I asked you to marry me. That was what you wanted, wasn’t it? I gave you what you wanted.”

When Maribel stood up, she knocked her chair over. “I want
you
to want it!” she said. “I want you to want it as badly as I do. But you don’t.”

Mack tried to get a hold of her, but she smacked him out of the way. Her face was purple, she cried so hard he couldn’t even see her eyes. “Maribel, people are different. I can’t feel the way you do because I’m not you. I’m me. And I’m doing the best I can.”

“It’s not good enough!” she screamed. “You don’t love me enough!” She hit herself in the face with her open palms. “There’s something wrong with me! You don’t love me enough. You don’t! You don’t love me enough.”

Mack grabbed her arms, and she fought him. She snarled and cried in his face and he smelled her warm, garlicky breath. He held her by the wrists.

“I do love you enough,” he said. A red mark surfaced where she’d hit herself. A red mark on her pretty face. How could he love her enough when she always wanted more?

“You’re hurting me!” she said. Mack let go of her wrists. He’d gripped them so tightly, he left white marks. She darted into the bedroom, slamming the door behind her and locking it. Mack knocked on the door. “Maribel? Please open up. Mari, I don’t know what’s happening.” He heard nothing from the other side of the door but her muffled crying. Her brokenhearted crying. Even with his best intentions, the best he could give, he’d somehow failed. Mack listened for a minute, and then he cleaned up the shattered plate and the thrown food, wrapped the tray of lasagna with foil, put it in the fridge. He washed his bloody scratch marks and held a clean dishtowel against them. He knocked on the door again. “Mari, please. Tell me what’s wrong.”

“You’re what’s wrong!” she screamed. “I’m what’s wrong. This whole thing is wrong.”

“Maribel, open the door, please. Please?”

“Leave me
alone
!” she shouted.

He tried the doorknob. Locked. He could jimmy it with something from the utensil drawer, but why? What was the point?
This whole thing is wrong
.

Mack went to the sofa to watch the weather channel. Freida was off the Jersey Shore.

Lacey Gardner couldn’t concentrate on the storm because something else was bothering her. She had forgotten what Maximilian looked like. It was the oddest thing. She closed her eyes and concentrated on the things Max used to do—reading in his chair, making a tricky putt in golf. But she couldn’t picture him at all. She couldn’t imagine him in her mind.

She collected all her photographs of Maximilian and spread them out on the coffee table. Twenty-one pictures of Max—from the age of thirty-three in his military uniform to the photo of Max on the porch of the Cliff Road house during his last summer. Lacey studied each picture, and then she leaned back on the sofa and shut her eyes.

Nothing.

He had vanished. She could think his name, think of a hundred thousand moments with him, right up until the moment in bed the last night when he took her hand. But she couldn’t see his face in her mind. She opened her eyes and there were twenty-one images of Maximilian smiling at her. Then she closed her eyes, and there was darkness.

Lacey started to weep. It might be a passing phase, brought on by all the stress, the heat, the impending storm. Or it might be that now, at age eighty-eight, she was slipping away. The best part of her—the part that remembered Maximilian and kept him alive—was gone.

There was a knock at the door. Lacey wiped her face quickly with her handkerchief, but not before Mack saw her.

“You’re crying,” he said.

“No, I’m not.”

Mack waited a minute, then he said, “If something’s bothering you, you can tell me. You don’t have to be everyone’s pillar of strength and wisdom all the time.”

“Nothing’s bothering me,” she said. She nodded at the coffee table. “I’m just looking at old pictures.”

Mack surveyed the table. “Maximilian was a handsome man.” He pointed to the picture of Max in uniform. “He looks like me in this picture, don’t you think?”

“Yes,” Lacey whispered. Her Max, her Mack. She took Mack’s hand. “I love you. Do you know that? Have I ever told you that? I love you.”

Mack knelt beside her. “Lacey, what’s wrong?”

The tears started up again, out of her control. “I miss him,” she said.

“I know, Lacey,” Mack said. “I know you do.”

She cried more tears, tears she thought had dried up long ago. Mack held her hand, saying nothing. After several minutes, she snuffled into her handkerchief, and blew her nose. “I’m okay now,” she said. She noticed a bandage on Mack’s arm. “What happened to you?”

“Rough night at home,” he said. “Actually, I came to ask you a favor. I’d like to stay here tonight, if I could.”

Relief flooded Lacey, replacing, almost, the emptiness, the blankness. “For Pete’s sake, of course. Stay here, please.”

Mack squeezed her hand. “Okay, I will. Thank you.”

She wouldn’t have to be alone, then. Maximilian was missing, but Mack would be here instead to help her fend off the horrible darkness. For one night more, at least.

Monday began as a mild, sunny day, and Mack made headway on the remaining eighty shutters. Around noon, the wind shifted from southwest to due west and by the time the chambermaids finished cleaning the rooms at one o’clock, the sky was low and gunmetal gray.

Again, Bill didn’t show up in the office. Therese fluttered around behind the chambermaids, but when they finished their work, she retreated to her house. Mack shuttered away. When the wind picked up, sand pelted the side of his face and the back of his neck, a thousand tiny needles. A gust lifted his Texas Rangers hat off his head. His hands were busy with shutter and drill gun, and all he could do was turn and watch his hat blow down the beach. It was eerie in a way; suddenly the beach was deserted. Bill and Therese had dropped the future of the hotel in Mack’s hands.

By three o’clock, waves pounded the beach so that Mack felt the vibrations through the soles of his work boots as he rushed to finish shuttering. He skipped room 7, Clarissa Ford’s room, and when he made it down to room 2, she stepped onto her deck with a lit cigarette. The wind plucked the cigarette from her fingers immediately; it was halfway to Jetties Beach before she even realized it was gone.

At 3:45, the first drops of rain fell. Mack screwed in the final shutters. The wind moaned; Mack’s right ear filled with sand. Then the rain picked up. Sand blew in drifts halfway up the snow fence. Mack held his drill inside his jacket, raised his arm to shield his eyes, and ran for the back door of the lobby. By the time he reached the back door, he was soaked and his boots were filled with sand. He stood under the eaves and looked at the roiled, black sea. Mack thought of Maribel, at home on the sofa reading, her feet bundled in an afghan. She hadn’t said a word to him when he left that morning. No apology, no explanation—nothing but the silent assurance that whatever he was doing, it wasn’t enough. Mack watched the waves crest and crash. One came halfway up the beach. The next one even farther. He didn’t understand her.

Inside, Vance and Love played gin rummy at the front desk. Jem was slumped in one of the wicker chairs, asleep.

“You can all go home,” Mack said. “I’m staying at Lacey’s tonight. I’ll take care of things until this bitch passes.” He shook Jem’s shoulder. “You can leave, Jem. Why don’t you take my Jeep? You can’t walk home in this.”

Jem opened his eyes. “The Jeep? What will you drive?”

“I’m not going home tonight.” And then, before he could think better of it, he said, “Take the Jeep and check on Maribel. She’s all by herself. I’m sure she wants company.”

Jem sat upright in the chair. “Is that supposed to be some kind of joke?”

Mack’s stomach prickled with jealousy, and with fear. He pictured Maribel crying, he pictured his fingers gripping her wrists, leaving behind white bracelets. “It’s no joke, man. I can’t get home tonight. You’d be doing me a favor if you checked on her.”

“I’d be doing you a
favor
? Really?” Jem said.

“Just go,” Mack said. He flipped Jem his keys.

Jem didn’t hesitate. He took the keys and ran, following Vance and Love out the door. Because the windows were shuttered, Mack couldn’t watch them drive away. And that kept him from yelling after Jem, and telling him it was all a mistake.

As soon as the rain started, Bill got out of bed and ran to the living room window. The ocean was huge, the waves bigger than any Bill could remember. The lobby was shuttered, and so were the rooms—Mack’s doing. Bill couldn’t bring himself to feel one way or another. He couldn’t feel anything except this crazy longing, this crazy sadness.

Therese came up the stairs. “You’re up,” she said. She stood with him at the window. “Our kingdom. I hope it doesn’t get washed away.”

“What does it matter?” Bill said.

“Bill,” Therese said, “she’s coming back.”

“She’s not coming back!” Bill said. “Stop saying that, Therese. Cecily
isn’t coming back!
”

Therese said quietly, “She is.”

“She’s not,” Bill said. The Brazilian boys chased Cecily now. One boy—Gabriel—grabbed Cecily’s bright red hair. He held a razor to her neck.

Bill went to the closet and put a slicker on over his pajamas. “I’m going up to the widow’s walk.”

“What?” Therese said. She collapsed on the leather sofa. “You’ve lost your mind.”

“What does it matter?” Bill said. He marched through the bedroom and opened the door to the attic. In the attic was a flight of stairs leading to a hatch that popped up onto the widow’s walk. Bill had trouble opening the hatch door; he pressed his hands flat against it and pushed with all his might. Then the door flipped open and the wind and the rain nearly knocked Bill down the stairs. He knelt on the stairs and clenched the railing. He would get up there, and sit on the widow’s walk. It might kill him, but what did it matter? He was the father of two children: one dead, one missing.

Then he heard a voice, footsteps. Therese climbed up after him.

“I’m coming up there with you,” she said. She was five or ten feet away, but it sounded as though she were calling to him from the end of a long tunnel. The wind lifted her pale orange hair; she looked like a ghost or a witch, but she looked beautiful, too—his bride, the woman he loved.

Bill gripped the railing with one hand and reached for her with the other. The wind was impossibly strong. Poetically strong—if they did manage to climb onto the widow’s walk, maybe the wind would pick them up and carry them away, to their son, their daughter.

Rain drove through the hatch. Bill was soaked to the skin. He was in bare feet.

“Come on,” he said. He raised his head through the opening. The sky screamed in his ears, the world rained down on him. All he could see was white. Bill tried to look around, but he couldn’t find the sea, he couldn’t find the hotel. The sky was blank, the color of wind. Wind filled his eyes, his ears, his nose—he was drowning in the wind.
What are you waiting for? A sign from God?
“You can have it!” Bill screamed to the sky. He was sure that somehow S.B.T. could hear him. “You…can…have…it!” He lost his balance and faltered in his footing, but Therese steadied him. He brought his head back inside. The stairs were wet and slippery; Therese’s blouse stuck to her skin. Mascara ran down her face, her orange hair was wet, the color of a pumpkin.