The Beach Club (41 page)

“I feel like your chauffeur,” Mack said.

“We want to be together,” Love said.

“Yeah,” Vance said. In the rearview mirror, Mack watched him put his arm around Love’s shoulders. Mack thought of Maribel, and he wondered if the feeling of being the stupidest person in the world would pass.

Mack led the caravan back down the hill into the thick of the moors. He was deep in thought—about Lacey, about his parents, and about Maribel—but he did notice when Love abruptly cleared her throat.

“I’m pregnant,” she said.

Now that autumn had arrived, the front desk was a peaceful place to work. Love kept the woodstove fired throughout the day and a mug of warm herbal tea by the phone. She wore bulky sweaters and the fleeces she hadn’t touched since early May. Normally, wearing winter clothes and lighting fires got Love excited for winter. Love had a plane ticket back to Aspen leaving after the hotel closed on Columbus Day, and although she was going to use it, she wasn’t staying in Aspen. It was amazing, really, how her life had changed in less than six months. Not just the circumstances of her life but her way of thinking as well. Her whole life before coming to this island had been charted, graphed, strategized. What she realized now was that it was much more fun to let Life tell her how things were going to be.

Look at the way she announced her pregnancy. She’d resolved to keep it a secret, but then Lacey died, and although Love didn’t know Lacey that well, she felt something up on Altar Rock, some sort of movement, a rush, what Vance would call a “gut feeling” that Lacey’s death and her child’s conception were not unrelated. They were part of a cycle, they were part of how the big picture worked. And descending into the moors—the breathtaking green-red-gold moors of Nantucket, Love blurted out the news.

She stunned Vance and Mack, that was for sure. Vance’s expression remained unchanged for a split second, then his mouth opened and he laughed. Not a funny laugh, but a happy laugh. He hugged and kissed her and he laughed. He clapped Mack on the shoulder and Mack let go of the stick shift long enough to grab Vance’s hand.

“That’s terrific, you guys,” Mack said. “Man, is that great. Congratulations.”

“I’m going to be a dad,” Vance said. His voice was filled with awe, Love supposed, and fear maybe too, but no hesitancy. “I’m going to be a father.” The words didn’t frighten her at all; driving down the bumpy, sandy road she knew she loved Vance. He was totally wrong for her—ten years too young, too sullen and moody and utterly mysterious—and yet she loved him. She wanted to be with him, she wanted to know him and she wanted him to father her child, in every sense. Standing on Altar Rock, she felt her heart open up to include other people; she felt her life grow beyond just herself. This was a gift she had never expected from pregnancy, or wanted, but here it was. She was forty years old and she was growing up.

Love and Vance talked about what they were going to do. First they considered Vance moving to Aspen. He could get a job at the Hotel Jerome, or the Little Nell. After the baby was born in May, they could return to Nantucket. This plan had its appeal, but when Love thought about it, she realized she didn’t want to live in Aspen any longer. “Can we stay here?” she asked him. “Can we stay on Nantucket?”

He smiled. She wasn’t used to this—him smiling all the time now. “Sure,” he said.

Vance discovered that the house Mack and Maribel usually rented for the winter would be empty. So the house on Sunset Hill—the house Mack called the Palace—would be theirs. It was a house that fell out of the pages of Love’s book,
Vintage Nantucket
. The uneven wooden floors might throw her pregnant body off-balance, but the ceilings and the doorways were low enough that she had plenty of places to brace herself.

And so, they would stay on Nantucket, and this seemed the final piece of Love’s happiness. She was pregnant, she was in love with Vance, and over the past five months she had fallen in love with Nantucket. She was staying.

A couple wearning sweaters and gloves and hiking boots walked into the lobby, their cheeks bright with the cold. It was room 15, the Hendersons. They were young and laid back, the kind of couple Mack had promised would show up in the fall.

“We just walked the trails at Sanford Farm,” Mrs. Henderson said. She had gray eyes and thick black eyelashes. “This place is so gorgeous. It’s like make-believe. The houses in town, the shops, the restaurants. And then when you get out of town, the natural beauty is astounding.”

“The island is magical,” Love agreed.

Mr. Henderson approached the desk, one hand in his front jeans pocket, and one hand wrapped around a mug of coffee. “We’re schoolteachers in Vermont,” he said. “And Vermont is beautiful. But not like this. It must have something to do with being on an island, all that water, you know.” He looked at Love. “Do you live here?”

Here—Nantucket—the land of stars and clams, oxygen-rich air and romance?

“Yes,” she said.

Jem called his parents from the phone in Maribel’s apartment. He knew his family was waiting to hear from him. Waiting for him to come home.

His sister, Gwennie, answered the phone.

“It’s me,” he said. “Mom and Dad there?”

“That’s just great,” Gwennie said. “We don’t hear from you in six months, and then you can’t even say hello like a normal person? That’s just great, Jem.”

“Gwen, are Mom and Dad there, please? This is costing money.”

“Don’t you want to know how I am?”

“Sure,” he said.

“I’m more blood than flesh,” she said. “But I’ve gained six pounds.”

“Excellent,” he said. “No more puking?”

“Not as much. When are you coming home?”

“I need to talk to Mom or Dad,” Jem said. “Put on whoever’s in the vicinity.”

Gwennie didn’t bother to cover the receiver. “
Mom! Dad!
” she screamed. “
Jem’s
on the phone!”

His mother got on. “Jem! Thank you for calling, honey.”

“Hi, Mom.”

“How are you?”

“I’m great. It’s been quite a summer.”

“It sounds like it. I photocopied your letters for my bridge club. You don’t mind, do you? If it said something private, I blocked it out. But you really didn’t say anything too private. Everyone wanted to know about the people you were meeting. It sounds like that island is really something.”

“It is.” He imagined his letters being passed around the bridge table like a cut-glass bowl of nuts.

“When are you coming home? Daddy and I want to pick you up at the airport.”

Jem’s father picked up the other phone. “Hey, boy! We miss you down here. Feels like you’ve been away forever.”

“What’s going on, Dad?”

“I’m watching the Redskins lose and your mother’s making chili.”

“Gwennie’s just starting to get better,” his mother whispered. “She’s not purging nearly as often.”

“She said she gained six pounds,” Jem said. “That’s great.”

“I talked to Bob Beller about getting you an internship at Brookings,” his father said. “How about that? The Brookings Institution—now, there’s a high-powered place.”

Jem took a deep breath. Hearing his parents’ voices made him miss them—he pictured his house, the kitchen with the copper pots hanging, his bed and goose-down pillows, the den with the pool table and the organ that Gwennie hadn’t touched since she was nine years old. He missed it—and he wondered if maybe that was what kept him from calling all summer. He didn’t want to miss them too much.

“I’m not coming home,” Jem said. “I’m going to New York State for a couple of weeks, and then I’m going to California.” He coughed. “Actually, I’m moving to California.”

Gwennie must have been listening on a third phone because she yelled out, “He’s not coming home! I told you he wasn’t coming home and I was right!”

“You’re not moving anywhere,” his father said.

“Paul,” Jem’s mother said. “We can’t clip his wings.” She sweetened her voice. “Why do you want to move to California, Jem? That’s so far away.”

“I want to be an agent,” he said. “I want to open my own talent agency.”

“You need capital to open a business,” his father said. “Opening a business is not just something you do the year after you graduate from college.”

“I know,” Jem said. “I’ll work for someone else first, and save my money.” He thought about the fifteen thousand dollars sitting in Nantucket Bank with his name on it. He had
not
written home about that—his parents would think accepting Neil’s money was wrong. They would wonder what he’d done to earn it. “Anyway, I have to be in California to break into the business.”

“I was right!” Gwennie shouted. “I told you so!”

“What did you learn up there this summer?” his father asked. “That you don’t need your family anymore?”

“Did you meet a girl?” his mother asked. “Did you…did you get some girl in trouble?”

With the exception of Gwennie’s bulimia, his family was like something from the wrong decade.
Did you get some girl in trouble?
His mother couldn’t even say the word
pregnant
.

“No,” he said. “No one’s in trouble.”

“Except you,” his father said. “If you don’t get yourself home by the end of the month.”

“I don’t want to work at Brookings, Dad,” Jem said. “And I don’t want to tend bar at the Tower.” The Locked Tower: now the very name of the place gave him the shivers.

“You’re not going to California,” his father said. “I forbid it.”

“Paul!” Jem’s mother said. “We talked about this. If Jem wants to go to California, what can we do to stop him? He’s twenty-three years old.”

“I am not pleased, Jeremy,” his father said. “And I’m not sending you any money, so I hope you earned plenty up there. I’m going to call Bob and tell him to forget about the internship. Is that what you want me to do?”

“Yes,” Jem said.

“Okay, then.” His father hung up.

“Mom, are you still there?” Jem asked.

“Yes,” she said.

“Her name is Maribel Cox,” Jem said. “She’s blond and pretty and nice and incredibly smart. She works at the library and she runs and she’s a terrific cook. I love her, Mom.”

“You love who?”

“Maribel Cox,” he said. “You should be happy for me because this is, like, the best thing that’s ever happened to me aside from being born.”

“You love Maribel Cox.” His mother sighed. “It probably shouldn’t surprise me, but it does. You’ve always been so levelheaded about girls.”

“I’m being levelheaded now,” Jem said. “I swear.”

“Will you call us when you get to California? Will you tell us where you’re living?”

“Do you think Dad will ever speak to me again?”

“He’s disappointed, and I have to tell you, I’m disappointed, too, crushed, really. So when you hang up you tell Maribel Cox, whoever she is, that you hurt your mother’s feelings.”

“I’ll call you and tell you where I am,” he said. “I’m sorry about everything. I’m glad Gwennie’s getting better, and—”

“That’s enough, Jeremy,” his mother said. “We love you.”

She hung up.

“Whoa,” Jem said. He punched off the portable phone and fell back into the sofa cushions. “Whoa.” He thought back to what Lacey Gardner had told him, about how children should stop hoping for their parents’ approval and just live their lives. This fortified him for a minute, but then he realized that just because Lacey was dead didn’t mean she was right.

Maribel came into the living room. “How was it?” she asked softly.

“We’re going,” he said.

Of all the guests who stayed at the hotel, Cal West was Therese’s favorite. She didn’t know him particularly well; he wasn’t what she would call a friend. He wasn’t handsome or charming, and he didn’t have any egregious personal problems for her to work out—no divorce, no untimely deaths, no emotional or psychological conditions. Nothing about Cal West stood out. He was boring.

Cal West came from Ohio, a place Therese imagined to be even more dull and orderly and monochromatic than the town she grew up in on Long Island. Ohio—the name of the state was deceptively rounded; what Therese pictured was a square of dun-colored carpeting, flat, unattractive. What did people do in Ohio? Cal West worked in the provost’s office at Ohio State University. He processed papers having something to do with collegiate life.

Cal West had a triangular face—his forehead was wide and his chin narrow and the planes of his cheeks were straight edges. He had wispy brown hair which he combed down with water, a few faint acne scars, brown eyes. He stood five eight, wore sweater vests and loafers.

He’d started coming to the hotel six or seven years earlier for Columbus Day weekend. Therese might never have noticed him at all except the first year a strange thing happened. When she went in to clean Cal West’s room, the place was immaculate. The bathroom sparkled, the bed was made with perfect corners. At first, Therese thought she’d entered a vacant room, but Cal West’s suitcase was in the closet and his shirts and pants hung neatly on hangers. Therese checked the room the next day, and the next. His room was pristine. Therese could have gone through the motions of vacuuming the carpet and remaking the bed, but why? She had finally discovered a person as clean as she was.

Cal West spent hours reading in the lobby in front of the woodstove. One year he read the Bible, one year Shakespeare, one year every book that had won the Pulitzer Prize, in chronological order. In the evenings Cal removed his reading glasses, leaned back in the rocker, and listened to the music—Haydn, Schubert, Billie Holiday. Cal West seemed to have a quiet, contented life, and Therese envied that. She thought Cal West must be very wise. He’d done something right.