The Beach Club (7 page)

“Fuck you, Fred,” Bart said.

“Watch your language,” Leo said.

“That was uncalled for, Fred,” Bart said.

“I was only kidding,” Fred said. “I was only trying to add some levity to this little affair, this pathetic attempt at family bonding. Sorry if I offended you.”

“Dad’s right,” Bart said. “You need to lighten up.”

“Why are you kissing Dad’s ass, Bart?” Fred said.

Leo raised his voice. “I
said
watch your language. We have the children here.”

Then Bart turned to his father. “Why do you call
them
‘the children’? Fred and I are also your children.”

“It’s an age thing,” Leo said.

“So now that I’m twenty-eight years old I’m no longer your child? I’ve become, what, your colleague?”

Chantal stood up. “I can’t take this,” she said. Therese hadn’t even realized the girl spoke English. Chantal, wasn’t that a French name? The girl had a flat, Midwestern accent. “This low-level ground fire is driving me nuts. You people don’t need to be playing tennis. You need to be dealing with your issues. I’m going back to the hotel.” She picked up Whitney and took Cole by the arm. He protested, and Chantal said, “Fine, you want to stay, stay.” She marched off.

Therese watched her go. She should probably leave as well. Bill believed that the only people who could fix family problems were the family members themselves. But Therese worried about Cole. The skin around his eyes was red and mottled from so much crying. He wore a little white polo shirt and little tennis shoes. He sat in the grass with his feet out in front of him, his arms crossed.

“I should go, too,” Therese said. “I don’t belong here.”

“Please stay, Therese.” This from Fred. “I don’t think any of us can handle it if another woman walks out.”

“Yes,” Leo echoed. “Please stay. We’ll behave, won’t we, guys?”

“Okay,” Therese said. “I’ll stay.” She winked at Cole. He hiccuped.

Therese concentrated on her tennis—the green ball and her old-fashioned racket—but she couldn’t help noticing the silence that settled over them like the fog. The men barely grunted out the score. Was this their idea of good behavior? If you have nothing nice to say, say nothing at all? Didn’t they know it was unhealthy to hold feelings in?

A little before five o’clock, they were tied at six games apiece.

“Shall we have a tiebreaker to see who gets the set?” Leo asked.

“I agree under one condition,” Therese said. “You men have to talk to one another.”

“Talk?” Fred said.

“Yes, you know, talk to one another, like normal people,” Therese said. “Chantal was right. You need to communicate.”

Fred got ready to serve. “Okay,” he said. “I have something I’d like to talk about. I’ve decided I don’t want to be a lawyer.” He slammed the ball and it whizzed past Leo.

“What?” Leo said. “What did you say?”

Fred and Therese switched sides and Fred took another ball from his pocket. He tossed it up and caught it, and looked at his father. “I don’t want to be a lawyer.”

“You just graduated from Harvard Law School and now you don’t want to be a lawyer? Ninety thousand dollars later and you’ve suddenly had a change of heart?”

“It’s about more than ninety thousand dollars,” Fred said. “It’s about my life.”

“Well, I’m gay,” Bart said.

“Wait a minute,” Leo said, wiping his forehead with the sleeve of his shirt. “One bombshell at a time. You don’t want to be a lawyer?”

“Don’t ignore what I said, Dad,” Bart said. “Don’t pretend like the fact that I’m gay doesn’t exist.”

“No,” Fred said, “I don’t want to be a lawyer.”

The fog was so thick Therese could barely make out Cole at the edge of the court. But he sat there, listening.

Leo looked at Bart. “You’re gay. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do with that. Say great? That’s wonderful? I’m so happy for you? What’s appropriate?”

“How about, ‘Thank you for telling me’?”

“Okay,” Leo said. “Thank you for telling me. And, Fred, if you don’t want to be a lawyer, then what
do
you want to be?”

“I don’t know,” Fred said. “A motorcycle cop. An independent filmmaker. A house husband.”

Bart looked at his watch. “Our time’s up,” he said. “We have to be off the court.”

“And nobody won,” Fred said.

The fog made it look as though the afternoon were going up in smoke. Therese’s fault, for meddling. As they walked back to the hotel, Cole took her hand.

“I want my mom,” he whispered.

Therese squeezed him to her side. “I know,” she said. “I know.”

The next morning, Therese followed behind the chambermaids with her checklist, inspecting their cleaning jobs. Was the toilet working? Was the temperature of the water in the toilet bowl correct? Did the tile floor in the entryway need scrubbing? Were the lightbulbs working? Therese had twenty-four items on her checklist. In all the years that the hotel had been open, no one had ever complained of a dirty room. Not once.

Therese watched one of her new chambermaids—a girl from Darien named Elizabeth—as she started on the bathroom in room 7.

“Check under the mirror for grime,” Therese said. “Dirt has favorite hiding places and that’s one of them.”

Elizabeth wiped her forehead with the back of her rubbergloved hand. “Okay,” she said. She went back to scouring the top of the toilet, then she turned to Therese. “But do I really have to check the temperature of the water in the toilet bowl?”

“We need to make sure the mixing valves are working correctly. If the water’s too hot the toilet will whistle, and the guests will be up all night listening to it. If the water’s too cold…well, have you ever sat on a toilet filled with ice cold water?”

Elizabeth shook her head.

“It’s no fun,” Therese said. “Just take your gloves off and stick your finger in the water. See if it feels comfortable.”

Elizabeth got two very distinct worry lines in her forehead. “But people
poop
in that water.”

“By now the poop is hundreds of yards away. It’s clean water, I assure you.” Therese watched Elizabeth pull at her rubber glove one finger at a time and gingerly dip the end of her pinky into the water.

“It’s comfortable,” Elizabeth said.

“For goodness’ sake.” She nudged Elizabeth aside and dragged her own hand through the water. “You’re right,” Therese said.

Therese moved on to room 8, knowing that Elizabeth was rolling her eyes in frustration and would no doubt write a letter home to her mother complaining about her boss who made her test the toilet bowl water. Half the chambermaids Therese hired quit, but the ones who stayed became the world’s best housekeepers.

In room 8, sitting on the unmade queen-sized bed, was Leo Hearn. Therese checked her clipboard.

“This isn’t your room,” she said. “What are you doing in here? You don’t belong in here.”

“I was waiting for you,” he said.

“I’m working,” Therese said. “Why aren’t you with your children?”

“My children hate me,” Leo said. “I can’t get anything right. The nanny hates me and she’s not even related to me. No wonder my wife left.”

“Your kids don’t hate you,” Therese said. “You’re just having a difficult time.”

“I’ll say it’s difficult. One kid is a lawyer in a good practice but he’s gay. He likes men. The other kid is straight but he doesn’t want to be a lawyer. He wants to be a
house husband
. I told them if I took the lawyer part of Bart and joined it with the heterosexual part of Fred, they’d make the perfect son.”

“Oh, Leo,” Therese said.

“I let that pearl slip after four Stoli tonics at dinner last night. Now neither one of them is speaking to me. It’s like I don’t exist.”

“You hurt them,” Therese said. “You need to apologize.”

“At the time, I thought maybe they’d take it as a compliment. They each got it half right.”

“No,” Therese said. “Because you’re telling them that they only equal half a person in your eyes. You’re not accepting their choices.”

“I don’t know what to do,” Leo said, his broad shoulders slumping.

Therese sat next to him. “You want a piece of advice from an old woman?”

“You’re no older than me,” he said. “But you’re right. I feel old.”

Therese caught her reflection in the mirror over the dresser. If Bill were watching her now, he’d cringe. He’d tell her to pat Leo Hearn on the hand and wish him good luck. But Therese wanted to help. “Twenty-eight years ago, I lost a child. A son. Born dead.” Therese felt Leo shift slightly away from her on the mattress. “And I would give anything to have just one of your three sons. They are strong, healthy, smart, good people and it’s your responsibility to love them. That’s all, Leo, just love them.”

“I’m sorry you lost your son,” Leo said.

“I’m sorry, too,” she said. “But I’m even sorrier to see someone like you with four beautiful children acting like an ass.”

“I am an ass,” Leo said. “I am just a really big ass. No wonder my wife left me.”

“Stop thinking about yourself, Leo. Parents aren’t allowed to think about themselves.”

“Do you have some kind of instruction manual that I don’t have?” he asked.

“My instruction manual has been twenty-eight years of pain for my son. And it makes me grateful for what I do have, my husband, my daughter Cecily.” Therese misted up. She waved her hand. “Go find your kids,” she said.

Leo left the room and Therese watched him go. Then she eyed her checklist. At that moment it seemed so silly she wanted to pitch it out the window. Therese let a couple of tears drip down her cheeks, then she heard a knock on the door. It was Elizabeth.

“Are you okay?” Elizabeth asked.

Therese wiped her face and looked in the mirror. The white streak in her orange hair stood out like a scream in a nursery, something wrong, something amiss. Her baby boy dead. How shocked she’d been to look at herself in the mirror after thirteen grueling hours of labor and find that she’d turned into an old woman, with white hair. White hair that couldn’t be dyed, that wouldn’t hold color. So she wouldn’t couldn’t forget.

On Sunday, Leo approached Therese during breakfast. He lowered his voice. “Things are better,” he said. “I took your suggestion and recanted the statement about the perfect son.”

“Good for you,” Therese said.

Leo checked his watch. “Cole hasn’t cried in twenty hours. A new record. But I still feel like I’m balancing a tray of expensive china on my head.”

“That’s known in the parents’ manual as the balancing-expensive-china feeling,” Therese said. “All parents feel that way sometimes.”

“I’m taking Bart and Fred out alone tonight,” Leo said. “A men’s night out, you know, big, juicy steaks, red wine, cigars, the whole bit.”

“Just love them, Leo,” Therese said.

“I’m leaving Chantal with the kids and ordering them take out shrimp and fried clams. But would you check on them? In case Cole starts to cry. I know he likes you.”

“I’d be happy to check on them if it makes you feel better.”

Leo spun his coffee cup in his hands. “You know, I’ve been thinking about what you said and I really am sorry about your son.”

“I didn’t tell you that story to get your sympathy, Leo,” Therese said.

“I know.” Leo turned red and looked down at the carpet. “I just wanted you to know it made me think.”

“Good.” It made him think, but he would never know what it felt like to hold a dead baby. Lucky, lucky man. “I’ll keep an eye on your kids,” she said. “Don’t worry about a thing.”

Later, Therese would recall certain images: the Hearn men dressed in navy blazers and white shirts and bright summer ties standing on the front porch of the lobby while Chantal snapped their picture, their arms wound around each other, looking not so much like father and sons as like fraternity brothers, team members, friends. Then, another picture with Leo holding Cole, and Bart and Fred holding the baby girl. Therese watched all this from the bay window of her house, and she felt pride at that moment. Pride! She had helped! Therese noted the arrival of the young delivery man from Meals on Keels who showed up with Styrofoam cartons of food. She thought, “I’ll check on them after they eat.” Therese searched her empty kitchen cabinets for something that might qualify as dinner. She was a great housekeeper but a terrible cook and she thought guiltily of all the times Cecily had complained growing up, “There’s nothing to eat in this house!” Therese fixed two cucumber and cream cheese sandwiches and a handful of pretzels. She poured herself a glass of Chardonnay and a cranberry juice for Bill. She took the glasses first and then the plates to the bedroom where Bill was lying in the near dark with a washcloth over his eyes, snoring. It was seven o’clock.

Then the phone rang and Therese left the plates of food on the bed next to Bill’s sleeping body as she went to answer the phone. She remembered hoping it was Cecily.

But it was Tiny, her normally serene voice high-pitched, like the very top of a guitar string. “We have a situation down here. I’ve called an ambulance.”

Therese flew down the stairs, out of her house, and across the parking lot, her long skirt billowing behind her. There had been no sense asking what or who. Her mother instinct shrieked like a siren. It was the Hearn children.