The Beach Club (8 page)

Chantal stood in the lobby holding Cole. His arms and legs were pink and swollen, his face a red, angry balloon.

Chantal was shaking. “He’s not choking, I checked. I know how to do the Heimlich but he’s not choking. I don’t know what’s happening.”

Therese took Cole from her; he was heavier than she expected. “Go get the baby.”

Therese put her ear to Cole’s mouth. Cole’s breathing was hoarse and wheezy. His eyes were swollen shut. “Can you hear me?” Therese asked him. “Are you awake?” Then Therese heard sirens. “Call a cab for the girl,” Therese said to Tiny. “And call Leo Hearn at the Club Car. I’ll go with the boy to the hospital.”

Therese hurried out the front of the lobby to meet the ambulance. Cole’s body went limp in her arms. The paramedic jumped out and took Cole from her.

“He fainted,” Therese said. Cole’s skin was turning scarlet; he looked like a boiled lobster. “Is he going to die?”

The ambulance driver flung the doors of the ambulance open, put Cole on a stretcher and loaded him in. “You coming with us?” he asked Therese. “You the boy’s grandmother?”

“No,” she said. Heart breaking at the word “grandmother” though she was certainly old enough.
Mother
.
Mother
. “But I am going with you.” Therese hiked her skirt and climbed into the back of the ambulance. The siren sounded and they sped off down North Beach Road.

The paramedic lifted Cole’s eyelids. “The kid’s in shock,” he said. He put a blanket over Cole, then took his blood pressure. He produced a needle from his bag and stuck it into Cole’s arm.

“What are you doing?” Therese asked. “I said I’m not the boy’s mother, or grandmother. Don’t you have to ask permission or something?”

“We have a little anaphylactic reaction here,” the paramedic said. “A severe allergic swelling accompanied by hives, low blood pressure, fainting. And the kid’s having problems breathing because his throat is swelling shut. Has he been eating nuts maybe? Or shellfish?”

“Clams, I think,” Therese said. She wondered if saying “a little anaphylactic reaction” was like saying “a little cancer” or “a little heart attack.” Low blood pressure, shock, fainting—all that sounded so serious. “He’s allergic, then?”

“Look at him,” the paramedic said. “This is more than indigestion.”

“Is he going to die?” Therese asked again. She might fend off the worst kind of news if she faced it head on.
Was the child going to die?
Less than six months before, she rode in another ambulance, when it was Bill on the stretcher, his face pale and shiny with sweat. The paramedics then talked about flying Bill to Denver in a helicopter that Therese suspected they saved for dying people. She had been too afraid then even to speak the words. But now she saw it was easier to start with the worst possibility; she might outsmart death by pretending she wasn’t afraid.

The paramedic had red hair like Cecily and he was young, perhaps only a few years older than Cecily. He smiled and patted Therese’s shoulder.

“No,” he said, “he’s not going to die.”

At the hospital, they took Cole away on a gurney and the nurse tried to hand Therese forms to fill out, but she said, “I’m not his mother, I’m not his grandmother. I’m not related at all. I don’t know his date of birth or anything. His father will be here soon.”

A minute later, Chantal ran into the waiting room. She held the baby, who was asleep.

“I’m sure to get fired now,” she said.

Therese took the baby from Chantal and nodded for her to sit down. Therese kissed the sweet, fragrant top of the baby’s head. She remembered Cecily at this age: the tiny, solid weight of her. The smell of a baby, the softness of a baby.
Baby, baby
.

She whispered to Chantal, “It’s not your fault, dear. Cole was allergic to what you ate. Did you have clams?”

Chantal sniffled. “Clams and shrimp. And then he swelled up like a piece of bubble gum. This whole trip has been a nightmare.”

Leo stormed into the waiting room with Bart and Fred behind him. Tie loose, eyes bloodshot, smelling like smoke.

“What happened?” he said. “Where’s Cole? I want to see my son.”

Therese put a finger to her lips. “Cole had an allergic reaction to the clams. You need to speak to the nurse. She wants you to fill out some forms.”

“I don’t want to fill out any goddamned forms! I want to see my son! I get a call at the goddamned restaurant telling me my child has been rushed to the emergency room, and I’d like to see him.” Leo glared at Therese, as though she were responsible. How could she blame him? She had given Leo permission to love his children, without warning him that as soon as you allowed yourself to love them fully, you left yourself open to this kind of hurt, this kind of incredible fear. Leo started in on the nurse at the desk.

“What happened?” Fred asked.

“It was an allergic reaction to the clams, they think,” Therese said. She uneasily recalled that emergencies were like this: you repeated what little information you had again and again until finally you received more information. “He turned bright pink and puffy, and right before the ambulance arrived he fainted in my arms. The paramedic gave him a shot. The paramedic seemed to think Cole was going to be fine.”

Leo returned from the desk with a clipboard. “They won’t let me see him yet,” he said. “They said the doctor will be out shortly, whatever that means. Cole had an allergic reaction to the shellfish.” Leo looked at Fred. “Did you know he was allergic to shellfish?”

Fred shook his head.

“Bart, did you know Cole was allergic to shellfish?”

“No, Dad, I didn’t.”

“I didn’t know either,” Chantal offered up. “Otherwise I wouldn’t have let him eat the clams. But he said he
wanted
some. I just gave them to him without thinking.”

“I didn’t know he was allergic,” Leo said. “I’m the boy’s father and I did not know he was allergic to shellfish.” He collapsed into a molded plastic chair.

Bart patted him on the back. “It’s okay, Dad.”

“It’s not okay,” Leo said. “Because I’m sure his mother knew he was allergic, and his mother’s not here. She took that important piece of information with her, just like she took all of the other important pieces of information. I didn’t know Cole was allergic, I don’t know how to make Cole stop crying, and I certainly don’t know how to care for a baby girl. I only had boys, and I don’t know much about them either.”

They were all quiet for a while and then Fred cleared his throat. “Is it possible that this is the first time Cole’s ever eaten shellfish and that nobody knew he was allergic because he’d never tried it before?”

“It’s possible,” Chantal said. “I’ve never seen Cole eat anything but hot dogs and pasta.”

Fred tousled his father’s gray hair. “So that means if Kelly were here, she wouldn’t have known Cole was allergic either.”

“Thinking like a lawyer,” Bart said. “Harvard isn’t wasted after all.”

A bald man in a blue jogging suit came out into the waiting room. “Mr. Hearn? Mrs. Hearn?”

“Are you the doctor?” Leo asked.

“Dr. Maniscalco,” he said, offering his hand. “Nice to meet you. Cole is going to be fine. He had an allergic reaction to some clams he ate but we gave him a shot of epinephrine, and some corticosteroids to reduce the swelling. That should take care of it. He can never eat any kind of shellfish again. He shouldn’t be in a room where clams are steaming, he shouldn’t even pick up a clam on the beach. If you hadn’t gotten him here in time, there could have been some serious complications.”

“But he’s okay, right, Doctor?” Leo asked. “Can we take him home?”

The doctor nodded and Leo followed after him down the hall. He returned several minutes later holding Cole, whose brown eyes were wide open, thick lashes blinking; he was sucking his thumb. Therese felt the cool wind of relief. She watched her reflection in the sliding glass doors as she swayed the baby back and forth. It seemed so natural, holding a baby.

Bill was waiting up when she got home.

“What I want to know is,” he said, “are we going to get sued?”

“No,” Therese said.

“Good,” Bill said. “It’s the family of lawyers we’re dealing with so I was nervous. I woke up and found the sandwiches and I wondered why I was eating alone, and so I called Tiny. I guess I slept through the sirens.” He took Therese’s hand and she sat on the floor in front of his chair so he could rub her shoulders. “Was it awful?” he asked.

“I’ve seen worse,” Therese said. “But I was scared there for a while. In the end, though, the little boy’s okay, and I think the family is going to make it as well.”

“They survived the meddling of Therese Elliott,” Bill said.

What Therese wanted more than anything else at that moment was for Cecily to come home. She wanted to look at her own child and know that she was safe. And she wanted a good night’s sleep.

“We have fourteen check-outs tomorrow,” Therese said. “And only three chambermaids. And if that’s not bad enough, tomorrow is Memorial Day.”

Bill Elliott never forgot Memorial Day. In the morning, he made love to Therese as sweetly and tenderly as he knew how. He kissed her eyelids and they leaked tears. Therese clung to him, and when Bill entered her, her sobs quieted. Therese had been his wife for thirty years and still, Bill could not believe the love that overcame him. This Memorial Day morning, the love and sadness mixed together.

“I love you,” Bill said.

“I know.”

One hour in bed and they relived the full weight of a pain that had assaulted them so long ago. Though perhaps Bill was the only one who felt the full brunt of the pain; perhaps for Therese, the pain had faded over the years. He hoped for her sake that it had.

Twenty-eight years ago, Therese was thirty and Bill was thirty-two. Therese was eight months pregnant with their first child, and Bill worked for his father at the Beach Club. The hotel rooms had not yet been built, although Bill and Therese planned to see an architect and approach Big Bill with the idea—a Beach Club and a
hotel
. Rooms facing the water. It was thrilling to think of handing something so concrete to their new child. Thrilling to think about passing the hotel on to a son.

No one was ever able to explain what went wrong. Therese had sharp pains one day while shopping in town. She called the doctor from the lunch counter at Congdon’s Pharmacy and he jokingly told her not to drive the Jeep over the cobblestones. That night Therese asked Bill to feel her belly. Was the baby kicking?
Tell me you feel the baby kicking
. Bill spread both hands over Therese’s naked belly, his fingers splayed, and rubbed it as though it were a crystal ball. He thought he felt a distant pounding, but then he realized it was Therese’s frantic heartbeat. No, he felt nothing.

Therese called the doctor in the middle of the night, and he agreed to meet them at the hospital. Bill remembered the ride to the hospital—no ambulance, no sirens—just the quiet, dark minutes in the Jeep with Bill imagining how he would apologize to Dr. Stevenson for dragging him out of bed for no reason.
It’s our first time
, he’d say.
We’re just a little nervous
.

But an apology wasn’t necessary: The baby was dead. Dr. Stevenson induced labor and for thirteen hours Therese pushed—Bill at her side—both of them crying, Therese screaming out,
It isn’t fair!
Bill was thinking and maybe Therese too (Bill would never know),
What if the doctor is mistaken? What if the baby is alive?
Therese flung her arms against the metal rails of the bed, trying to hurt herself.
It isn’t fair
, she screamed, and no one—not Bill, not the nurses, not Dr. Stevenson—told her she was wrong.

The baby was a boy. A perfectly shaped, normal-seeming little boy, except his skin was gray and when Bill held him he was cool to the touch, like a baby made of porcelain. The nurse left them alone in the room with the baby; she told Bill they should hold the baby for as long as they wanted. “It makes the grieving easier,” she said. “Most couples who miscarry never get a chance to hold their baby.” Bill and Therese both held the baby. They held him separately; they held him together—for a few minutes, a complete family.

Bill found it impossible to believe that holding his son made his grieving easier. Even now, twenty-eight years later with his wife in his arms, in their warm bed, he could remember what it felt like to hold his dead son. They named him W.T. Elliott—William Therese Elliott—and buried him in a plot in the cemetery on Somerset Road, even though everyone in Bill’s family had always been cremated. But cremating the baby was unthinkable. What would he amount to? A handful of ashes that they would fling out into the sea? It would be too horrible to watch the ashes float away; it would be too much as if he never existed.

After they buried the baby, Bill vowed to make love to Therese in the mornings. At first he had to make himself go through the motions. He was afraid of getting Therese pregnant again—and he was afraid of not getting her pregnant. But making love to Therese was the best way he knew to show his devotion, and it became as natural for him as waking up, opening his eyes.

Ten years later when Therese was forty and Bill was forty-two, and Bill, at least, had given up hope of a child, Therese got pregnant again. It was impossible to feel joyful about this pregnancy—it was, Bill remembered, nine months of unspoken fear. But in the end, they had Cecily, who came out of the womb with red hair like her mother. She was kicking and screaming, undeniably alive.

After their lovemaking, Therese rose from the bed, blew her nose into a Kleenex and said, “I love him. This is Memorial Day. I remember him.”

Bill said, “I know. Me too.”

He lay in bed a few minutes longer, listening to the sound of his wife in the shower, and he said, in a whisper,