The Inn at Lake Devine (27 page)

“Exactly.”

“You noticed?”

“I guessed.”

“Because?”

“The place, the guests, the feel of it … something in her eyes.”

“Mrs. Berry’s?”

Linette widened her eyes and smiled Ingrid’s unblinking, slightly deranged smile.

“Screw her,” I said. “This is nineteen seventy-five.”

Linette intoned with perfect pomposity, “Our Israelite brethren are welcome anywhere in our fair land.”

We both laughed. With no outsiders in the car, and our passage assured, we could.

I
ngrid, dressed in camel-hair trousers and a matching Perry Como cardigan, said only, “Welcome,” in the same rote way she greeted all guests, as if the word itself did the job. Linette was reintroduced from 1968, recast in her most favorable Cornell light: hotelier, classmate, and thoughtful pal who had extended a hand as soon as she read about Robin in
The Alumni News
.

“Of course I remember you,” said Ingrid, many degrees more charming for Linette, rich girl and Halseeyon scion, than for me. I was greeted coolly with, “You’re looking well, Natalie. We have a new cook. Did Kris tell you? She has a degree in nutrition, and so far—” Ingrid crossed her fingers and wagged them prayerfully.

“Kris didn’t tell me,” I said.

“Kris didn’t realize she was anything but a stop-gap measure,” said Kris, his tone reproachful.

“She’s very much at home in this kind of setting,” said Ingrid.

“A nursing-home kitchen is not a hotel dining room,” said Kris. “I wish you had talked to me about this.”

Ingrid’s round face was a portrait of unexpressed annoyance. Who do you think you are that I would consult you about a personnel matter? I read in her eyes. Above them, a microscopic arching of her brow was the unspoken corollary: When was I supposed to consult you? As you were commandeering my company vehicle to God-knows-where with misguided romantic ambitions?

I asked Ingrid how the guests liked the new cook.

“March is quiet,” she said.

“Any complaints?”

“No more than usual.”

“What about compliments?”

Linette spoke up for the first time. “How many entrées do you offer at dinner?”

“Two,” said Ingrid, the number ending in a purse of the lips.

“Two?” Linette repeated, as if Ingrid had said, “Zero.”

“We’ve always done it that way. No one’s ever gone hungry.”

Kris volunteered that at the Halseeyon there were six or eight full-fledged offerings and—get this, Ma—you could order as many as you wanted. You could get all of them—take one bite, try the next.

Ingrid smiled her tight, superior smile. “The Catskills are known for that. Our guests don’t come here expecting every meal to be a feast, the way New Yorkers do. It’s not the raison d’être of their vacations.”

Linette remarked, in a voice full of counterfeit wonder, “Ya know, I’ve heard of that.”

“Me too,” I said.

“I’ve read about it in the literature,” she added.

“What literature?” asked Ingrid.

“Hotel management—food customs and preferences, broken down by region and ethnicity. Jews, Italians, and Lebanese love to eat. The French do too, but not over here. They hate margarine and sliced white bread.”

“Ouch,” said Kris.

I listened to Linette addressing Ingrid in a breezy, almost imperceptibly disdainful way, which I now wanted to adopt. “Haven’t you found that to be true, Natalie?” Linette was asking. “That the average American diner has a less sophisticated palate than the average French peasant?”

I said, Yes,
absolument
. Inspired, I turned to Ingrid. “I’ve always thought you could use a little
zalts un fefer
in your meal planning.”

“I beg your pardon?” asked Ingrid.

“Literally? ‘Salt and pepper.’ ”

“But,” Linette amplified, “when grandmothers say it, it’s disparaging, as in ‘No excitement, no personality.’ ” She and I nodded: Total agreement; excellent translation, by the way.

Nelson had been standing slightly apart, flipping through mail that looked, from its hand-addressed square envelopes, to be stockpiled sympathy cards. Finally, he asked, “Where’s Dad?”

“Kris”—Ingrid actually snapped her fingers—“go find your father.”

“Where is he?”

“In the woods,” she answered, as if such a thing were obvious and annoying.

“Where?”

“He saw some mushrooms he wanted. Out back. Yell. He’ll hear you.”

“I’ll go with you,” I said.

We cut through the kitchen. At the spot where we had once wiped dishes and hidden from mourners, two women in hair nets were pounding cube steaks. Kris made a quick left into the pantry, me in tow, and found a familiar linoleum-topped counter to maneuver me against.

“What if they come in?” I asked, my lips on his.

“Ten seconds,” he murmured.

It was sweet and almost bashful, as if it were that lost kiss; as if we hadn’t just spent three nights in a huge round bed, sleeping in
a knot, exhausted from what we had both confessed was sexual gusto of an overdue, unquenchable, and highly compatible variety.

I whispered, “What about tonight?”

“What
about
tonight?”

“The sleeping arrangements?”

Kris said, “You’re talking to the night manager.”

We stayed that way for another minute. I said, “I feel something.”

Kris closed his eyes and said with a grimace, “Okay. I’m thinking about ice fishing.” He jiggled each leg in turn and did a few shallow knee bends. “I’m ready,” he said. I checked and said, “You’re fine.” I couldn’t resist—one more kiss to a soft stretch of neck.

“No more,” he said. “Not until I can do something about it.”

I touched only his hair, lifting one hank that was across his forehead. “I’m crazy about you,” I said.

M
r. Berry, with a sad, chewed-up, feminine-looking basket at his side and a trowel in his hand, was gingerly prying a clump of small brown mushrooms from the base of an overturned stump. “Why, look who’s here,” he said with a shy grin, rising and exposing wet knees on his shabby corduroys. He looked past his son to put his arms around me for a hug. Over his shoulder, I smiled at Kris, who shrugged as if to say, Who knows?

“We were sent to fetch you,” I said.

“Nelson brought Linette,” said Kris.

“Linette?” said Mr. Berry.

“Feldman. From Cornell.”

I knew that without me present Mr. Berry would have said—benignly enough, merely for identification—“The Jewish girl?” but said instead, “Of course.”

“We were up at her family’s place in the Catskills.”

“Busman’s holiday,” I said.

“Did you all come together?”

“I stopped in Newton to get Natalie—remember Linette called
here looking for Nelson?—and I tried to convince him that a change of scenery would do him good.”

“Did you succeed?”

I answered first, playing against Mr. Berry’s unswerving innocence. “Kris? Would you call our trip to the Catskills a success?”

He replied, “Dad. All I can say is—yes, it was a success. Beyond my fondest hopes.” He turned to me. “Is that what you were going to say, Nat?”

I said, “God, was it a success.”

“What happened?” said Mr. Berry, nodding his sweetly befuddled encouragement.

“I don’t think you want all the details,” said Kris. He touched his father’s shoulder, signaling him to lead the way on the path. “They’ll be wondering what took us so long,” he said, with a quick, private adjustment to make me laugh.

“
T
his was the night they got engaged,” Ingrid was saying, passing a snapshot to Linette. She dipped into a shoe box and selected another photo. “This is the engagement party at the Fifes’ house in Farmington.… This is our Gretel. With Robin.” She looked away quickly in phony, stoic silence as the three of us came through the kitchen door into the meeting room.

“She offered,” Linette said helplessly, a photo in each hand.

“Let’s put those away now,” Mr. Berry said gently. “It’s much too soon.”

“Do you remember our Gretel?” Ingrid asked Linette.

“Of course I do. Blond ringlets and saucer eyes.”

“I’m not usually emotional,” Ingrid said, “but this is the first time I’ve seen Nelson since New Year’s, so it makes it that much fresher.”

“Why look at pictures if they’re going to upset you?” Nelson asked impatiently. He walked over to the hot plate, a new addition to the bar, and poured an inch of overcooked black coffee into a discolored mug.

“Maybe we shouldn’t have descended without warning,” Kris said. “Although I didn’t think it was necessary—a Sunday in March.”

Linette helped herself to coffee, and offered it all around.

“We’re spending the night,” said Nelson. “I’m taking a sick day tomorrow.”

Kris said, “And Natalie might stay for a couple of days.”

“Have you found work?” Ingrid asked me.

“As a matter of fact, I have.”

“I see,” said Ingrid. Then, after a pause, “Are you on holiday?”

“I start soon.”

“Not only does she have a job,” said Kris, “but she’ll be running the show.”

Ingrid wasn’t interested. She turned to Linette. “I assume you work for your family’s hotel chain?”

“Chain?” She laughed. “No chain; one big white elephant with two eighteen-hole golf courses, but it’s all one joint.”

“You’re confusing the Feldmans with the Hiltons,” said Nelson.

“I thought—” Ingrid began. “Must have been another classmate.”

Linette said, in her now-familiar born-yesterday voice, “You wouldn’t be confusing me with Jodie Levine, by any chance? She was in our program. Her father owned a bunch of HoJo’s.”

“No,” said Ingrid firmly.

“That happens,” said Linette. She shot me a wry look that said, Among the
goyim
.

Mr. Berry announced, in dotty-aunt fashion, “We’re getting listed in a guidebook that A.A. puts out.”

Kris laughed.

Ingrid spat out, “Triple-A. Not A.A.”

“What do they say about us?” Kris asked.

“We won’t know until it’s published, but I imagine flattering things, or we wouldn’t be listed.”

“Maybe it’ll help,” said Kris.

I could see the business bulb flashing above Linette’s head. “What’s March like?” she inquired chummily.

“Depends on the snow,” said Kris.

“Forty, fifty percent occupancy?”

Ingrid said, “The thaw came early this year.”

“Thirty percent,” said Kris.

I asked, “Any chance the double with the yellow-chintz headboard is free?”

Ingrid straightened her spine. She looked at me as if I had asked her for the deed to her hotel.

“I’ll check,” said Kris, walking over to the cubbyholes behind the registration desk. “Empty!” he called, waving the key.

Ingrid barely reacted.

Mr. Berry said, “Let your mother figure out the sleeping arrangements. That’s her domain.”

Linette murmured something to Nelson.

Nelson said, “If the room’s empty, what’s to figure out?”

D
inner was a choice between Swiss steak and a roasted leg of spring chicken. Salad was a surgical wedge of iceberg lettuce dribbled with orange dressing. There was no excitement in the room: People cut their meat with a slow intersection of knife and fork and chewed as if counting bites. Unpardonably, there were instant mashed potatoes and frozen mixed vegetables, with their telltale crinkle cuts. I waited until dessert was served—Indian pudding or Floating Island—before saying, “Frankly, Ingrid—and I know you didn’t ask for my opinion—this new cook has no feel for food.”

She broke off a pale piece of Parker House roll and chewed it prissily. “At least this is well balanced and nicely presented.”

Linette, in a plaid jumper that looked like a parochial-school uniform, said, “I have to agree with Natalie, Mrs. Berry. She’s talking about a whole lot more than presentation. Nothing is more important at a hotel than the food.”

“Look around,” I said quietly.

“Where?” said the Berrys.

“No one looks happy. It’s the look of patients eating hospital food.”

Ingrid looked to her flesh and blood, begging silently for help.
Was
this hospital fare? Were her patrons unhappy?
Is
nothing more important at a hotel than its food?

“Can Mrs. Crowley do any better?” I asked. “I mean, is she more creative than this, but she thinks this is what you want?”

“Is it really bad?” asked Mr. Berry.

I heard the word
shmendrik
in my mother’s voice but dismissed it out of loyalty.

“Dad,” said Kris. “
Instant
mashed potatoes?”

“I don’t discuss these kinds of decisions in public, ever,” said Ingrid, leaving teeth marks in each word.

“You’re right,” said Linette. “Absolutely.” She took a spoonful of Indian pudding, having been assured by Ingrid that it wasn’t made with lard. “At least one table should be smiling.”

“Maybe while Natalie’s here she could give Mrs. Crowley some tips,” said Mr. Berry.

Under her breath, trying to smile, Ingrid hissed, “I said
later
.”

We sipped our tea and weak coffee. “What’s on tap for tonight?” asked Linette.

“Steve and Eydie,” said Nelson, at the same moment Kris said, “Simon Says.”

“Nelson,” murmured Ingrid, after another boisterous round of Catskills jokes. “May I speak with you privately?”

“Just say it, Ma.”

Ingrid placed her cup carefully in its saucer and did an eyeball sweep of the room. “We have returning guests. They know the family; many know the Fifes. They know that you’re in mourning.”

“So he’s not supposed to be out in public, enjoying himself?” Kris demanded. “When does Emily Post say he can laugh again?”

“That’s not what Mother’s saying,” said Mr. Berry.

“It doesn’t look right,” Ingrid whispered.

Linette asked, “Is it because Nelson’s here with a woman and it looks like he’s on a date?”

Nelson said, “I wasn’t married. I’m not a widower.”

“Nelson and I are friends, Mrs. Berry,” said Linette.

Ingrid blinked hard and said, “
I
know that. It never occurred to me that you were anything but friends.”