The Inn at Lake Devine (4 page)

Eddie gave a short speech to the first joint session of future inlaws: He and Audrey had made a mistake. He was sorry, because he knew they had trusted him to date their daughter without any monkey business. But they loved each other, and now that they were going to have a baby, he didn’t want anyone to think of their baby as a mistake.

A
lways, when my sister asked her how she felt to be pregnant at nineteen, my mother insisted it was welcome news once the shock wore off. It was the baby boom. People married and had babies young. Nineteen then was not like nineteen now. “And your father,” she would say, slapping her hand to her cheek. “He was delirious. He was tickled pink. He couldn’t wait.”

The baby was Pammy, Pamela Arlene Marx, born seven and a half months after the garden wedding. She got my mother’s small bones and my grandfather’s former blond hair—an adorable combination, everyone agreed.

And I was proof, the planned second child, that they intended to stay married. I was named for my Grandpa Marx’s baby sister, who had stayed behind in Europe. I had her exact name, once you took translation liberties with the Yiddish: Natalie Sarah Marx. It was a
sacred honor I held over Pammy’s head whenever I could: that I bore the name of our own personal Anne Frank, our forever-teenaged aunt, whose graduation photo from the gymnasium in Riga was presented to me at birth, our common initials engraved on the silver frame. To please my grandfather, everyone strained to see a resemblance between me and his beloved Nesha. I got her dark hair, her reputed height—she’d not been born when he left for America—and her head for science. She had corresponded faithfully (“like cluckvork”), the most beautiful letters in the most beautiful hand, to all her brothers and sisters in America. So regular, Papa Marx told me during a visit to the shrine on my bureau, that when they stopped coming in 1942, we knew.

I
 can’t remember what crusading impulse made us get dressed up and drive from our rental cabin to the Inn at Lake Devine, but I know my father and I were the ringleaders, and my mother was along to make sure we behaved. Pammy, at sixteen, said we were being several ridiculous things—hypocritical, low-class, uncool—and refused to change out of her bathing suit to go.

It was on that ride around the lake in 1963 that we invented our drop-in selves: Mr. and Mrs. Edward Martin and daughter Natalie, prospective guests. Mr. Martin owned a fruit—no, a grocery—store in Massachusetts. A superette. Mrs. Martin was a housewife.

A discreet white arrow, knee-high to the ground, marked the dirt road that led to the Inn. My mother announced that it smelled different on this side of the lake, and if you could bottle this air people would pay money for it. My father sniffed diagnostically out the window and said, “Wild blueberries.” At the first crossroad, several slats nailed to a white pine announced the names of property-owning families:
CARROLL
, we read.
FAHNSTOCK. DELBERTI. ALDRICH. MCBRIDE
, and the top one, lettered professionally,
INN AT LAKE DEVINE
.

“This way,” I said, more nervous than I was admitting about my secret history of crank calls to Mrs. Ingrid Berry.

“Remember, we’re just looking,” my mother said. “We’re considering it for a future vacation, so we want to see it in person.”

Leafy branches scraped our truck as we lumbered along the narrow road, as if reminding us that these routes were meant for sleeker vehicles. Then the lake, steely blue, jagged shores. Our turnoff ended in a paved parking lot filled with late-model cars. The lawn before us looked darkly bluish-green and golf-course perfect. Adirondack chairs shone with what looked to be a just-dry coat of high-gloss green. We parked in the space farthest from the Inn so no one would see
MARX FRUIT
painted on the doors.

My father and I jumped out of either side of the truck’s cab, and my mother inched her way toward the passenger door. She had worn a sleeveless sheath of pale yellow linen, with a tear-shaped cutout centered at her collarbone. Her clutch pocketbook and pumps were of woven straw. My father was wearing navy-blue chinos and a white short-sleeved shirt, and I was wearing shorts and a matching sleeveless blouse of red-and-white-checked seersucker: the nice, neat Martin family, arriving to inspect the possible site of next year’s summer vacation.

As we convened at the passenger side, another car drove up. It was a station wagon driven by a teenage boy, with two teenage girls as passengers, all in bathing suits. They didn’t greet us, although they assessed us as they walked by with the air of returning regulars who had driven a father’s car to town for suntan lotion and Noxzema.

My father started off on the white-pebbled path to the Inn, but my mother and I held back. We didn’t want any too-self-assured teenagers to hear us wonder aloud if we had the right entrance or the right clerk. He turned back and said, “You coming?” My mother held up one finger and said, “Give me a minute. I have to check something.”

I knew my father didn’t know what the delay was. He had no guile. He couldn’t figure out what my mother had to check. I
walked over to him and said, “Wait a sec. We don’t want to catch up to those kids.”

He used the intermission to face the lake, inhale appreciatively, and massage country air into the hair follicles of his big forearms. My mother and I waited until the teenagers disappeared into the buildings before we set out on the white-pebbled walk, my father last in our procession. We walked up the wide stairs of the big white house, crossed the veranda, its floorboards glossy green and its ceiling sky-blue, and entered through the front door. Inside, the wallpaper depicted mural-size scenes of riverboats on the Mississippi at Natchez. There was a room-size braided rug in the reception area, a large dining room straight ahead with round tables set for dinner, an unlit stone fireplace, and not a soul in sight.

“Hal-lo!” my father sang out.

Still no sign of life. There was a blackboard on an easel outside the dining room. In blue, pink, and green chalk, someone had artfully lettered

My father followed me over to the sign and said, “Sounds good. Lots of fruit. And I like how they give you a choice.”

From nowhere, a woman with graying blond hair pulled back into a bulky and imperfect french twist glided over to us and said, “May I help you?” She was wearing a wraparound skirt in a Pennsylvania Dutch print, and the short-sleeved white blouse I had seen in a hundred Ship ’n Shore ads.

My mother said, “We’ve just stopped by to see the Inn, because we’re thinking of a future stay here.”

With the briefest of insincere smiles and no other sign of cordiality, the woman asked, “And you are …?”

“Audrey Martin. And this is Mr. Martin, and our daughter, Natalie.”

“Ingrid Berry,” she said coolly, as if it were a brand name of high quality and customer loyalty.

“Are you the manager?” Eddie asked.

“Yes,” she said. “My husband and I are the owners.”

I stared at the woman I had made it my business to harass by telephone and mail, a federal offense for sure. She looked perfectly nice, I thought, with her high color and her Canada mint-pink lipstick.

“You’ve got a beautiful piece of property here,” said my father. “You must have the best shoreline on the lake.”

“We think so,” said Mrs. Berry, staring a bit too serenely back.

“Are you open all year?” my mother asked.

“Just Memorial Day to Labor Day.”

“Not too long,” said my father cheerfully.

“We fill up a year in advance,” said Mrs. Berry. “It’s not uncommon for our guests to reserve their rooms for the next summer as they’re leaving.”

“You all booked for this year?” asked my father.

“I’m afraid we are,” said Mrs. Berry.

“Wow,” he said.

“Maybe you could check your guest register,” said my mother.

“Shoehorn us in,” my father added.

Mrs. Berry glided around to the other side of the dark wood reception desk. She opened a black-cloth ledger and pretended to inspect handwritten entries every few pages. “Well!” she said after a dry silence.

“Did you find something?” my mother asked.

“I have … let me check one other thing …” She opened a wooden filing box and moved deliberately, front to back, through the index cards until she found the object of her search. “Okay. It looks as though we have the last weekend in September open. A family suite, meaning two connecting rooms.”

“You’re not closed after Labor Day?” asked my mother.

“We’re open weekends year-round,” said Mrs. Berry. “A two-night minimum.”

“We were kind of hoping for a summer visit,” said my father. “The girls and I love the water. Our other daughter, Pammy, didn’t come with us.” He added, as if that sounded irregular, “She has the sniffles.”

My mother said, “Why don’t we think it over. The girls go back to school the Wednesday after Labor Day, so it’s not what we were hoping—”

“It’s a cancellation,” said Mrs. Berry. “I can’t promise it will be available when you call back.”

My mother waited a few seconds—probably only I noticed her gathering her will—and said smoothly, “I guess it’s a risk we’ll have to take.”

“Where do you live?” asked Mrs. Berry.

“Newton,” said my father, one detail we hadn’t thought to fine-tune.

I saw something in her gray-blue eyes, a flicker of triumph, as if we had moved our queen foolishly, setting her up for checkmate. “Newton, MassaJewsetts?” said Mrs. Berry softly, sarcastically, the offending syllable almost lost in her 180-degree pivot to the file box. She stayed that way, her back to us, pretending to be doing some critical paperwork.

“Okay, then. We’ll be in touch,” said my father.

Mrs. Berry murmured something affirmative, and we left.

I
was the only one who was sure. I insisted for most of the ride around the lake—until my mother forbade me to say another word on the subject—that I had heard “Jew” as plain as day cross the lips of Ingrid Hitler Berry.

“Nobody would say that,” my father argued.

“But I heard her.”

“Natalie,” said my mother. “Someone might think that, but
would never say it to our face. You thought you heard it because you know she’s prejudiced. You were listening for it.”

“Or maybe she had some kind of Scandinavian accent,” said my father. “Maybe that’s what you heard—‘Massayoosetts.’ ”

I yelled that Mrs. Berry had no accent whatsoever—none. And why was he sticking up for her?

My mother said, “Don’t yell at your father.”

“She didn’t know we were Jewish,” I continued. “She thought we were the Martins who lived in Newton and didn’t like Jews either. She expected us to say something like, ‘Ha, ha, you said it: “Newton, MassaJewsetts.” is right!’ ”

“She didn’t say anything of the kind,” my mother insisted. “You imagined you heard ‘MassaJewsetts.’ ” And later, as if to herself: “It’s ridiculous. No one would say that kind of thing out loud to strangers. Especially the manager of a resort. Not in this day and age. I don’t want to hear another word.”

I
 had stopped dwelling on Mrs. Berry and designing campaigns against her, but suddenly she was back. At overnight camp in New Hampshire the next summer, a bunkmate mentioned that when camp was over, she and her parents and brothers were having their real vacation, a week at a hotel on Lake Devine. Suddenly, Robin Fife in her Bermuda shorts and white camp T-shirt, though a mildly annoying and not very bright bunkmate, represented the ideal Gentile guest. I asked the name of their destination, and she answered, a little off the mark, “The Lake Devine Hotel.”

I asked what it was like.

“Kind of boring, but my parents like it.”

“What kind of people go there?” I asked.

“Boring people,” said Robin. “Old people. People who don’t even use the dock half the time.”

I asked what people did at a lake if they didn’t use the dock.

“Sit in big chairs and look out at the water through binoculars. Stuff like that. They’re old.”