The Inn at Lake Devine (7 page)

I asked her if Annette was named after Annette the Mouseketeer, because I used to have a boy doll I called Cubby.

“No, she’s not,” said Gretel, an obvious lie, since there was only one Annette in the universe.

I said, “What did you want to show me?”

“Oh.” She looked around and lunged for the closest object of possible interest: Annette’s miniature baby bottle, which was attached with a pink rubber band to the doll’s stiff wrist. “She drinks and then she wets down there,” said Gretel.

I told her I knew. I used to have a Betsy Wetsy.

“What happened to her?”

I said she rotted. I used to shove food into the little hole between her lips, and it didn’t come out the other end. Of course, I was only three or four then. She started to stink and my mother threw her out.

She asked if I wanted to play dolls. I said I hadn’t brought any dolls with me, and, besides, when you’re fourteen, you’re not that interested anymore. She said, deaf to my answer, that I could use hers. She had a Ginny with four bought outfits and about ten more that her Aunt Ann had made, including a kilt with a gold safety pin and a knitted sweater with a G on the front for Gretel.

“Or Ginny.”

“She said it was Gretel.”

I asked if she was supposed to be playing in the house by herself when there were no adults here.

“They let me.”

“No one’s watching you?”

She said, “I’m in fourth grade and I get all A’s.”

I told her I’d better go find Robin, who was waiting for me to, um, play tennis.

“I play tennis,” said Gretel.

“It has to be an even number of players. Two is even. Three is odd.”

“We could take turns.”

I said, well, she could watch.

She said, N-O. Did I know her parents owned this hotel?

I said, “The tennis courts aren’t at your parents’ hotel. They belong to the town, and this is a free country.”

Gretel said, “I knew Robin before you did.”

I said, “You’re a baby—Baby Gretel. I’m not playing with any baby.” When she screwed up her face, I made a big show of leaving, exactly the way my sister did when I pouted after an insult. The message in my feigned exit was: You’re proving my point, aren’t you? You’re a crybaby. I’m going to play with girls who are older, who don’t pick fights with the very people they want to make friends with.

Still, she was a pathetic little thing. And I had been the same pathetic little thing on Irving Circle when I stood on our front porch trying to snare my sister’s friends’ attention. From the narrow stairwell, I called back, “If you want to come and watch us play, you can. Maybe Mr. Fife will play with you.”

She took her time. I made an audio display of pounding my feet on the steps to the bottom, then yelling, “You coming or not?”

Soundlessly, Mrs. Berry had approached on the path of dried pine needles and was opening the screen door. As accusingly as if she had interrupted a burglary, she said, “May I help you?”

I yelped at the sound of her, then said, “I told Gretel she can play tennis with me and Robin. I’m waiting to see if she’s coming.”

“Oh?” She glanced around the room, in a quick survey of valuables.

I said, hoping to sound indulgent and charitable, “She wanted to show me her room and Annette.”

“Where’s Robin?” she asked.

“In our room. Changing.”

“Gretel!” she sang out, her eyes fixed on mine. “Are you playing tennis with Natalie?”

“I don’t know how to,” the brat yelled back.

“Well,” Mrs. Berry said smugly to me, “I guess you’re free to play tennis with someone your own age.”

It was painful to see how pleased she looked, to see that an adult and mother could take satisfaction in humiliating me.

I said, “Gretel wanted me to play dolls with her, so I was just trying to be nice.” I walked past her and out the screen door. I stopped on the small brick rectangle that served as the back stoop and said, “I didn’t think someone nine years old should be alone all day.”

M
rs. Berry reported me to Mrs. Fife. I had teased Gretel and I’d been fresh.

I said, “Mrs. Berry hates me.”

“She said you were in the little house without an invitation.”

“Gretel invited me to see her room. She invites everybody. I’m the only one who ever said yes.”

She said, “There’s an unwritten rule that hotel guests don’t go in the owners’ residence.”

“Doesn’t Gretel know that rule?”

“She’s only six,” said Mrs. Fife.

I said, “She’s nine. She’s going into fourth grade.”

Mrs. Fife said, “Natalie, I know Mrs. Berry doesn’t hate you. She’s just looking out for her little girl, the same way your mother does and the same way I do for Robin. Gretel’s her baby.”

I repeated, “She’s nine. And I was being nice to her because I felt sorry for her.”

Mrs. Fife advised that in the two days we had left, I should be especially
polite to Mrs. Berry. After all, we were guests at her hotel, and I might want to come back someday.

I said, “There’s a lot of kids here who I wouldn’t want at my hotel. All
I
did was let Gretel show me her dolls. I didn’t touch anything and I didn’t make a racket—”

She raised a finger to her lips. “Natalie, nobody likes a tattletale.”

I considered the short time remaining, the claustrophobic ride home, and my parents waiting for the Fifes’ report about what a pleasure I had been. So I didn’t say, “Nobody can stand being around your sons, but I don’t hear Mrs. Berry complaining about them.”

Because in three days I’d be home with people who appreciated and loved me, and I’d never have to endure another vacation with strangers, I told her she was right.

I
t was generally assumed, because I didn’t talk about the painful parts, that I’d had a lovely week at Lake Devine. My parents darted into the street to greet me as if the Fifes’ Chevy needed flagging down, then invited my hosts to stay for dinner, for tea, for coffee. The Fifes said, “We’d love to—great little girl you’ve got there—but at this rate the boys will beat us home.” My father produced our thank-you gift: a basket of fruit with a pineapple, a box of stationery, and a roll of pastel mint patties straining against pink cellophane. Trying to speed up their retreat, I thanked the Fifes repeatedly. Finally, parents and daughter piled into the front seat, but not before Mr. Fife grasped my hand and shoulder in a meaningful shake: I had, he assured me, enriched everyone’s week.

My father repeated an earlier offer. “I wish you’d let me cover—”

“I wouldn’t hear of it,” boomed Mr. Fife. “Natalie was our guest.”

“Then Robin has to come stay with us.”

My parents waved good-bye, both sorrowfully and enthusiastically, as if the Fife station wagon were carrying their last child off to college.

Dinner was ready—my mother’s sweet-and-sour meatballs, which I had requested as my welcome-home meal from camp the month before. My parents wanted to hear about the hotel, the
clientele, the activities, the food, and what they called “the climate.”

I said my favorite meal had been roast beef au jus with popovers on the first Sunday.

“Who cooked?” my father wanted to know.

I told him a woman, the cook, Mrs. Knickerbocker, Mrs. K. And my favorite part was that she came out of the kitchen after dessert and people would applaud.
Every night
, even when it wasn’t so great. She took a bow. If she didn’t appear at her usual moment, people would clap until she did. It was a hotel tradition. She’d been there for a long time, as long as the Fifes had been going there.

“You applauded even when it wasn’t good?” asked my mother. “Isn’t that a little insincere?”

I repeated that it was a
tradition
at this hotel. Perhaps at all hotels with dining rooms. I was an expert on such things now.

“What else did you have besides roast beef?” my father asked.

I said, squinting into space to recall my seven nights, “Chicken croquettes, baked stuffed sole with Mornay sauce, Yankee pot roast, Irish lamb stew, New England boiled dinner, turkey pot pie, meatloaf surprise.”

My mother made a face:
ordinary
.

“Fresh vegetables or canned?” my father asked.

I said both. And good bread.

“What kind of bread?” he asked.

“Rolls.”

“Rolls every night?” my mother asked. “Those soft white ones?”

“Good, though. Homemade …” I moved the subject out-of-doors; my mother held no strong opinions on nature. “Remember the raft?” I began. “We swam out there and sunbathed all afternoon.”

“Did she do the desserts, too?” my mother asked.

I said I thought so. Here, look at my tan.

I knew I was close to blurting out something that would put
Mrs. Berry on the anecdotal hot seat: the pork at Lake Devine. It appeared more and more frequently during my stay, until it seemed that every dish left the kitchen scrambled with ham or garnished with bacon.

So I asked, incapable of leaving it unsaid, “Do most restaurants put ham in everything?”

“You like ham,” my dad said.

I told them it wasn’t a problem, just a question.

“Ham at every meal?” my mother asked.

I said no: sausages, bacon, ham steaks, B.L.T.s, pork roasts, the pale
goyishe
frankfurters of sporting events, meatloaf crisscrossed with limp strips of bacon, deviled-ham sandwiches on a picnic lunch.

“That’s how the
goyim
cook,” said my mother.

“I hope you didn’t complain,” said my father.

I said no, I had not complained. I had thought of mentioning it to Mr. Fife, but I didn’t know what people outside Irving Circle put on their table, and I didn’t want Mrs. K. to think that Jews were difficult.

“I think you used good judgment, Nat,” said my dad. “I’m sure it wasn’t any different from what they usually served.”

I said, Maybe. But ham on salad?

“That’s a chef’s salad,” said my father.

“Bacon on turkey sandwiches?”

“You’ve had club sandwiches,” said my mother, “and you loved them.”

I said they must be right. Once I had gotten the idea in my head that Mrs. Berry was testing me, I must have tasted ham everywhere. But it couldn’t have been the case, because other people would have noticed, people who didn’t like pork for their own reasons. Yes, I was mistaken, I could see that now. Grown women don’t pick on little girls. Mrs. Berry had better things to do than send a message to me personally with every meal.

•  •  •

R
obin wrote me letters in the off season that sounded like someone had forced her to. Her pale personality faded even more on the page: “Dear Natalie. How are you? I am fine. How is school? What are you doing this weekend? Maryellen is coming over for a sleepover. I have Mr. Souza for math.” As if I knew who Maryellen was, or Mr. Souza, or as if I cared to discuss ninth grade with someone in eighth. I did write back, dashing off one side of a page of notebook paper, “School is fine. Judy and Donna and I saw
Lord of the Flies
on Saturday. I have Mrs. Polga for English. I’m in study hall now. My cousins from Swampscott are coming here for Thanksgiving.”

It was all the effort it took to keep the correspondence alive. I was surprised that Robin still liked me after my summer’s mental cruelty, though I suspected that, when compared to her brothers, I was the best friend she’d ever had. With her in another state, I selectively remembered the tolerable parts of Robin—how she rarely got mad at anyone for anything, and would defer to my preferences in sports and games. She liked to read, although I found most of her books woefully babyish. When I read aloud to her from
The Fountainhead
, she promised she’d find a copy in Farmington.

My family received New Year’s greetings from Robin’s family on Rosh Hashanah. Three months later, a big Hanukkah card arrived on the dot of the first day, signed individually by every Fife, including Jeff and Chip. My parents asked why I thought the Fifes were so keen to acknowledge Jewish holidays, and I said, “They have a lot of Jewish friends.”

“How do you know that?”

“Mr. Fife told me all his Jewish stuff.”

“What Jewish stuff?” asked my mother.

I said, “You know—like he teaches with fine Jewish teachers. Plays golf with Jewish golfers. Reelected a Jewish senator.”

My mother made a face.

My father said to her, “That’s okay. He was trying to make Natalie feel more comfortable. He wanted us to know they like Jews.”

I said, “They meant well sending us cards.”

“That’s right,” said my father proudly. “Nat’s right.”

My mother stood the Fifes’ Hallmark menorah up on the kitchen table without a word. I knew she thought my father was too uncritical (“Name one person you don’t like,” she would challenge him from time to time) and that I was too much my father’s girl to have noticed the earnestness of the Fifes’ every act.

“Maybe I’ll make them up something,” said my father.

I said, “You already did, remember? With stationery and mints?”

“You don’t have to send them anything,” my mother said. “I’ll put them on our Christmas list.”