Summer Accommodations: A Novel (31 page)

I was expecting Sarah's return from her meeting with Hank on Saturday afternoon. The feelings of jealousy and fear that had seized me on Thursday had not relented and the anticipation of our reunion only served to add dread to the mix. I had tried and failed to deceive myself with the bravado of detachment. I didn't want to lose her and though everything had been unalterably changed by the revelation that there was someone else in the few days she was gone I had already accepted that reality and was willing to hold on even if it meant a less than perfect love. At eighteen, in our earnestness, we imagine love to be forever.

The luncheon special that Friday was cold borscht followed by cheese blintzes both served with fresh sour cream and my guests were so happy with the meal they ate themselves into a state of torpor bordering on inebriation.

“Such a meal!” Mrs. Zuckerman announced to Sammy, her hands, as if in prayer, clasped against her large bosom, “I could plotz.” But she did not collapse, even after finishing all of her own and the remains of her husband's blintzes. Seeing her wobble like a toy in the rear window well of an automobile, Sammy saw to it that she left the dining room with the assistance of one of the bell hops who, with one arm supporting her bloat, steered her clear of the lobby furniture as he led her back to her room. Mr. Zuckerman, whose constipation was spoken of as if his evacuative travails were epic in scale, had felt an urge, an interior rumbling of unusual but promising proportions, and had excitedly fled the dining room for his porcelain throne. It was basically the usual doings of a usual day.

“Sarah should be getting back by now shouldn't she.” Ron knew she had gone to New York. He did not know about Hank and thought my moroseness was nothing more than pathetic longing.

“No, she should be back before dinner tomorrow.”

“Don't sound so overjoyed. Mel, she'll think somebody died while she was away.” I frowned and turned my back on him. I didn't see how it would be possible for me to welcome her back without seeming either wary or remote.

“How' re you doing?” Harlan had sat down at the table where I was folding the napkins for dinner. I greeted him with a nod. “You're not sure how to react to Sarah are you. Let me help you out with this.” He crossed his legs, lit up a cigarette and started to blow smoke rings which I found profoundly irritating. It was as though he might next start performing card tricks while advising me on how to approach Sarah, the legerdemain infinitely more interesting to him than the counsel. “Do not seem delighted, do not be happy to see her, but don't be morose or sulky. Let her feel your strength and your dignity, like a … like a
prince!
Cordial but aloof, gracious yet remote, elusive.” He smiled a satisfied smile and exhaled columns of smoke through his nose. “Think you can handle that?”

“That doesn't sound like me.” It didn't sound like him either, not the “him” I had constructed in my admiring fantasy. It did, however, sound like the manipulative, exploitative operator that Sarah had been insisting was the real Harlan.

“Nothing sounds like anybody, Jack. You have to learn different situations call for different styles. Remember when you asked me about what I do to get women to pay attention? I told you to listen to them and by listening you learn what they want. Then you either give them that or, when you really get comfortable, you figure out how to turn that upside down, startle and disarm them, sometimes sweep them away with the unexpected.” He crushed his Lucky and quickly lit another. “Sarah is probably expecting you to be either very happy to see her or very guarded and grim. By being a prince you transcend her expectations; you'll be a new Mel, a real Jack, someone she won't want to lose. Even if she's already made up her mind to stay with that Hank fellow she'll have to retreat, rethink the choice. You'll see.” He sat back, clasped his hands behind his neck, smiled, and puffed on the cigarette dangling from his mouth. He looked enormously self-satisfied and I hated him for proving Sarah so right. “You don't have very much to say today do you?”

“I don't think you'd want to hear what I have to say.”

“What? You know that's not true, you know that I'm your friend and I'm interested in what you think.”

“Harlan, I'm really upset about Sarah's going to see this Hank guy, so upset that I can't think straight, yet you're telling me to put on this act as though it would be no big deal to pretend being a goddamn prince!” My voice was loud when I said prince and there was a sudden silence in the dining room. With a frown on my face I looked around at the remaining waiters and busboys and then waved my hand at them as if to say, “never mind.”

“You really are on edge aren't you. You know that's not going to work for you when you meet Sarah. If you can't have more control of yourself you can't have any control over the situation with her, it's that simple.”

“Control? You think I can have control over her? You really are different, aren't you. Sarah has been telling me she thinks I trust you too much and this kind of talk makes me think maybe she's right.”

“Sarah said that? What does she know about me that gives her the right to judge me like that?”

“It's the way you are around women.”

“It's the way women are around me, Jack, and you know that's the truth, you've seen it for yourself. I don't have to do anything but show up for things to start happening.”

“But you do more than just show up. Listen to the advice you were just giving me, doesn't that say you know what to do all the time? Look, I've seen you with that blonde woman on the tennis court and the woman on the softball field, the woman who wanted you to give her kid diving lessons, all the women in the kiddy pool, it's everywhere you go.” The accusations the steely eyed Joe had made also came to mind but I wasn't going to list them. Nor was I prepared to warn Harlan just yet. I hadn't decided how to avoid Ben B's demand and alert Harlan without ending up in some Catskill jail.

“So? Jealous? Envious? What are you saying?”

“Well, what about Heidi, what does that say about her? Isn't she enough for you?”

“Enough? I don't understand. I'm with her every night she wants to be with me. I have never deliberately hurt or disappointed her, I … wait a minute. It's Sarah who's off with somebody else right now, Jack, not me. Don't you see what she was doing? She was setting it up for you to be so upset with me you wouldn't turn to me for advice when she put you in this position. Boy, that's something. Do you think this girl really cares about you or is she just trying to torture you?” I was stunned into silence by what he said. It hadn't occurred to me to scrutinize Sarah in the same way she asked me to examine Harlan. But hurt as I was I wouldn't allow myself to be positioned that way.

“I don't see it that way. Let me alone for a while please I need to think about some things.” Pursing his lips, narrowing his eyes and shaking his head in assent, he slowly rose from his chair, crushed his Lucky Strike in the ashtray, said, “See you later,” and left. That conversation with Harlan had Augusted me.

3.

Later that day, Ron attempted to cheer me up. I doubted that he had ever experienced the kind of threat I was feeling from someone like the durable if invisible Hank, but then he was not one to reveal himself that readily. We had just finished the lunch meal and were heading back to our room when he grabbed me by the arm.

“Come on. Mel, let's tackle something you can really handle, let's tackle the Abe Melman problem. What's with Abe? It is your turn, you know, and time is running out so give it a try. I was not particularly enthusiastic about playing. There had been such preoccupation with Sarah and with Harlan that I couldn't imagine being clever and humorous about Abe. Nor did I feeI it was my right to reveal what Ben had disclosed to me about him. I shrugged, not a full-fledged denial but not a rejection of the proposal either.

When we were midway between the kitchen and the waiters' quarters. a drenching rain came down all at once, intense and loud and soaking, as if we had blundered under a waterfall. Confused, I hesitated trying to determine which shelter was nearer so I could get under cover before my shoes and trousers were soaked beyond use but Ron ran directly to our room without a second's thought. When I got there he had already stripped off his clothing and was stuffing newspaper into his shoes to absorb the water from them. I stood in the room dripping, shaking the water from my hands as it ran down my arms, trying to be a silent clown like Buster Keaton. Ron laughed.

“Get out of those wet things or I'll tell your mother,” he joked “and then let's hear your story of ‘What's with Abe?'” I peeled off my clothes, stuffed my shoes with newspaper, pulled on a sweatshirt and climbed up into my bunk.

“Okay, let's see. I've thought about this some, lately.” Then I began. “Abe and Leah met in a small shul in the Morrisania section of the Bronx one bright, autumn morning on the first day of Rosh Hashanah. A new year, a new love, a first love for both. They began to date, if you could call the tortured silences they shared walking up and down the Grand Concourse dating, and when …”

“I like that ‘tortured silences'. It's a nice touch,” Ron said.

“Shhh! But thank you ladies and gentlemen. And when Abe went off to City College to study Shakespeare and accounting, Leah took a job in the bookkeeping department at Alexander's Department store on Fordham Road. Abe was a very serious student and he burned the midnight oil three nights a week so he could work at Feinberg's bagel bakery the other three nights for the money to pay for his books, his clothing, and the shoe repairs requisite to his long walks …”

“Boo!”

“Shut up! Every Friday night he saw Leah because Feinberg the bagel baker was orthodox and his business was closed for the Sabbath, so between school work and his job, Abe had only one night off, Friday night. Meanwhile, Leah was seeing a new and more glamorous side of life from inside the walls of the immense department store. On her lunch breaks she would gobble down the small sandwich her mother packed for her and then spend the rest of her time walking through the more chic women's clothing departments of the store. Seeing the cashmere sweaters, the glamorous tight fitting skirts, and the silk blouses, Leah began to feel a craving for these finer things. Three years passed. Every Friday night Leah saw Abe and every Tuesday night Abe would call to arrange a date for the following Friday. It was the rhythm of their relationship, and its steady and reliable pace had all the glamour and excitement of fingers drumming on a table top.” I paused. I made most of this story up as I went along and I was not certain where I was heading just then. I leaned over the edge of my bed and looked down at Ron who was lying on his back, eyes closed, a smile on his face. Outside, the rain poured down and hissed at our windows. This was cozy.

“Go on.”

“Leah had taken to wearing nylon stockings because that was how the women who shopped in Better Dresses dressed, and she began to use a darker red lipstick as well, and to wear simulated pearl earrings and a small string of simulated pearls around her neck. She didn't let Abe see her wearing the jewelry, however, because she was certain that he'd disapprove. After all, there was a depression going on and every cent counted, so spending money so frivolously …”

“No, no, no. Your story is all wrong,” Ron interjected angrily. “Why would she get nylon stockings for God's sake, and where would she come off buying costume jewelry? Come on!” I was surprised by how seriously Ron was taking this story and how real Leah had become in such a short time.

“Okay, okay, but let me finish. This is a good one. Okay. So she took to wearing dark red lipstick and painting her nails and for a while even flirted with cutting her hair short. She ached for change, for risk, for something daring and even dangerous.” I paused, timing the effect of this intermission by the sounds of Ron's twisting on his bed and then said, “Because there was a man at work who blushed whenever Leah caught him staring at her, a very fair, very blond, very Irish man …”

“Aha!”

“ … and, while Richard Doyle spent many nights spilling his seed into his bathroom sink, imagining the many delights of the dark Leah's Jewish sexual mysteries …”

“Like whining at his touch?”

“Shhh! He pined for a deeper and purer relationship with her and would not defile her pristine person with the touch of that impure nether appendage he abused for his depraved release. The priest in the confessional was growing weary of Richard Doyle's ritual self-abuse and frustrated that the ‘Hail Marys' and the ‘Our Fathers' he prescribed did not deter this sheep from dreaming like a wolf …”

“You're starting to lose it again, Melvin, what the fuck do you know about ‘Hail Marys' and ‘Our Fathers?'” Ron's voice was very angry.

“In the spring of the fourth year of Abe's courtship of her, Leah became aware that Richard Doyle had begun to follow her, and while this titillated her, it also aroused a nagging and persistent anxiety. What if he approached her? What if he asked her for a date? What if, she trembled at the mere thought of it, what if he touched her. Yet, as the weeks passed, strange feelings began appearing inside her, warm and exciting feelings that she had not known before, feelings that she had never experienced with Abe. But the thought of Richard Doyle, she began calling him ‘Dickie' in her fantasies, released an urgent sensation, a lava flow of longing. Abe, meanwhile, had mustered the courage to propose marriage to Leah, convinced that their weekly walks testified to his commitment and respect. It was almost summer and he would be graduating from college in just a few weeks. As they walked down the Grand Concourse that June night, the lights from Yankee Stadium illuminating the sky off to the south, Abe took Leah's hand and stopped her progress. ‘Leah,' he faltered, ‘Leah, you know how I … Leah, I …' he couldn't say the words. Leah knew what he was trying to say but would offer no assistance. In fact she had begun to dread the coming of this night, the night she would have to tell him that she did not love him and could not, could never, marry him. ‘Marry me' he blurted out. But before she could say anything in response, a figure came out of the shadows, a tall fair-haired man who, saying only her name, swept Leah up in his arms and ran down the street with her. And what pained Abe more than his frightened paralysis, his horrible helplessness and inaction, what tore at him that night and forever after, was that Leah never once screamed or cried out to him for help.” The hissing of the rain was the only sound in the room for what felt like a long time. We both lay silent and quite still in our beds.