The Beach Club (22 page)

“You can’t go away with some boy, some
foreign
boy we’ve never met. You’re a child, Cecily. So you can forget that idea right now,” Therese said. She lifted her dinner plate, and Cecily’s untouched plate of food. “I’m sorry.”

“I’m counting on you taking over the hotel, Cecily,” Bill said. “Your mother and I haven’t told you everything that’s been going on, but I need to retire soon. You can’t just go running off to another continent. Being a part of this family comes with responsibility.”

“I don’t want the hotel,” Cecily said. “I’m sorry to say it, Daddy, but I’m not interested.”

“That’s absurd. You can’t be not interested. It was Grandpa Bill’s, it’s mine, it’s going to be yours.”

“Give it to Mack,” Cecily said. “He wants it, I don’t.”

“It doesn’t work like that. I can’t give it to Mack.”

“Why not?” Cecily asked. “He’d do a better job than me. Besides, when Grandpa Bill died, you
wanted
the club, you wanted to build hotel rooms. I don’t want that. You can’t make me want that.”

Bill put his hand over his heart. “Oh, God.”

Therese stood behind him. “Your father is sick, Cecily. We didn’t want you to worry, but he’s sick. You can’t tell him things like this or he’s going to have a heart attack.”

Cecily rolled her eyes. “You guys are too much. Giving me a
guilt trip
, telling me Daddy’s
sick
? You should have had more children. You should have had more than just me.”

Therese winced. “How can you say that? You know about W.T.! For years we tried to have children,
for ten years
, and finally there was you. I’m sorry you don’t like it, but some of us are not as fortunate as you, my dear, picking and choosing the way we’d like our lives to go. Most of us just have to take what life deals us, but I am
not
going to stand here and deal with you telling your father you don’t want to be a part of the family tradition that has
sustained
you and given you a
good life
. I am not going to listen to you tell me where you are going with what strange boy.” Therese wound her white streak of hair around her finger. A Mom trick, to make Cecily feel guilty. “Have you slept with this boy?”

Cecily laughed, looked back out the window. She remembered the startled expression on the cleaning lady’s face. “Mother.”

“Mother, what? Was I supposed to assume my fifteen-year-old was away at school having sex?”

“I’m eighteen, Mother, okay? Can we establish that fact?”

“You’re not going to Brazil,” Bill said.

Cecily held out her arms. “Put handcuffs on me, then,” she said. “Put handcuffs on and lock me in the house, because that’s what it’s going to take to keep me here.”

Therese started to cry. “I can’t believe you’re doing this to us,” she said. “I can’t believe that after what I had to endure before, I now have to endure this.”

“It’s not like I’m dying,” Cecily said. She calculated in her head: if she had to leave tonight, could she do it? She’d cashed all her graduation checks plus two paychecks so far from her father. But it still wasn’t enough. She’d have to stay a while longer. “I’m just going away for a year, okay. How about that? A year abroad. I’ll be back next summer.”

“You’re not going anywhere,” Bill said. “I’m sorry, honey.”

Suddenly, there was a noise, a tremendous boom, so loud it rattled the window. Cecily looked outside in time to see the first fireworks, a brilliant spray of red and yellow and white. Then there was another boom—silver sparkles.

“Happy Independence Day,” she said. She stomped down the stairs and left the house, slamming the door behind her.

Jem Crandall watched the fireworks from Jetties Beach with thousands of other people. Kids waved sparklers, parents nodded off to sleep in beach chairs, a group of college students sat in a circle singing the theme song from the Partridge Family. There was no reason for Jem to be amidst all this chaos when he could be down at the Beach Club enjoying peace and quiet, except that here, at Jetties, he was with Maribel. She sat beside him on a beach towel wearing a Nantucket red miniskirt, a white T-shirt, a navy blue cardigan sweater, her blond hair in a ponytail, her tan legs tucked neatly beneath her.

“Are you okay?” Jem asked her. She was quietly picking onions out of her sub sandwich, and tossing them into the sand. (When he called to suggest a picnic, he hoped she would cook, but she told him that now that Mack had left, she would never cook again, hence the sandwiches, and he ordered hers, stupidly, with onions.)

Maribel bit into her sandwich. He put his hand on her knee.

“What’s wrong?” he asked. But, of course, he knew what was wrong: it had been a week since Mack moved out. At first, when Jem saw that Mack had moved into Lacey’s, he thought Mack had found out about his date with Maribel. Jem asked Vance—carefully, casually—did he know what happened?

“Lover boy blew it with his babe,” Vance said. “Screwed around with her on room eighteen.”

Jem called Maribel immediately and she confirmed this. Mack was having some kind of relationship with Mrs. Krane, in room 18.

“I don’t want to see you, Jem,” Maribel said. “I’m a wreck. My life is a disaster area. I’m just sifting through the rubble.”

She didn’t want to see him but Jem called every day—sometimes she just cried into the phone and Jem held the receiver, helpless. Only with his sister, Gwennie, and her bulimia had he ever felt this helpless. But finally, Maribel agreed to see him—tonight, the Fourth of July, but only if they came to this beach and hid amongst all these people. She didn’t want Mack to see them together.

Maribel turned to him. “The past six Fourth of Julys Mack kissed me when the fireworks started.” Her eyes were glassy; she pulled a tissue from her skirt pocket. “I’ve lost a part of my life, Jem.”

“I know,” Jem said.

“Do you know?” she asked. “Have you ever been hurt like this? Have you ever experienced loss like this?”

“No,” he admitted. He had never been in love. He’d never cared about someone more than himself. Jem did have real feelings for Maribel, though, scary feelings, lurking in a dark, unexplored place inside of him. He could feel them gathering strength. He wanted Maribel to be happy she was sitting with him this Fourth of July, but she treated him like the runner-up, the silver medallist, a stand-in.

A thunderclap, and the sky lit up with color. There was a collective “Oooooh, aaaaah!” Some clapping. A burning smell. The fireworks had begun. Jem looked at Maribel: even crying, she was still so pretty. He moved his face closer to hers. Her hand shot up, as if she might slap him.

“Don’t,” she said. “Please.”

“I just want to hold your hand,” he said. He wiped a tear from under her eye with his thumb. “Can I do that?”

Maribel surrendered. Jem held her hand all through the fireworks. Her lifeless, clammy hand that was clearly not excited about being held by Jem’s hand. He was a mannequin, a crash-test dummy, a Band-Aid. But he didn’t care.

Love got stuck working the front desk because Tiny wanted the night free. Free for what? Love wondered. Tiny didn’t strike Love as a patriotic person.

“Are you going to watch the fireworks?” Love asked.

“No.”

“What are you going to do?” Love said. She spent fifteen minutes every day with Tiny during their shift change, and yet Love knew absolutely nothing about her; nor, it seemed, did anyone else.

“That sounds like a personal question,” Tiny said. “And I don’t answer personal questions. But since you’re so curious, I’ll tell you that I’m avoiding the fireworks. I don’t want anything to do with them.”

By seven-thirty Love understood why. The fireworks were being set off from Jetties Beach down the way, but stragglers wandered into the lobby.

“Do you have a bathroom my daughter can use? She swears she’s going to whiz herself. Hey…these are pretty quilts. This is a nice place. Where are we?”

At first Love was solicitous—she let fourteen people use the bathroom and then she locked not only the bathroom door but the door to the lobby as well. No one else was coming in! But then the Beach Club members arrived, knocking, waving, mouthing “It’s me, it’s me.” They wanted their umbrellas set up, they wanted Sleepy Hollow chairs.

“I paid five thousand dollars for my membership,” Mr. Cavendish said. “I will sit in comfort and watch the fireworks.”

Mack materialized out of nowhere. That was one good thing about his breakup with Maribel—now he was always around.

“We can do chairs,” Mack said. “I’ll meet you out at the beach.”

Love put Tchaikovsky’s
1812 Overture
on the stereo for mood. Vance walked into the office.

“The fireworks are about to start,” he said. “I came to show you how to get to the roof.”

“The roof?”

“You want to see the fireworks, don’t you?” Vance asked. “Come on, follow me.”

“I can’t leave the desk,” Love said. “What if somebody needs something? What if somebody calls?”

Vance reached around Love and busied out the phones. His hand grazed Love’s waist and she flinched.

“Relax,” Vance said. He wheeled her through Mack’s office and into the utility closet, his arm around her. The utility closet was dark and Vance reached for the string to the light, but he couldn’t find it.

“What are we doing in the closet?” Love asked. She laughed nervously. This reminded her of stupid kissing games she had played at parties twenty-five years ago. Go into the closet with a boy and stay there until something happens.

“This is the way to get to the roof,” Vance said. “There’s an escape hatch, and I have a ladder. We climb up and pop out.”

“Won’t someone see us?” Love asked.

“I’ve been doing this for years,” Vance said. “Do you trust me?” His voice was closer than Love expected.

“Yes,” Love said.

“We just need to find the light is all,” Vance said. He stumbled over something. “I should have brought my flashlight. Wait, here it is.” Vance clicked on the light. They were standing among vacuum cleaners, mops, pails, extension cords, and huge boxes of toilet paper. “Before we go up, I want to show you something.” Vance opened a toolbox and brought out some crinkled papers. “It’s a short story I wrote that got published in
Slam!
Have you ever heard of
Slam!?
”

“No,” Love said.

“I always see you reading so I thought you might want to take a look at it.”

“Sure,” Love said. The story was entitled “The Downward Spiral.” Exactly the kind of gloomy title she expected from Vance. Still, she was touched he showed it to her. The paper was mildewed at the edges; it had obviously been sitting in that box a long time. “I’d be happy to read it. A published story! I’m impressed. I didn’t know you were a writer.”

Vance shrugged. “I thought since you used to work at a magazine…just read it and tell me what you think.”

He set up the ladder. “You go first,” he said. “I’ll follow behind you.”

Love climbed the ladder and Vance followed. She felt his breath on the backs of her knees, and she worried he could see up her skirt.

“Look above you,” Vance said. “See the hatch?”

Planted in the dusty boards of the ceiling was a metal door, sealed with rubber like a refrigerator. It made a sucking noise as Love opened it to the night sky. She hoisted herself out onto the roof and Vance popped up beside her.

Love raised her arms to the cool air of the dark blue sky. “Much better than being stuck in the lobby.” Below, hotel guests and Beach Club members arranged their chairs and blankets. Love could see all the way down to the mob of people at Jetties.

“Be careful,” Vance said. He sat on the sloping roof. “Come here.”

“But the ocean!” Love said. The water was a shimmering blue, one shade lighter than the sky. A ferry floated toward the island. “This is gorgeous. Thank you for bringing me here.”

“I’d feel better if you sat down,” Vance said.

“What’s wrong, am I making you nervous?” She edged down to the lip of the sloping roof. It was just like skiing a double fault line.

“Love,” Vance said. “Please come here.”

She pretended she was at the Hadwen House, dancing under the stars. Love waltzed across the shingles to where Vance sat. He pulled her down so close to him that their shoulders brushed. And then, suddenly, Vance put his arm around her and kissed her cheek. Love stiffened. What was he doing? He kissed her mouth. Love wasn’t sure what she expected from a kiss from Vance, but she certainly didn’t expect it to be so soft, so warm, so tender.

There was a pop, like a giant balloon exploding, and then a shower of red, gold, white. Fireworks. Love closed her eyes and Vance kissed her again. Then she pulled away.

“Vance,” she said. “What’s going on?”

Vance’s profile was cool as a coin.

“I like you,” he said.

“You like me?” She stared across the roof of the hotel. There it was: a giant
L
, for Like.

“Yeah,” he said. “I do. Is that some kind of crime?”

“No,” Love said. “I’m just surprised.” It was so odd—he was so odd, so sullen and grouchy, always lurking in the shadows, badmouthing Mack, peeling out of the parking lot in his Datsun. He seemed better suited for someone like…well, like Tiny. In fact, Love suspected from the beginning that Vance and Tiny were conducting a little romance. But no, Vance liked Love. She couldn’t help but feel flattered.

“I’m much older than you,” she said. “Do you know that?”

“Not that much older.”

“Ten years older,” she said. “You’re thirty, right?”

Vance picked up her hand and held it. “I don’t care how old you are. I think you look great,” he said. “I think you look hot.” He kissed her again.

He was a terrific kisser, that was for damn sure. He had a strong, fit body, and he might have a handsome face if he ever smiled. Love shuffled her expectations, rearranged her plans. Could this work? Could she have a fling with
Vance
?

“Let me ask you something,” she said. “What do you think about children?”

Vance raised his eyebrows. “Children? What do you mean?”