The Inn at Lake Devine (25 page)

“What was the name of your summer camp?” I asked.

“Applegate,” they said in Nelson’s direction.

“So it must have been a co-ed camp if they’re having a dance,” I said.

“Across the lake. Miriam. The sister camp.”

“Is it a joint reunion?” asked Nelson.

The brothers said, “Yuh.”

“Why did you pick the Halseeyon?” asked Kris.

The brothers shrugged.

“They must’ve given you a decent group rate,” Kris said.

“Lower than a group rate,” said one.

“How did that work out?” Kris asked.

“The owner,” said another.

“What about the owner?” asked Nelson.

“His daughter,” said one.

“Linette?” I asked.

“Went to Camp Miriam,” said the other.

W
e skipped services and drove to a townie bar in downtown Monticello. Kris and Nelson ordered beers; I had, after several cups of Manischewitz Concord Grape with dinner, a glass of Tab. We hadn’t discussed Linette in front of the Lupow brothers, and Nelson didn’t seem to be grasping Shabbat etiquette. “I feel a little weird,” he said. “Like, she invites me here and we run out on her. Maybe she’s looking for me.”

I nudged Kris’s foot under the table.

“Nels?” he said, his voice a note higher than usual. “Did Linette tell you she was getting married?”

Nelson swallowed, but his face gave nothing away. “No kidding,” he said. “Who’s the guy?”

“A rabbi,” I said.

“Well,” he said. “A rabbi. Sounds serious.”

“Kris was worried that you might not have come if you’d known that.”

“Why?”

“You know—I came with Natalie. You and Linette would make four. We’d hang around together and have some fun.”

“Dance,” I said.

“And you think that’s out of the question?”

Kris and I must have been wearing twin apologetic expressions, because Nelson said, “Hey, look. I got out of Providence, which I
needed to do. And I get to see Natalie under happier circumstances than last time.” He punched Kris’s upper arm. “And I get to see my brother back among the living.” He raised his glass, and we raised ours, with less gusto.

Nelson said, “I see a jukebox.”

Kris said, “I’ve been here too long. I was actually thinking, Better not play music on Shabbat.”

Nelson stood up and fished quarters out of his pocket. He spent a long time flipping through the jukebox’s offerings, deep in what looked like bleak contemplation. When he rejoined us, he asked, “So what do you know about this rabbi?”

“Hardly anything,” I said.

“A few details,” said Kris.

“Does he have a name?” Nelson asked.

“Joel,” I said.

“When’s the wedding?”

“
Mañana
,” said Kris.

“Does she have a ring?”

“Like this,” said Kris, indicating a rectangle the size of a pocket lighter.

“When did they meet?”

“Unclear,” said Kris.

I said, “I guess you two lost track of each other after college.”

Nelson looked expectantly toward the silent jukebox.

“What’d you pick?” Kris asked.

“Elton John and Roberta Flack.” In seconds, we heard, as if it were a parody of Sonny Cirrell, the opening notes of the theme from
Love Story
.

Kris said, “You bozo.”

“It’s a mistake,” Nelson protested. “I must’ve hit the wrong buttons.”

Kris eyed the half-dozen locals and muttered, “We’re gonna get beat up.”

A man in a dark green leisure suit walked by us, leading a tough cookie in a nurse’s uniform onto the dance floor.

Nelson said, “Go ahead, you two.”

We said, No, not if he wasn’t.

Nelson said, “In that case, Natalie, may I?”

The song was difficult to dance to; it called for slow, skating steps that felt ridiculous. I said, “We can sit this one out if you want to.”

He said, “I was hoping we’d have a chance to talk.”

“Sure,” I said lightly. “About what?”

“Stuff.”

“Such as?”

“Things good with Kris?”

“Very good.” I was conscious of his hand holding mine, his chin not quite grazing my hair, and I thought, If I were back at the lake and fourteen again and someone had said, “One day you’ll dance with Nelson Berry to a theme song from a movie called
Love Story
,” I would have been thrilled.

“Has Linette mentioned me at all?” Nelson asked.

“A couple dozen times.”

“Concerning …?”

“Robin. And how you’re doing.”

“And you said …?”

“Essentially, that you were okay, not great. I told her Robin was sweet and beautiful, and that she was the happiest bride-to-be I’ve ever seen.”

After a long few moments he asked hoarsely, “Do you think that’s true?”

“I know it.”

The song played on painfully. I glanced over at Kris, who was wearing the sweetly anxious look of a guy who was letting his older, reputedly more charming brother dance with his girl.

“Aren’t all brides-to-be happy?” Nelson asked.

I said, “Some are happier than others.”

He shrugged. “I haven’t known that many.”

“I’m thinking of your buddy Linette.” Nelson waited, didn’t prompt me. After a minute I said, “I get the idea that she’s not madly in love with this guy.”

“Why?”

“She doesn’t see him very often, and when she talks about him … I don’t know. I didn’t really get a sense of why she’s marrying the guy.”

“People don’t always wear their heart on their sleeve.”

“I think Linette would … and I’m fairly certain that sleeve would be attached to a hideous outfit.”

Nelson laughed, and said fondly, “Doesn’t she have the
worst
taste in clothes?”

I thought of Robin’s classic, starched, all-cotton clothes, her long, straight hair, the Pappagallos on her feet, and the tasteful diamond solitaire on her hand. In danger of saying emphatically, “The
worst
, the polar opposite of Robin’s,” I murmured, “Just an impression about her as reluctant bride-to-be. Just something in her eyes, and what she didn’t say about Joel.”

“People expect me to act a certain way and say things that will reassure them that I’m incapacitated by grief.”

I protested that it was just the opposite: People wanted signs that he was okay.

“I’m not okay,” he said, “but I have to keep putting one foot in front of the other.”

“I know that.”

“One reason I wanted to come up here was to be around strangers who wouldn’t be giving me the poor-Nelson look I see everywhere else.”

“Then you came to the right place. I can’t imagine a look of pity on Linette’s face. I think she’ll expect you to do the limbo at the camp reunion.”

Nelson laughed, then said he was going to give Linette a call and tell her where she could find us.

“They don’t answer their phone.”

“Ever?”

“Friday night’s a big deal,” I said. “Observant Jews don’t answer the phone or turn on a light. Did you ride the elevator? It stops on every floor so no one has to press a button.”

“I knew her in college, remember? Friday night was no different from any other night.”

I said, “You’re saying she isn’t observant?”

“What she is,” said Nelson, “is an obedient daughter.”

The song ended, finally, and we went back to Kris, who was trying hard to look unworried.

I said, “I was telling Nelson about our various conversations with Linette.”

Kris said, “She and Natalie hit it off.”

“More importantly,” Nelson said, “I understand you two are hitting it off.”

I wanted to keep up my end of the banter, but it seemed the right moment to make a declaration in front of the brother who had always won the hearts of the guests. I said, “I understand I have you to thank for all of this.”

“All of what?”

“Accepting Linette’s invitation. Coming here this weekend—”

“This glorious weekend, she means,” said Kris.

I said, “Let’s not exaggerate; it’s only been a glorious twenty-four hours.”

Nelson patted his brother’s cheek approvingly.

Kris said, “You’re in an awfully good mood for someone who was—” He stopped, then said, “Downgraded to the barracks.”

“Am I?”

I said, “I noticed that, too.”

“You guys worry too much.” He executed the fake stretch and yawn of a bad actor, checked his watch, and asked, “Want to go? I might as well turn in early.”

“Did you bring a book?” Kris asked him, a manager of lodgings
without TVs, and now a guilty brother who had a woman. “Want to stop and pick up a couple of magazines?”

“Let’s just get back,” said Nelson.

I touched Nelson’s arm. “Has it been a complete flop so far?”

“Not at all.” He stood up, looking oddly untroubled. In parallel gestures, he and Kris took dollar bills out of their wallets and put them under their glass mugs.

“She’ll show up at breakfast,” said Kris, “which is when she came looking for us.”

Nelson pushed his chair in and said, “I know you thought this weekend was going to be one big double date, but it ain’t gonna happen, folks. And that’s fine. I’m going to dance at her wedding.”

“Whenever that is,” I said.

Nelson said, “Tell you what: If we don’t run into each other before the camp reunion, then I’ll make a big entrance. I’ll crash the party and demand one dance for old times’ sake.”

“When you were nothing but pals,” I said.

“You’ve never crashed a party in your life,” said Kris.

Nelson said, “I’m your older brother. I was crashing parties before you were born.”

“Oh yeah? Name one.”

“This one, Jack,” Nelson said.

W
e left him at the entrance to a damp, dim passageway, its vinyl wallpaper peeling. Watching him, the Ivy League math teacher in his pressed khakis, recede into the camp counselors’ tunnel, I harrumphed, “Some change of scenery she’s offering. It breaks my heart.”

“I offered to talk to Estelle,” said Kris. He found my hand and kissed it.

“Go to bed,” Nelson yelled back.

I
nasmuch as a dining hall full of pious Jews on Shabbes could create a buzz, there was one at breakfast, and Nelson was its subject.

“Your brother!” cried Avi and Ira, more animated than they’d been when discussing Don Larsen’s perfect game. “Did you hear what happened last night? At the pool? He jumped in and saved someone!”

“The indoor pool,” said a woman at the next table.

“After services,” said Ira, or Avi.

“Who’d he save?” Kris asked.

“An elderly woman,” said the other brother.

“A cantor’s wife—”

“From Pennsylvania,” said another stranger.

“Fully dressed, with heels and a big heavy pocketbook,” said someone else.

“He
is
a professional lifeguard,” said Kris.

“They should have a lifeguard on duty here, regardless,” said the woman one table over.

“Is she okay?” I asked.

“She was more scared than anything else,” said a man with a goatee, who was passing by our table.

“Nelson jumped in?” I asked.

“Spread-eagle. With all his clothes on.”

“I wasn’t there,” said a Lupow brother, “but I heard he jumped in without even taking his shoes off.”

“He got her out of the pool in a matter of seconds,” said the other.

“She was no little slip of a thing, either,” said the man with the goatee.

“A big individual,” added the woman by his side.

“Who doesn’t swim,” said a Lupow.

“She’s from outside Philadelphia,” said Victor, arriving with many juices and a vat of canned figs.

“Her husband doesn’t swim, either,” said the first woman.

“Where’s your brother now?” Victor asked.

“Must be sleeping,” said Kris.

“He deserves it,” another piped up.

“He desoives breakfast in
bed
,” said an old man. “On a silver tray.”

“With a medal,” said Victor.

“It’ll probably make the papers,” said Ira, or Avi.

“What’s his name again?” someone asked.

“Nelson Berry,” Kris said. “He’s my brother.”

“He’s a teacher,” said Victor.

“A swimming teacher?”

“Mathematics,” said Victor.

“He was so modest,” said a pretty woman with a perfect flip to her wig. “He said it was instinctive.”

“We were there,” said her husband. “He flew into the water, never giving a thought to his own safety.”

“He’s a very experienced lifeguard,” I said.

“At the Inn at Lake Devine,” plugged Kris.

“What was she doing by the pool?” I asked.

“Just walking by! Oneg Shabbat was in the Coney Island Room. She lost her balance.”

“Her pressure,” I heard.

“Her sugar.”

“Her inner ear.”

“It would have been
some
lawsuit,” said a bald man in pinstripes, “if a guest of this hotel had drowned on her way to Oneg Shabbat.”

“She was lucky Nelson was there,” I said.

“Hal Feldman is the lucky one,” said the well-dressed man.

N
elson, pressing a pillow over his face, denied the heroics. “I couldn’t help myself,” he groaned. “All those years—I didn’t even think. I saw her go in, and I went flying like a jerk, shoes and all. They’re ruined. It wasn’t even over her head.”