The Vacationers: A Novel (20 page)

After a minute, Franny’s sniveling tapered off. “I love this song,” she said, and started to sing along. Lawrence and Charles joined in—“Bennie and the Jets” in a fractured, off-key three-part harmony. Franny tried to sing the highest but couldn’t, and so Lawrence launched into an impressive falsetto. Charles sang bass and played along on an invisible guitar. The song went on interminably, their voices getting louder and louder, until they were all screaming. After Elton, the DJ said something in German and then played some Led Zeppelin. Lawrence turned down the volume.

“You guys know that song is terrible, right?” Sylvia said, though she was very glad that her mother had stopped crying. She swiveled around in her seat and clutched the back of her headrest. “You okay, Mom?”

Franny reached up and squeezed Sylvia’s fingers. “I’m okay, honey. I’m just, I don’t know.” She turned to Charles. “I can’t believe you really hit him.”

“You would if you knew how long I’ve wanted to do that.” Charles looked at the back of his hand, already sporting a pale bruise.

“Yeah,” Sylvia said. “I kind of wanted to do it, too. Men are fucking dirtbags. No offense, guys.”

Charles and Lawrence shook their heads. “None taken,” said Charles.

“Are you getting a divorce?”

Franny had asked herself the same question hundreds of times—when Bobby was small and they couldn’t stop arguing, when he was eight or nine and they were deciding whether to stay together, when he came home and told her about Madison, and on all the days he said or did something that she thought was annoying, like fart in a small elevator. That was marriage.

“I don’t know, honey, we’re still sorting it all out. We both love you and your brother. It’s just a little messy at the moment.” Franny wiped at her cheeks. “I must look like a wreck.”

Sylvia laughed. “You should have seen yourself at the beach. It was like you turned into Godzilla. Momzilla. You were Momzilla. Momzilla and Gayzilla Strike Back.”

“I like that,” Franny said. She leaned back into Charles’s chest. “Find something else we can sing along to, Lawr.”

Lawrence hit the dial a few times, hurrying past anything recent or in a foreign language (ignoring the fact, of course, that English was a foreign language in Spain), and eventually came to Stevie Wonder. Franny began to belt out the words, and hummed along with the harmonica solo, and so without waiting for further approval, he turned the volume up and kept driving.

Jim hadn’t been hit since he was a teenager. He’d had that kind of face then, a soft chin and puppy-dog eyes that turned down at the corners. He’d been thrown into lockers and teased for his willingness to do extra-credit homework. It wasn’t until he had his final growth spurt in the eleventh grade that the girls ever noticed him, other than wanting him to come to their study sessions in the school library. His eye stung, and though there hadn’t been any blood, he knew he would have a shiner. Did people still use the word
shiner
? He felt like an old man—the transition was swift. Just that morning, he’d woken up feeling young again, like he and Fran could make it work, that everything would be all right and he would have his life back.

Two burly men in leather jackets walked toward him on the beach, their heavy black boots trudging awkwardly through the fine sand.

“Saw ya get punched there,” one said.

“Didn’t take it too bad,” said the other.

Jim looked at them with his left eye, keeping the right one shut tight under his cupped palm. Bobby and Carmen took a step closer, wondering if they were going to have to intervene, to keep Jim from being a human heavy bag. Bobby felt his pulse quicken—he’d taken some kickboxing classes at Total Body Power and thought he could defend himself, if given the opportunity.

“You were on our plane,” Jim said, recognizing the patches sewn onto their leather jackets—young Elvis, fat Elvis, a vintage motorcycle. “‘The Sticky Spokes,’” he said, reading off the larger man’s biceps.

“Were we? That’s a riot,” the man on the right said. He was shorter, with closely cropped red hair. “Just a blokes’ vacation, we do it every few years. Get on some bikes and ride around. Don’t get to do it as much as I’d like at home anymore. I’m Terry. Want me to have a look at the eye? I’m a pediatrician.”

Bobby unclenched his fist.

Jim nodded, and Terry stepped in closer. It hurt to open his eye, and Jim blinked away some involuntary tears. Terry pressed two fingers very gently around the socket, and felt along Jim’s cheekbone.

“You’ll be fine, nothing’s broken,” Terry said. He reached into his back pocket and pulled a handsome calling card out of an elegant leather wallet, attached to his belt with a thick chain. “Call me if you need something, though. We’re here until August.”

“Will do, thanks,” Jim said. “What kind of bike do you ride?”

Terry’s whole face perked up, widening into a near-perfect circle. “You know bikes? At home I’ve got a Triumph Scrambler. Nineteen sixties body with a twenty-first-century heart. This week I’m on a Bonneville, gold and gleaming and quick as lightning.” He patted Jim on the shoulder. “You’ll be fine. Keep it cold.”

Bobby, Carmen, and Jim all thanked Terry and his silent friend and watched them stalk back through the sand. They were set up at the very edge of the beach, nearest the parking lot. Jim could just make out the outline of a motorcycle through the pine trees.

The umbrellas were difficult to close properly, and there were so many towels and tote bags that they had to make two trips to the car to pack everything up. Jim sat in front with Bobby behind the wheel, a still slightly cool water bottle pressed to his eye. Carmen reluctantly shared the backseat with the rest of Franny’s myriad snacks, some of which had spilled out of their containers and onto the beach towels. The car smelled like cut strawberries and suntan lotion. Jim and Bobby made no indication that they would speak, which was good. A half-hour of silence seemed like the very least they could all give each other. Carmen rolled down the window, despite the air-conditioning, and let the fresh air in. Moving felt like a step in the right direction.

THE HOUSE WAS BIG ENOUGH FOR ALL OF THEM, BARELY.
Jim’s black eye allowed him to take up more space, and after a bad night’s sleep clinging to his edge of the bed, as far from Fran as he could get without sleeping on the floor, he planned to spend the morning in Gemma’s handsomely cluttered office. She was an interior designer, or an amateur milliner, or a certified Reiki practitioner in addition to owning a gallery in London. Jim couldn’t keep it straight. Her books were varied to the point of insanity—one shelf devoted to Eastern religions, one to fashion, one to World War Two. He’d known women like Gemma before, rich girls with brains but no focus, good-looking and well-meaning dilettantes. He took a book on Buddhism off the shelf and opened it at random.

Out the window, Franny and the boys were having their breakfast by the pool. The day was misty but getting warmer,
and Fran, her back to Jim, was wearing one of her gauzy dresses that he loved. Fran had all the usual feelings about her body’s changes, about menopause, but to Jim, she still looked just as beautiful as she ever had. Her bottom was still round and shaped like a generously large fruit. Her face was still full and soft. He felt himself getting older, but Franny would always be younger than he was. There was no good way to tell her that, not without the name Madison Vance coming out of her mouth soon afterward.

At first it was just friendly office banter, the kind Jim had always enjoyed. There had been numerous other women he’d flirted with at
Gallant
, and it had always been innocent. There was the one whose large glasses took up half her face, and the one who had a fiancé in Minneapolis, and the lesbian who flirted with Jim anyway, because she flirted with everyone, a wonderful quality in a person of any orientation. He hadn’t for a second considered sleeping with any of them, even when he and Franny were having problems. Sure, had he pictured their bodies once or twice when he and Franny were having sex? He had. But he had never so much as picked an errant hair off their sweaters or stood too close to them in a crowded elevator. Jim was loyal to his wife.

She was telling a story—Franny picked up her fork and twirled it in the air like a baton. Charles and Lawrence, both facing Jim’s window, threw back their heads and laughed. Jim wished he could join them outside, just open the door and walk out and sit next to her.

Madison Vance had appeared like a lump of kryptonite, as suddenly as if she’d fallen out of the sky. She was forward, and brave, and when she told Jim she wasn’t wearing any underwear, he shouldn’t have raised his eyebrows in amusement. He should have called human resources and then tucked himself in a ball under his desk like an air-raid drill. Instead, he had smiled and involuntarily run his tongue across his lower lip. True youth was something magnificent to behold—not the youth of thirty-five or forty-five or fifty, all still young and vital when viewed from the other side, but the unimpeachable youth of the early twenties, when one’s skin hugged the bones and glowed from the inside out. Madison let her long blond hair hang loose over her shoulders, and it swung side to side, each tiny strand both delicate and wild. She had made it clear that she wanted him,
in that way
, in that ancient way, she wanted him. And Jim wanted her, too.

The moment he walked into the hotel bar to meet her, Jim knew he was making a mistake. Up until then, he had convinced himself that it was all in good fun—he was taking this young woman under his wing. She was a pip, a go-getter! And they would sit at the bar and have drinks and talk about journalism and novels, and then she would go on her merry way, taking the subway back to Brooklyn Heights, where she was sharing a sublet with a roommate. Once he walked into the bar, though, and saw what Madison was wearing, her pale thighs extending out from under her impossibly short dress, Jim knew that the situation wasn’t even close to the one he’d let himself believe.

He had walked to the desk, he had asked for a room.

He had tipped his face down to meet hers.

He had unzipped her dress and watched the fabric slide over her narrow hips.

Jim turned away from the window and let his head drop toward his chest. His eye ached and he wished that the rest of his body was as marked, one giant bruise, because he deserved it.

When she was in high school, Carmen had thought long and hard about her options. There was a boy in her class who loved her, and she loved him, too. They’d lost their virginity to each other in his twin bed, and their mothers were friends who liked to sit together on plastic chairs on the beach. When she was at Miami Dade, there was a guy she met at Starbucks and slept with on and off for the next six months, until it turned out that he had another girlfriend back home in Orlando. There were always lots of guys at every gym she’d ever worked at, eyeing her while she worked out. Miami was an easy place to meet someone if you cared about your body.

Bobby was different. The first time they went out, he told her about his family and New York. He was still in college, but seemed so much younger than when Carmen was his age. She’d been supporting herself since she was sixteen, and at twenty-one, Bobby’s parents still paid his rent, though she
didn’t know that yet. What was clear was that he came from somewhere else, a different planet of wants and needs. She loved hearing about his mother—a writer! It sounded like a job from the movies, going around the world and writing about what she ate. Carmen started buying magazines that she thought his mother might be in, and sometimes when Bobby came over to her house, he’d confirm her suspicion, saying,
Oh, I think my mother was in that one,
and sometimes he’d say,
Oh, my mother hates that one—total assholes,
and Carmen would pretend that the magazine had been a gift from a client, disowning it quickly.

She tried so hard to get them to like her. She stayed quiet at their dinner parties and smiled blankly when they talked about something she didn’t know anything about. She wore her most conservative clothes and tried not to complain about the cold. But nothing she did ever seemed to be right.

The kitchen was warm—all the blinds were open. If it had been her mother’s apartment in Miami, all the shades would have been closed until just before dusk, but the Posts didn’t seem to mind the house heating up like an oven. She wasn’t going to say anything, it wasn’t her decision.

“Morning,” Bobby said. He’d been sleeping late. Carmen wound her hands around her orange juice. It was the first morning in a year that she hadn’t had a protein shake, but he didn’t seem to notice.

“Good morning,” Carmen said. Everyone else seemed to be by the pool, and Sylvia was surely still asleep. The house was
theirs alone. “Will you take a walk with me? Just a walk.” He hadn’t been saying much, and neither had she.

“Sure,” Bobby said, staring out the window at his family. He didn’t want to be around them any more than she did. They tugged on their sneakers and were out the door before anyone knew they were gone.

Pigpen was straight down a narrow road—a two-way street only when absolutely necessary, and they walked in single file, Bobby in front. There were all sorts of things like that—lessons Bobby hadn’t learned. Was she supposed to teach him? She’d tried. Walking on the outside in case a car jumped the curb or went through a puddle, letting her pass through doorways first. He didn’t do any of those things. If she’d asked, he would have said something about how they were equals, but really, he’d just never thought about it. Carmen stooped down to pluck a flower, and tucked it behind her ear.

The town was only a few streets long, the cobblestone blocks curling in and around one another in a tight knot. They walked past the small grocery store, and the Italian restaurant, and the bar that sold sandwiches. When they reached the end of the block and rounded the corner, Carmen was just about to open her mouth. Instead, they turned left and then stopped abruptly.

The street ahead of them was filled with people—one man with a guitar, some children throwing things into the air, and a few older women standing around beaming. The cars on the street were stopped, but the stymied drivers didn’t honk their horns or even look impatient. Carmen pulled Bobby closer to
the action, and they watched from across the street—at the center of the group, standing outside the doorway of a small building, were a bride and groom. Another man stood just behind them on the steps, making proclamations. Carmen could understand most of what he was saying—
This is a joyous day, God has given these two people each other—
but it wouldn’t have mattered if the man was speaking Swahili. It was a wedding, in any language. The bride, a plump woman near Carmen’s age if not a bit older, wore a short dress with a lacy bodice, and a wrist corsage. Her new husband wore a gray suit and a tie, his mostly bald head gleaming in the sunlight. They gripped each other’s hands tightly, rocking back from side to side as their friend spoke. The woman let out a peal of laughter, and her husband kissed her on the mouth. The old ladies shook their handkerchiefs in the air, and the children screamed happily, consumed by their own role in the festivities. Carmen felt her stomach pump once, then again, and realized that she was crying.

She reluctantly turned away from the happy scene and toward Bobby. He stood with his arms crossed, an impatient expression on his face.

“Train wreck,” he said. “Did you see the size of her arms? She could use an hour of two of some triceps pull-downs. Like four times a day for the rest of her life.” He chuckled. “Ready?”

Carmen felt as if she’d been slapped. “She looks beautiful.” The bride and her groom were dancing now, in between the stopped cars. She twirled out, then in, out, then in. Each time
she came close, her husband kissed her, so clearly thrilled at his own fortune. “You know, I always thought that you’d grow out of this.”

“Of what?” Bobby shook his curls off his forehead.

“Of being afraid.”

Bobby looked confused. “Listen, if this is about something my sister said—”

“I don’t care, Bobby. It’s not about anything your sister said, or didn’t say. It’s about you. I always thought that you would need some time, you know, to grow up, but I think I just realized that it’s never going to happen, not while I’m sitting around waiting for it. I’m gonna go home.”

“You want to walk back?” Bobby started to turn.

“No, you don’t understand,” Carmen said. “Back to Miami. Without you. This is over. I should have done this years ago. Don’t you see how happy they are?” She pointed to the bride and groom, still hugging their families, their smiles stretching their cheeks. It didn’t matter that the bride’s dress was too tight or hadn’t come from Vera Wang—she was
happy
. She wanted to be with this man for the rest of her life, and he felt just the same way. They had chosen to make the leap and, having leapt, were delighted to find that the world was even more beautiful than they’d hoped. Carmen knew right then that Bobby was never going to marry her. He was never going to leap, at least not with her at his side.

“You’re breaking up with me?” Bobby asked. She couldn’t tell if he looked confused, relieved, or both. There were lines on
his forehead, but the corners of his mouth had begun to twitch into a nervous smile. “Right now?”

“Right now, Bobby. And I think you should take a little time off from Total Body Power, too. I’ll make sure your clients are covered. Take a few weeks to figure out what you’re going to do next, okay? You’re not a personal trainer, not really. And the powders don’t work unless you’re a bodybuilder. There’s just too much bullshit, you know?” With that, Carmen spun around and started walking back up the hill. She would call a taxi from the landline and figure out her flight when she got to the airport. She’d never been to mainland Spain—maybe she’d go there. She didn’t turn around to see if Bobby was walking behind her, because it didn’t matter. She would pack up her clothes and leave the powders in the kitchen. She was done.

Everyone was so excited about Carmen’s premature departure that even Sylvia forgot about Joan. He rang the bell twice before anyone thought to let him in. Sylvia opened the door and said, “Oh! Hi!” and then quickly ushered him into the dining room.