The Vacationers: A Novel (5 page)

The setting sun had shifted over the mountain, and now Jim and Sylvia swam through the shade on their laps back and forth in the swimming pool. From
Gallant
’s current issue: “Why Doing Laps Will Make You Live to 100,” written by a novelist with a weak breaststroke and a spare tire, a piece Jim had commissioned because he thought it sounded like something Franny would like. (
Gallant
was always looking for more female eyes.) Jim’s fingers began to prune, but he didn’t mind. From the deep end of the pool, he could see mountains and trees and the back face of their little pink house. An airplane flew overhead, and both Sylvia and Jim were grateful not to be on it, not to be leaving anytime soon. A good swimming pool could do that—make the rest of the world seem impossibly insignificant, as far away as the surface of the moon.

“It’s not bad, huh?”

Sylvia swam over to the far lip of the pool and hoisted herself up on her elbows.

“It’ll do.” She wiped the water out of her eyes. “What time do Bobby and whatsherface get here? And Charles?”

“In the morning, like we did. They’ll be here early.” If they’d been in New York, standing on opposite sides of 75th Street, they wouldn’t have been able to hear each other: the cars, the people, the airplanes, the bikes, the noise of everyday life in the city. They hadn’t been talking as much as usual, anyway, not lately. Now they were twenty feet apart and could hear each other perfectly. If they’d shouted, their voices would have bounced off the trees lining the mountain and echoed into the valley below, into Pigpen proper, maybe all the way to the ocean.

“I wish he was coming by himself,” Sylvia said.

“Who, Bobby? Or Charles?” Jim swam slowly over to Sylvia’s side of the pool.

“Both of them.”

“I thought you liked Lawrence,” Jim said. He extended his arms and grabbed the lip next to Sylvia. She let go and floated onto her back.

“I do, I do, it’s just . . . I’d rather have him alone, you know? When Lawrence is around, Charles has to pay attention to him, like he’s a little dog. They’re not like you and Mom, who are, like, just people who happen to be married to each other, you know? They’re always fixing each other’s clothes and reading
over each other’s shoulders. It’s gross.” Sylvia shuddered, her wet hair sending droplets of water flying into the pool. “It’s like, at a certain age, people should get over the idea of being in love. It’s gross,” she said again.

“That’s not true,” Jim said. He wanted to say more, to tell his daughter that she was wrong, but couldn’t find the words.

Franny opened the back door and poked her head out. “Dinner! No bathing suits at the table.”

Jim had found a stack of beach towels in the laundry room, and Sylvia grabbed one after she hoisted herself out of the pool. Her father stayed bobbing in the pool, his hands cupping the concrete rim.

“You’ll be happy to see Bobby, though, won’t you?” Jim asked, staring up at Sylvia. He wanted the children to remain uncomplicated with each other, though he knew it was futile. Parenting adults wasn’t at all like parenting kids, when the whole merry band was inclined to believe you, just because. Sylvia knew what had happened because she lived in the same house as the two of them, and it was impossible to keep it from her. It would have been hard to keep it from a child, but teenagers had ears like suction cups, soaking up everything around them. Bobby didn’t know anything. Jim almost wished that he was staying at home, staying far, far away from the implosion of his nuclear family.

Sylvia had wound one gigantic towel around her body and another around her hair. “Sure,” she said. “I guess.” She waited for Jim to pull himself out of the pool before going inside, but
she didn’t say anything else, challenging him to complete his own thought.

The master bedroom was over the study, and had its own en suite bathroom. There was a closet on the left-hand side of the bed and a dresser on the right. Jim had unpacked his things in five minutes flat, and was sitting on the edge of the bed, watching Franny transport armfuls of tunics and airy, light dresses from her suitcase into the closet. She went back and forth, back and forth.

“How much clothing did you bring?” Jim took off his glasses and placed them, folded, into his shirt pocket. “I’m exhausted.”

Franny spoke as if she hadn’t heard him. “Well, Bobby and Carmen and Charles and Lawrence all get in at the same time, roughly, so we could either drive down to meet them or they could all drive together, what do you think?”

“Wouldn’t it make more sense for them to all drive together and save us the trip?” Jim knew it wasn’t the answer she wanted. He stood up and cracked his knuckles.

Franny pushed past him, carrying another load. “I suppose so, yes, but if I go pick them up, then maybe one car can go to the grocery store while the other one comes right back,” she said. “Sylvia’s tutor is coming at eleven, so why don’t the two of you stay home? I’ll go pick up Bobby and Carmen, since Charles
is renting the car, and then maybe we’ll swap cars so that Bobby and Carmen and Lawrence come right home, and Charles and I will go food shopping. That makes the most sense, really. Why don’t we do that?”

It didn’t make any sense, not to Jim, but he wasn’t going to argue with her. This was the problem with including Charles and Lawrence: Franny would do anything to rearrange plans in order to be with Charles twenty-four hours a day for as many days as possible. It didn’t matter that Charles was married now, or that the rest of her family was here, and the vacation was ostensibly about spending time with Sylvia. The plan had been to use the trip as a celebration for their thirty-fifth wedding anniversary, too, but that idea, that it was to be in some way a celebration of their marriage, now seemed like a joke with a terrible punch line. Once Charles arrived, Franny would start laughing the way she had when she was twenty-four, and the rest of them could start setting one another on fire for all she cared. That’s what best friends did: ruin people for everyone else. Of course, Franny would have said that Jim had already ruined everything.

Jim ambled into the bathroom and dug his toothbrush out of the dopp kit. The tap water tasted like old metal, but it still felt good to brush his teeth and wash his face. He purposefully took longer than usual, in part because he wasn’t sure how the night would go. How the night went, so went the vacation. If Franny had softened on the airplane, or in the beautiful house, or while unpacking, that would be a welcome sight. When he
came back into the bedroom, Franny was sitting up in bed with
Don Quixote
on her lap. Jim pulled back the thin coverlet and started to slide in, but Franny put out a hand, flat.

“I would prefer if you slept in Bobby’s room. For the night,” she said. “Obviously not once they get here.”

“I see,” Jim said, but he didn’t move.

“Sylvia sleeps like a hibernating bear, she’s not going to hear you,” Franny said, opening her book.

“Fine,” Jim said. “But we’ll have to deal with this tomorrow, you know.” He picked up the novel he was reading from his nightstand and made his way to the door.

“Yes, we’ll have to deal with this, won’t we?” Franny said. “I love that you make this seem like it’s my choice.” She opened her book and turned her attention to somewhere far, far away.

Jim pulled the door closed behind him and waited for his eyes to adjust to the dark.

WHEN LAWRENCE DUCKED INTO THE MEN’S ROOM,
Charles leaned against the terminal wall, pulled his wheeled suitcase so that it rested against his feet, and shut his eyes. They’d left their house in Provincetown at three o’clock the previous afternoon in order to get to Boston Logan for their evening flight, and flying coach was more exhausting than he remembered. Lawrence was the thrifty one—if Charles had come alone, he would have sprung for business class, at the very least. He was fifty-five years old. What was he saving the money for, if not for transatlantic flights? Lawrence would have scolded him, had he been able to hear Charles’s thoughts. This was a conversation they had on an extremely regular basis. Just because a baby hadn’t come along yet didn’t mean that one wouldn’t, and then wouldn’t he feel guilty about those thousands of wasted dollars floating somewhere over an ocean?
Weren’t organic apples/private school/tennis lessons worth it? They were, Charles would always agree, even though he had lately come to believe that their shared dreams of having a family would soon go the way of the dodo, at which point they could resume their happily selfish lives. Almost all of the other couples they’d met at the adoption agency already had their babies—one, if not two—and Charles thought there might be something written in invisible ink in their letter to the birth mothers.
I’m conflicted,
maybe, or
I don’t know, do we look like good parents to you?

The terminal smelled like disinfectant and heavy perfume, a mixture that gave Charles a headache on the spot. He shifted his body to the right, so that he was facing the stream of disembarking travelers. The Spanish ones had better faces than the tourists—better cheekbones, better lips, better hair. When he was younger, Charles would paint from life, but now he just snapped photos with his digital camera and painted from those. He loved that freedom, being able to have anyone’s face in his pocket.

“Hey,” Lawrence said. He wiped his wet hands on his pants.

“Welcome back,” Charles said. He leaned his head against Lawrence’s shoulder. “I’m tired.”

“I know you are. But hey, at least you’re not wearing an adult-sized playsuit,” he said, gesturing to a woman walking out of the jet bridge at the gate opposite the bathroom. She was small, probably not much over five feet tall, with soft pink terry-cloth sweatpants and matching sweatshirt, both of which
were snug enough to show off her round bottom and otherwise compact figure. “Weren’t those outlawed a decade ago?” The woman stepped out of the line of traffic and turned around, waiting for someone. A tall man with a moppish head of brown curly hair emerged, nodding at the waiting woman in pink.

Charles spun around so that he was facing the wall. “Oh, shit,” he said. “It’s Bobby’s girlfriend.”

“Not the one in the playsuit,” Lawrence said, turning his body so that they were both facing the wall.

“We can’t both be pointing this way,” Charles said. “Shit.”

“Charles?”

Charles and Lawrence both turned around, arms open wide. “Hiiiiiiiii,” they said in unison. Bobby and his girlfriend had shortened the gap between them, and were now no more than four feet away.

“Hello, handsome,” Charles said, pulling Bobby close for a hug. They patted each other on the back affectionately, and when he pulled out of the embrace, Bobby kept one arm slung around Charles’s shoulder as if they were posing for a team photo.

“How was your flight? Hi, Lawrence.” Bobby smiled widely. He had the easy tan of a person who spent most of his days outdoors, though that wasn’t the case. Lawrence thought Bobby might in fact look too tan, as driving around real estate properties in Miami wouldn’t afford so much sunlight unless he drove a convertible, which seemed unlikely. Maybe he spent every weekend on the beach, his face and arms and chest slathered in
tanning lotion, like some 1975 bodybuilder. That seemed unlikely, too. Lawrence wasn’t quite sure how to reconcile himself to the fact that Bobby’s golden-brown suntan was almost certainly fake. The rules were different in Florida.

“Fine. How about yours?” Charles said. No one had spoken to Bobby’s girlfriend, nor had there been any effort to introduce her. Charles knew that they’d met once or twice at a Christmas dinner, or at one of Franny and Jim’s large anniversary parties—maybe it was their thirtieth, five years ago now? Charles had a dim recollection of seeing this woman standing next to Franny’s literary agent, assiduously avoiding conversation by performing an extremely thorough investigation of the ceiling. The girlfriend was at least a decade older than Bobby, which was what had made her sweatsuit so absurd. She was almost Lawrence’s age, young only as viewed from the other side of sixty. Franny had a lot to say on the matter, but only after half a bottle of wine. Until then, she remained coldly impartial. They’d been together for years, off and on, but none of the Posts seemed to care one way or the other, at least in polite company, the way one might ignore the flatulence of an otherwise friendly dog. Charles couldn’t believe that he didn’t remember her name. She was native to Miami, with Cuban parents. Was it Carrie? It wasn’t Mary. Miranda?

“Carmen was so excited, we didn’t sleep at all,” Bobby said, finally looking over his shoulder to find her. “You remember Charles and Lawrence, right?”

“Hello,” she said, reaching out her hand. Lawrence shook it
first, then Charles. Carmen had a firm grip, a handshake that surprised them both. She had olive-colored, creaseless skin that belied her age, and a ponytail that looked mussed from the airplane, an off-center whale spout. Lawrence thought she looked like one of the Spice Girls after a decade out of the spotlight, slightly worse for wear.

“Of course,” Charles said. “How could we forget?”

Franny was waiting at the baggage claim, rubbing her hands together. When Bobby and Carmen rounded the corner and came into view, she squealed and jumped awkwardly in her slip-ons, one of which slid off her foot and skidded a few inches across the slick polished floor. She hurried back into it and ran across the room, as slowly as if through molasses. Bobby stooped down to let himself be folded into his mother’s arms.

“Oh, yes, yes, yes,” she said, rubbing his back. Franny felt terrible about keeping Bobby in the dark about Jim, but it wasn’t the sort of thing you explained over the telephone. Now that he was in her clutches, she thought it would be so much easier if information could be passed telepathically, like on a science-fiction television program, just
zzzzzzpppp
from one brain to the next. “Oh, yes.”

“Hi, Mom,” Bobby said, blinking his eyes at Carmen
over his mother’s shoulder. “You can let go, really, I’ll be here for weeks.”

“Oh, fine,” Franny said, and reluctantly pulled back. “Carmen, hello,” she said, and quickly gave her a kiss on the cheek. “The flight was okay?”

“Fine,” Carmen said, smiling. “We watched movies.” She shifted her weight from one leg to the other, stretching out her calves.

“Great,” Franny said. “Did you happen to run into Charles? He should be around here somewhere.” She looked past Carmen, back down the hall they’d come from. Sure enough, Charles and Lawrence were pulling their suitcases behind them, laughing. Franny’s eyes misted over, as if she thought he wouldn’t really have come. She took a few steps past Bobby and Carmen so that they wouldn’t be able to see her start to cry. Charles finally saw her and began to walk more quickly, scooping her up like a long-lost lover after a war.

Franny’s Chinese fire drill went off without a hitch: Bobby and Carmen and Lawrence got in Charles’s rental car, and Charles got into Franny’s car, and off they went. Carmen could drive stick, and so she drove the first car, while Charles drove the second. Lawrence was too tired to complain, and if Charles had perked up enough to go grocery shopping, that was better for
everyone, wasn’t it? Charles waved limply from the passenger-side window as the car drove away, Lawrence now the captive of the two strangers he wanted to come on vacation with the least.

“It’s so good to see you, Lawrence,” Bobby said. “I haven’t seen you since before you guys got married. When was that, a year ago? Two years ago? I know it was in the summer.” Carmen jerked the car forward and merged into the airport traffic.

“It’ll be three years next month,” Lawrence said, closing his eyes and briefly thanking a godlike figure that the Spanish drove on the right side of the road. “You know what they say about time.”

“What’s that?” Bobby said, lowering his window shade to take a peek in the mirror. For a moment, he caught Lawrence’s eyes and smiled. Bobby was sweeter than his sister; in fact, he was sweeter than the entire rest of the family. As far as Lawrence could tell, Bobby had no hard edges whatsoever, a quality one didn’t often come across in people who had grown up in Manhattan. Lawrence felt his shoulders relax a bit.

“Oh, you know. It flies.” Lawrence crossed his arms and stared out the window. His own family had never been on vacation together, not since he was a child. Even then, he didn’t think they’d done more than one or two trips to a smoky campsite, where they’d all slept in the same dank, mildewing tent. It seemed like folly to imagine that one could fill a house (or a tent) with relatives and still expect to have a pleasant vacation. He and Charles had already discussed this: after
Mallorca, they were going to go somewhere else for a few days, just the two of them, where they would be mercifully free from small talk and other people’s emotional baggage. Lawrence was thinking about Hudson, or maybe Woodstock, but Charles found upstate New York too buggy. They could wait until the weather shifted and then fly to Palm Springs. All Lawrence wanted to talk about was who had a baby, who was still waiting, about wallpaper for the nursery, about names and strollers and where they could buy some nice lesbian’s breast milk.

“That’s so true,” Carmen said. She pulled her purse onto her lap and took out a large plastic bag full of makeup, all of it miniature, as if made for dolls. “Samples,” she said over her shoulder, by way of an explanation. “This way I can fit everything I need. Three ounces or less.” She unscrewed a cap the size of a baby’s thumbnail and squeezed out a drop of cream onto the pad of her index finger. Lawrence watched as she rubbed it vigorously onto her face and neck with one hand while driving with the other, and then tightened his seat belt. Other people’s families were as mysterious as an alien species, full of secret codes and shared histories. Lawrence watched Carmen repeat the process a few more times with different potions. The car rocked to the side as she took a turn too quickly, and Bobby yelped, not without a sense of humor.

“She’s a terrible driver,” he said, and then braced himself against Carmen’s retaliation.

Bobby’s sweetness didn’t matter, not really, not any more than Franny’s bossiness or Jim’s reserve, or Sylvia’s preco
ciousness. The problem was that Charles had abandoned him before they’d even left the airport. How much could two weeks undo?

“I’m a bit tired,” Lawrence said. “I think I’ll just shut my eyes, if you two don’t mind.”

“Of course,” Bobby said. “Knock yourself out.”

Lawrence closed his eyes. He’d begun to sweat, and the car’s air-conditioning seemed inadequate to the task at hand. He wondered briefly if Bobby and Carmen would chat in the way that couples do, about nothing of importance, but they remained silent.