Jane Austen in Boca (26 page)

“I’m already sitting,” said Flo. She was in fact sitting on her couch reading
Daniel Deronda,
George Eliot’s “Jewish” novel, a book that she liked so much that she had told Lila and May that she was prepared to read every one of its thousand pages aloud to them.

“Put the book down,” said Lila, “and prepare yourself. It’s about Mel Shirmer. He’s moved into Boca Festa. Pod seven, Eastgate. Not by himself He’s married—to Roz Fliegler.”

Flo, not easily surprised, was surprised.

“I know it must be a blow,” continued Lila, “so I wanted to be the first to break it to you. I didn’t want you finding out through gossip in the dining room or, worse, seeing them there together.”

Flo assured her that though she was surprised, she was not stricken. Her feelings for Mel, if she had ever had any, had long since dissipated into indifference—if not distaste. What interested her, however, was how the union had been effected. She had not seen Mel for some time. She had assumed that he had gone back to Washington (or New York) and given up on the idea of settling in Florida.

“It seems he’s been courting her on the sly,” said Lila disgustedly. “He obviously was embarrassed showing up here since everyone assumed that you two were a couple. It seems they met at the JCC—in the biblical prophets course; it’s always the most popular—and she made a beeline for him. He was, they say, very receptive. She’s quite well off, you know,” said Lila meaningfully. “No doubt that had something to do with it.”

“No doubt,” said Flo.

“But the nerve of them settling here!” exclaimed Lila. “With you only two pods away!”

“A pod can be an ocean,” said Flo. “It’s reasonable that they would settle here. Roz has lived here for years.”

“Yes. They stayed in the same pod but moved to a bigger condo,” noted Lila. “Mel said he needed an extra bedroom to use as his study—for his writing.” Lila seemed to have temporarily forgotten her outrage and moved into her strictly reportorial mode. “They were married quietly, but she says she wants to have a big party to celebrate in the fall. She’s renting the clubhouse and planning the decorations with Rudy—the sky’s the limit. I don’t suppose we’ll be invited.” Lila seemed a bit crestfallen at the prospect of missing such a gala event, but quickly recalled her feelings for her friend. “So you’re not upset? Even if you don’t feel anything for him, you must admit that it’s… disrespectful.”

“Well, I couldn’t expect him not to marry the woman of his dreams out of respect for me,” said Flo.

“Roz Fliegler—the woman of his dreams? Feh!” declared Lila.

“Lila! Since when have you gotten to be so discriminating? Mel was not rich. In fact, he didn’t have much money at all, from what I could tell. Roz has plenty and is a very lively personality. I don’t think you should be one to judge.”

“You have a point,” admitted Lila, who had the virtue of acknowledging a reasonable argument. “It’s just that he led you on.

“He didn’t,” said Flo. “He may have tried for a while, but he didn’t succeed. Now, stop making such a big deal about it. Let’s go to lunch. Maybe I’ll see them there and can offer my heartfelt congratulations.”

T
HERE WERE TWO OCCASIONS IN THE COURSE OF THE YEAR WHEN
the atmosphere of West Boca underwent a dramatic transformation: the week between Christmas and New Year’s, and the week following Easter Sunday. These were the public schools’ official extended holidays when grandchildren, freed from academic constraints, were shipped down to grandparents who, it was thought, were dying to see them. During these periods, children ranging in age from five to seventeen made their appearance in the Boca clubs.

Boca Festa made special arrangements in anticipation of this deluge. A variety of programs were implemented that included games and contests, barbecues and picnics. Special clinics in golf and tennis were organized, straining the stamina and versatility of the club pros, who now had to adjust their instruction to ten-year-olds who had been taken off their Ritalin. More important than the lessons, of course, were the debriefing sessions that followed with the children’s grandfathers, when it was necessary to give assurances that the youngsters had the makings of first-class players if only they could perfect their forehands, backhands, and serves.

Normally, Boca Festa was a quiet place, aside from the skirmishes at the board meetings and the occasional arguments at lunch or in the card room as to whether Bill Clinton was a
shanda
or the best president the country has had since FDR (there appeared to be only two positions on this issue). Another bone of contention was the Bush-Gore election. As residents of Palm
Beach County, many club residents had come face-to-face with the notorious “butterfly ballot,” and continued to be indignant on the subject. Some blamed the stupidity of the ballot and others the stupidity of their peers (drawings of the ballot on tablecloths had upped the club dry-cleaning bill by 30 percent). Yet while these topics produced raised voices and slammed fists from time to time, club life tended to be sedate and calm overall. Everyone was cognizant of the dangers of high blood pressure. The exception was during those two vacation weeks. At those times, toddlers in sodden diapers were seen running across the clubhouse lounge followed by youngish women in high-heeled mules, and there was so much splashing in the pool that the matrons in beehive hairdos had to move their chairs back a good six inches. There were lines for the Stairmasters and hardly room to accommodate the influx of younger women in the aerobics classes. Daughters-in-law were booked for massages with Tiffany, the club masseuse, who was minutely questioned afterward by mothers-in-law desperate for a handle on what their sons were thinking. (“The breasts are definitely not real,” Tiffany confided to Mrs. Ruderman.) Candy wrappers were found on the golf course, despite regular announcements at pod meetings to pay particular attention to the disposal of trash. Most under pressure were the culinary staff, who found themselves fielding special requests of a highly esoteric sort: “Leave a few lumps in the potatoes, but not too many, then add parmesan and butter, with a smidgen of salt and a dash of paprika,” the chef was told by one woman who explained that her grandson, a picky eater, had gone mad for this recipe when she was visiting him last summer. The staff was finally obliged to post a notice near the entry to the dining hall:
THE KITCHEN MUST REFUSE ALL SPECIAL REQUESTS FOR DISHES DURING WINTER AND SPRING VISITING WEEKS OWING TO TIME AND BUDGETARY LIMITATIONS.
This, of course, did not prevent many grandparents from slipping the chef fifty dollars along with a scribbled recipe for
matzo brie
with peanut butter.

Carol, sensing that her presence might be distracting at this point in May’s relationship with Norman Grafstein, shipped Adam down by himself during the spring vacation week. She had mobilized the entire ground staff of Continental Airlines in the service of his care, and had interviewed all the attendants on the flight, finally choosing a perky young woman named Susie as his personal companion for the trip. He was equipped with a suitcase of games and puzzles, though he had found the barf bags and the cotton eye covers that the plane distributed to its passengers more entertaining than the manifold materials that Carol had carefully selected from the Store of Knowledge in the mall.

May was initially nervous at the prospect of hosting Adam without his parents. She was afraid that a child used to such an energetic support system might feel bored in the face of her limited stamina and capacity for creative play. Alan had never required entertainment, having spent most of his spare time in his room with the television on.

“You can get Norman to help you entertain him,” Carol had suggested. She had already ascertained that Norman’s son and his family would not be coming down for spring break. Stephanie was seven months pregnant, and at three, little Benjamin was too young to fly by himself. The idea that Norman Grafstein would be without family during the week had influenced Carol’s decision not to have herself and little Alison accompany Adam. Here was an opportunity for May to draw on Norman’s assistance and recruit him for the grandfatherly role.

As it happened, Adam did not make undue demands on his grandmother. In fact, he made no demands at all. Being released from the clutches of Carol’s enormous organizing power, he seemed to have fallen into a relieved lethargy; it was as though he were a spring that had been pulled taut and was now, finally, allowed to relax. Whenever May asked him whether he might like to go out to hit golf balls, or visit the science center, where the interactive computers were said to be amazing, or even take
a swim in the club pool, where other boys his age were splashing each other furiously, he seemed uninterested. He was more inclined to remain on the couch watching cartoons and eating a few more of her potato latkes.

On the second day of his visit, Adam became acquainted with Amy and her friends, who had arrived to film May doing her household chores. The group had by now settled on May and Norman as the focal point of the documentary and made regular visits to May’s apartment to get footage of her unloading the dishwasher and carpet-sweeping the living room. Adam immediately took to the idea of the filming, which he judged to be “really cool,” and eventually Amy assigned him the role of literal “best boy” He therefore spent the majority of the time he was not lying on May’s couch following the group around the club, holding the boom mike, making sure the wires weren’t tangled, and, when Amy yelled “Cut,” running over to give George a high five. For a child who had been diagnosed with a mild case of attention deficit disorder, his ability to remain absolutely quiet and still during a shooting sequence of half an hour or more was nothing short of amazing. He had already told Carol in a call home that he wanted to trade in his Nintendo and PlayStation for a DV videocamera and editing system, to which she had replied that she would research the matter and get back to him.

F
LO FOUND HERSELF ON HER OWN DURING THE SPRING VACATION
week. May was either tending to Adam or off with Norman, and Lila was busy going through Hy’s effects with his son and daughter, both of whom she had taken to more than she had ever taken to Hy.

“And what’s wrong with that?” Lila asked Flo in the rhetorical mode she used when she was trying to convince herself of something. “Why can’t I find myself a pair of kids I like, even if they are in their forties? I’m a late bloomer, and I don’t do things in order. Now that I’ve had the wedding and the kids, maybe the love of my life is next.” Flo suggested that Lila should stop while she was ahead.

“I don’t intend another wedding, if that’s what you’re driving at,” Lila reassured her. “But I’m not above living in sin.”

“Soon you’ll be burning your bra and running off to a commune,” said Flo.

“Always the cynic,” Lila said, shrugging. “One day, I’d like to see you go off the deep end over someone. Okay—so Mel Shirmer wasn’t the right one. I’m still waiting. It would do you good to make a fool of yourself.”

“I’m afraid that’s not in the cards,” said Flo. “I get too much pleasure watching other people behave like fools to want to assume the role myself. Just let me sit back and watch.”

Flo did watch as a bevy of grandchildren of various shapes and sizes wrapped their besotted grandparents around their fingers. She noted that her neighbors seemed perfectly willing to
buy the candy, video games, and sundry junk that they loudly decried the rest of the year.

“You’ve got to give them what they want,” said Pixie Solomon as her ten-year-old grandson proudly displayed the DVD of
The Matrix
she had just purchased for him. “It’s for their parents to lay down the law; our job is to make them happy.” And with such philosophical skill, Flo realized, her peers managed to reconcile any contradiction that happened to emerge between theory and practice.

She had even run into Roz Fliegler and Mel Shirmer near the pool one day—Roz’s granddaughters, ages six and seven, in tow. It was Flo’s first direct encounter with Mel since the marriage. Though she had seen him and Roz from a distance in the clubhouse, they had not been close enough to exchange words. Now, having come out to the main pool to meet Lila at the porch restaurant, she found herself face-to-face with the happy couple.

Mel greeted her with only a trace of stiffness and quickly assumed a genial tone when he saw that she was prepared to be friendly. Roz, for her part, took an attitude of exaggerated noblesse oblige, having heard that Flo had preceded her in her husband’s affections. It was a pose hard to maintain as the two little girls pulled on her Chanel jumpsuit and whined for ice cream.

“You’ve met my husband,” drawled Roz, extending her left hand to stroke Mel’s arm and thereby display a humongous diamond ring (purchased by Mel through access to Roz’s bank account). She used her other hand to pull little Bathsheba, the six-year-old, away from a piece of gum that she was trying to pry off the pavement.

“I’ve been hoping to run into you,” said Mel ingratiatingly. “As you can see, I have now remedied my lack of grandchildren. These little angels are keeping me very busy.” Lillith, the seven-year-old, had begun to pull on Mel’s Rolex, and he struggled to free it from her viselike grip.

“You seem to have found your element,” noted Flo, sweetly. “Perhaps not as elevated as you anticipated, but certainly adorable.”

“Certainly adorable,” agreed Mel. He had finally wrestled his watch free, though the child had now begun to play with the tassels on his Italian loafers.

“Mel is wonderful with the children,” said Roz. “They adorrrre him, as you can see.”

Flo agreed that she could see this, but little else was said since the younger child suddenly began to scream loudly that the older one had kicked her, and Roz hurried them off to the snack bar while Mel went to find a Band-Aid. Overall, Flo thought that Mel had gotten more than he bargained for with Roz—which is to say, Roz was getting her money’s worth out of the arrangement. The meeting, in any case, had been painless. Future encounters would no doubt be increasingly comfortable—and amusing. In point of fact, she looked forward to them.