The Beach Club (3 page)

“I’m not marrying Cecily, Therese.”

“Well, you’re not marrying Maribel.” Therese and Mack had this same conversation every year, and she knew it irked Mack, but Therese couldn’t help herself. To her, only one course of events made any sense—Mack marrying Cecily and the two of them taking over where Bill and Therese left off. She also knew that people rarely did what made sense.

“I haven’t decided about marriage at all yet,” Mack said. “But I can tell you, if and when I do get married, it won’t be to Cecily. And if you don’t believe me, ask her. She’d rather eat glass, direct quote.”

“I won’t give up,” Therese said. She caught her reflection in a tarnished mirror, and then she pulled out her artist’s tools from the utility closet—vacuum, bucket, cleanser, and her feather duster—and started to work.

Maribel Cox knew she was the subject of gossip—among her mother’s friends at the Christian Calendar Factory, among her colleagues at the library, among Mack’s co-workers and Bill and Therese down at the Beach Club. She knew they were all whispering, “When are Mack and Maribel going to do the
right thing
? When are they going to get
married
?”

The truth of the matter was this: Maribel wanted to get married with a raging, fiery passion, but the only person who knew it was Maribel’s mother, Tina. Every Wednesday night, Maribel called Tina and every Wednesday night, Tina said, “Well?” Meaning: well, did Mack finally say those five little words, “
Maribel, will you marry me?
” Every Wednesday night, Maribel said, “Well, nothing.” And her mother said, “Keep the faith.”

Maribel and Mack had been dating for six years, living together for three. Maribel had found a man Afraid to Commit.

“Like mother, like daughter,” Tina said. Maribel pictured her mother: twenty pounds overweight, permed hair, smoking a cigarette as she talked on the phone. Tina herself had never been married. She met Maribel’s father at an outdoor concert, and Maribel was conceived in the woods nearby, up against a tree. Her mother never saw the man again; she’d only known him for one day.

“If he’s anything like you,” Tina was fond of saying, “he must be a great guy.”

Maribel loved her mother dearly, although this love was tinged with shame and pity. Tina worked as a supervisor at the Christian calendar factory in Unadilla, New York. Her mother didn’t belong to a church, and yet spending all day around Christian calendars, she picked up certain phrases: “Keep the faith,” and “Godspeed,” and “We are all His little lambs.” It had always been just Tina and Maribel; there was never anyone to help them out, no man in Maribel’s life growing up. Mack lost his parents in a car accident and Maribel tried to believe this was the same thing as her not having a father, but in fact, it was vastly different. When Maribel thought of her father, there was no one to picture. She was left with an empty spot inside, a part of her missing. A hole.

When Maribel was thirteen, she begged Tina to describe her father. “Remember, Mama, remember everything you can.” Tina sucked on her cigarette and closed her eyes:
His
name was Stephen, he had sweet, chocolaty breath and a pencil-line scar above his eyebrow. I remember the scratch of bark against my back. It was getting dark, the sky turning pink and lavender through the trees. I didn’t know your father real well. But when I was with him, I had a feeling something good would come of it
.

Maribel wanted to get married for two people—herself and her mother. She wanted Mack to take care of them, the way Stephen might have. Mack made just as many comments about the future as Maribel did, if not more. There was no doubt in Maribel’s mind that Mack wanted to spend the rest of his life with her. He loved her.

So what, then, was the problem?

After years of taking self-help books off the shelves at the library, Maribel drew a conclusion: Mack was afraid to grow up. The phone call he received from David Pringle last week proved it. Mack owned a huge farm in Iowa, but he didn’t want to go back and run it and he didn’t want to sell it. Both options involved too much commitment, too much responsibility. It was as though he wanted the farm to exist on its own, magically, a farm from a dream, while he stayed on Nantucket and ran the stupid hotel. At any minute, Bill Elliott could drop dead and the hotel would go to Cecily, and Mack would be out of luck. But Mack loved his job at the hotel—six months on, six months off, never telling Bill if he were coming back or not—because it gave him freedom. Because he didn’t have to take it—or anything else—too seriously.

In Maribel’s opinion, Mack needed to ask Bill Elliott to profit-share. Thirty percent of the hotel’s profit should go to Mack each year. Many of the guests who took Mack and Maribel out to dinner admitted (after a few cocktails) that should Mack ever leave his job, they would stop coming. The hotel was lovely, they said (but expensive, and the rates went up every year); it was the
service
that kept them coming back. It was walking into the lobby and having Mack there with his cheerful, booming voice, “
Hel-lo
, Mr. Page! Welcome back. How was your winter?” It was Mack who picked up the Page children and swung them around while he complimented Mrs. Page on her new haircut. And that was what people paid for. They wanted to be coddled; they wanted to be courted.

Maribel was convinced profit sharing was the answer. If Mack profit-shared, he would take his job seriously. He would take his life seriously. He could afford to hire someone really qualified to run the farm. His house would be in order. He would propose. And the empty spot inside of Maribel would shrivel, shrink, disappear.

On May first, Maribel and Mack had just moved into their “summer place”—a basement apartment in the middle of the island. It was the only housing they could afford in the summer, when island rents doubled and tripled. In winter, things were different; in the winter, they lived on Sunset Hill, next to Nantucket’s Oldest House. The house on Sunset Hill was just a cottage, but Maribel and Mack called it the Palace. They loved the Palace—its low doorways and slanted ceilings and floors. In the quiet, cold, gray mornings of January, they lit a fire in the kitchen and Maribel made Mack cinnamon toast and oatmeal before he went out to bang nails. In the evenings, they walked into town through the deserted streets, past houses closed for the winter, sometimes not seeing another soul. They loved the Palace and it was sad every year to pack up their belongings and move to mid-island.

Maribel waited to broach the topic of profit sharing until Mack had worked at the Beach Club for three days. By then he’d gotten a taste of all the work the hotel needed and he’d had a chance to reflect on the crazy summer ahead of him. Then, on the fourth morning, Maribel made Mack scrambled eggs with fresh herbs. They sat at the dining table surrounded by stacks of unpacked boxes and duffel bags. Moving in went slowly.

“I’ve been thinking about money,” she said. “And the housing.”

“I know you hate this place,” Mack said. “But every year you get used to it.”

“I had an idea, Mack.” She curled her bare toes into the fibers of the shag carpet. “I think you should ask Bill to profit-share.”

There was a long silence, Mack eating. “You’ve been talking to your mother?” Mack said. “You’ve been reading one of those Men Live on Mars books?”

“You need to secure yourself a future at the club. It’s been twelve years. It’s time to ask Bill to profit-share.” She spread her painted-pink fingernails out on the dining table and counted off twelve years, then she counted off six years of Mack and her together.

“I can’t,” he said.

“Why not?”

“Because I can be replaced. If I ask to profit-share, Bill can say no, and fire me. He can hire someone else.”

Maribel clasped her hands and leaned forward. She wasn’t eating. Too nervous. “He would never fire you. He loves you. And you say he’s not doing well. Don’t you think he wants to know that you’ll be there to take care of the hotel after he’s gone?”

“The hotel will be Cecily’s,” Mack said, his mouth full.

“She’s a child.”

“She’s eighteen. She’ll figure it out.”

“What about you, then?” Maribel said. “Us? What do we do when Bill dies? I know it’s not something you want to think about….”

“You’re right, it’s not. He’s not on death’s door, Maribel. He’s just a little frail.”

“He’s never been well. Now he’s just one year closer.”

Mack finished his eggs and buttered a piece of toast. Maribel brought him a jar of Concord grape jam. Then he said, “I don’t want to ask.”

“Why not?” Maribel said. She dipped a finger into the jam and tasted it.

“Because it’s his business to pass on to Cecily. My father left me a business. I understand how it works. I’m not going to put Bill in the awkward position of having to relinquish part of his profits to keep me happy.”

“You could use the money to hire someone to run the farm,” Maribel said. Mack slathered the jam over his toast. Maribel watched his every move; he was a mystery to her. “And it’s not as though you’re asking him to hand over the business. You’d simply be asking for part of the profits. Don’t you think you influence those profits?”

“Of course,” Mack said. “But I’m not going to ask him. I’ve worked for Bill for a long time. It would embarrass us both.”

“Okay, then,” Maribel said. “If you don’t want to ask Bill, let’s move to Iowa. Let’s run the farm ourselves.”

“You don’t want to move to Iowa,” Mack said.

“Yes, I do,” Maribel said. This wasn’t a lie, exactly. If it would take moving to Iowa to get Mack to marry her, she would do it. She thought of her mother’s life—twenty-eight Christian calendar years of being alone. That would not be Maribel’s life.

“But I love Nantucket,” Mack said. “I’m happy here.”

“So you’re going to sell the farm then?” Maribel said. “You’ve decided?”

“No,” Mack said. Maribel felt a twinge of guilt, because he did look completely at a loss. He wiped his plate with the crust of his toast. “Why do I have to decide now?”

“Because you’re thirty years old, Mack. Because you want more money, more respect. Don’t you want things to change?”

“I guess,” he said.

Maribel reached across the table and touched his hand. He trusted her; he knew that her thinking was for both of them. “Ask Bill to profit-share. If he says no we can leave for Iowa.”

Mack took his empty plate to the sink. He turned the faucet on, then off, then on, and he poured a glass of water and drank it slowly and deliberately, in a way that made Maribel want to scream. He was always making her wait!

“Let me think about it,” he said.

“Don’t you think it’s time we took the next step? Don’t you think it’s time you got what you deserved?”

“Yes?” Mack said.

“Okay, then,” Maribel said.

Maribel watched from the living room window as Mack walked out to the Jeep and drove away.
I want you to feel good about yourself
, she thought.
I want you to ask me to marry you!

The first thing Jem Crandall thought when he arrived at the Beach Club to interview for the bellman’s position was that it was like a scene from a movie—the ocean, the sand, and then the leading man—strong handshake, sailing-instructor suntan, who called himself Mack, and said Why don’t we interview on the pavilion? The pavilion! Nantucket was the fanciest place Jem had ever been, and he’d certainly never been interviewed on a pavilion before.

The pavilion turned out to be a covered deck with blue Adirondack chairs that faced the ocean.

“This is like a little porch,” Jem said, taking one of the chairs.

“What do you think?” Mack said. He half sat, half leaned on the railing with his back to the water, so he could look at Jem. Jem stared at Mack’s ankle, swinging back and forth like a pendulum. He was wearing deck shoes without any socks.

“It’s fucking gorgeous,” Jem said. He shut his eyes. What had he just said?
Fucking?
Swearing, in a job interview! “Excuse my French,” he said. “I just meant…”

“I know what you meant,” Mack said. He scribbled something down on his clipboard, probably,
Low-class, not right at all for the job
. Jem sat up straighter in the chair, but it was hard to achieve really perfect posture because of the way the back of the chair was slung.

“Sorry,” Jem said.

Mack checked his Ironman sportswatch. He was dressed like a J. Crew model—navy cotton sweater, khakis, a Helly Hansen Gore-Tex vest lined with fleece. Jem tried to keep from fixating on Mack’s swinging ankle.

“So you want to be a bellman,” Mack said. “I have two questions. How long can you stay and do you have a place to live?”

Jem arranged his thoughts. In career counseling at William and Mary, he learned that the key to a good job interview was to tell the truth, and not what he thought the interviewer wanted to hear. “I can stay until closing,” Jem said. “I graduated from college, like, last week.”

“Where’d you go to college?” Mack asked.

“The College of William and Mary.”

“Okay, so you graduated. And you don’t have another job to start in the fall?”

“Not lined up, no.”

“What are you planning to do?”

Jem tried to sit up. “I’m going to California. I want to be an agent.” An agent: that was the first time he’d said the words out loud. It sounded okay.
I want to be an agent
. Jem was afraid to tell his parents about his plans because they would reject the words “Los Angeles” right away. They would argue it was too far from home. Jem’s parents lived in Falls Church, Virginia; they were small-town people. They had to pull out the atlas to locate Nantucket.

“An agent?” Mack said.

“Yeah,” Jem said. His feet itched and he wondered if he’d gotten sand in his socks. He stared at Mack’s bare ankle, then tore his eyes away. “An agent for actors.”

“Do you act?”

“I’m not very good. I modeled a little in college, though. I was Mr. November in the college calendar.” Mr. November: It was a good, handsome picture—Jem in jeans, sitting on a split-rail fence in historic Williamsburg. But now Mr. November sounded ridiculous. Things that seemed okay in college didn’t always translate to the real world. Jem should have kept his mouth shut. From now on, he was just going to answer the questions.