The Beach Club (40 page)

He never thought of Lacey dying—she seemed superhuman, the one member of his parents’ generation who was going to live forever. But now she was dead. Not only was Bill deeply saddened by the loss but he knew what this meant: he was next.

“So she left her cottage to Mack,” Bill said. He recalled his conversation with Mack during the storm. “He promised he’d stay.” He took his wife in his arms and spoke into her sweet hair. “I just want someone to stay.”

Mack moved his things out of the basement apartment while Maribel was at work. He threw his clothes into garbage bags and sorted through the CDs. He packed his pay stubs and pictures of his parents. The TV was his, but he let Maribel keep it; the kitchen stuff was all hers, except for a bottle opener shaped like a whale that had belonged to Maximilian. Mack took that. They’d bought the gas grill together, but he let it be. He packed all his belongings into the back of the Jeep, and then he sat in the driveway. He considered leaving a note. A note saying what?

Back at the club, there was no shortage of work. Mack shoveled sand—it was like eating a giant plate of spaghetti—he couldn’t seem to make any headway. It kept his body busy and hurting; he tried to concentrate on the physical pain and not his other pain. Lacey gone. Maribel gone.

After work, Mack carried his bags into Lacey’s cottage. He dug out the whale bottle opener and popped the top off a Michelob. He settled down in Lacey’s chair. He had two phone calls to make.

The first was to How-Baby.

A sugar-voiced, southern secretary answered the phone. “Is this
the
Mack Petersen, as in, our new vice president of travel and hospitality?”

“Yeah,” Mack said weakly. “Can I speak to Howard, please?”

How-Baby came on the line, voice booming as though he were sitting three feet away. “I was worried about you!” he said. “We saw you take a real beating from Freida. Watched it on national news. How’s the hotel?”

“She’ll be okay,” Mack said. “But there’s a lot of work to be done.”

“So it doesn’t look like you’ll be getting out of there easily,” How-Baby said.

“I’m not getting out of here at all,” Mack said. “That’s why I called.”

How-Baby was quiet.

“I’m calling to turn down your offer, Howard,” Mack said. “I have to stay here. It’s not personal and it has nothing to do with money. Believe me, everything you offered is top-notch. It’s just what my gut is telling me.”

Still How-Baby was quiet.

“Howard, are you there?”

How-Baby coughed; Mack tried to imagine him upset, agitated, thrown off guard. Caught unaware. It didn’t seem possible.

“I’m here,” How-Baby said. “You know, just last night Tonya asked what we were going to do next summer when we came to Nantucket and you weren’t there. She said she couldn’t imagine it.”

“She won’t have to imagine it,” Mack said.
New job gone
.

“No,” How-Baby said. “I guess she won’t.”

The second phone call was to David Pringle. Mack took a long swallow of his beer before dialing.

“David, it’s Mack. Mack Petersen.”

David chuckled. “It’s only September, Mack. I was figuring you’d put off this phone call for at least another month.”

“Nope!”

“What’s happening?” David asked. “You had all summer to think about it. Come to any conclusions?”

“Has Wendell changed his mind?” Mack asked.

David whistled. Mack pictured him leaning back in his leather chair, shirt sleeves rolled up. “No, he hasn’t changed his mind. He’s rented a hall for his retirement party.”

“Oh.”

“You’re going to sell, then?”

“No one else has shown any promise?” Mack asked. “This summer, no one…”

“Mack, I told you how things were. Nobody will put forth the effort on a farm that’s not their own. Wendell did it out of love for your father, simple as that. There’s no one else.”

“Okay,” Mack said. “Sell.”
Farm gone
.

“I’ll put it up first thing in the morning,” David said. “We’re not going to get rich from this, you know.”

“I know.”

“What should I do about the house?”

“Don’t do anything,” Mack said. “I’m coming back. I’ll clean it out myself.”

“You’re coming back?”

“After the hotel closes, I’ll drive out. Take a week or two.”

“Call me when you get here,” David said. “You can sign some papers. And, well… I’d like to see you, Mack. I’ll bet you’re all grown up.”

“I am,” he said.

The next day, Mack stood on the front steps of St. Mary’s Church on Federal Street in gray pinstriped pants that belonged to a suit he never wore, greeting the people who came to Lacey’s memorial service. This was no different from his job at the hotel, really—greeting people and making them feel welcome. Concierge of the funeral. Manager of grief. Vance and Love and Bill and Therese milled around the aisles of the church, seating people, but Mack didn’t want to be inside any longer than he had to. He had “hired” Clarissa Ford to work at the front desk of the hotel and answer the phone. (She showed up wearing a bright blue suit, smelling like lilies of the valley. “There’s no smoking in the lobby,” he said. “It’s okay,” she said. “I’m quitting.”)

Tiny arrived at the church, and with a man no less, a young man with a ponytail and a mustache.

“Mack,” Tiny said, “this is Stephen Rook.” She looked at Stephen. “This is Mack.”

Mack shook Stephen Rook’s hand. He wondered if this were Tiny’s boyfriend.

Tiny said, “Stephen is my husband.”

“Your husband?” Mack said. “I didn’t know you were married, Tiny.” He smiled apologetically at Stephen Rook. “She never tells us anything about her personal life.”

Stephen Rook raised his hand as if to say,
Hey, that’s cool
, and Tiny said, “Stephen is deaf, Mack.”

“Whoops. I’m sorry. Tell him I’m sorry.”

“He reads lips,” she said.

“Thanks for coming,” Mack said.

Stephen raised his hand again, and escorted Tiny into the church.

Many of the people at the service were elderly friends of Lacey from back in the day. They shook Mack’s hand, explaining how they knew Lacey from Sankaty, or the Yacht Club, or how they used to shop in Lacey’s hat store. Lacey’s doctor and dentist came from Boston, and so did the Iranian doorman from her Boston apartment building, a slight, dark-skinned man named Rom. Rom whipped out a Polaroid of Lacey standing with his children in front of the Charles River. “She always said she loved Nantucket best,” Ron said. “Now I’m here, I see why.”

The current class president from Radcliffe arrived with a female friend—Meaghan and Meredith—Mack couldn’t tell them apart once they introduced themselves. They called Lacey “Ms. Gardner” and said they were planning a fund-raising drive to start the Lacey Gardner Scholarship Fund for young women business owners. Mack was amazed. Here he was certain he knew Lacey better than anyone else, and yet he hadn’t met half these people.

Then, just as Mack was about to head inside, Jem and Maribel walked up. Maribel wore a black linen dress, her blond hair pulled back in a clip, no makeup. She looked beautiful. Jem had on a navy blue double-breasted blazer, like something a sea captain would wear.

“Mack,” Maribel said. She smiled sadly and hugged him, and Mack shut his eyes and squeezed her, thinking how if things were different, she might be coming to this church to marry him.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered in her ear. “I’m sorry.”

When they separated, her eyes were red; the crying had begun. “Me too,” she said.

Mack shook Jem’s hand. Mack wanted to thank him, and he wanted to toss him off the church steps. But before he could decide between the two, the church bells rang, and the three of them stepped into the sanctuary.

Mack hated organ music, he hated the cloying smell of funeral flowers. He hated coffins and pallbearers, although if Lacey had asked him, he would have carried her coffin on his back. Fortunately, though, Lacey had requested cremation, and Therese kept the urn of Lacey’s ashes tucked under her arm next to her pocketbook. After the service, they were going to scatter the ashes at Altar Rock.

Mack sat in the front row of the church next to Bill and Therese. Behind him, he could hear people crying. The priest, Father Eckerly, spoke of Lacey’s life: her years at Radcliffe, her tenure working for the State Health Department, her marriage to Maximilian, her shop on Main Street. Her model life as a Catholic, and as a working woman who was also a devoted wife.

“Lacey provided us with many lessons about how to live,” Father Eckerly said.

Mack shifted in his seat. He hated funerals because they all reminded him of the funeral service for his mother and father. His parents were rolled down the aisle of Swisher Presbyterian in matching coffins. Wendell gave the eulogy. He spoke of what a tragedy it was, how unfair, Mack, only eighteen, robbed of his parents. The church was packed with people—family, friends, neighbors, kids from school, farmers from as far away as Davenport and Katonah. They were there to pay their respects, but somehow the tragedy overshadowed his parents’ simple, good-hearted natures. Somehow, his parents got lost in all the sadness.

After the ceremony, they buried Mack’s parents in the cemetery behind the church. Mack watched stone-faced as they lowered his parents into the ground. When the minister threw a handful of dirt onto the coffins, Mack cut through the crowd and walked back to his house, which was over a mile away. He sat alone in his bedroom until his uncle came and fetched him. “They want to see you at the luncheon,” his uncle said. “You’re all that’s left of this family and people want to see you.” Mack went to his aunt’s house, where everyone said it was the saddest thing they’d ever known to happen, it was the saddest funeral they’d ever attended.

The problem with funerals, Mack decided, was that they never did a person justice. Father Eckerly could drone all day about Lacey’s balancing act of career and home—a woman before her time—but that didn’t get at the real Lacey. The real Lacey drank Dewar’s from the stroke of five o’clock until bedtime, she listened for hours without judging, she defended love and the strength of the human spirit.

Mack closed his eyes. He didn’t know what he would do without her.

By the time they made it to Altar Rock, Mack felt better. He drove Love and Vance in his Jeep, Bill and Therese and Tiny and Stephen followed in the Cherokee, and Rom and the two Radcliffe women wanted to come along as well—so Mack suggested they take Lacey’s Buick. The three cars twisted through the moors, which were just starting to turn red. Autumn was less than a week away. Mack ascended the steep hill to Altar Rock—the highest point on the island. He parked, picked the urn of Lacey’s ashes off the front seat (Therese gave the urn to him after the ceremony, saying, “I think Lacey would want to ride with you”), and climbed out of the car.

When Mack first read Lacey’s will, he wondered why she wanted her ashes scattered at Altar Rock—why not scatter them into the water at the Beach Club? But as soon as he stepped out of the car, he understood why. The panorama was spectacular—from here he could see Sankaty Lighthouse, Nantucket Harbor, and in the distance, Great Point Light. If they scattered Lacey’s ashes at the Beach Club, the water might carry her away. But when they scattered her ashes here, she would become one with Nantucket.

Mack waited until the group gathered into a semicircle, then he opened the urn. He expected ashes, like from a cigarette—he thought fleetingly of Clarissa Ford—but these ashes were chunky and hard, like pieces of coral. He took a handful and passed the urn to his left, to Bill. Bill took a handful and passed the urn to Therese, and so on, until the urn reached Rom and Rom had to turn the urn upside down so that the last few pieces of Lacey’s remains came loose in his palm.

Mack turned to Bill. “Do you want to recite a poem?” Mack whispered. “Or should we, I don’t know… should we all say something?”

Therese leaned over. “Why don’t we each pick a spot and say something privately before we scatter?”

Mack raised his voice. “Okay, uh…everyone can pick a spot and say something privately and then, I don’t know…bombs away, I guess.”

Love and Vance faced Sankaty Light, Bill and Therese faced south toward the airport, the Radcliffe women turned to the harbor. Tiny and Stephen Rook tossed their ashes out over the moors. Rom threw his into the air like a baseball.

Mack held his ashes. His hands were sweating and the ashes left a white, chalky residue. He stood next to the stone marker for Altar Rock, wondering what he could possibly say to Lacey, or to God. Lacey had no grandchildren, Bill and Therese had no son, Cecily had no brother, Maribel had no father, Andrea had no husband—and Mack had set himself down among these people like a piece in a jigsaw puzzle. He filled their gaps and they filled his. But now some of the pieces had disappeared, leaving Mack exposed. Lacey was gone. Whatever Mack held in his hand—the ashes of her bone, her heart, her brain—he wanted to keep, in a jar, or a sugar bowl somewhere. He wanted to keep this last little part of her with him.

Gradually he became aware that everyone else was finishing up, and while no one stared at him, he got the distinct feeling they were waiting. He couldn’t shove Lacey’s ashes in his pants pocket now.

He squeezed his eyes shut.
I love you
,
too
,
Gardner
, he said.
Thanks for being my friend
.

He let Lacey go.

The group stood around Altar Rock a few moments longer in silence. Then Stephen Rook said something in sign language.

“It is a beautiful day,” Tiny repeated.

Everyone nodded in agreement, and drifted toward their cars. They were going back to Lacey’s cottage for some lunch. After everyone went home, Mack wanted to sit in Lacey’s armchair, in Lacey’s cottage—now his armchair in his cottage—and drink a stiff Dewar’s.

He climbed into the Jeep and Love and Vance piled into the back, even though Lacey’s ashes were no longer up front. The empty urn rolled around on the floor.