The Vacationers: A Novel (22 page)

“Your mother raised you like a baby manatee—she let you stay close for a year, tops, and then pushed you out into the ocean.”

“Is that what manatees do?”

“I don’t know, I think so. I read that on a tea bag, too.”

Franny opened her mouth and let it fill with water, which she then spat out, in Charles’s direction. The water felt like heaven. They would be cold when they got out, she knew, but it didn’t matter. She wasn’t ever going to leave the pool.

“We’re trying, you know.” Charles hoisted himself halfway out of the pool, his once muscular arms now a bit softer against his upper body.

“Trying what? Don’t talk to me about weird sex stuff, please. I haven’t gotten laid in a hundred years and it will make me hate you.” Franny rubbed the water out of her eyes. She was facing away from Charles and swiveled her body so that he was directly in front of her. The bottom of the pool was slightly pebbled, like a popcorn ceiling, and she drew her knees to her chest.

“No,” Charles said. He let himself fall back into the water with a splash. “We’re trying to get a baby.”

Franny wasn’t sure she’d heard him right. “
Get
a baby?”

Charles swam over and put his hands on Franny’s shoulders. She let her legs straighten out and put her hands on his hips, so they were both standing in the shallow end, in fifth-grade-dance pose.

“Get a baby. I mean, adopt a baby. We’re trying to adopt.
It’s close. I mean, it could be. Someone picked us, and we said yes, and now we’re waiting.” Charles didn’t expect to be nervous telling her this, but then again, he supposed there was a reason he hadn’t brought it up until now. The process had been going on for a year! More than a year! And Charles had wavered from the beginning, he’d wavered until the day before, when he saw once again how patient Lawrence was, how loving, how forgiving. How could anyone want more than that in a parent, or a spouse?

Franny didn’t flinch. “My love,” she said, and closed the gap between them, pressing her wet body against his. She wanted to tell him that he would be a wonderful father, and that having her babies—that’s what they were to her still, her babies, no matter how old they got—was the best thing she’d ever done, no matter the stress and complications. She pulled back and saw that Charles’s eyes were wet, either with pool water or tears, she wasn’t sure, but it didn’t matter, because hers were, too. “Yes,” she said. “That is a wonderful, wonderful idea.”

JOAN ARRIVED PROMPTLY AT ELEVEN AS USUAL, BUT
instead of coming inside, he stepped back and held the door open for Sylvia to come out. She blinked in the bright sunlight and put on her sunglasses, a pair of Franny’s from the 1980s, giant ones that took up half her face and made her look like either a grandmother or a movie star, she wasn’t sure which. She’d had trouble deciding what to wear for their day out and about, and had finally chosen a short cotton dress with daisies on it. Joan then opened the car door for her and jogged around to the driver’s side. The car was so much bigger than the two rental cars that it felt like a Humvee, but it was probably just a regular-sized sedan. It smelled like Joan’s cologne, and she inhaled deeply, wanting to fill her nostrils. Sylvia tucked her hands under her thighs on the leather seat. It was already hot outside, and unless Joan immediately put on the air-conditioning, she
was going to sweat and stick to the seat and there would be gross red marks when they got up, like she’d been attacked by a giant octopus who happened to live in his car. Sylvia smiled when Joan sat down, turned the key, and a great big blast of cold air shot out of the vents.

“So, where are we going?” Sylvia asked.

“It’s a surprise,” Joan said. “But don’t worry, I won’t make you wear a blindfold. You can swim, yes? You have a bathing suit?”

“Yes,” Sylvia said.

“Then we go,” Joan said, and they were off.

Once she got over the embarrassment of her tennis lesson, Franny decided that she was a professional journalist, not a lovesick teenager, and called Antoni at the number he’d given her, an extension at the tennis center. She booked the late afternoon—not for tennis, for talking. She could always pitch it to someone later, if she felt like it:
Travel + Leisure
,
Sports Illustrated
,
Departures
. Sylvia was out with Joan, the lucky duck, and the boys seemed content to sit by the pool and read, Jim with a hat pulled low over his wounded eye and Bobby with a frown so deep she thought it might leave a scar. Charles and Lawrence were on Bobby duty—making sure he didn’t hurt himself or, worse yet, call a taxi and book the first flight back to Florida. Franny wanted him there—miserable or not. It
was the same philosophy she’d had about the children drinking alcohol as teenagers: better in her house, where she could keep an eye on it, than in the streets, where they might get arrested. She’d presented her afternoon out as work, but she wasn’t sure. Franny patted Jim on the arm and then drove herself back to the tennis center, stalling only once.

Antoni was waiting for her in the office, his arms crossed. Instead of his handsome gym teacher outfit, he was wearing a pair of dark blue jeans and a white button-down shirt that made his skin look as if the sun had kissed each pore individually. His sunglasses hung around his neck on the cord, but when she came in, he pulled them off over his head. Antoni walked toward her, his hand outstretched. When Franny met him in the middle of the room, she was surprised to find herself being pulled even closer, and Antoni quickly kissed her on both cheeks.

“Oh,” Franny said. “Isn’t that a lovely way to start the day.”

The phone rang, and the girl behind the desk picked it up and started speaking quickly in Spanish. Antoni ushered Franny back in the direction of the parking lot. When they were outside, Franny realized that they hadn’t made an actual plan—clearly he didn’t expect her to play, but they hadn’t talked about what they’d do while they talked. That was her favorite part of interviews: the starlet who scarfs down a plate of french fries in her favorite diner; the chef who walks around his small town with his dogs nipping at the heels of
his wellies, a sandwich in his pocket. Franny liked to see what people ate.

“Have you had lunch?”

Antoni looked at his watch. “No, it’s early. Are you hungry? I’ll take you to the best tapas on Mallorca. Tourists aren’t allowed, but for me, they’ll make an exception. First we have a tour of the center, then we eat.”

“Well, yes,” Franny said, though Antoni was already walking through the lot and toward the chain-link fence at the far end. He strapped his sunglasses back on his head, and pulled a baseball cap out of his back pocket. Franny’s sandals thwacked against the ground, forcing her to walk with her knees jutting forward like a child playing dress-up.

There were thirty courts in all, in two long rows on either side of the administrative office. They ran camps for children, more serious training for competitively ranked juniors, and lessons for adults who were hopelessly past their prime but still interested in getting a better serve. Antoni looked at Franny when he mentioned the serve. Nando Filani was their most famous export, but Antoni was clearly proud of the center’s entire staff. Every time they passed a lesson in progress, or a sweating teenager hitting ball after ball, Antoni would clap twice and then nod or offer a few words of encouragement. Nando’s name was on the door, but it was Antoni’s clubhouse. Franny took notes that she doubted she’d ever use:
Sound of auto tennis-ball machine. Sneakers sliding on dusty
clay courts. Red ankles, white socks. AV/peacock, feathers extended.

She’d been writing a bit over the last few months, what would ultimately wind up condensed into a first chapter, or a prologue, if she kept it at all. That was where the anger lived, the hurt. The rants about Jim and the sanctity of their union. It was crazy, what young people believed was possible, what so many earnest twenty-three-year-olds took for granted about the rest of their lives. Franny’s parents had been married for a hundred years, and she doubted that either of them had ever strayed, but what did she know? What did anyone know about anyone else, including the person they were married to? There were secret parts of every union, locked doors hidden behind dusty heavy drapes. Franny thought she must have them, too, somewhere deep inside, drawers of forgotten indiscretions. She certainly hoped so. It wasn’t any fun to be on the other side, to be the wronged party. Franny liked the idea of doing a little bit of wrong. Maybe that’s what the book would be, a memoir in the future tense.
A Catalogue of My Future Sins
. A middle-aged woman’s post-divorce sexual reawakening. There would be a mirror on the cover.

Antoni was speaking to a student, a young girl, maybe twelve years old. She had the steely gaze of a professional but hit two slightly wobbly backhands in a row. He stood behind her, his back at the fence, and murmured words of correction. Her third shot sliced through the air like a Ginsu knife.

“Sí,”
he said, and clapped twice. Franny clapped twice in response, and he looked over at her and winked.

The roads were faster on the back of a motorcycle, the turns sharper. Jim hadn’t been on the back of a bike since he was in college, and the physical logistics were more challenging. His arms were wrapped around the pediatrician’s thick waist, and his helmet kept knocking against Terry’s. It seemed unlikely they would end up anywhere but at the very bottom of a very steep cliff, but after only about twenty minutes of silent prayer, Jim felt the vibrations of the motor slow beneath him. He opened his eyes and saw the gate for the Nando Filani International Tennis Centre. Once they’d reached a complete stop, Jim tugged off his helmet.

“This is it,” he said. As requested, Terry had stopped outside the entrance, some twenty feet down the road.

Terry tipped the bike over to one side so that Jim could dismount. He swung his left leg over the back of the bike and felt something pop. Riding motorcycles—hell, even just getting off a motorcycle—seemed to be a younger man’s game, but Jim didn’t want to appear too stodgy. Ignoring the pulled feeling in his groin, Jim walked over to the stone wall and peered into the tennis center. He could see the parking lot, which was all he really needed. That way he could see if Franny and her Don
Juan took off. Jim wasn’t sure why he’d felt the need to follow his wife, but he had. It wasn’t sweet or romantic. It was possessive, and a little bit desperate, and he knew it. That didn’t matter. What mattered was that he kept Franny in his sights as long as he could, even if it meant giving Terry a bear hug for the next few hours.

Terry was used to sitting on his bike on the side of the road, taking in the scenery, and didn’t object to waiting. He closed his eyes and turned his ruddy face toward the sun. The bike wasn’t large enough for Jim to sit on without feeling like things had taken a turn for the truly intimate, and anyway, he couldn’t stop pacing. He walked up and down the road beside the entrance. The shoulder wasn’t wide enough for a car, but the bike tucked in nicely, allowing the regular traffic to zoom by. Every now and then a car would slow and pull into the parking lot of the tennis center, and every now and then, a car would pull out. When that happened, Jim would duck behind the bike as quickly as possible, or bend over as if he were inspecting the back tire. Terry would peer into the car, and say “Nope” if Franny wasn’t in it. This happened three times, until Terry said “Yep.” Jim stayed crouched behind the bike, his back facing away from the entrance, until the car turned onto the road, and then he climbed on the back of the bike as quickly as possible, wrapping his arms around Terry with genuine affection.

“Let’s go,” he said, and Terry revved the engine. Jim had never been a car guy, or a speed guy, but he was starting to understand the appeal of life on the blacktop. If he hadn’t
cashed in his chips on Madison Vance, he might have splurged on a midlife crisis on wheels. He could see it so easily—he and Franny zipping up I-95, or smaller, prettier roads, taking in the fall foliage al fresco, at a sixty-mile-per-hour clip. He’d get her a helmet in whatever color she wanted, though of course she would want black, or maybe gold. Franny Gold. That was her name when they met,
Franny Gold, Franny Gold, Franny Gold
. He’d always loved her name, even though Franny joked that it was “shtetl chic.” How could you do better than gold? Terry turned the bike around slowly, and then they were off, Antoni’s BMW directly ahead of them. When he turned, they turned. When he stopped, they stopped. Jim couldn’t see what was directly in front of them—that was just the back of Terry’s helmet—but he watched the arid countryside turn into the streets of downtown Palma. They were on the ring road by the marina, curving underneath the shadow of the cathedral. Jim wished he knew what they were talking about, how much thicker Antoni’s accent had gotten since he left the spotlight. He prayed briefly for some sort of brain injury but then retracted the prayer from the record. Franny had done nothing wrong. If she wanted to sleep with a handsome Mallorcan, he wouldn’t stop her.

Joan had four CDs in his car: Tomeu Penya’s
Sirena
, Enrique Iglesias’s
Euphoria
, Maroon 5’s
Hands All Over
, and One
Direction’s
Take Me Home
, which he claimed belonged to his younger sister. They started with One Direction, at Sylvia’s request, and Joan tried not to nod in time with the beat. It was a perfect day—warm and breezy, and once they were driving, they didn’t even need the air-conditioning anymore. Both Joan and Sylvia rolled down their windows and let the actual air do the trick. Sylvia’s hair whipped around her face like a blond tornado, but she didn’t care. When she’d had her fill of pop confection, she ejected the CD and put in the Tomeu Penya, the one person she hadn’t heard of. In the photo on the CD cover, Penya (she assumed) looked like a creepy hitchhiker, in the same way that Neil Young looks like a creepy hitchhiker. A song began—Joan hit fast forward to the second track, and Sylvia clapped along.