The Vacationers: A Novel (24 page)

“Jim,” she said. “Are you following me?”

He crouched down, holding on to the bottom of the car’s window. “Maybe.”

“Have you been following me all day? On the back of that
guy’s motorcycle?” Franny gestured with her chin toward Terry, who really did cut an imposing figure when you didn’t know him. He was on the phone now, scowling into the middle distance. He saw them looking and waved.

“Maybe.”

“Why, if I may ask such a pedestrian question?”

“Because I love you. And I don’t want to lose you. Not to some tennis pro, not to anyone.” Jim stood up and opened the car door. He reached a hand down for Franny. She paused, put her foot on the clutch, and turned off the car.

“I keep fucking that up,” she said, once she’d climbed out. “I think we’re going to have to buy it when we return it. I’m pretty sure that I’ve ruined it completely.”

Jim put his hands on Franny’s shoulders. She was so much smaller than he was, almost an entire foot. His parents, who’d wanted him to marry some gangly sylph from Greenwich, had never understood. They were worried about the gene pool, about producing generation after generation of tall blonds. But Jim loved her, only Franny, only his wife. “I’m the one who fucked up. Fran, I am so sorry. I will do anything. I can’t be without you, I can’t.”

Franny reached up and traced the outline of Jim’s black eye, which had started to turn green. “It’s healing,” she said, and tilted her head up in the way that meant he could kiss her, and so he did. Behind them, Terry let out a wolf whistle, triumphant.

After walking through a short tunnel cut into the side of the mountain, Sylvia and Joan finally found what they were looking for. The beach was magnificent—a tiny horseshoe of sand, completely empty. Sylvia could see the bottom of the water for fifty feet, bright blue and clear. Joan set down his bag and the cooler, and quickly got them set up. He unrolled a thick blanket, and stacked heavy things in the corner to keep it down, though the beach seemed totally protected from the wind. There were no waves, not even small ripples. Sylvia kicked off her shoes and waded in.

“This is literally the most beautiful place I have ever been in my entire life,” she said. “And I’m pretty sure that will always be true.”

Joan nodded. “It’s the best. No one knows about it. Even local people don’t know. My grandparents live right up there,” he said pointing up the mountain behind them. “They would bring me here when I was little. Very good for toy boats.” He had packed enough food for four: ham and cheese sandwiches, wine, thin butter cookies his mother had made. “Do you want to swim first, or eat?”

Sylvia walked over to the blanket, her wet feet and calves now caked with sand. “Hmm,” she said, turning back to face the water. “Normally I would pick the food, but right now, I don’t know.”

“I have an idea,” Joan said. He pulled the corkscrew out of the bag and opened the bottle of wine. He took a slug and then handed the bottle to Sylvia, who followed suit. When she’d passed it back, he recorked the bottle, set it in the cooler, and peeled off his shirt.

Everyone on earth had a body, of course. Young people had bodies and old people had bodies and all bodies were different. Sylvia would never have described herself as someone who cared about muscles; pecs and abs did nothing for her, theoretically. That stuff was for idiots who didn’t have better things to think about. That was for girls like Carmen, who didn’t know enough to see that their boyfriends treated them like garbage. Working out was a punishment, a gym-class nightmare. Sylvia tried to remember if she could even touch her toes, but couldn’t, because she was hypnotized by the sight in front of her. All of her speculation about Joan made the actual physical reality of him without his shirt on seem like a joke. She didn’t even know which muscle groups to imagine! They were all there, the little ones and the big ones and the ones like arrows pointing toward his crotch. She truly had had no idea that bodies were actually made like that, with no Photoshop in sight. Joan folded his shirt and laid it on the blanket, and then reached for his fly. Sylvia had to turn around.

“I’ll race you,” she said, mostly because she wasn’t sure her legs could take seeing any more, like they might just give out from under her and then she’d die on the spot. She quickly pulled off her dress, revealing the tank suit underneath. She
threw her dress in a ball behind her, not caring where it landed, and then ran into the water. She ran until the water was as high as her hips, and then closed her eyes and dove.

When her head bobbed up a yard later, Sylvia could hear Joan in the water behind her. She turned around, treading water, and watched him swim to her. She felt like a flounder swimming next to a dolphin. When Joan raised his head, his hair still looked perfect, just wet. Sylvia smoothed her own hair back, feeling all the knots from the windy drive.

“You know,” she said. “I think Anne Brontë is really underrated. In terms of the Brontë family. Don’t you think so?” She kicked her legs, and her right foot made contact with some unseen part of Joan’s body. “Sorry.”

Joan dipped his chin into the bay, showing no sign that he’d heard her.

“Elizabeth Gaskell, too,” Sylvia continued. “I mean, George Eliot gets all the love, and Elizabeth gets nothing, don’t you think that’s weird?”

Joan swam closer, so that his shoulders were only a foot away from Sylvia’s.

“I won’t kiss you if you don’t want it,” he said.

Sylvia wished for a camera, for her telephone, for a reality television crew. Her heart was beating so quickly that she thought the water around her would begin to boil. “That would be okay,” she said, and Joan closed the gap between them. She let her eyelids flutter shut, and then she felt his mouth on hers.

Not counting whoever she’d kissed at the party, drunk out of her mind, Sylvia had kissed five people in her life, roughly one a year since she was twelve. Joan was number six, and the difference between him and the previous seven was so hilarious that Sylvia couldn’t contain herself. Gone were the searching tongues, the cumbersome teeth, the bad breath, the too-soft lips that belonged to every single boy in New York City.

“Are you laughing at me?” Joan said, pulling back. He reached for her waist, unafraid of her answer, and Sylvia felt herself lift her legs so that they wrapped around his torso. Her entire body felt warm and buzzing, like a fluorescent lightbulb. She wanted to kiss Joan until she couldn’t breathe, until they needed to call for help because they were both dead by make-out.

“I think we should have sex,” Sylvia said. Joan put his hands underneath her thighs to brace her weight, and then walked straight out of the bay, dropping to his knees when they reached the blanket. He deposited Sylvia gently on her back, and then slid one shoulder of her bathing suit off at a time, never taking his mouth off hers. When her bathing suit was off, Joan moved his mouth down her body. When he started going down on her, an experience she’d never particularly liked before, she realized that there were parts of her body she’d never met, and he was introducing her to them, which felt chivalrous and empowering and like she’d been sitting in a dark room for her entire life, and now she was naked on a beach in Mallorca and maybe there was a God after all. There was a condom in the basket, or in his pocket, and when Joan leaned back to put it on, Sylvia got to
look at his entire naked body, which was so phenomenally beautiful that she forgot to feel embarrassed about her own.

The actual sex didn’t hurt (as Katie Saperstein had years ago told her it would), and she didn’t bleed (again, Katie Saperstein). Sylvia couldn’t say that it actually felt
good
, either, but her whole body was still humming from whatever Joan had just licked and nudged and paid glorious attention to, and so Sylvia happily went along for the ride. He moved around on top of her, going in and out, and she could hear the bay sloshing around and the birds flying overhead. If anyone had walked down the steep slope and through the tunnel to the beach, they would have seen them, full-on, no question, but no one did. Joan finished with a final push, his beautiful face briefly changing into something complicated and taut, and then relaxing back into its natural state of perfection. Sylvia wrapped her arms around him, because it seemed like the thing to do, and Joan rested his head on her clavicle. He stayed inside her for a moment, and then gently pulled out and rolled onto his back. Their legs were wet and sandy, and when Sylvia sat up, the whole beach seemed to spin. The world was different now that she knew this was a possibility.

“So,” she said. “I think it’s definitely time for a sandwich.”

After a long day of doing absolutely nothing (in pool, out of pool, snack assemblage, snack intake, repeat), Charles and
Lawrence had convinced Bobby to play another game of Scrabble with them. Jim and Franny had come home and vanished upstairs, their cheeks red, likely in the middle of another argument. Bobby watched the stairs for a little while like a hopeful puppy, but returned his attention to the game when he realized his mother wasn’t coming back anytime soon. It was Lawrence’s turn, and he laid down
PITHY
, connecting to Bobby’s
PEAR
.

“You guys don’t have to take care of me, you know,” Bobby said. “I’m not going to jump off the roof.”

“No one thinks you’re going to jump off the roof,” Charles said.

“No,” Lawrence said. “Not the roof. Maybe an upper window, but not the roof.”

Bobby smiled.

Charles took a moment and rearranged his tiles. In the upper corner of the board, there was an empty double word score, and Charles filled it with
SORRY
. “Sorry,” he said.

“No, you’re not,” Lawrence said, but then kissed him on the cheek.

The front door opened and Sylvia slunk in, her hair wet in spots and dry in others. “Hey, guys,” she said. “I’m just going to take a shower.” She hurried toward the stairs.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Charles said. “You were out with Joan this whole time?”

Sylvia didn’t blush, but she also didn’t slow down. “Yes. Yes, I was.” And with that, she was up the stairs, in the bathroom,
and in the shower. It didn’t matter how cold the water was, or who could hear her. She sang “Moves Like Jagger” until she didn’t know the words, and then she made them up.

“Huh,” Lawrence said.

“Huh,” said Bobby.

“I think we should focus on the game,” Charles said, and they did.

LAWRENCE WOKE UP EARLY TO CHECK HIS E-MAIL.
Santa Claws
would be the death of him, he was sure. The last e-mail he’d received from Toronto was about the lead actor going on strike because of a heat wave, and the suit, and the fur. It was not Lawrence’s problem, except that he had to keep track of every dollar they spent, and the actor’s strike meant that they were spending lots of money on craft services and union lighting rigs when nothing was actually being shot. He carried his laptop into the kitchen and stood with his back to the sink.

There were twenty new e-mails in his inbox. He scrolled through quickly—mostly J.Crew and the like pressuring him to buy more summer clothes—but stopped when he got to an
e-mail from the adoption agency. He opened it one finger, pulling the computer closer to his chest. When they’d started, Lawrence thought the whole adoption process would be like the scene in John Waters’s
Cry-Baby
, with children performing domestic scenes behind glass, like at a museum. You’d pick the one you wanted, take them home, and love them forever. But it wasn’t that simple. Lawrence skimmed the e-mail, reading as fast as he could. The e-mail was short—
Call me. She’s made a decision. You’re it.

Lawrence nearly dropped the computer. He didn’t realize he was making any noise until Charles rushed out of their bedroom in his pajamas.

“What happened?” he asked, worried. “What’s wrong?”

Lawrence shook his head vigorously. “We have to go home right now. We need a phone. Where’s the phone?” He spun the computer around so that Charles could read the e-mail. Charles took the reading glasses off Lawrence’s face and put them on his own.

“Oh my God,” Charles said. “Alphonse.”

Lawrence started to cry. “We have a baby boy.”

“A baby!” Charles shouted. “A baby!” He put the computer down on the kitchen table and pulled Lawrence into his arms, dipping him, murmuring names into his ear.
Walter. Phillip. Nathaniel.
It didn’t matter where Alphonse came from, what the circumstances had been. What mattered was that they were going to take him home.

With all the commotion of booking new flights and helping Charles and Lawrence pack and get out of the house, everyone was awake and alert much earlier than usual. Franny decided that pancakes were in order, as they were a celebratory breakfast food. Jim stayed close to her, cracking eggs when instructed, and searching through cabinets for vanilla extract. Bobby sat at the table alone while Sylvia made the coffee—it had always been her favorite activity, the French press. She timed the brewing on the oven clock, no longer even missing her phone. She could have thrown it down the mountain and watched it crack into a thousand pieces and she wouldn’t have cared. Whenever she closed her eyes, she could feel Joan’s mouth on her body.

“They’re going to be really good, don’t you think?” Bobby was starting to look more like himself—he’d been sleeping better and eating like a teenager.

“I do,” Franny said. “I really do.” She whisked the batter and then slid her finger around the edge of the bowl and stuck it in her mouth, nodding with self-approval. She knifed a small pat of butter and melted it on the hot griddle. “Are you making coffee with your eyes closed for a reason, Syl?”

Sylvia’s eyes flew open. “I was just testing myself,” she said. “Yep, three minutes.” She carried the French press to the table
and released the plunger. Bobby held out his cup. “Pour it yourself,” she said. “I’m busy.” Sylvia slid down the bench toward the wall and closed her eyes again, a half-smile on her face.

“You are a weirdo,” Bobby said.

“Oh, yes,” Sylvia said, eyes still shut. “I am.”

That was exactly what his sister had always been good at—being herself. Bobby thought about the slick suits in his closet that he wore when he showed expensive apartments, the hi-tech fabrics he wore to Total Body Power, the faded jeans he’d had since college that he wore when Carmen wasn’t around because she called them “dad pants.”

“You know, I don’t even like real estate that much,” Bobby said. “Or working out. I mean, I like working out because I like to feel healthy, but I don’t really care if I have the best body in the world.” He paused. “I wonder how hard it is to adopt a baby.”

“Let’s just deal with one thing at a time, sweetie, okay?” Franny said, swanning over with a plate stacked high with thick pancakes, some dotted with blueberries.

“Okay,” Bobby said, and forked three of the pancakes onto his plate.

“Okay,” Sylvia said, finally opening her eyes. “These are the best pancakes I have ever seen.” She looked up at her mother. “Thank you, Mom.”

Franny wiped her hands on her skirt, slightly flustered. “You’re welcome, my love.” She turned around to get the syrup, which Jim was already holding.

“I don’t know what happened to our children,” she said. “But I like it.”

Jim kissed Franny on the forehead, which Sylvia and Bobby pretended not to see. All four Posts held their breath simultaneously, each wishing for the moment to last. Families were nothing more than hope cast out in a wide net, everyone wanting only the best. Even the poor souls who had children in an attempt to rescue a dying marriage were doing so out of a misguided hopefulness. Franny and Jim and Bobby and Sylvia did their silent best, and just like that, for a moment, they were all aboard the same ship.

Sylvia had been thinking about Joan every minute since she’d left his company the day before. She wanted to have sex again and again, until she felt like she really knew what she was doing, and Joan seemed like a good partner. He could pick her up, for fuck’s sake. He knew about secluded beaches. Who cared if he listened to terrible music and wore shirts with fleurs-de-lis printed on the shoulder when he went out dancing? At home, Sylvia would never in a million years have been interested in anyone who went out dancing, period, but that wasn’t the point. The point was that she needed to figure out a totally natural way to sneak Joan upstairs to her bedroom without her parents noticing.

In the few minutes before he rang the bell, Sylvia opened her
laptop at the kitchen counter. There was a message from Brown with her rooming situation—Keeney Quad, what she’d been hoping for, where most of the freshmen lived—and contact information about her new roommate (Molly Krumpler-Jones, of Newton, Massachusetts). It was the e-mail that Sylvia had been waiting months for, but she barely even looked at it, because right above it was an e-mail from Joan.

S— Sorry to cancel our second to last session, but I won’t be able to come today. I will see you tomorrow at ten to say good-bye. Had fun at the beach.—J

He could easily have sent it in a text message, but if he’d texted, she would have seen it faster and responded. The e-mail was a time bomb, waiting for her to open her computer in order to detonate. Sylvia felt her cheeks go up in flame, but then she heard someone at the door and was instantly relieved. He’d been joking! Obviously, Joan wasn’t that much of an asshole—he was just playing with her. Sylvia scrambled to the door. She considered flashing him when she opened the door, but her breasts had never been particularly impressive, and decided against it. She was laughing as she pulled the knob.

A tall woman—taller than Sylvia by several inches, which meant she was close to six feet—was bent in half on the other side of the door, rooting around like an anteater in a gigantic leather purse.

“Can I help you?” Sylvia asked. She put her hands on her hips in hopes that her posture would communicate that she was not the slightest bit interested in doing anything of the sort.

The woman looked up startled. “Oh, Lord. You must be Franny’s daughter, are you? I saw the car in the drive and knew that I must have mixed up the dates. Isn’t that just like me,” she said, as if Sylvia would be able to corroborate. She stood up and gave her long, wavy blond hair a shake. “I’m Gemma,” she said. “It’s my house!”

“Oh,” Sylvia said. “Then I guess you should come in.” She gestured toward the foyer, stepped inside, and screamed for her mother before retreating to her bedroom.

Franny hadn’t seen Gemma in person in a decade and was horrified to find her remarkably unchanged. Gemma got herself a glass of water—
Oh, you’ve been using the filter? I just drink straight from the tap like a cat. I think it’s what keeps my immune system in such top shape
—and then they went out to sit by the pool. Gemma had just come from her house in London, a limestone in Maida Vale, but before that she’d been in Paris for two weeks, and before that, Berlin.

“It’s so exhausting,” Gemma said. “I really envy that you have this lifestyle. You can pack up the kids and just go somewhere for two weeks and no one will even bother you.” She widened her eyes at the word
bother
. “You can just
get away
. I would pay a million dollars for that. Even when I
do
go on vacation, the gallery is always calling me, or one of my artists, and then I have to get on a plane just to massage someone’s
fragile ego, and I want to say, you know, I was just about to have a snorkel in the Maldives.” Gemma ruffled her hair with both hands, laying it over the back of the chaise longue. “It’s a nice house, isn’t it? Quaint.”

Franny could have described the house using a hundred adjectives, and
quaint
wouldn’t have been on the list. “It’s incredible,” she said, not wanting to contradict Gemma outright.

“Most Brits think Mallorca is for drunken teenagers,” she said. “It’s sort of like reverse psychology, buying a house here, up in the mountains. It really is the best place to get away. It’s like if you and Jim decided to buy a house on the Jersey Shore, everyone would think you’d gone mad, but then there you are at your lovely house, miles away from the puddles of sick and the beaches covered with pale skin and babies in dirty nappies. None of my British friends would ever come here.”

Franny stared out at the mountains. If the house had belonged to her, she would have invited everyone she knew, and they all would have oohed and aahed. She could have her whole terrible book club come and read George Sand and laugh about how wrong she’d been about the island, how depressive. Literally any person in the world would love the view, the food, the people. Franny thought she could write a new brochure for the tourist board if someone so much as slipped a pen into her hand.

“Well, we’ve all had a wonderful time. Eating our way through, really.”

“Oh, I never eat anything. Just the ice cream. I come for a
week, eat only ice cream, then go home feeling like I’ve been on a cleanse.” Gemma closed her eyes. The sun was beating straight down on them, and Franny felt the warm part of her hair. “So,” Gemma asked, eyes still shut, “where’s my Charlie?”

He hadn’t told her. Of course he hadn’t told her! If Charles hadn’t said a word to Franny, then he wouldn’t have dared say anything to Gemma. Not since she was in the eleventh grade had Franny felt such delight in the knowing and dispensing of news about her friends’ lives.

“Oh, you don’t know?” Franny feigned surprise. “That’s so odd that he wouldn’t tell you—I know how close you two are.”

Gemma’s eyes flew open. She blinked several times in a row, giving the impression of a rodent emerging from months spent in a dark hole underground. The skin around her eyes had begun to crease, and maybe even sag. Franny didn’t often revel in other people’s flaws, but in this case, she would make an exception. Gemma was waiting for her to speak, with her own lips parted, as if that was where the information would enter her body. She looked like a beautiful, stupid dog. Franny wanted to kiss her on the mouth and then shove her into the pool.