The Vacationers: A Novel (25 page)

“They went home to get their baby,” Franny said. “A boy. They’re adopting a baby boy.”

“They left? To buy a baby?”

“They’re not
buying
a baby, they’re
adopting
a baby.”

Gemma let out a bark. “On purpose? I thought babies only happened to people by accident. I’ve had three husbands and
have narrowly avoided them half a dozen times! What on earth is he thinking? Really. Oh, Charlie. Now his paintings will all be dewy little portraits of a half-naked Lawrence with a baby asleep on his chest.” She paused. “Now I’m doubly sorry to have missed him. The last hurrah!”

Franny tried to smile, but couldn’t. “I suppose.”

“Are you and Jim in the master, upstairs?” Gemma asked. She slipped her sunglasses out of her purse and put them on. “You wouldn’t mind moving to whichever room Charlie and Lawrence were staying in, would you? You know how it is to sleep in your own bed. All the other mattresses are too soft for my back, like sleeping on giant pillows. You’ll be fine for one night, I’m sure, won’t you? If it’s not too much trouble.” She stood up and dusted off her spotless blue jeans. “I’ll call Tiffany’s and send over a spoon.”

“How nice,” Franny said. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ll start packing upstairs so that you can have your bedroom back.”

The two women walked toward the door side by side, each one trying to reach the handle first, as if to stake claim to the entire property. Franny would have won if her legs had been a few inches longer, but Gemma grabbed it first, her long, thin fingers gripping it like it was a loose diamond floating in the swimming pool. She held the door open for Franny, who walked in with her head held high. She wouldn’t tell Charles what a bitch his friend was—that would turn her moral high ground to mush. Instead, she would just be secure in her knowledge that she was the better friend, and that his baby, whoever he
was and whoever he would grow to be, would call her his aunty, whereas Gemma would never be more than a terrifying shrew on the other side of the globe.

Bobby wanted to swim until he could no longer feel his arms or legs. His personal record in a pool was a mile, mostly because that was six laps at Total Body Power, and doing less than six laps seemed pathetic, but he didn’t much like swimming. No one in Florida did. Swimming was for the tourists, splashing around in a way that would never equal the calories in a single Cuban sandwich. Right now, being in the pool was the only way to make sure that no one would speak to him, and so that’s where Bobby wanted to be, exhausting his limbs and his lungs and avoiding his entire family.

It was so easy for most people. His high school friends had all gone to college and found women to marry. His college friends, too. They met in the dining hall, or in Psych 100, or at a party after a football game, just like they were supposed to. There were a few holdouts, a guy here or there who’d dumped or been dumped or was too much of an introvert to get a real girlfriend. When those friends came through Miami, they’d always have a good time. Bobby would take them to clubs and they’d drink all night. Girls in Miami wore the tiniest dresses and the highest heels, and his friends were always shocked by how many of them there were, like ants on a picnic table. The
married friends didn’t visit much, and when they did, it was for dinner and maybe a single drink, and they went to bed. Not even to fuck, but to sleep. Bobby would pretend to leave when they did, but then circle back to the bar by himself. Who went to bed at ten o’clock? He was close to thirty, but he wasn’t dead.

Bobby hadn’t had a real girlfriend until Carmen. Sure, there had been girls, but never anyone serious. When he lost his virginity his freshman year at Miami, he didn’t tell the girl it was his first time, though it was probably pretty obvious. In retrospect he wished he had, because he’d never forget her name—Sarah Jack,
like a lumberjack
, she’d said at the party where they met—and now it felt weird, like he was still keeping a secret, even though it was almost ten years ago. Bobby felt his outstretched fingers brush against the wall of the pool, and did a somersault underwater to go back in the opposite direction. The water wasn’t chlorinated, and he could open his eyes without them stinging. There were leaves at the bottom of the pool, and he thought about diving down to get them, but he didn’t.

There had been a dozen weddings since college, and he went to all of them—some in New York, some in Florida, but mostly scattered around in the brides’ various hometowns, with some destination exceptions. The most expensive wedding had been in Vail, Colorado, at the top of a mountain. He and Carmen went skiing together for the first time that weekend, and she met all of his friends from high school. A few of them pulled
Bobby aside afterward, in the lodge and at the house they were sharing and at the reception, and they all wanted to know how old Carmen was. Some of them were impressed and some were clearly weirded out, but none of them expected to get an invite to Bobby and Carmen’s wedding, that was for sure. At each subsequent event, they were surprised to find the pair still together. A few even included Carmen’s name on their wedding invitations, instead of just a plus-one. But there was always someone sticking his elbow into Bobby’s ribs, always someone calling Carmen a cougar.

Twenty-eight was neither young nor old. Obviously it was young in the scope of someone’s whole life, but it was already getting late in terms of figuring out what you wanted to do. Bobby’s parents got married when they were twenty-three and twenty-five, which seemed normal only in the context of time, as though they were cave people who didn’t expect to live to thirty. But that’s when his friends had started getting married, too.

Selling real estate was supposed to be steady, but it wasn’t. There were reality television shows about guys his age selling ten-million-dollar houses in Malibu, but Bobby was struggling to rent fifteen-hundred-dollar apartments. He and Carmen lived like roommates or, worse yet, family members. He cooked and she cleaned. Carmen reminded him to pick up his dry cleaning and kissed him on the cheek when she felt like it. She had never wanted kids—never. If he was being honest, that
was the problem. Not her age, not anything else. Carmen may have wanted to get married, but she never wanted to have children, and he did. It was how he knew it didn’t matter that he didn’t love her.

Bobby let himself slow down. The muscles in his back were already tired. It was so hard to know when you’d made a mistake. What was it? Staying with Carmen for so long? Cheating on her? Telling himself that it was justifiable, because he knew they weren’t going to last, so what did it matter, anyway? Bobby opened his mouth and let it fill with water, and then pulled his face out of the pool and spat the water out. Maybe the problem was Miami. Maybe the problem was the gym, or the debt, or the loneliness. Maybe the problem was him. It all seemed so easy for everyone else, choosing the right person to marry, as if they had some secret sign, a tattoo in invisible ink. How else were you supposed to know? Bobby was looking for certainty. He’d tried to ask some of his friends, in an offhanded way, how they knew their girlfriends were “the one,” but the question always sounded hypothetical and got him answers like “I know, right?”

From the middle of the pool, all Bobby could see were the sky and the trees ringing the property. An airplane flew overhead, and Bobby wished he were on it, going somewhere he wanted to go. Instead, he put his face back in the water and kept swimming, back and forth, back and forth, until he was so tired he thought he might have to crawl to the house on his knees. It was time for him to straighten out, and if nothing
else, he could start with this, the length of this pool, over and over again.

Jim and Franny took their time packing their things and bringing their suitcases downstairs to Charles and Lawrence’s room. Charles hadn’t stripped the bed when they left, being in such a hurry, and so Jim and Franny were changing the sheets, even though it seemed silly, just for one night. Franny was buzzing with irritation. It was Gemma who’d made the error, not them.

“If it was me, I would sleep in the guest room for a night,” Franny said, for at least the tenth time. “I would.”

“I know, Fran.” Jim pulled the sheet over the upper left-hand corner of the mattress, and waited for Franny to do the opposite one.

“I might even go stay somewhere else or, at the very least, offer!” Franny threw her hands up. “It’s so rude.”

“It’s so rude.” Jim pointed, gently, at the tangled sheet. Franny nodded and pulled it taut on her side, stretching the elastic over the thin bed. “But it is her house.”

“The other beds really aren’t as nice as hers, huh?” Franny quickly tucked in the last corner, and they moved together toward the pile of pillows, throwing them back on the bed. “What a cow.”

“What a cow,” Jim repeated, and softly pushed Franny onto the bed.

“What,” she said, not unkindly, as he moved on top of her, his knees on either side of her waist. Jim lowered himself as gracefully as he could and kissed her on the forehead. His eye socket was still green, but she was getting used to it.

“I was just remembering how it felt to bring Bobby home,” Jim said. “How terrifying it was—driving those fifteen blocks from Roosevelt felt like driving to Timbuktu. The world was so loud. All those honking taxis. Do you remember?”

“You drove so slowly,” Franny said. “I loved it. I wish you’d always driven that way, like the car was made out of glass.”

“I don’t think Charles and Lawrence have any idea what they’re getting themselves into,” Jim said. “But neither did we.” He rolled onto his side, tucking his long legs against Franny’s body.

“They’ll be good,” she said.

“We were good, too, weren’t we?”

Franny could remember those first few days as a complete haze, as if shot in soft focus. Her nipples had hurt more than she’d thought they would, but really, what had she thought at all? It was almost impossible to imagine an actual baby existing where there wasn’t one before, even when you could feel it kicking away inside you. It was easier with Sylvia, of course. Poor Sylvia. The second child never did get the same kind of attention. They’d leave her wailing in her crib, they’d set her down on the kitchen floor with nothing more than a wooden spoon to entertain her. Every time Bobby screeched, they ran. Maybe that was the answer to good parenting—pretending the first
child was the second. Maybe that was where they’d gone wrong, by always giving in.

She rolled onto her side, too, her nose level with Jim’s. A swath of her dark hair fell out from behind her ear, covering her eyes. “Should we worry about him?”

Jim reached out and brushed Franny’s hair out of her face. “Yes. What choice do we have?”

“I love you as much as I hate Gemma,” Franny said. “Which, right now, is a lot.”

“I’ll take it,” Jim said. “And you know, I kind of like being down here. It’s more private. Doesn’t it feel like we’re in a hotel? Or, at the very least, a bed-and-breakfast?”

“Oh, God, bed-and-breakfasts,” Franny said. “Where you’re forced to eat subpar blueberry muffins with strangers.”

“Yes, and have sex with your wife.” Jim put a hand on Franny’s lower back and pulled her toward him, pressing her against his body hard enough that she would be able to feel his erection.

“Is the door locked?”

“I locked it as soon as we got in here,” Jim said. “I was a Boy Scout, remember?”

“Ooh,” Franny said. “Tell me again about those tiny little shorts.”

Jim let the joke go, wanting to move on, wanting to take her clothes off while she’d still let him. That was part of the appeal of Madison Vance, not knowing when and if she would stop him. He thought he knew Franny well enough to know that
she was ready, but it had been a long time, and it seemed possible that the signals had changed. He kissed her neck the way she liked, up next to where her jaw met her earlobe, and then climbed backward to pull her dress off over her head.

Franny pushed herself up on her elbows, creasing her stomach at the waist. Jim quickly undressed next to the bed, his hard-on springing upward joyously when he pulled down his boxer shorts. Franny’s body knew just what to do, her hands and her mouth and her legs, and she was ready to do it all.