The Vacationers: A Novel (26 page)

“Take them off,” she said to Jim, and he obediently pulled down her underwear, one side at a time, inch by inch, until they were wrapped only around her left ankle. “Now come here,” she said, and he moved back on top of her, filling her mouth with his. They didn’t speak again until it was over and they were lying on their backs, glistening with a job well done.

THE FLIGHT TO MADRID LEFT AT NOON, WHICH MEANT
that they had to leave for the airport by ten-thirty a.m. at the very, very latest. Everyone was packed and ready to go, even Franny, who was notoriously bad at such things. Sylvia had begun to pace.

“He said he’d be here by now,” she said. “I don’t know what to do.”

Sylvia had already texted Joan three times: The first was a friendly
Hey, what’s up?
The second was a slightly more aggressive
You’re still coming over, right?
And the third was a toe-tapping
Where are you??? We’re waiting to go to the airport until you come. So come.
He hadn’t responded to any of them.

They were all standing by the car—Bobby and Jim had arranged and rearranged the suitcases in the tiny trunk, with one squishy bag left over that had to ride on laps in the back.
Gemma poked her head out from time to time, as if to check if the Posts were gone. Every time her lollipop head disappeared back inside, Franny made a horsey noise with her lips, big and wet.

A minute later, a car honked and then pulled into the drive. Joan’s BMW. Sylvia rushed over to the driver’s side of the car, unable to keep herself from grinning. He shut off the engine and swooped his hair back, making eye contact with Sylvia through the closed car window before opening the door.

“Hola,”
he said, and kissed her quickly on both cheeks. Joan put a hand on Sylvia’s waist for a split second, patted her like an ineffectual airport security guard, and then walked around the car to greet the rest of the family.

“Oh, good! I thought Sylvia was going to have a heart attack,” Franny said. She pulled Joan close for a hug. “Ugh, you smell so
good
. Let me find your check, it’s in my purse.”

Joan shook Bobby’s hand, then Jim’s. Sylvia stood off to the side, still hovering by Joan’s car door. “Hey,” she said, and he reluctantly returned to her side. Lowering her voice and turning her body away from her parents, Sylvia said, “You’re not taking the check, are you?”

Joan shrugged. “You’re right—I should charge extra.” He ran a hand through his hair, so casual.

Sylvia laughed. “Is that supposed to be a joke?”

Franny hurried over, waving a check in the air. “Here you go, here you go!”

“Thank you, Franny,” Joan said, rolling out her name
because he knew she’d enjoy it. He folded the check in half without looking at it and then slipped it into his back pocket. Sylvia was torn between feeling like stabbing him in the genitals and just wanting to stuff cotton in her ears so that she’d never have to hear him speak ever again. Which, of course, she wouldn’t.

“Hey, Mom, wait,” Sylvia said. Franny and Joan both stopped and looked at her. “Take our picture, okay?”

Sylvia had thought about taking a picture of Joan every day for the last two weeks, but hadn’t ever worked up the courage to do it. To take someone’s photo, you were acknowledging their importance, saying that you wanted to remember them, that you wanted to look at their face again. She couldn’t have asked to take his picture—or just fucking
done
it—without tacitly admitting that she liked him. He knew it, of course—Joan had known from the second he walked into the house, from the second he saw her in those tiny little towels. How could she not? She was a heterosexual human being, and he was made out of Mallorcan clouds and dreams. But it was too late. If she didn’t take his picture now, Joan would vanish into the ether, like some made-up Canadian summer-camp boyfriend, whether he’d been sweet and doting or a complete asshole or somewhere in between. No one would believe her. She wished she had taken a picture of him on the beach, his wet bathing suit slung low around his hips, but she hadn’t. This would have to do.

“Of course!” Franny said, and started patting herself down, as if she were going to find a camera around her neck. Sylvia
thrust her phone at her mother. Franny squinted at the screen, and Sylvia’s stomach dropped, but what could she do? She looked plaintively at her brother, who somehow, magically, understood.

“Here, Mom, let me,” Bobby said. He aimed the phone at Joan and Sylvia and waited for them to move into position.

“Okay,” Sylvia said. She turned her body so that she was facing Joan and gave the phone her profile. Without giving herself a moment to chicken out, she reached up and grabbed Joan’s chin and turned his mouth toward her, planting one on him. She kissed him for a moment and then let go, hoping that her brother had thought to take more than one picture. “Okay,” she said again. Joan looked slightly stunned, and demurely swiped at his lower lip with his thumb and pointer finger.

“Have a safe flight,” he said. He opened his arms to Sylvia, but she just slapped his hand instead.

“Will do.” Sylvia crossed her arms over her chest, nodding. She waited for Joan to get into his car and back out of the driveway, which he did.

“Well,” Franny said, and then left it at that.

“I’ll drive,” Bobby said. Jim started to protest, but Franny tugged him with her into the backseat, and he acquiesced. Bobby handed them his duffel bag, which wouldn’t fit in the trunk, and they laid it across their laps. Sylvia sat in front. Sometimes love was one-sided. Sometimes love wasn’t love at all, but a moment shared on a beach. It stung, sure, but Joan
had done her a favor. Sylvia was going home a changed woman. Fuck Katie Saperstein, fuck Gabe Thrush. Fuck everyone. She had gotten exactly what she wanted. Sylvia put on her sunglasses and turned on the radio.

“Rock and roll,” she said, apropos of nothing but her own beating heart.

Bobby had to decide at the airport—his flight was booked to Miami, but there was nothing for him there. Franny and Jim thought he should come home to New York for a little while, until he could figure out what to do about the money, what to do about Carmen, where he’d live. Iberia was able to get him a standby ticket to JFK, but the gate area seemed crowded, and Bobby was nervous that there wouldn’t be room on the plane. There was nothing to eat in the enormous terminal except ham sandwiches, so they all ate some of those.

“This is actually not bad,” Franny said with amazement. Bobby had two.

Sylvia and his parents were all sitting together, their carry-on bags slumped around their calves and on their laps. Sylvia had her nose in a book, and Franny and Jim were sitting quietly, not doing anything but staring into space. Every now and then, Jim would put his arm around Franny and hug her close, and then he’d let go again. Bobby wished he’d brought a book or
something. He had movies on his iPad but didn’t want to watch them. Carmen had left her self-help bullshit behind, no doubt on purpose, but Bobby had left it at the house.

“I’m going to go look at the magazines,” Bobby said, and set off. The terminal was endless, one long hallway of gates with a ceiling several stories tall and a moving sidewalk to get people from one end to the other. He walked into one of the small shops and stood in front of the magazine rack. Most things were in Spanish, but there was a stack of
The New York Times
, and a few magazines, including the British edition of
Gallant
, which he loyally ignored.

Bobby picked up the newspaper, a copy of
Time
, and a mystery novel that he’d heard about. He’d checked his e-mail before they left the house, and he thought that if Carmen had written, then he’d go back to Miami, but she hadn’t. And what was the point of going back, if he already knew it was the wrong thing? She’d made it easier on both of them, really. Or at least easier on him. Bobby paid for his stack of stuff, throwing in a pack of gum at the last minute. His bank account was so close to empty that every purchase was paid for with crossed fingers, but this one went through without a delay. New York would be okay for a little while—just until he was back on his feet. He could meet his friends for dinner—maybe just dinner. A few of them would try to set him up, and this time, he wouldn’t resist. In New York, twenty-eight was younger than it was in Florida. Only one of his friends had a kid. Bobby looked down at his free hand and realized that it was shaking. He waited for it to
stop before rejoining his family. When he sat down, Sylvia looked up from her book and smiled, her face relaxed and content. He was making the right decision, he just knew it.

“Gimme some gum,” she said, and so he held out the pack.

Before the plane boarded, Jim took one last walk to stretch his legs. In all of the recent excitement, he’d forgotten to feel nervous about going home. Despite the fact that Franny seemed to be tolerating—even responding to—his touch, his job would still be gone when they got home. He was only sixty. Only sixty! Jim made himself laugh. He remembered when sixty was as old as eighty. His parents had been sixty. Hell, his grandparents had been sixty. And now he was, too, just like that.

Jim did not want to go on cruises, or learn to play golf. He did not want to wake to find that his pants were too short and his neckties were too thin, or too wide. Jim walked as far as he could without having to show his ticket and pass through security again, and turned back. He passed Spanish families with their belongings strewn around them as though they were sitting in cafés, not a care in the world. None of the children were on leashes. The airport was longer than a football field, and Jim had to quicken his pace to make sure he made it back in time to board. Franny was so nervous about small things—her seat would still be there, but if a crowd had formed, bottlenecking the jet bridge, she would be up and fanning herself
with her ticket, scanning the masses for his face. That was what Jim wanted—to never make Franny nervous ever again. He walked faster, so that he was almost jogging. The Spaniards around him, a slow-paced people, watched with interest.

Their gate was twenty yards ahead. There was a fairly orderly line already in place, which meant that he had somehow missed the announcement over the loudspeaker. Franny and the kids weren’t in the spot where he’d left them, and he craned his neck to see where they’d gone. He walked halfway down the line, as if he needed to get within six inches to recognize his family, when he finally noticed Franny standing by herself off to the side.

“I’m so sorry,” Jim said. He swiveled his body around. “Where are the kids?”

“They’re on the plane,” she said, and put her hand on his arm.

“Shit, I didn’t realize we were boarding so soon.” Jim was flustered, doubly so by Franny’s unusual calm.

“It’s okay,” she said. “They won’t leave without us.”

The line was getting longer, and Franny looped her elbow through Jim’s, guiding him gently to the back of the line. His heart was still beating at a rapid pace, and his underarms felt warm and damp. His forehead was slick with sweat. They waited for the line to move, which it did. One by one, the travelers in front of them boarded the plane, tucking their suitcases into the large compartments above their seats. Jim and Franny were among the last to board, but their seats were still there,
empty and waiting. Franny settled into her seat and shoved her purse under the seat in front of her. She held her hands in her lap primly while she waited for Jim to sit.

Despite the circumstances, she was delighted to have Bobby coming back to New York with them, her two little ducklings under her roof together for a little while longer. She would have to remember to not baby her son, to treat him like an adult, and to expect adult behavior from him, just like she would have to not ask Sylvia too many questions about what happened with Joan. The human heart was a complex organ at any age. Teenagers were no less impervious to true heartbreak and lust than they were to getting hit by buses. If anything, the odds were dramatically higher.

Bobby’s problem was that he’d never had anything he wanted to fight for—Carmen was a comfort to him, a kickstand. Now that she was gone, he was going to have to use his own legs. Franny thought that it was true of all of them, to some extent. Jim would need to find a way to fill his days; Sylvia would have to reinvent herself as a college girl. Bobby would have to learn to be a responsible adult; Franny herself would have to find her own tiny islands and populate them with food and love and words. She would have to forgive her husband without forgetting what he’d done. No—she didn’t have to, but she wanted to.