Dante's Paradiso
. The spa had been a dream of my son-in-law ever since he dropped out of Haverford a year before graduation and eloped with my daughter, Emily, to Colorado. Out West, he'd studied massage as seriously as if it were nanophysics, then apprenticed at the Golden Door before moving east to the New Life Spa in the mountains of Virginia. There, his charm, impeccable manners, and talented fingers had developed such a following that it wasn't long before grateful clients began urging him to open his own establishment. Some, like Phyllis Strother, putting their money where their mouth was. Paul and I had enough confidence in the enterprise to invest in it, too, although our piece of the corporate pie amounted to the size of a broom closet.
Listening to the sawing and banging going on outside the room, I wondered if Dante were regretting his decision to venture out so soon on his own. His talented fingers hadn't touched a client for months, except to shake hands with a new employee or sign a work order for one of the contractors who had been transforming what had once been a restaurant into Dante's Paradiso, a twenty-thousand-square-foot luxury day spa.
When I tuned in again, Garnelle had picked up the flannel sheet and was holding it in front of her face like a mother playing peekaboo. “Turn over,” she instructed. Pleased with the way she respected my modesty, I obeyed, settling my face comfortably into a padded doughnut that surrounded a hole cut into the massage table.
Garnelle's fingers pressed into the muscles of my shoulder, forcing my face further into the doughnut that cradled it. “What have you been doing? You're tight as a drum, right here. All knots.”
I opened my eyes, but instead of a flowering meadow, I stared into the quiet mauve of the carpet where Garnelle's toes, painted acid green, peeked out from the ends of her Birkenstocks. “Moving furniture,” I moaned. “Oh God, your fingers are magic. They should be insured by Lloyds of London.”
Garnelle's big toe twitched. “Speaking of London, it's that personal trainer with the British accent that I'd like to get my hands on.”
“You mean Norman Salterelli?”
“Uh-huh. Abs from here to Christmas.”
“He's a former trainer with the U.S. Olympic team.”
“So I noticed.”
“He's also married.”
Garnelle shrugged. “So what?”
“With kids.”
“Rats.”
Thinking about kids reminded me of my daughter, who had been working flat-out for days on Puddle Ducks, the day care center that would tend to the children of clients while they were being pummeled and steamed and exfoliated. Surprisingly, Puddle Ducks had been Dante's idea. Providing day care was a necessity if one wished to attract younger clientele, the yummy mummies who had left their high-salaried corporate positions to devote themselves full-time, and with every bit as much attention as they had formerly given to corporate America, to raising their children. As if he knew I was thinking about him, I heard Dante's voice ricocheting off the hand-painted Mediterranean tiles that decorated the Natatorium just on the other side of the door.
“The exercise equipment! Thank
gawd
! Where the hell are you, dude?” Dante seemed to be on his cell phone, shouting directions. “You're way off! Turn your rig around and get yourself down Forest Drive toward Bay Ridge. Right on Herndon. When you get to the water, look right and you're there. Ask for Emily. She'll show you where the stuff goes, get you a cup of
cawfee
.”
After six months living north of the Virginia border, the slight drawl Dante had affected while working in the Blue Ridge Mountains was slowly giving way to his native New Jersey twang.
“Oh, Emily will know where it goes, all right,” I muttered to the floor. “But if she has to keep taking up the slack for her husband, she'll never get the day care center done.”
Like a good employee, Garnelle ignored my remark. “I almost didn't come, you know,” she commented softly a few minutes later.
“That would have been tragic,” I said, meaning it to the tips of my well-massaged toes.
“When Dante first called about the job, he told me the spa was going to be built down Indian Head way. Frankly, I didn't think you'd get a whole lot of business down in that neck of the woods, if you know what I mean.”
“That's what Mrs. Strother's market analysts advised. The golf club was gorgeous, but after they conducted a series of focus groups, they decided to look for property around Annapolis instead. Better demographics. I'm not complaining, mind,” I said. “I enjoy spoiling my grandchildren rotten, and for the first time, I won't have to drive three hours to do it!”
“I love it here,” Garnelle commented as she kneaded my left bicep. “The view of the water from the front porch is fantastic. You can see all the way to the Bay Bridge.”
“I know. Before it became Paradiso, this was the Bay View Inn, a pretty classy restaurant. I can't tell you how many wedding receptions I attended here over the years. It's really strange to see Jacuzzis installed in the middle of what used to be the main dining room.”
“Do
you
think we'll be fully staffed by the time we open? Officially, I mean, for the clients?” Garnelle asked, drawing the sheet back over my right arm, and a few seconds later drawing the opposite corner back to expose my left.
Under her hands, I shrugged. “I don't know, but I certainly hope so. When I went by the office a few minutes ago, every chair was full, and there were a couple of people sitting out in the hallway.”
“So, he's still interviewing? I thought he was finished with that.”
“He's looking for an accountant. And I think there are still a couple of openings for guides.” Even as I said it, the word seemed ridiculous, but that's what Dante's ad on Monster.com had said:
Spa guides for upper-demographic, full-service spa near Annapolis, MD. Responsibilities of this role include receiving members at front desk, scheduling services, program registrations, payment processing, and telephone reception. Day, early morning and weekend hours; flexible time schedules available.
“âGuides'? For a spa? What's the world coming to?” Garnelle tut-tutted. “It's bad enough when âassociates' are bagging your groceries.”
“They'll be competent, but decorative, too, I suspect, although Emily nixed the skimpy white uniforms that Dante had in mind. Everyone's going to be wearing khakis and forest green polo shirts embroidered with the spa logo.” Paul's artist sister, Connie, had designed the logo, a stylized
P
that morphed into a semireclining female form.
Garnelle sniffed, then picked up my hand and massaged my fingers, one by one, as I lay, limp as a cooked noodle, on the table.
“Not there, you idiot!” Dante was disrupting my
wah
again. Judging by the
beep-beep-beep
of a truck backing up, the main doors to the spa must have been propped open and my son-in-law had to be directing traffic somewhere along the serpentine driveâlaid out by my older sister, Ruth Gannon, and echoing (she said) the natural movement of
chi
âthat led visitors up a gentle slope to the main entrance of the spa. Ruth was probably, even as we spoke, out with the gardener fengshuiing the heck out of the place.
Garnelle's fingers slid away, and for a few delicious seconds hovered over mine, which tingled almost as if a charge of electricity was arching between us. “Shhh ⦔ she whispered. “Stay here for a while and rest. I'll be waiting by the sauna when you're ready.”
Garnelle drifted away, her sandals silent on the plush carpet. I sensed rather than heard the door close behind her.
Alone, as I struggled to tune out the construction and feel the ocean waves roll out of the speakers, washing over me like a blanket, I made a mental note to speak to Dante about the importance of better soundproofing.
Outside the room, two people began arguing. Dante, for certain, and unless I missed my guess, Emily was the other. Dante spoke too intensely and Emily too quietly for me to make out what they were saying, but from the rise and fall of Emily's voice, I could tell she was unhappy about something.
A prolonged scraping sound, followed by a splash, and someone shouting
shitfuckdamn
.
Something had fallen into the swimming pool, something big, but locked in the peaceful embrace of the sea, I was too far gone to care.
When I padded out of the sauna half an hour
later, flushed from head to toe, my hair curling damply against my cheeks, and sipping the fresh strawberry smoothie that Alison, one of the guides, had whipped up for me, I immediately ran into Dante. Still as tall and rail thin as he had been when he married my daughter almost eight years ago, my son-in-law was directing the retrieval of a lounge chair from the deep end of the swimming pool. Ben Geyer, the pool boy, had stripped down to his khaki Bermuda shorts and was poking ineffectually at the submerged piece of furniture with a long aluminum pole. He'd already shed his shoes. Next to the shoes, a sodden green and white striped cushion silently drained onto the tiles.
“I think you're going to have to get in,” Dante told the young man.
Ben scowled. Clearly, retrieving furniture from swimming pools hadn't been mentioned in his job description, but he stripped off his belt, draped it over his shoes, shrugged, and jumped into the pool.
Ben had his work cut out for him. The redwood lounge chair, heavy under normal circumstances, would be completely waterlogged. Barring the eleventh-hour arrival of a Navy scuba team, I predicted a swim in Dante's future.
With a smile and a wave, I left the guys to it and headed off to help Emily.
I found her in the former club room, which was rapidly being transformed into Puddle Ducks. Surrounded by boxes, Emily was unpacking a pint-sized table and chair set painted in bright primary colors. Three wooden puzzles were already arranged on an identical table set up near a picture window that comprised one entire wall.
Behind Emily, my sister-in-law, Connie, stood on a step ladder, dabbing blue paint onto Jemima Puddle Duck's paisley shawl. Jemima, in her sky-blue poke bonnet, curled her webbed feet over the chair rail and seemed to be speaking with Kip the collie dog about her lost eggs. Still wrapped in my spa robe, I stood still sipping my smoothie, admiring Connie's handiwork. “That's really cute, Con!”
Connie turned and sent a thousand-watt smile in my direction. With her copper curls, checked gingham shirt, and a dab of blue paint on her nose, she looked like Raggedy Ann all grown up. “It is, isn't it?” Connie gestured with her paintbrush. “What do you think about that one?”
I turned to consider the mural on the wall behind me: Flopsy, Mopsy, Cottontail, and Peter were picking blackberries in Mr. McGregor's garden.
“Peter didn't get any blackberries,” I corrected. “âFirst he ate some lettuces and some French beans; and then he ate some radishes; and then, feeling rather sick, he went to look for some parsley,'” I quoted, the story still fresh in my mind from the number of times I'd read it to Chloe. “Peter got a dose of chamomile tea, if I'm not mistaken. âOne table spoonful to be taken at bedtime.'”
Connie waved a brush. “Poetic license. I'm an artist, not a novelist.”
I was still admiring the botanical accuracy of the mural when I noticed Ruth chugging down the hallway, both hands jammed into the pockets of the lightweight blue cotton sweater she usually reserved for working in the garden. She'd gathered her abundant silver hair into an untidy bundle on the top of her head, and secured it there with a pencil. “I told him and told him, but did he listen? No,” Ruth muttered before her foot had even crossed the threshold.
Emily looked blankly at her aunt and shrugged. “Told who what?”
“Dante! It's poor planning, Emily. The day care center should be on the
east
side of the building, not the north. The Palace of Beijing put the little princes in the east. North is so dark, and negative.” Ruth lowered her voice. “It's evil and calamity, too. Can't you do something about it, Hannah?”
“Shut up, Ruth,” I hissed. That last remark was going too far, even for someone as militantly new age as Ruth.
Emily wasn't having any of it, either. “That is such
bullshit
, Aunt Ruth.”
“Two thousand years of Chinese civilization can't be wrong,” Ruth said.
“But in feng shui,” I pointed out, “there's always a remedy, right?” I'd been around my older sister long enough to pick up on the lingo.
“Well, yes.” Ruth favored me with a smile, as if I were a prized pupil. The awkward moment passed. “And that fabulous mural's certainly a good place to start.”
I sensed a
but
coming, and Connie must have sensed it, too, because she pasted on her brightest, most disingenuous smile and waited.
“Your children will be playing here, Emily, don't forget,” Ruth said, as if ours were the only children who mattered.
My granddaughter Chloe, at six, was in first grade. Jake, just turned three, attended nursery school, but would be joining his baby brother, Tim, at Puddle Ducks each afternoon once the spa opened for good. At the moment, Tim, the baby brother in question, was the center of attention, occupying a gleaming white playpen that had been set up near the French doors leading out to the patio and the Japanese garden beyond. Adorably dressed in a blue and white striped Petit Bateau coverall I'd splurged on at Madeleine's Boutique on Maryland Avenue, he didn't seem the least concerned about the elements of feng shui, or Jemima Puddleduck's lost eggs, or anything else for that matter. He sat contentedly in his playpen, gnawing on a wooden block.