"Yeah," he was saying, "you wouldn't think so, would you? Got to be a hundred Spooners in the New York phone book, though. Sure, sure. Good luck, fella." He hung up.
"Joe —" Grandma said.
"Ma." He shook his head. She moved closer, because she never took a hint. They started talking in low voices. I beat it back to the kitchen.
Mom had the serving pieces all lined up on the table to take out to the dining room. I picked up the mashed potatoes and was heading out when Joe reappeared in the doorway. His face was red, as though he'd been the one bending over the stove. He tapped his empty cocktail glass against his leg as if he was keeping time to a jazzy rhythm in his head.
"So, does he want a job?" Mom asked.
"Doesn't matter, he got the wrong Spooner." Joe leaned against the doorway as Mom turned. He watched her as she brushed her hair off her forehead with the back of her hand.
"Look at your mother, Evie," Joe said. "A beauty like that shouldn't be stuck in Queens, right?"
Mom snorted as she took butter out of the icebox.
"A beauty like that should be lying around a pool, going out to restaurants, shopping all day. Not have her face in a hot oven. Right?"
"Right," I said.
Mom was trying to ignore us. "Don't be his stooge, Evie."
"So what would you say if we left tomorrow morning on a trip to Florida?"
"For crying out loud, Joe."
"I'm serious. Not just Florida — Palm Beach, the ritziest town in Florida. I got the car all gassed up, ready to go. So what would you say?"
"I'd say I have no clothes."
"Buy them there." Id say you re crazy.
"Like a fox. I was thinking about it today. I've been working too hard. It's time for a vacation, since we didn't take one this summer."
"That's what I said back in July." Mom jerked her head toward the living room. "Is she going?"
Joe spread his hands. "Honey, I've got to at least ask her —"
She turned her back and began to swipe at a clean plate with a dish towel. "Then I'm not going. Have a good time with Gladys."
What about me?
I wanted to ask. But I clammed up. I knew when to talk, when to make a joke to get them talking to each other again, and when to watch and keep my mouth shut.
Joe poured himself some whiskey and drained it. "Into the breach," he said, heading out to Grandma Glad.
Mom kept rubbing that plate. We could both hear the murmur from the living room, and I was dying to go listen, but I didn't.
When Joe came back in, he headed straight for his drink. He winked at me over the rim. "After dinner, we'll pack," he said. "Grandma Glad isn't coming. She doesn't want to miss Sunday Mass with Father Owen."
Mom leaned against the counter. I watched them look at each other. I expected Mom to be happy, give Joe a kiss. But she didn't.
"Palm Beach!" I said. "It sounds so fancy!"
He sat on the chair and patted his knee. "Come on, Bev. Let's blow this joint and have some fun, the way we used to. Everybody needs some fun once in a while."
"You seem to get your share," she said.
Mom doesn't give in easy. She took her time folding the dish towel and placing it back on the counter. Then she walked over and sat on his knee.
"I've never been to Florida," I hinted.
I sat on his other knee and slung an arm around his neck. "C'mon, Joe. I've never even been south of Jersey."
Don't stick me here with Grandma Glad,
I prayed.
Joe laughed. "You don't have to give the soft-soap, Evie." He put his arms around us both. "I can't do without my two beautiful girls."
"What about school?" Mom asked. "Evie starts next week."
"Evie doesn't need school. She's smarter than her teachers."
"Can I get a white bathing suit?" I asked.
"Sure. You'll be a regular Rita Hayworth. Now," he said, giving us both a squeeze, "I'm starved. Get me a saw and I'll carve the roast."
I laughed, leaning back against his shoulder. It felt reckless and crazy, like we could do anything, jump in the car and drive hundreds of miles, just to chase summer.
It didn't feel like anyone was chasing us. Not at all.
Chapter 5
The trip took four days and three flat tires. Long days of driving on two-lane roads, passing trucks loaded with squawking chickens in Delaware, and cars with salesmen driving with their hats on outside of Washington, and trucks loaded with apples in Virginia. At first we sang and read magazines out loud and Mom passed back cheese sandwiches.
Maybe Joe's jokes became a little too jokey. Maybe we had the fizz, but only because Joe was shaking up the soda bottle so hard. Because pretty soon we weren't talking much, and we just wanted to get there already. Joe stopped trying to entertain us and started speeding, watching out for local cops.
The farther south we got, the warmer it grew. At first we loved the heat, cranking down the car windows and tossing our sweaters in the trunk. But then it was not just warm, it was hot.
At home, when it was hot, relief was a fan, a glass of lemonade, and maybe a bus ride to Rockaway Beach. But there was no end to this. Just hot metal and hot road, until sweat stuck us to the seats and we just wanted to dive into any shade we could find. Except we couldn't; we had to keep on driving.
Joe's left arm was sunburned from where it hung out the window. He wet a handkerchief with water and put it on the back of his neck.
We started getting up at
five a.m
. to drive in the cool part of the day. We quit by three. Mom made Joe find a motel, or a guest house. Each place had stained chenille bedspreads, and rust stains around the drains, and toilets that Mom scrubbed first before she let me sit on them.
I cheered when we crossed the Florida state line. Dust billowed and blew in the window, and even the glimpse of the ocean was just a cheat, because when we stopped and pulled over to wade in the water, we were itchy with sand and salt when we dried off.
Mom unstuck her legs from the seat, one after the other, then lifted herself up and spread her skirt underneath.
"You said it would be warm," she said, fanning herself with her hat. "You didn't say it would be hellfire and damnation."
"What do we care? We'll be in the pool all week," Joe said.
"If we ever get there," Mom said. "Are we driving to South America? You in trouble with the law, Joe?”
“Shut up, Bev!" Joe snapped.
My mother jerked her head to look out her window. They didn't talk for another fifty miles.
Just before dark we drove into West Palm Beach, straight down a busy street with drugstores and a movie theater and people walking with ice-cream cones. I hung out the window like a dog, lapping it up.
"Now this is more like it," Mom said.
"Wait till you see the ritzy part," Joe said. He turned onto a small bridge and we drove over the water. "You see? Palm Beach isn't just a beach, it's an island. You don't have to mix with the suckers back there on the mainland. This place belongs to the rich."
Now it belonged to us. Tall palm trees marched down a row, taller than any palms I'd seen so far. Or maybe it just seemed that way because they were
rich
palm trees, the way I thought of Humphrey Bogart as handsome just because he was a movie star. I knew we were heading toward the ocean because I could smell it. And then there it was, still blue against the lavender sky.
The houses that lined the road were as big as hotels. They were painted in the colors of summer dresses, pink and yellow and cream.
"What gives? They're all boarded up," Mom said.
I noticed the closed shutters on the windows, like the houses had their eyes shut tight. There was nobody walking on the street. No cars driving by.
"Where is everyone?" Mom asked.
"They're all in their pools, counting their money," Joe said.
"There's a hotel!" I sang out.
Joe slowed down, but it was closed.
"Is this Palm Beach or a ghost town?" Mom asked.
I saw Joe's mouth twist and I was afraid he'd tell her to shut up again. "Look at all these flowers!" I said. "I bet there's lots more hotels. This is Palm Beach."
There were other hotels. Plenty of them. But they were all closed. Huge, grand hotels like palaces. Smaller hotels with courtyards with dry fountains.
"Let's go back to West Palm," Mom said.
"I said Palm Beach and it's going to be Palm Beach," Joe told us. "So the place closes down in the summer. Things will be opening up. It's fall."
"I thought you said you made a reservation, Joe," Mom said.
They both fell silent after that. I was the only one talking, pointing out houses and trees and the blooming bushes, explosions of pink and purple. Mom had her window cranked down all the way and tapped her finger on the door. I could smell Joe's perspiration from the backseat and see the stain on his shirt.
Then, just when I was sure he'd have to give up, he turned down a side street and we saw it. A hotel with a light on. And it was pink. Pink as cotton candy.
"Le Mirage," I said, reading the sign.
"Well, it does feel like we crossed a burning desert," Mom said.
Joe drove down a circular driveway that ended under a porch. "Look at this fancy drive, just made for a Cadillac."
"Too bad we're driving a Ford," Mom said. But she said it in a funny way, and we all laughed again.
A skinny boy in a red jacket and black pants suddenly came running out to open our doors before we could. "Welcome to the Le Mirage Hotel," he said as Joe got out of the car and stretched his back. The boy held out his hand. "Your keys, sir. I'll get your bags."
Mom and I linked arms and caught our breath when we walked into the lobby. It was almost cool inside the tiled space. It looked like a castle, only smaller. There was carved wood everywhere, and whenever they could add gilt, there was gilt.
"It's like Radio City," Mom said, hugging my arm.
"There's a painting on the ceiling," I said, tilting my head back.
A tall man and woman strolled across the lobby toward the dining room. The man touched the small of the woman's back as she walked. She wore a pink dress with a deep neckline and a black sequined cardigan draped over her tanned shoulders, fastened with a brooch. Her black hair was long, past her shoulders, and straight. It was pinned to one side with a clip that looked like a spray of diamonds but were probably rhinestones. She wasn't beautiful — Mom had her beat by a mile — but she was the kind of woman who made heads turn.
"Now there's an attractive couple," Mom said in the voice she used when she approved of something, like Gregory Peck in
Duel in the Sun
or Butter Rum Life Savers. "I wonder where they're from."
"Jersey City by way of Kalamazoo," Joe said, which is a joke he makes if he means "nowhere and everywhere." But you could tell he was happy that a little shot of glamour had turned everything around.
We wanted the whole hotel to be as good as the lobby, and it almost was. We liked the white tablecloths and the clean towels, as many as we wanted. I had my first grapefruit, smothered in sugar. We learned that the bright flowers were
bougainvillea
and how to plan around a thunderstorm every day at four. We had never seen rain like that, pounding so hard it seemed to jump off the sidewalks straight back into the sky. We liked the breeze off the ocean at night, and the tiny green lizards, and the smell of night-blooming jasmine. We all got the giggles just hearing Joe say "I'll charge it to our suite."
It didn't take Mom long to realize that we were too dumb to know what everybody else knew — nobody came to Palm Beach in the fall. There were so few guests in the hotel that Mom and I were able to nickname them all, like Nice Fat Man and Mean Fat Man, Honeymoon Wife and Honeymoon Husband, Crabby Couple. We called the glamorous couple we'd seen when we checked in The Swanks.
The rest of the hotels didn't even open until December. All of the stores on Worth Avenue, Palm Beach's main drag, were closed. The Paramount Theatre was closed. We had landed in a ghost town.
The desk clerk told us about things to do — tennis lessons, boats we could rent — but we never got to them. We started to notice the worn upholstery on the sofas and the stains on the carpets. The hotel had been closed during the war, and nobody had bothered to fix it up.
Mom finally met the swanky couple by asking for a light. Their names were Tom and Arlene Grayson. She'd once worked for Hattie Carnegie, the dress designer. He owned a "small hotel" in New York. That did it for Mom.
The Swanks became The Graysons, and Mom and Joe started staying up late to play bridge with them.
I started eating dinner early in my room, sandwiches and potato chips. I'd eat in my damp bathing suit to stay cool, sitting on the carpet. Then I roamed around. I got to know how a hotel worked. I saw the closets that the maids disappeared into to fill carts top-heavy with towels and stinky with soaps. I saw the bored clerk at the desk sneaking looks at a girlie magazine. I saw the valets sitting on the white stone wall, smoking cigarettes. I peeked into the lounge with the stuffed sailfish where Mean Fat Man sat drinking alone every night. I walked the halls and played hopscotch with a penny for a potsy, hopping from rose to rose on the carpet. I didn't have to worry about being childish. There was nobody around to get embarrassed in front of.
It's crazy how you can go from not being bored to being bored out of your mind in about the time it takes to tie your shoes. I started to wonder about school and Margie and Jeff and when we'd be going home. I missed lying on my bed, listening to Sinatra on the record player. I was tired of being hot.
And then one night everything changed.
Chapter 6
I heard the laughter first.