The Beach Club

2 Memorial Day

May 25

Dear S.B.T.,

So, we’re at it once again this year! While it’s true I’m not getting any younger, I still have no interest in selling the hotel. My staff is in place, Mack is back running the show, and my wife, Therese, is sitting next to me at the helm. The hotel has been buffed and polished and we look forward to a stellar season. As ever, you are invited to reveal your identity to me and come sit in my office, take in the view and talk. I feel we would have a great deal in common, and maybe after an hour or two of face time you will understand why my response to your offer has to be no, thank you. We’re doing fine.

Cordially,

Bill Elliott

Therese Elliott was only interested in the unhappy people who stayed at her hotel. She, like Tolstoy, found happy people all alike; they were boring, dullards, plukes. And so, Mack dealt with the happy guests (except for Andrea, the woman with the autistic son, but Therese sensed this was a different matter altogether) and he left Therese with the damaged and wounded, the guests who suffered despite their money. They had lost a wife, or a child, or their leg or their breasts to cancer. They assumed responsibility for a parent with Alzheimer’s. They were divorced, widowed, married but alone. They had been abused. They fought suicide, depression, alcoholism.

Therese worked the reservation phone over the winter in Aspen and she heard all kinds of stories as she booked the rooms. She vividly remembered the day she spoke to Leo Hearn-February 6-it snowed eleven inches the night before, fresh powder, and Bill left the house at nine-thirty for Buttermilk Mountain. Therese’s daughter, Cecily, called at ten-noon on the East Coast where she went to boarding school-to say she had the flu and was puking her guts up. Therese felt both upset and angry-upset that Cecily was sick and so far away, and angry that Bill wasn’t home to worry with Therese because he was too busy skiing the green slopes. It was horribly sad to think of Bill, who had once raced down Jackpot with the best of them, limited to skiing with awkward beginners. Why don’t you stay home with me? Therese had asked. We’ll play cards, go shopping. But Bill got a thrill out of feeling his skis cut through the snow, just a few sweet turns. Therese imagined Bill falling, his body shattering like a teacup. She would be a widow, left to raise a headstrong teenage daughter and run the hotel all alone. Tragic possibilities always lurked near the front of Therese’s mind, just behind her common sense.

At one o’clock, Leo Hearn called.

Leo Hearn wasn’t a new client. He’d been coming to the hotel for four or five years and he’d always been Mack’s domain-he was hale, robust, a Man’s Man. He had started a second family in his late fifties: a young wife, two small children. He was a lawyer. In other words, someone who held very little interest for Therese, until this phone call.

She noticed something new in his voice right away. A softening, a surprising deference.

“Hello, I’d like to make a reservation for Memorial Day weekend, please,” he said. “I might be too late, but, oh, heck, I hope not. This is Leo Hearn calling from Chicago.”

“Leo Hearn?” Therese said. The man whose voice boomed through the lobby, making the staff cringe? The man who broke one of Mack’s fingers with his crushing handshake? “Leo, this is Therese Elliott.” She flipped through the reservation book to May, Memorial Day. “I’m looking at Memorial Day right now and it’s wide open. What do you need?”

“I need a better shrink and a better nanny,” he said. “In fact, I think what I really need is to start over. You know, with my life.”

Therese looked out her floor-to-ceiling window at the back of Aspen Mountain. “I see.”

“My wife is gone,” Leo said. “You remember Kelly? She left me. And I mean left. She left without any money and she left without the kids.”

“The babies?” Therese asked.

“Whitney is ten months and Cole is almost four,” he said. “She left them.”

Therese’s throat soured as she thought of Cecily, puking into a plastic bucket in some awful dorm room two thousand miles away. That was bad enough. She couldn’t imagine a mother abandoning her children, her babies, forever.

“My doctor said I should keep everything as normal as possible. So that’s why I’m calling. I want to bring the kids to the island. All my kids. I have two older boys too, did you know that? Boys, ha!” Leo said. “They’re grown men. Of course I fouled everything up with them in the eighties when I divorced their mother. But they say they’ll come to Nantucket. Humoring me, probably. I think my oldest son is gay. He’s an attorney and he works on gay rights and the kid’s never had a girlfriend that I’ve known about. My other son, Fred, is a third-year at Harvard Law, but Fred is tricky, see, because Fred’s still angry with me from what happened with his mother. I was hoping if the kids spent time with their older brothers maybe they would stop crying.” He paused, and Therese wondered if Leo Hearn weren’t so boring after all. “I just want my children to stop crying.”

Therese gazed out at the mountain, thinking, Please, Bill, come home. “I understand.”

Leo cleared his throat. “Do you have three rooms available?”

Therese was puttering around the lobby on the Friday of Memorial Day, perfecting it for opening weekend, when Leo Hearn and his children arrived.

“Leo,” she said, walking over. “I’m glad you got here safely.”

“Therese,” Leo said. He hugged her and kissed her cheek awkwardly. He turned to his family. “Meet the gang. You know Cole and the baby. This is our nanny, Chantal, and my sons Bart and Fred. We’re quite the entourage.”

Entourage indeed. An attractive blonde held the baby girl. Then the sons: the one named Bart, tall and thin, dressed in a suit, and the one named Fred a younger replica of Leo Hearn himself-broad shouldered and stocky. Weaving between everyone’s legs was the little boy, Cole. Therese crouched down, and said, “Hello, Cole. Welcome back.”

Cole stopped a second and looked at her, his brown eyes suspicious. Then he went back to his aimless weaving. An unhappy child was the sign of an unhappy family; no one could convince Therese differently.

“Come here, Cole,” Leo said. Cole ran and hid under the piano. Leo shrugged. He looked at his other two sons and rubbed his hands together. “So, what do you say, guys, should we play some tennis this afternoon?”

“I don’t know,” Fred, the young Leo, said. “We just got here. Maybe we could relax.”

“Maybe,” Leo said. “Or maybe we could play tennis like I suggested. You want to play, don’t you, Bart?” he asked the son in the suit.

Bart loosened his tie. “Sure, Dad, I’ll play.”

“Well, then, we need a fourth,” Leo said.

Slow down, Leo, stop trying so hard. Therese’s mother instincts kicked in like adrenaline. She went back to watering her plants.

“We need a fourth,” Leo repeated. His eyes scanned the lobby as though someone might magically materialize.

“I don’t have to play,” Fred said. “I’d really rather relax. You can play with Bart.”

“This is a family weekend,” Leo said. “I’d like to play tennis with both of you. We just need a fourth.”

“I was third seed singles at Bilbo High School in 1958,” Therese said. “But you probably don’t want to play with an old woman.”

Leo smiled. “No, that’s great, that’s perfect. We’d love to have you join us, Therese. Wouldn’t we, guys?”

Fred and Bart rustled around and made gestures that looked sort of like nods.

“Shall we say four o’clock?” Leo asked.

“That gives you time to relax,” Therese said. “Why don’t you check in and Vance can show you to your rooms.” She set her watering can down on the piano. Cole was stretched out on the carpet underneath, pretending to be asleep. Therese whispered to him, “When you wake up I have some beach toys you might like.” She waited a few seconds and Cole raised his head.

“What kind of toys?” he asked.

“Toys for building castles,” she said. “Want to see?”

“I want my mom back,” Cole said. “She’s not coming back.” He had thick black eyelashes, the kind grown women envied.

“I know you want to see your mom,” Therese said. “But what I have are beach toys. Do you want to see the beach toys?”

Cole nodded.

Therese held out her hand. “Come with me.”

After Therese gave Cole a bucket, shovel, and a large inflatable lobster, and delivered him safely to his room, she went into Bill’s office and collapsed in one of the wicker chairs by the window. Bill typed at his computer.

“The Hearns are here,” she said. “Remember I told you the wife vanished and left mister with those two tiny children? Plus a couple of grown sons from the first marriage?” Out the window, she was glad to see both Bart and Fred spreading beach towels under an umbrella. “Remember I told you? Well, I’m playing tennis with them this afternoon.”

Bill stopped typing. “Call me crazy, but it sounds like you’re meddling, Therese. Or getting ready to meddle.”

Cole and the nanny trudged onto the beach. Cole ran for the edge of the water with his pail and shovel. Just a normal little boy. Therese’s mother instincts whistled like a tea kettle. She looked at Bill, and at the volume of Robert Frost poems on his desk. The two of them had known so much pain. Therese’s way of dealing with it was to sniff out other people’s sore spots, wanting to make them better. Bill’s way was to read his poetry.

“I am meddling,” she said. “But they needed a fourth.”

“Be careful,” Bill said. “These are people’s lives you’re dealing with. Not lab animals set up for one of your psychology experiments.”

Therese stood up, smoothed the folds of her silk skirt. “I take great offense at that.”

“I know you do,” he said. “But will you please be careful?”

“I’m always careful,” she said.

“When have you been careful?” Bill asked. “I have never met anyone more willing to get involved in the jumble of other people’s lives. It’s your insatiable need to clean everything up, to create order, to make things lovely again. You can’t stand to see a mess.”

“I want to help,” Therese said. “I’ve never done anything except try to help.”

“What about Mrs. Ling leaving her husband last year at the end of her stay? Are you going to tell me that wasn’t any of your doing? What about convincing the Avermans that they should send their son to military school? What about arranging the wedding in the lobby for the woman who was dying of lupus?”

“She wanted to get married!” Therese said. “I helped make that woman’s life complete. And Mrs. Ling is happier without her husband-you read the card she sent during the holidays.”

Bill held up his palms. “Therese, I’m only asking you to think about pulling back a little this year. To begin with, think about letting Leo Hearn deal with his family problems on his own. What do you say to that?”

Therese put her hands on her hips. She and Bill were opposites: Bill liked numbers, and the cool, lofty images he found in poetry-and not just any poetry but the poetry of Robert Frost, who wrote about the woods, lakes, paths, leaves. Frost: the man’s very name dripped icicles. Bill wasn’t equipped to deal with the guests-happy or miserable.

“Tennis is at four,” she said. “So if anyone’s looking for me, that’s where I’ll be.”

“Be careful!” Bill said.

Nantucket in May was funny as far as the weather was concerned. It had been fair and breezy all day but at four o’clock fog rolled in. Therese changed into her whites and she was standing on the front porch of the lobby when Fred popped out of the gray mist.

“Dad and Bart are going to be a minute,” he said. “They were the ones who wanted to play and now they’re not even ready.”

Therese bounced her racket off her knee; she still used a wooden racket, with a frame. “So, have you been to Nantucket before?” she asked.

“No,” Fred said. “Nantucket was a place where Dad brought his new family. We only got invited this year because the crisis hit.”

“The crisis?”

“Dad’s wife, Kelly, left him and the kids high and dry. I hate to say it but that’s what you get for marrying someone twenty-five years younger than yourself. Dad deserved it. What goes around comes around and all that.” Anger lifted off Fred like a bad smell.

“What do you do, Fred?” Therese asked.

“Me? I just finished law school. I’m studying for the bar.”

“So you’re going to be a lawyer,” Therese said.

Fred shoved his hands in the pockets of his white shorts and bowed his head. “I don’t know,” he said. He looked at her. “Have you ever met a lawyer you liked?”

Therese laughed. “What a question. If I didn’t like lawyers, I’d be out of business.”

“I don’t like lawyers,” Fred said. “Actually, my brother’s okay and he’s a lawyer. But he’s different.” He swung around to look at the lobby. “Hey, do you own this place?”

“My husband and I do.”

“Man, it must be a gold mine.”

“It is,” Therese said. Fred smiled as she hoped he would. And then Leo and Bart came around the corner with Chantal, Cole, and the baby.

“The kids are going to come with us,” Leo said. “I thought I’d make this a real family affair. Cole can chase the balls.”

Cole started to cry. “I was having fun on the beach,” he said.

Fred kicked a hermit crab shell across the parking lot. “Great,” he said. “Just great.”

They reached the courts at four-fifteen. The fog was thickening.

“Is this even worth it?” Fred asked. “In a few minutes we won’t be able to see the ball.”

Leo opened a can of balls and whacked one across the net at Fred’s feet. “You need to change your attitude, Buster.”

Chantal sat in the grass near the net while the baby toddled around her. Cole was crying.

“This is spectacular,” Fred said. He turned to Therese. “Have you ever seen such a happy family?”

“Would you like to be on my team?” she asked.

“Okay,” he said. He yelled across the net. “Hey, Dad, we’re going to play mixed doubles. Me and Therese against you and Bart.”

“Fuck you, Fred,” Bart said.

“Watch your language,” Leo said.

“That was uncalled for, Fred,” Bart said.

“I was only kidding,” Fred said. “I was only trying to add some levity to this little affair, this pathetic attempt at family bonding. Sorry if I offended you.”

“Dad’s right,” Bart said. “You need to lighten up.”

“Why are you kissing Dad’s ass, Bart?” Fred said.

Leo raised his voice. “I said watch your language. We have the children here.”

Then Bart turned to his father. “Why do you call them ‘the children’? Fred and I are also your children.”

“It’s an age thing,” Leo said.

“So now that I’m twenty-eight years old I’m no longer your child? I’ve become, what, your colleague?”

Chantal stood up. “I can’t take this,” she said. Therese hadn’t even realized the girl spoke English. Chantal, wasn’t that a French name? The girl had a flat, Midwestern accent. “This low-level ground fire is driving me nuts. You people don’t need to be playing tennis. You need to be dealing with your issues. I’m going back to the hotel.” She picked up Whitney and took Cole by the arm. He protested, and Chantal said, “Fine, you want to stay, stay.” She marched off.

Therese watched her go. She should probably leave as well. Bill believed that the only people who could fix family problems were the family members themselves. But Therese worried about Cole. The skin around his eyes was red and mottled from so much crying. He wore a little white polo shirt and little tennis shoes. He sat in the grass with his feet out in front of him, his arms crossed.

“I should go, too,” Therese said. “I don’t belong here.”

“Please stay, Therese.” This from Fred. “I don’t think any of us can handle it if another woman walks out.”

“Yes,” Leo echoed. “Please stay. We’ll behave, won’t we, guys?”

“Okay,” Therese said. “I’ll stay.” She winked at Cole. He hiccuped.

Therese concentrated on her tennis-the green ball and her old-fashioned racket-but she couldn’t help noticing the silence that settled over them like the fog. The men barely grunted out the score. Was this their idea of good behavior? If you have nothing nice to say, say nothing at all? Didn’t they know it was unhealthy to hold feelings in?

A little before five o’clock, they were tied at six games apiece.

“Shall we have a tiebreaker to see who gets the set?” Leo asked.

“I agree under one condition,” Therese said. “You men have to talk to one another.”

“Talk?” Fred said.

“Yes, you know, talk to one another, like normal people,” Therese said. “Chantal was right. You need to communicate.”

Fred got ready to serve. “Okay,” he said. “I have something I’d like to talk about. I’ve decided I don’t want to be a lawyer.” He slammed the ball and it whizzed past Leo.

“What?” Leo said. “What did you say?”

Fred and Therese switched sides and Fred took another ball from his pocket. He tossed it up and caught it, and looked at his father. “I don’t want to be a lawyer.”

“You just graduated from Harvard Law School and now you don’t want to be a lawyer? Ninety thousand dollars later and you’ve suddenly had a change of heart?”

“It’s about more than ninety thousand dollars,” Fred said. “It’s about my life.”

“Well, I’m gay,” Bart said.

“Wait a minute,” Leo said, wiping his forehead with the sleeve of his shirt. “One bombshell at a time. You don’t want to be a lawyer?”

“Don’t ignore what I said, Dad,” Bart said. “Don’t pretend like the fact that I’m gay doesn’t exist.”

“No,” Fred said, “I don’t want to be a lawyer.”

The fog was so thick Therese could barely make out Cole at the edge of the court. But he sat there, listening.

Leo looked at Bart. “You’re gay. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do with that. Say great? That’s wonderful? I’m so happy for you? What’s appropriate?”

“How about, ‘Thank you for telling me’?”

“Okay,” Leo said. “Thank you for telling me. And, Fred, if you don’t want to be a lawyer, then what do you want to be?”

“I don’t know,” Fred said. “A motorcycle cop. An independent filmmaker. A house husband.”

Bart looked at his watch. “Our time’s up,” he said. “We have to be off the court.”

“And nobody won,” Fred said.

The fog made it look as though the afternoon were going up in smoke. Therese’s fault, for meddling. As they walked back to the hotel, Cole took her hand.

“I want my mom,” he whispered.

Therese squeezed him to her side. “I know,” she said. “I know.”

The next morning, Therese followed behind the chambermaids with her checklist, inspecting their cleaning jobs. Was the toilet working? Was the temperature of the water in the toilet bowl correct? Did the tile floor in the entryway need scrubbing? Were the lightbulbs working? Therese had twenty-four items on her checklist. In all the years that the hotel had been open, no one had ever complained of a dirty room. Not once.

Therese watched one of her new chambermaids-a girl from Darien named Elizabeth-as she started on the bathroom in room 7.

“Check under the mirror for grime,” Therese said. “Dirt has favorite hiding places and that’s one of them.”

Elizabeth wiped her forehead with the back of her rubbergloved hand. “Okay,” she said. She went back to scouring the top of the toilet, then she turned to Therese. “But do I really have to check the temperature of the water in the toilet bowl?”

“We need to make sure the mixing valves are working correctly. If the water’s too hot the toilet will whistle, and the guests will be up all night listening to it. If the water’s too cold…well, have you ever sat on a toilet filled with ice cold water?”

Elizabeth shook her head.

“It’s no fun,” Therese said. “Just take your gloves off and stick your finger in the water. See if it feels comfortable.”

Elizabeth got two very distinct worry lines in her forehead. “But people poop in that water.”

“By now the poop is hundreds of yards away. It’s clean water, I assure you.” Therese watched Elizabeth pull at her rubber glove one finger at a time and gingerly dip the end of her pinky into the water.

“It’s comfortable,” Elizabeth said.

“For goodness’ sake.” She nudged Elizabeth aside and dragged her own hand through the water. “You’re right,” Therese said.

Therese moved on to room 8, knowing that Elizabeth was rolling her eyes in frustration and would no doubt write a letter home to her mother complaining about her boss who made her test the toilet bowl water. Half the chambermaids Therese hired quit, but the ones who stayed became the world’s best housekeepers.

In room 8, sitting on the unmade queen-sized bed, was Leo Hearn. Therese checked her clipboard.

“This isn’t your room,” she said. “What are you doing in here? You don’t belong in here.”

“I was waiting for you,” he said.

“I’m working,” Therese said. “Why aren’t you with your children?”

“My children hate me,” Leo said. “I can’t get anything right. The nanny hates me and she’s not even related to me. No wonder my wife left.”

“Your kids don’t hate you,” Therese said. “You’re just having a difficult time.”

“I’ll say it’s difficult. One kid is a lawyer in a good practice but he’s gay. He likes men. The other kid is straight but he doesn’t want to be a lawyer. He wants to be a house husband. I told them if I took the lawyer part of Bart and joined it with the heterosexual part of Fred, they’d make the perfect son.”

“Oh, Leo,” Therese said.

“I let that pearl slip after four Stoli tonics at dinner last night. Now neither one of them is speaking to me. It’s like I don’t exist.”

“You hurt them,” Therese said. “You need to apologize.”

“At the time, I thought maybe they’d take it as a compliment. They each got it half right.”

“No,” Therese said. “Because you’re telling them that they only equal half a person in your eyes. You’re not accepting their choices.”

“I don’t know what to do,” Leo said, his broad shoulders slumping.

Therese sat next to him. “You want a piece of advice from an old woman?”

“You’re no older than me,” he said. “But you’re right. I feel old.”

Therese caught her reflection in the mirror over the dresser. If Bill were watching her now, he’d cringe. He’d tell her to pat Leo Hearn on the hand and wish him good luck. But Therese wanted to help. “Twenty-eight years ago, I lost a child. A son. Born dead.” Therese felt Leo shift slightly away from her on the mattress. “And I would give anything to have just one of your three sons. They are strong, healthy, smart, good people and it’s your responsibility to love them. That’s all, Leo, just love them.”

“I’m sorry you lost your son,” Leo said.

“I’m sorry, too,” she said. “But I’m even sorrier to see someone like you with four beautiful children acting like an ass.”

“I am an ass,” Leo said. “I am just a really big ass. No wonder my wife left me.”

“Stop thinking about yourself, Leo. Parents aren’t allowed to think about themselves.”

“Do you have some kind of instruction manual that I don’t have?” he asked.

“My instruction manual has been twenty-eight years of pain for my son. And it makes me grateful for what I do have, my husband, my daughter Cecily.” Therese misted up. She waved her hand. “Go find your kids,” she said.

Leo left the room and Therese watched him go. Then she eyed her checklist. At that moment it seemed so silly she wanted to pitch it out the window. Therese let a couple of tears drip down her cheeks, then she heard a knock on the door. It was Elizabeth.

“Are you okay?” Elizabeth asked.

Therese wiped her face and looked in the mirror. The white streak in her orange hair stood out like a scream in a nursery, something wrong, something amiss. Her baby boy dead. How shocked she’d been to look at herself in the mirror after thirteen grueling hours of labor and find that she’d turned into an old woman, with white hair. White hair that couldn’t be dyed, that wouldn’t hold color. So she wouldn’t couldn’t forget.

On Sunday, Leo approached Therese during breakfast. He lowered his voice. “Things are better,” he said. “I took your suggestion and recanted the statement about the perfect son.”

“Good for you,” Therese said.

Leo checked his watch. “Cole hasn’t cried in twenty hours. A new record. But I still feel like I’m balancing a tray of expensive china on my head.”

“That’s known in the parents’ manual as the balancing-expensive-china feeling,” Therese said. “All parents feel that way sometimes.”

“I’m taking Bart and Fred out alone tonight,” Leo said. “A men’s night out, you know, big, juicy steaks, red wine, cigars, the whole bit.”

“Just love them, Leo,” Therese said.

“I’m leaving Chantal with the kids and ordering them take out shrimp and fried clams. But would you check on them? In case Cole starts to cry. I know he likes you.”

“I’d be happy to check on them if it makes you feel better.”

Leo spun his coffee cup in his hands. “You know, I’ve been thinking about what you said and I really am sorry about your son.”

“I didn’t tell you that story to get your sympathy, Leo,” Therese said.

“I know.” Leo turned red and looked down at the carpet. “I just wanted you to know it made me think.”

“Good.” It made him think, but he would never know what it felt like to hold a dead baby. Lucky, lucky man. “I’ll keep an eye on your kids,” she said. “Don’t worry about a thing.”

Later, Therese would recall certain images: the Hearn men dressed in navy blazers and white shirts and bright summer ties standing on the front porch of the lobby while Chantal snapped their picture, their arms wound around each other, looking not so much like father and sons as like fraternity brothers, team members, friends. Then, another picture with Leo holding Cole, and Bart and Fred holding the baby girl. Therese watched all this from the bay window of her house, and she felt pride at that moment. Pride! She had helped! Therese noted the arrival of the young delivery man from Meals on Keels who showed up with Styrofoam cartons of food. She thought, “I’ll check on them after they eat.” Therese searched her empty kitchen cabinets for something that might qualify as dinner. She was a great housekeeper but a terrible cook and she thought guiltily of all the times Cecily had complained growing up, “There’s nothing to eat in this house!” Therese fixed two cucumber and cream cheese sandwiches and a handful of pretzels. She poured herself a glass of Chardonnay and a cranberry juice for Bill. She took the glasses first and then the plates to the bedroom where Bill was lying in the near dark with a washcloth over his eyes, snoring. It was seven o’clock.

Then the phone rang and Therese left the plates of food on the bed next to Bill’s sleeping body as she went to answer the phone. She remembered hoping it was Cecily.

But it was Tiny, her normally serene voice high-pitched, like the very top of a guitar string. “We have a situation down here. I’ve called an ambulance.”

Therese flew down the stairs, out of her house, and across the parking lot, her long skirt billowing behind her. There had been no sense asking what or who. Her mother instinct shrieked like a siren. It was the Hearn children.

Chantal stood in the lobby holding Cole. His arms and legs were pink and swollen, his face a red, angry balloon.

Chantal was shaking. “He’s not choking, I checked. I know how to do the Heimlich but he’s not choking. I don’t know what’s happening.”

Therese took Cole from her; he was heavier than she expected. “Go get the baby.”

Therese put her ear to Cole’s mouth. Cole’s breathing was hoarse and wheezy. His eyes were swollen shut. “Can you hear me?” Therese asked him. “Are you awake?” Then Therese heard sirens. “Call a cab for the girl,” Therese said to Tiny. “And call Leo Hearn at the Club Car. I’ll go with the boy to the hospital.”

Therese hurried out the front of the lobby to meet the ambulance. Cole’s body went limp in her arms. The paramedic jumped out and took Cole from her.

“He fainted,” Therese said. Cole’s skin was turning scarlet; he looked like a boiled lobster. “Is he going to die?”

The ambulance driver flung the doors of the ambulance open, put Cole on a stretcher and loaded him in. “You coming with us?” he asked Therese. “You the boy’s grandmother?”

“No,” she said. Heart breaking at the word “grandmother” though she was certainly old enough. Mother. Mother. “But I am going with you.” Therese hiked her skirt and climbed into the back of the ambulance. The siren sounded and they sped off down North Beach Road.

The paramedic lifted Cole’s eyelids. “The kid’s in shock,” he said. He put a blanket over Cole, then took his blood pressure. He produced a needle from his bag and stuck it into Cole’s arm.

“What are you doing?” Therese asked. “I said I’m not the boy’s mother, or grandmother. Don’t you have to ask permission or something?”

“We have a little anaphylactic reaction here,” the paramedic said. “A severe allergic swelling accompanied by hives, low blood pressure, fainting. And the kid’s having problems breathing because his throat is swelling shut. Has he been eating nuts maybe? Or shellfish?”

“Clams, I think,” Therese said. She wondered if saying “a little anaphylactic reaction” was like saying “a little cancer” or “a little heart attack.” Low blood pressure, shock, fainting-all that sounded so serious. “He’s allergic, then?”

“Look at him,” the paramedic said. “This is more than indigestion.”

“Is he going to die?” Therese asked again. She might fend off the worst kind of news if she faced it head on. Was the child going to die? Less than six months before, she rode in another ambulance, when it was Bill on the stretcher, his face pale and shiny with sweat. The paramedics then talked about flying Bill to Denver in a helicopter that Therese suspected they saved for dying people. She had been too afraid then even to speak the words. But now she saw it was easier to start with the worst possibility; she might outsmart death by pretending she wasn’t afraid.

The paramedic had red hair like Cecily and he was young, perhaps only a few years older than Cecily. He smiled and patted Therese’s shoulder.

“No,” he said, “he’s not going to die.”

At the hospital, they took Cole away on a gurney and the nurse tried to hand Therese forms to fill out, but she said, “I’m not his mother, I’m not his grandmother. I’m not related at all. I don’t know his date of birth or anything. His father will be here soon.”

A minute later, Chantal ran into the waiting room. She held the baby, who was asleep.

“I’m sure to get fired now,” she said.

Therese took the baby from Chantal and nodded for her to sit down. Therese kissed the sweet, fragrant top of the baby’s head. She remembered Cecily at this age: the tiny, solid weight of her. The smell of a baby, the softness of a baby. Baby, baby.

She whispered to Chantal, “It’s not your fault, dear. Cole was allergic to what you ate. Did you have clams?”

Chantal sniffled. “Clams and shrimp. And then he swelled up like a piece of bubble gum. This whole trip has been a nightmare.”

Leo stormed into the waiting room with Bart and Fred behind him. Tie loose, eyes bloodshot, smelling like smoke.

“What happened?” he said. “Where’s Cole? I want to see my son.”

Therese put a finger to her lips. “Cole had an allergic reaction to the clams. You need to speak to the nurse. She wants you to fill out some forms.”

“I don’t want to fill out any goddamned forms! I want to see my son! I get a call at the goddamned restaurant telling me my child has been rushed to the emergency room, and I’d like to see him.” Leo glared at Therese, as though she were responsible. How could she blame him? She had given Leo permission to love his children, without warning him that as soon as you allowed yourself to love them fully, you left yourself open to this kind of hurt, this kind of incredible fear. Leo started in on the nurse at the desk.

“What happened?” Fred asked.

“It was an allergic reaction to the clams, they think,” Therese said. She uneasily recalled that emergencies were like this: you repeated what little information you had again and again until finally you received more information. “He turned bright pink and puffy, and right before the ambulance arrived he fainted in my arms. The paramedic gave him a shot. The paramedic seemed to think Cole was going to be fine.”

Leo returned from the desk with a clipboard. “They won’t let me see him yet,” he said. “They said the doctor will be out shortly, whatever that means. Cole had an allergic reaction to the shellfish.” Leo looked at Fred. “Did you know he was allergic to shellfish?”

Fred shook his head.

“Bart, did you know Cole was allergic to shellfish?”

“No, Dad, I didn’t.”

“I didn’t know either,” Chantal offered up. “Otherwise I wouldn’t have let him eat the clams. But he said he wanted some. I just gave them to him without thinking.”

“I didn’t know he was allergic,” Leo said. “I’m the boy’s father and I did not know he was allergic to shellfish.” He collapsed into a molded plastic chair.

Bart patted him on the back. “It’s okay, Dad.”

“It’s not okay,” Leo said. “Because I’m sure his mother knew he was allergic, and his mother’s not here. She took that important piece of information with her, just like she took all of the other important pieces of information. I didn’t know Cole was allergic, I don’t know how to make Cole stop crying, and I certainly don’t know how to care for a baby girl. I only had boys, and I don’t know much about them either.”

They were all quiet for a while and then Fred cleared his throat. “Is it possible that this is the first time Cole’s ever eaten shellfish and that nobody knew he was allergic because he’d never tried it before?”

“It’s possible,” Chantal said. “I’ve never seen Cole eat anything but hot dogs and pasta.”

Fred tousled his father’s gray hair. “So that means if Kelly were here, she wouldn’t have known Cole was allergic either.”

“Thinking like a lawyer,” Bart said. “Harvard isn’t wasted after all.”

A bald man in a blue jogging suit came out into the waiting room. “Mr. Hearn? Mrs. Hearn?”

“Are you the doctor?” Leo asked.

“Dr. Maniscalco,” he said, offering his hand. “Nice to meet you. Cole is going to be fine. He had an allergic reaction to some clams he ate but we gave him a shot of epinephrine, and some corticosteroids to reduce the swelling. That should take care of it. He can never eat any kind of shellfish again. He shouldn’t be in a room where clams are steaming, he shouldn’t even pick up a clam on the beach. If you hadn’t gotten him here in time, there could have been some serious complications.”

“But he’s okay, right, Doctor?” Leo asked. “Can we take him home?”

The doctor nodded and Leo followed after him down the hall. He returned several minutes later holding Cole, whose brown eyes were wide open, thick lashes blinking; he was sucking his thumb. Therese felt the cool wind of relief. She watched her reflection in the sliding glass doors as she swayed the baby back and forth. It seemed so natural, holding a baby.

Bill was waiting up when she got home.

“What I want to know is,” he said, “are we going to get sued?”

“No,” Therese said.

“Good,” Bill said. “It’s the family of lawyers we’re dealing with so I was nervous. I woke up and found the sandwiches and I wondered why I was eating alone, and so I called Tiny. I guess I slept through the sirens.” He took Therese’s hand and she sat on the floor in front of his chair so he could rub her shoulders. “Was it awful?” he asked.

“I’ve seen worse,” Therese said. “But I was scared there for a while. In the end, though, the little boy’s okay, and I think the family is going to make it as well.”

“They survived the meddling of Therese Elliott,” Bill said.

What Therese wanted more than anything else at that moment was for Cecily to come home. She wanted to look at her own child and know that she was safe. And she wanted a good night’s sleep.

“We have fourteen check-outs tomorrow,” Therese said. “And only three chambermaids. And if that’s not bad enough, tomorrow is Memorial Day.”

Bill Elliott never forgot Memorial Day. In the morning, he made love to Therese as sweetly and tenderly as he knew how. He kissed her eyelids and they leaked tears. Therese clung to him, and when Bill entered her, her sobs quieted. Therese had been his wife for thirty years and still, Bill could not believe the love that overcame him. This Memorial Day morning, the love and sadness mixed together.

“I love you,” Bill said.

“I know.”

One hour in bed and they relived the full weight of a pain that had assaulted them so long ago. Though perhaps Bill was the only one who felt the full brunt of the pain; perhaps for Therese, the pain had faded over the years. He hoped for her sake that it had.

Twenty-eight years ago, Therese was thirty and Bill was thirty-two. Therese was eight months pregnant with their first child, and Bill worked for his father at the Beach Club. The hotel rooms had not yet been built, although Bill and Therese planned to see an architect and approach Big Bill with the idea-a Beach Club and a hotel. Rooms facing the water. It was thrilling to think of handing something so concrete to their new child. Thrilling to think about passing the hotel on to a son.

No one was ever able to explain what went wrong. Therese had sharp pains one day while shopping in town. She called the doctor from the lunch counter at Congdon’s Pharmacy and he jokingly told her not to drive the Jeep over the cobblestones. That night Therese asked Bill to feel her belly. Was the baby kicking? Tell me you feel the baby kicking. Bill spread both hands over Therese’s naked belly, his fingers splayed, and rubbed it as though it were a crystal ball. He thought he felt a distant pounding, but then he realized it was Therese’s frantic heartbeat. No, he felt nothing.

Therese called the doctor in the middle of the night, and he agreed to meet them at the hospital. Bill remembered the ride to the hospital-no ambulance, no sirens-just the quiet, dark minutes in the Jeep with Bill imagining how he would apologize to Dr. Stevenson for dragging him out of bed for no reason. It’s our first time, he’d say. We’re just a little nervous.

But an apology wasn’t necessary: The baby was dead. Dr. Stevenson induced labor and for thirteen hours Therese pushed-Bill at her side-both of them crying, Therese screaming out, It isn’t fair! Bill was thinking and maybe Therese too (Bill would never know), What if the doctor is mistaken? What if the baby is alive? Therese flung her arms against the metal rails of the bed, trying to hurt herself. It isn’t fair, she screamed, and no one-not Bill, not the nurses, not Dr. Stevenson-told her she was wrong.

The baby was a boy. A perfectly shaped, normal-seeming little boy, except his skin was gray and when Bill held him he was cool to the touch, like a baby made of porcelain. The nurse left them alone in the room with the baby; she told Bill they should hold the baby for as long as they wanted. “It makes the grieving easier,” she said. “Most couples who miscarry never get a chance to hold their baby.” Bill and Therese both held the baby. They held him separately; they held him together-for a few minutes, a complete family.

Bill found it impossible to believe that holding his son made his grieving easier. Even now, twenty-eight years later with his wife in his arms, in their warm bed, he could remember what it felt like to hold his dead son. They named him W.T. Elliott-William Therese Elliott-and buried him in a plot in the cemetery on Somerset Road, even though everyone in Bill’s family had always been cremated. But cremating the baby was unthinkable. What would he amount to? A handful of ashes that they would fling out into the sea? It would be too horrible to watch the ashes float away; it would be too much as if he never existed.

After they buried the baby, Bill vowed to make love to Therese in the mornings. At first he had to make himself go through the motions. He was afraid of getting Therese pregnant again-and he was afraid of not getting her pregnant. But making love to Therese was the best way he knew to show his devotion, and it became as natural for him as waking up, opening his eyes.

Ten years later when Therese was forty and Bill was forty-two, and Bill, at least, had given up hope of a child, Therese got pregnant again. It was impossible to feel joyful about this pregnancy-it was, Bill remembered, nine months of unspoken fear. But in the end, they had Cecily, who came out of the womb with red hair like her mother. She was kicking and screaming, undeniably alive.

After their lovemaking, Therese rose from the bed, blew her nose into a Kleenex and said, “I love him. This is Memorial Day. I remember him.”

Bill said, “I know. Me too.”

He lay in bed a few minutes longer, listening to the sound of his wife in the shower, and he said, in a whisper,

“‘They cannot scare me with their empty spaces

Between stars-on stars where no human race is

I have it in me so much nearer home

To scare myself with my own desert places.’”

“My own desert places.” Bill loved his wife and daughter until his heart and lungs and liver and brain stretched and ached and pressed at their boundaries. But he had one desert place: he wanted a son. Sometimes Bill heard Mack’s voice or saw Mack throw his head back and laugh, and he thought, My son would be almost this age. This could be my son fixing the lamppost, driving the Jeep. This could be my son. Why couldn’t this be my son?

Mack didn’t have an hour or even fifteen minutes on Memorial Day to meditate about his parents, but he thought of them more than usual. Maribel had asked him late one night, “If you could have your parents back for an hour, would you do it?” The question upset him so much, he turned away from her in the dark. Mack wanted to pluck his parents out of Oblivion and tell them, face to face, I miss you, every day I miss you, and I love you. Who wouldn’t want that? But even if it were possible, he would never do it. To have his parents back for an hour meant giving them up after an hour, and that was a loss from which he would never recover. He couldn’t stand the thought of losing them again.

Maribel was the only one to ever ask questions about the night of the accident. Mack had been out with friends, seeing a movie. When his friend Josh Pavel pulled down the long dirt road that led through cornfields to the Petersens’ farmhouse, Mack saw the sheriff’s car in his driveway. There were no flashing lights, nothing like you saw on TV, only the sheriff, a man Mack knew from school assemblies, sitting on the front porch steps, his hat resting on his knees. The sheriff stood up, put his hands on Mack’s shoulders, and said, “Your mother and dad are gone. They’ve been killed.”

“And how did you feel at that moment?” Maribel asked him.

Mack stared at her blankly. “What moment?”

“The moment you learned they were gone.”

He swallowed. “I don’t know. I can’t remember the exact moment. It’s nothing I think about. It was the worst moment of my life. I don’t want to reexamine it.”

“You’ve blocked it out,” she said.

“I remember I threw up,” he said. “I vomited into my mother’s rhododendrons. I remember being embarrassed about that, in front of the sheriff.”

“Did you cry?” Maribel asked.

“I don’t know.”

“You must have cried.”

“I don’t know if I cried right then. I’m telling you, I can’t remember much. I remember the sheriff waiting for me on the porch, his hat on his knees.”

Ever since David Pringle’s phone call, Mack found himself thinking about the farm-the smell of the soil, the barn, the hog pen. The rough, hairy skin of a sow’s back, and the way the pigs squealed like children. To this day, Mack’s house had been left just as it was-Mack’s bedroom with his Iowa Hawkeyes pennants and his 1985 Sports Illustrated swimsuit calendar hanging on the wall. A valentine from Michele Waikowski thumbtacked to his bulletin board.

His parents’ room too had been left as it was-his father’s Carhartt overalls in the closet, and his mother’s dresses. His mother’s pale hair still in her hairbrush. The food in the kitchen had been cleaned out, except for Mack’s mother’s refrigerator pickles. “Leave the refrigerator pickles,” Mack told David Pringle. His mother used to say they would last forever.

Mack knew it was odd to keep things as they were, crazy, even. He supposed the farm hands gossiped about the house, along with the people in Swisher, along with people simply passing through Swisher; by now, it was legend. The farmhouse, untouched since the couple was killed in a car crash twelve years ago. Haunted? The woman’s hair still in her hairbrush. For years, David Pringle had been urging Mack to clean out the house and rent it, but Mack refused. Mack’s life with his parents was, in fact, frozen. The house was a museum of sorts, a museum Mack could visit if he ever found the desire, or the courage, to return.

Because it was Memorial Day, Mack let Love go home early-she’d been swamped all weekend-and he took over behind the front desk and imagined his parents standing there with him. Here is the lobby, the quilts Mack hung every year. Look out at the ocean, the ferry taking a crowd of people back to the mainland. Listen to this couple here checking out. They were sunburned across their cheeks, bike helmets tucked into their duffel bags.

“We had a great time,” the man said, handing over his American Express card. (Mack would not want his parents to know how much the room cost.) “Thank you very much.”

“Yes, and thank you for recommending the bike ride to Altar Rock,” the woman chimed in. “It was spectacular.”

The couple went to meet their cab, touching a few of Therese’s wooden toys on the way out, as if for luck.

See? I made them happy. I made them smile. But when Mack turned around, of course, no one was there.

Memorial Day: a day for remembering. Still, Lacey Gardner had better days for remembering Maximilian-his birthday, August 18, or their wedding anniversary, November 11, even Valentine’s Day, because that, sadly, was the day Maximilian had died. Besides, Memorial Day was for veterans, wasn’t it? Or was Veterans’ Day for veterans and Memorial Day for the rest of God’s people? Darn it, Lacey couldn’t remember and didn’t much care except that she had invited the new bellman in for a drink and he was asking her all kinds of questions about Maximilian, practically forcing Lacey to remember him.

“What did your husband do for a living?” Jeremy asked. (He introduced himself as Jem, but Jem wasn’t a real name in Lacey’s opinion and she told him so. She would call him Jeremy.)

“Banker,” Lacey said. The boy agreed to a scotch, a point in his favor. Lacey poured two drinks and brought them over to the coffee table. Jeremy sat on the sofa looking at a photograph of Maximilian taken the summer before he died. He was tan and healthy-looking in that picture, standing on the deck of their house on Cliff Road.

“Is this him here?” Jeremy asked.

“Indeed,” Lacey answered. “That’s Maximilian Percy Gardner.” She walked back to the kitchen-although in this tiny cottage, living room, dining room, and kitchen were one and the same-and fished through her refrigerator for cheese. She put some brie on a plate with a few Carr’s water crackers. Then there was a knock at the screen door. It was Vance with her bucket of ice. Goodness gracious, she forgot to put ice in the cocktails and hadn’t even noticed.

“The iceman cometh,” Lacey said. Vance didn’t smile-his face remained clenched in the same tight scowl he always wore. It would do the young man a world of good to smile every now and again, but she’d been telling him that for years, and to no avail. Now Vance had shaved his head. What on earth for? Lacey asked him. Some kind of gang? For freedom, Vance told her. He liked to feel the cool breeze against his scalp.

Vance peered into the living room, took in Jeremy sitting on the sofa.

“I’d ask you to join us,” Lacey said quickly, “but I know you’re on duty. There’s nothing like work to ruin a cocktail hour.”

“That’s okay,” Vance said. He set the bucket of ice down on the counter. “See ya.”

“Thank you, Vance!” Lacey called. She took the cheese and crackers to the table and went back for the ice. Having company meant a lot of dashing about. If she’d kept her mouth shut, she would be sitting in her chair, watching Dan Rather.

By the time Lacey reached the coffee table with the bucket of ice, Jeremy had dug into the cheese. Lacey was able to drop into her chair and relax just a minute while he finished chewing. She noticed he left the picture of Maximilian facedown on the sofa. This was quite definitely a strike against him.

“Let’s hear about you,” Lacey said. “Where do you come from? Your family?”

“I grew up in Falls Church, Virginia,” he said. “My father owns a bar.”

“A bar, really?” Lacey said. “Do you have siblings?”

Jem fixed himself another cracker. “A younger sister,” he said. “She’s bulimic. My parents go with her to counseling. You know what bulimia is, right? She stuffs her face with food and then she pukes it all up.” Jeremy popped the cracker into his mouth.

Lacey sipped her drink. The photograph snagged Jeremy’s interest again. “So this is your husband. He looks like Douglas Fairbanks, the old actor. How long were you married?”

“Forty-five years,” Lacey said. “I married late in life. I was thirty-one years old. I had a career, you see, and many people, my father included, thought that was like hammering the final pegs into the coffin of my spinsterhood. But Maximilian married me anyway.”

“So you were married for forty-five years,” Jeremy said. “How many children do you have?”

Lacey wondered if there were a formula for determining how many questions a person would ask before finding the exact wrong question, the question that brought a second too long of silence, the question that caused the voice of heartache to answer. Jeremy had found it early on; Lacey hated to answer this question.

“No children,” she said. “As I told you, we married late.”

Jeremy fixed himself another cracker. “You said you were thirty-one. That’s not too old to have children.”

“It was for us,” Lacey said. She had always blamed her barrenness on her advanced age-thirty-four by the time Maximilian returned from the war-although now she was programs on TV about childless couples and she realized it could have been the result of any number of complications. The fact was, she hadn’t gotten pregnant and she’d wanted to adopt. But Maximilian refused-it was the only time in forty-five years they had argued. They would not adopt! He was so stubborn about this, Lacey could hardly believe he was the same man she had married. By way of explanation, Maximilian told her he once had a chum who adopted a baby, and it turned out the baby was one-quarter Japanese. Who cared if the baby were one-quarter Japanese-or full-blooded Japanese for that matter? Lacey asked. She hadn’t been in the war, Maximilian said. True, this was true; Lacey hadn’t been in the war. But that had little to do with the matter at hand. Lacey had simply wanted a baby.

She looked at the photograph of Maximilian, which Jeremy returned to its upright position. She and Maximilian had a good life-a rich and varied life filled with work, travel, erudite people. But Maximilian didn’t stick it out with her the way he promised. He died in his sleep. He wasn’t even sick; it was as though he were just too tired to keep on living. Too tired! They fell asleep together, holding hands, but Lacey woke up alone. Clearly, when Maximilian made his decision about adoption he hadn’t realized how alone she would be.

“Would you like another drink?” Lacey asked.

“I can fix them,” Jeremy said.

“Good,” she said, settling into her chair. “Because I’m getting comfortable.”

Jeremy made the drinks and when he handed Lacey hers, she tasted it. “Very nice. Now tell me, Jeremy, about your career plans. I hear Nantucket is merely a resting stop for you, on your way to Hollywood.”

Jeremy nodded. “That’s right. I’m headed west in the fall. I want to be an agent.”

Agent, Lacey thought, like the FBI? No, that couldn’t be right. There was that old term, agency man; what had that meant? Or maybe not agent but aged, like hereself.

“Agent?” she said.

“I used to think I wanted to act,” Jem said. “I tried in college and it didn’t work out so well. But I like business, so I figure I’ll go out to L.A. and help people who can act. Represent them. Make them money. Be their friend.”

The world had surely deteriorated if one now got paid for being a friend. “That sounds lovely,” Lacey said.

Jeremy fixed himself yet another cracker. Well, he’d worked all day-it was understandable the boy would be hungry. Lacey was going to heat up a swordfish potpie for her dinner. She contemplated asking Jeremy to stay, but that seemed like too much.

“What do your parents think of all this?” Lacey asked.

A piece of cracker stuck in Jeremy’s throat and he coughed. Perhaps she had stumbled upon Jeremy’s sore spot. Perhaps the bulimic sister was a much safer topic than his parents.

“They don’t know about California,” he said. “My parents want me close to home, especially with my sister all messed up. They want me to find an internship in D.C. or something. So they don’t know about California yet. Do you think that’s bad?”

“To be honest, I’ve never understood why children feel they need their parents’ approval,” Lacey said. “I believe the earlier you stop hoping for that, the happier you’ll be. Look at me-my father went to all kinds of trouble to send me to Radcliffe, but then he sniffed when I pursued a career. But I didn’t let that stop me. I had a career that I adored and a husband, too.”

Jeremy’s face brightened. “Yeah, I figure they might not like the idea at first but once I make it, they’ll be fine with the whole thing.”

“You might be better off not worrying what your parents think at all. Ever.”

“They are my parents,” Jeremy said. “They did raise me.”

“All a parent can do is hope for the best,” Lacey said. This was the philosophy she always believed she would have followed with a child. Raise them as well as you can and then let them go. Jeremy looked at her strangely. Maybe he didn’t understand how much eighty-eight years of life could teach a person. She was relieved when he stood up.

“I should be going,” he said. He leaned over and kissed Lacey’s cheek, another point in his favor. “Thanks for the drink and the cheese and stuff.”

“You’re welcome, my dear,” she said. “Come again.”

Jeremy left the cottage, closing the screen door quietly behind him. Lacey stayed in her chair. She could reach for the remote control and turn on Dan Rather, or she could stand up and retrieve the swordfish potpie from the freezer. But for a moment she did neither. She was paralyzed with loneliness, and anger about that loneliness. She kicked the coffee table and the picture of Maximilian fell over with a clatter. This pleased her for an instant and then she felt irritated. Surely there were better days to get angrier than hell at her dear, departed Maximilian than this, Memorial Day.