What I Saw and How I Lied

Chapter 21

Someone had left a raft floating in the pool. It kept bumping up against the rail near the steps. I thought maybe I could sleep on it. I took off my sandals and bunched up my skirt in one hand and went in and grabbed it, hoisted myself up. Water sloshed over the side and got my skirt wet. I pushed off from the side.

I wanted to stain this place, leave my mark after this night. I hoped my blood would fill up the pool, but it drifted away, a skinny ribbon of pink.

I floated for a long time. I found out that without sun, you don't get sleepy on a raft. You just get wet.

Then over my head I saw Mrs. Grayson looking down at me. She was dressed in a skirt and flat shoes, a handbag over her arm.

"What are you doing out here?" she asked.

"I couldn't sleep."

"So what are you doing in the pool, counting sheep?"

I raised myself up and started to paddle toward her. "Tom's packing the car."

"I thought you were staying until morning." I climbed out, dripping.

"The bed's not as comfortable as I thought." She stubbed out her cigarette and regarded it for a minute. Then she flicked it into the pool.

We were quiet for a minute, just watching the ciga­rette stub float. She had a sweater around her shoulders and she hugged herself and shivered, even though it was warm. I'd never seen her without lipstick on before. Ladies' mouths look so pale and small without lipstick.

"There's a storm coming. We heard it on the radio." Mrs. Grayson said this absently, looking off toward the ocean we couldn't see, a block away. "A hurricane. Supposed to hit south of us, near Miami."

"We didn't know the hotel was restricted," I said.

"Every Jew knows about Palm Beach. It's on the deeds to the houses, you know. No Negroes, no Jews."

"I don't understand. Why did you come?"

"Well, I guess the best way to say it is, Tom wanted to get away from everything he was, and this is as far as you can get."

I was suddenly so tired. I wanted to sit down, but I didn't want her to think that I didn't want to talk to her. "I thought you might be spies," I said.

She grunted a laugh. "Maybe we were."

"Why does he want to get away?" I asked.

She didn't say anything for a minute. She noticed the cut on my forehead. "What happened to you?"

"I ran into something tonight," I said.

"Do you know what Yom Kippur is?" she asked, and after I shook my head, she said, "It's a holy day for us, the Day of Atonement. Tom was 4-F, but the war left its mark on him, too. On Yom Kippur last year, he just... went to the movies. He wouldn't stay with us. He said it standing in his mother's living room. Atone?' he said. Tor what he did, God should atone to me! You should have seen his mother's face. Poor Elsa."

"What did God do to him?"

"Killed his cousins," she said. "Samuel was like a brother to him. Sam's wife, Nadia. And Irene, their daughter. She was just your age. She had your same birthday, October thirty-first."

"What happened to them? To Irene?" I pronounced it like she had — Ee-wren. So much prettier that way. And I could see her, this girl I didn't know. Not her face, but her. I could see her lying on a bed on her stom­ach, her ankles crossed, listening to the radio. Just a girl like me.

"We tried to get them out, all of them. We didn't know what happened to them until after the war. A family friend contacted us, someone who made it through the camps, who knew what happened."

A girl with my birthday died in the camps. A girl I didn't know. I could see her on the bed, swinging her feet to a tune on the radio. I couldn't see her taken away. I couldn't see what happened after that. I knew about the camps, but I hadn't really thought about them. I'd seen the articles, but we'd had so much of war. I hadn't wanted to think about it after it was over, after all the men were coming home. I hadn't wanted to listen to the whispers about Ruthie Kalman's cousins. I didn't want any more of the war. I was sick of the war. I had wanted to listen to Joe saying, It's over, over there, and here is where it's happening now.

"So where will you go?" I asked.

"Home. We're going to drive home."

"I don't understand any of it," I said. "Why they won't let you stay. Why any of this can happen. I mean, we just fought a whole war."

"It wasn't about the Jews, kiddo," Arlene said softly.

"Joe is so angry. He says he's going to talk to the manager in the morning —"

"Sure. That's swell. But he's staying, right? He's not checking out."

I was quiet. The idea of checking out hadn't occurred to him. Or Mom. Or me.

"I'm glad you saw it, Evie," she said. "It's a good thing for someone like you to see."

"Why? I hated seeing it! It made me sick!"

"That's exactly why. Do me a favor?" She gave me a piece of paper, folded twice. It was a letter written on the back of a page torn from a calendar. Because I bet they wouldn't even use the hotel stationery now. "Give this to Joe. It's from Tom."

"What does it say?"

"What Joe already knows. Tom's pulling out of the deal. We have to go home now." She smiled and leaned over to kiss me. "It was nice getting to know you a little bit, Evie Spooner."

Our faces were very close. "You be careful now," she whispered. "Or better yet, go home. It's time for us all to just go home."