Summer Accommodations: A Novel (37 page)

3.

Newcomers kept arriving in the driveway for the final week of summer vacation, the exhaustion of the trip evident on their faces, in their bodies, and the wilted appearance of their clothing. Bernie Abramowitz. pacing, pinching, and pumping his way through the crowd was never happier than on these occasions of welcoming. I no longer felt irritated by his displays but instead felt pity for him and gratitude in the knowledge that my life would never be anything like his. Never.

About half of my guests were holdovers who had taken the last two weeks of August for their vacations. They enjoyed the warm days and cool nights but sacrificed the extra daylight hours the July vacationers enjoyed. There were those who were philosophical about the distribution of summer's bounty and celebrated their share, but then there were others who thrived on complaint, the ones who felt they weren't getting what was coming to them. Sammy had no patience with the latter group. His regulars were celebrants happy to be in the country and content with Sammy's kibitzing. The others, well, Sammy had a way of describing them that still makes me laugh when I think of it. “Nothing is ever good enough for these trumbeniks. Not only is their glass half empty, it's dirty and there's a chip in the lip.”

Sammy was still cool with me but he introduced me politely to our new guests. No regulars were among the last week's roster of new arrivals and this seemed to drive home to him the inevitability of the end of summer. It was already as good as over. We served the usual Sunday night dinner of boiled beef, stuffed chicken breasts or steamed vegetable platter, and the ice cream dessert was the hit of the meal. During the clean-up Sammy carried in a tray of glasses for me and then sat me down.

“You made a mistake, Melvin, not taking me up on my offer to make you a waiter. I hired a man from town who will fill in for Harlan and I decided to keep that station at just three tables instead of four. You could have made extra money and worked less for it, but that was your decision.”

“So does that mean Ron and I won't be getting a new roommate?” Shaking his head, he frowned.

“No, there won't be anyone else staying in the room. That's what's important to you? Not the money? Not my feelings for you? Whether there's a new roommate for one week? Meshugah.”

At that moment I felt an understanding and empathy for Sammy emerge from the general climate of sadness enveloping me. Here was a man with a raw, uncultivated intelligence surrounded summer after summer by boys and young men who would go on to careers in various professions, careers that would carry them away from him and Braverman's and these sagging mountains forever. Lacking the education he admired he had settled for being a character, an eccentric personality, the unforgettable drill sergeant who never graduates with the officers he's trained. His story was hidden behind a white shirt and a black bow tie, his sad clown's costume.

I asked, “Will Heidi be working in the dining room now that Harlan, I mean the thief, is gone?” Heidi was still my best route back to Sarah.

“Probably not. She is so upset I don't think she'll be working anywhere the last week of the summer. And you, you too are upset. Who ever thought Harlan would cause so much damage?” Ron, I thought, Ron did. “Well, maybe I can give her some comfort. Do you think the Bravermans would mind?” Sammy shrugged and forced a smile for me.

“Melvin, I have no answers for that question.” He squeezed my arm and left me at the side stand.

I showered and changed into khakis and a navy and green plaid shirt, my Diana debacle outfit—I've never been superstitious and may actually dare the fates to try me again—tied a crew neck sweater around my waist, and set off for the Bravermans' house. Sunday night there was no show or activity at the recreation hall so Ben and his wife would likely be in. They rarely left the grounds of the hotel at night, even with their two sons gradually assuming control of the resort's operations.

The meteor showers of late August were easy to spot in the mountains when you were away from the lights of the hotel's buildings and the path to the Bravermans' residence was unlit. I saw several shooting stars but the thrill they usually gave was occluded by the dread of what might lie ahead with Sarah. The feelings of betrayal and hurt had damped the fires of the passion I imagined might rescue us from the collapse of the meaning of “us”.

It was just after nine o'clock when I knocked on the Bravermans' front door. Ben answered almost immediately, a whiskey in hand.

“Melvin, what a surprise. I was expecting company, what is it you want?”

“Is Heidi here?”

“Heidi! First you tell me you're having fights with Harlan over Sarah and now you come to my house calling on Heidi? No, Heidi is not here, she's with Sarah in the arts and crafts shed. So which one do you want to see?”

“I want to see them both, but Sarah more than Heidi.” I said, trying not to exclude his daughter completely while stating my more pressing mission.

“Well, you'll find them down there. Be sure to knock louder when you get there. They're both in no condition for surprises right now,” he said, shutting the door without so much as a goodbye.

The day camp occupied a stretch of land along the northwest portion of the property away from the swimming pool, tennis courts and adult playgrounds. To walk there in the dark one relied upon the neatly tended wide dirt road that led from the swimming pool to the nature cabin; the art shed could be located next to the chicken coop behind the nature cabin. A small family of local raccoons had discovered the chickens and was removing them one by one for a while before Ben and his boys ambushed them and hung their tails up on the flag pole in the center of the camp. It was illegal to hunt raccoons but no one working there told the police. Ben treated his land and his animals the way an eighteenth century English Lord might, as if he was above the law. No, as if he was the law.

The shooting stars were brilliant in their course, their silence almost a surprise in the wake of the years spent imitating the whistle of descending bombs when the U.S. was at war. The chickens were asleep and the only sound was that of Sarah and Heidi talking and giggling in the distance. I hurried towards the shed, hopeful and fearful at the same time, eager to learn where we were—where I was with her and she with me, still unclear about what I was willing to forgive and whether she was even slightly interested in having to ask for my forgiveness. Though what she had done was wrong, hurtful and destructive, feeling humiliated herself by her actions could cause her to avoid me even if I did not reproach or berate her.

Upon reaching them the sounds I had mistaken for laughter grew louder. It was Heidi talking and crying, her voice breaking into a staccato that, from a distance, resembles some forms of laughter. The bitter sweetness of the approaching summer's end and its inevitable partings accompanied me into the cabin. Inside I saw Sarah with Heidi whose face bore the puffy effects of a long crying spell. I started in their direction, but Sarah shook her head vigorously and held up a single, cautioning finger. She leaned inward to say something in Heidi's ear and then came towards me. She too had been crying. Her mouth was drawn into a thin quivering line and her swollen eyes glimmered with the light reflected from her still unspilled tears.

“Don't stay here. Heidi needs to be alone with me.”

“Does she know about … about what I know?”

“Some of it.” I felt angry then. Why was she not telling me what she'd told Heidi? Was she hiding her secret still? Had she always hidden her feelings for Harlan behind her criticisms?

“That's why you don't want me here, isn't it, you're not giving him up that easily.”

“I just don't want you here.”

“You just don't want me, period.” She said nothing but turned away and went back to Heidi who craned her neck around Sarah's body to look at me. I could tell that Sarah was speaking and when Heidi nodded her head, I left dreading that the all too familiar moment might come when Heidi would begin to laugh and I would be the butt of the joke. There was no longer any doubt; Sarah and I were over. What had given me the idea that it was my decision to either let the relationship heal or break it off? And what had become of the “I love you” she had sobbed just the other morning? The pain was new all over again and it was clear to me another night would pass without sleep. My eyes never sought the sky on the way back to my room. The moon could have fallen into the parking lot and I would have been oblivious.

I endured the last week in a state of grief. I saw Sarah around the hotel a few times, fleetingly, but we never spoke again. What was there to say? It would have been easier to repair Humpty Dumpty than to fix the “us” I thought we had been. Each night I isolated myself from all social activity by wearing a warm sweater and bringing “The Idiot” to a side porch of the hotel that supplied sufficient light to read by. I read the story with some labor until it captured my attention when I realized that I was more like Myshkin than Candide, more a good hearted young man than the total naif. Then, finishing the dinner meal and getting to my reading chair on the porch became an absorbing preoccupation. I had to see how the prince fared with this odd assembly of people, all so determinedly Russian. And when his story ended in heartbreak and tragedy I flung the book off the porch into the rhododendron bushes aligned in front and stormed away. I would be neither Myshkin nor Candide. I would refuse to be pathetic. The end of innocence is not the end of life, it is the beginning of maturity.

L
abor Day weekend is and always has been the grand finale of the summer and so it was at Braverman's that summer of 1956. Every chair at every table in the dining room was occupied. Even Harlan's former station was filled to capacity.

“You see? There was a couple of hundred dollars you could have taken to college, my stubborn, steadfast, stalwart. The midnight supper on Sunday night often garners grateful guest gratuities.” Sammy's alliterations had the urgent and frenzied quality of the final minute of a thirty minute long fireworks display.

“Let's just get through the next few days. Don't worry, I won't let you down, Sammy.”

“I wanted you to have some extra money, that's all. First that college lets you down, then Sarah, at least the money might make you feel a little better.” Young as I was I knew better than to believe that money, that green poultice, could relieve my pained heart.

The diners filed in soon after bringing with them an excess of ersatz gaiety. For the first time since the embarrassment of the Lion's Club weekend in June drinking glasses from the bar accumulated on the dinner tables throughout the dining room and bursts of strident laughter were everywhere, not just in the places where the young singles usually were clustered. It was going to be a long weekend. Sammy had none of his regulars at our station and while I buried myself in work he schmoozed his new clients, hoping to recruit new loyalists to his roster of returning vacationers. I was not charming or especially friendly and Sammy accounted for my peevishness by telling everyone I was having girl trouble. That seemed a completely reasonable explanation and led one man to hold forth on the necessity of the broken heart for the education and maturation of young men. It was all I could do to refrain from dropping my tray on his head.

The next morning Solly Schwartz once again skittered down the center aisle as soon as the French doors of the dining room had been parted. For eight long weeks Solly remained as eager and enthusiastic about breakfast as he'd been on the day he arrived and, while my irritation with him had not abated, I had not had another run in with him. Maybe it was because Sammy wouldn't have supported me a second time, maybe it was because the episode reminded me too much of the Diana debacle, maybe it just wasn't worth the aggravation. Each morning I filled his juice glass with grapefruit juice and left it at his place before the doors were opened. I once asked him if he would want a different juice, fresh squeezed orange juice, tomato juice, or even prune juice.

“Oh no,” he said emphatically, “I like the bite of the grapefruit juice. It's a little bit bitter, like life itself,” he said with a smile. I'll give you something bitter, I said to myself, but never to him. One morning in the kitchen, early in the summer, I told Ron what Solly had said.

“A little Angostura bitters in his juice, if he likes it bitter,” Ron suggested. “Or you could coat the glass with salad oil so when he picks it up it drops right through his fingers.”

“Right, and he'd never think I was the one who did that. No thanks.”

“Yeah, but if you really dislike this guy so much the grapefruit juice is an opportunity waiting for you to take advantage of it.” Ron was right but there was nothing I was willing to resort to. So, having watched the morning ritual for scores of days, I was delighted when my patience was rewarded by the very mishap I had wished for every time Solly Schwartz lifted his juice glass from the plate, inspected its contents in the light, and raised it to his lips inverting it quickly to spill the bitter contents down his gullet. This morning it was especially bitter; something had interrupted his timing. Mrs. Schwartz, who had never appeared for breakfast at such an early hour but waited until we were half an hour away from closing the dining room to make her entry, stormed in and went directly to him. Just as he inverted his glass she yelled in his ear,

“Solly, you bastard!”

The juice splashed over his face, ran down his neck, washed over the coffee colored collar of his cafe au lait polo shirt, and landed on his two-toned brown and white shoes while Solly, trying to get out of the way of the cascading grapefruit juice, skipped and jumped backwards like a berserk dancer dancing in the wrong direction in a conga line. And all of this in seconds. The broad smile on my face was the first thing Solly saw when he wiped the stinging juice from his eyes and, disguising his embarrassment with a posture of moral outrage, he pointed a finger at me and demanded, “Don't just stand there grinning, you useless idiot, get me a towel to wipe my face with.” Useless idiot. Those words extinguished my smile and tightened my resolve.

“Use this if you like,” I said, tossing him the stained and damp side towel I kept tucked in my belt, “I think Mrs. Schwartz had something to say to you and I'd bet we'd all like to hear it. Mrs. Schwartz?” I said, nodding in her direction. Like an actor at a loss for words a flustered Mrs. Schwartz began to resort to “business”, dabbing hastily at her husband's shirt with her flimsy handkerchief.

“Melvin, you should be more polite to your guests and give my husband a clean towel or a napkin, just get him something, please.”

“What happened to the ‘Solly you bastard' speech?” It was suddenly quiet in the near empty dining room. The other waiters and busboys, hearing me repeat Mrs. Schwartz's words, stopped what they were doing to watch this exchange play out while the few guests present, sensing something had gone out of control, looked nervously at one another. I had just violated the social contract of the dining room; in response to a verbal attack I had attacked back.

“C'mon Mrs. S, let's all hear it, let's hear what Solly did to get you so angry.”

“Melvin!” Sammy called, not so much a summons as a warning.

“No, Sammy, stay out of this. It's between me and the Schwartzes.” Ivan Goldman approached.

“Cool it down, Mel, this won't get you anyplace, what do you think this will accomplish? C'mon cool off,” he said, laying an arm across my shoulders.

“I want an apology, damn it, I want some respect from this snail brained little pimp.”

“Melvin!!!” Sammy shouted and then grabbed my arm to pull me away from the table where the Schwartzes stood, aghast at my outburst. “Get over here now!” he said, pulling at me, but I was stronger than Sammy and, resisting him, stood my ground.

“Melvin White, just what do you think you are doing?”Sandy Stein said, quick stepping his way down the center aisle to join the fray, his index finger already poised to be wagged in my face.

“I'm doing what every waiter and busboy who's ever been degraded by some pompous shmuck wants to do, I'm getting even.”

“Not in my dining room you're not, you're fired.”

“Wait a minute, Sandy, don't get carried away, not on Labor Day weekend, relax, I'll handle it,” Sammy said, trying to soothe the irate martinet.

“No, it's all right Sammy, I quit, it's okay, I'm done for the summer. I quit. I don't want to be here anymore.”

“You can't quit, not now, and you,” he said pointing at Sandy Stein, “keep out of the business of running a dining room. You're here to make seating assignments not to boss the staff.”

“I say he has to go. No one has the right to talk to a guest that way.”

“And I said shut up! Go back to your desk and stop meddling in my affairs. That's it, end of story. And you calm down too, Solly, you didn't have to take it out on Melvin because your hand slipped,” Sammy said patting Solly Schwartz affectionately. “So, everybody okay? Everybody satisfied? Can we all make up and say it's over?”

“I'm sorry Sammy, I meant what I said. I quit. I'm leaving today, this morning, right now.”

Sammy was stunned. I doubt it was the first time a waiter or busboy walked off the job in the middle of a meal, but for me to do that, me, the youngest White brother, the good boy, the eager to please Melvin, that was a shock.

“Don't do this to me, Melvin, not now, not on this weekend, please.”

“I'll finish breakfast, but that's it. And you look after Schwartz because if I do he'll need a bath towel not a napkin to wipe his face with.” Solly Schwartz's face turned tomato juice red, and Mrs. Schwartz thrust her head back bringing her chin up to nose level and dabbed vigorously at Solly's neck with her scarf.

I was charming and witty and pleasant with the people at my tables and avoided eye contact with the Schwartzes who tried piercing my armor with their fierce stares while they muttered angrily to each other. Their table mates, hearing the story from Mrs. Schwartz who spoke loud enough to insure I heard it too, uncertain which side to align with ate small breakfasts and left quickly, relieved to get away from all of us. Sammy wouldn't speak to me at all trusting I could do my job without instruction at such a late date and I confess to feeling only a little guilt for leaving him stuck on the big weekend of summer's end, but I was ready to go. It was clear to me then that my outburst with the Schwartzes was fueled as much by my heartbreak with Sarah and the disappointments with school and Harlan as by the irritation of Solly's style. There was a need to break free of all that had confined and defined me. My choices had let me down and all that was left on the path to the future were defaults, choices I would not have willingly made. With twelve hundred dollars in my bank account in Liberty I could choose not to go to the school Steve and Jerry had attended. That money could support me while I figured out what to do about school, maybe travel or live in Greenwich Village or learn to play jazz piano, anything I chose.

I didn't try to collect the tips owed and no one offered to settle up that morning. Maybe they thought I'd change my mind, maybe they didn't believe I'd actually quit at such a late date, but I was through and the sense of relief and power was far greater than any guilt I might have regarding Sammy. Abe came towards me as I carried in my last bus box of dirty dishes and though I held up my hand to halt his approach, he would not be refused.

“You don't have to talk to me, but I want to say something to you. After you return home you will learn something that will make you very pleased. After you are done celebrating, think about treating people, everyone without exception, with kindness. That's it, Melvin, I'm sorry you are leaving like this but I understand your decision. So many disappointments.” There was nothing for me to say. Whatever the surprise he predicted awaited me, I was fed up with him, and Rudy and Lenny, with this whole lot of misbegotten circus sideshow freaks that I'd worked with for an entire summer; fed up too with Ron, and Ivan and the basketball players and the other nameless waiters and busboys from the outer boroughs of New York City. Fed up even with Sammy, a sad and harmless man. At that moment there was nothing admirable, amusing, endearing or even touching about this pathetic hodgepodge of “characters”.

Back in my room I was packing my clothing into the suitcase I'd laid on Harlan's bed—for me it would be Harlan's bed forever—when Ron came in from the bathroom.

“What's this about you quitting?”

“You were there, you saw what happened, I'm done. I've got one more thing to do here and then I'm going home.”

“One more thing? What, collect your tips?” For once Ron was not sneering at me. The boldness of my act had earned me his respect.

“I don't expect to collect my tips for last week. I don't give a shit about the money. This is about Diana. I can't separate my bad experience with Solly Schwartz from my bad experience with Diana. I've settled up with Solly, and now I'm going to settle up with Diana.”

“Settle what? She wasn't interested in you, she walked away from your date, she …” his tone was infused with his loss of respect.

“She said maybe another time. Well, this is another time. I'm going to walk over to her place and see what we can work out. Who knows? Maybe we'll check into Grossinger's for the weekend.”

Ron shook his head from side to side in dismissive wonderment, but I shook my head to affirm my plan and said, “What have I got to lose?”

I called Malcolm from the pay phone in the canteen before leaving the hotel.

“Would Charles and Lillian mind if I spent a few nights with you?”

“What are you talking about, you know the Browns love you.”

“I quit my job and I need a place to stay until we go home. Can I stay with you?”

“Of course, Mel, just stay out of sight during the day. It's so busy here they won't notice you at night. You quit on Labor Day weekend?”

“Yeah, it's a long story, I'll tell you later. Thanks.”

I had been so focused on going to Diana's house and confronting her on what I thought were her terms I had given no thought to my appearance and found myself walking down the road in my white shirt and black pants, my bow tie still clipped to my shirt collar. I pulled the bow tie free and stuffed it into my pocket, hesitating only momentarily to consider returning to my room for a change of clothes, then rejecting that choice and continuing even more vigorously towards Diana's. It was a beautiful, sunny September morning, strokes of yellow and orange color caressed the tips of the tree top leaves; the air was mild and dry.

When Diana's house came into view I felt my heart begin to race. What if she had left the area and someone else was living in the house, what if she had someone else there with her, what if she laughed when she saw me or told me to get the hell away from her, what if, what if, what if? I pinched the skin on my forearm to disrupt this craven monologue. “The good things in life you have to seek out and reach for,” echoed somewhere in my mind. I knocked on Diana's front door and waited for a response.

“Who's there?” She was there.

“I'm here.”

“Funny. Who the hell are
you?
”