Frima giggled suddenly. Jack would live in relative comfort, at least. If he could see the farm as it was in the old days, when there had been an outhouse with a pile of rotting turnips behind it, he’d probably turn around and run back to the city. Now, with all the new plumbing and modern conveniences, she couldn’t see anything in the physical setting he could possibly complain about. But, oh, there was so much more than the prettiness of the place, and she hoped he would appreciate this—the heart that went into creating it. She immediately rebuked herself for expecting too much. It took time and sweat and tears for someone to feel that way.
They sat around the kitchen table, Mama, Grandpa, and Frima, planning the remodeling and transformation of their property.
“Physical and spiritual renewal we can offer here, just like it was for Lou,” Mama said. “A big fancy hotel we can’t afford, nor do we want one. How Papa would have hated that!”
“Me too,” Frima and Grandpa said in one voice.
“What we want is a place where reasonable, intelligent people of moderate means can enjoy a few weeks’ relief from the city heat and daily worries in a charming country setting,” Mama continued. “Where they can give their kids some nice new experiences they can’t get in the city. And strictly family,” Mama had said severely, though Frima wondered at that time how it could be anything else.
No luxury or pretension, but solid comfort was a must. With Frima’s firm second, they argued down Grandpa, who was a bit too casual about the amount of indoor plumbing needed. Comfortably sized, airy rooms with good screens, good mattresses, adequate lighting, safe outlets. “If someone wants to read in bed, they should be able to without electrocuting themselves,” Mama said. Good plumbing was another essential; little sinks in the rooms, with mirrors above them and lots of bathrooms—at least one for every two or three rooms.
Some of what Grandpa considered unnecessary costs or sanitary frills could be balanced in the kitchen. Not that Mama would ever stint on food. Meals were ample, varied, and skillfully prepared, using high-quality, fresh local ingredients whenever possible. But although there were separate tables, meals were served boardinghouse style. There was one mealtime for everyone, including children, who were not served separately, and with a few necessary exceptions, everyone would eat the same food at any one meal. “No kosher-style foie gras,” she said, rolling her eyes—she had seen this on the printed menu of a larger hotel. “Chopped liver is chopped liver.”
Making a virtue of necessity, Mama also scorned tennis and golf, dismissing these as sports of the rich. Instead she provided badminton nets, croquet sets, a couple of ping-pong tables, lawn chairs, and several hammocks, and their guests seemed quite content. “This is not a country club,” she commented privately with lofty disdain. “If you come to the country to enjoy nature, then enjoy nature.” Frima was in full agreement. After all, they lived right next to a golf course in the Bronx, so what was the big deal about that? So, except for a lawn, Eisner’s did not go in for much formal landscaping. True to her vision of rustic charm, Mama had retained the old fruit orchard, grown half wild, the climbing roses, lilacs, and shade trees, some acres of pasture, and several of brambles and bushes full of berries for the guests to pick. Frima and Mama thoughtfully provided pails, printed warnings about poison ivy and sumac, and kept the most popular paths cleared. For the rest, they relied on the county to maintain the woody lanes, gentle hills, and quiet country roads for walking. A few minutes’ walk brought you to a cool refreshing pond fed by a dammed-up creek, maintained by the county and civic-minded residents like Grandpa and Mama.
Indoor amusements were also casual and free. Mama considered her guests intelligent, resourceful people, with the taste and creativity to find their own amusements. She wouldn’t dream of having a tumler—part hired comedian, part social director. Instead, they had fashioned a large common room in the main house, with well-used sofas and armchairs, a good-sized library of novels and magazines, usually left there by guests, as well as portable tables and board games. A radio and phonograph and a large collection of mostly classical records dominated one wall. Among the records, however, were some good dance albums, and on some Saturday nights, the floor was cleared. Mama didn’t consider a little ballroom dancing or even a square dance or two beneath her or her guests.
Yes, Mama had very decided and distinct ideas about the kind of guests she wanted, so much so that Frima had good-humoredly asked her what kind of entrance exam she would give to screen them.
“Friends tell friends,” said Mama. “And, of course, there is the secret handshake.”
As Frima matured and became more aware of the business they were trying to maintain, she realized that Mama’s achievement was truly impressive. She had so far managed to keep the place fully booked by a finely honed balancing act involving scale, resources, flexibility, and dawn-to-midnight work. And she was having the time of her life doing it. Mama, she came to realize, had a great talent for management that could not be fulfilled by sewing a fine seam and raising a daughter. She needed greater scope, and the hotel provided it. It had all worked out quite well, it seemed. Frima and Grandpa could have their little farm, and Mama could have her rustic inn. Who could ask for more?
But once again Frima fretted. In some other place, such a good-looking, bright, energetic young fellow like Jack might be a waiter, with specific hours and duties, free to court tips and call the rest of his time his own. Maybe Jack would be disappointed that Eisner’s wasn’t a grander place with more opportunities, more amusements, and more tips. Or, worst of all, more girls.
So, just who does he think he is? This place isn’t good enough for him? He’s never been in a place this nice in his whole life! By the time Frima reached her own bedroom, she had worked herself into a real snit. Okay, she thought, staring at herself sternly in the mirror. This way lies madness. Forget about Jack for a minute, and sit down and read a book or start studying the Beethoven you brought with you.
CHAPTER 3
So what if Bess’s first exposure to Monticello was disappointing. It was flatter than she expected and quite hot. She instantly chastised herself: Well, what did she expect? Snow-covered peaks? Was the Alpine Song a yodel? She had little time for fretting as two young guys in an ordinary Ford station wagon hailed her.
“Woo-hoo! Going to the Alpine? What’s your name, sweetheart?”
“Uh, Bess.”
“Woo-hoo! Fresh fish for Max!”
“Looks like jailbait to me. How old are you, sister?”
“Nineteen.”
“Hey, she ain’t jailbait!”
She had no idea what they were talking about, these two lugs who looked like Abbot and Costello in their teens, but she had no time for questions. They drove off with the speed of a getaway car, and she clung to the roof strap in the back seat, heart in mouth. Before she could worry about anything except her life, they came screeching to a halt in front of a large house, where they dumped her suitcase on the wide front porch.
“In there, sweetheart,” they said pointing to a screen door.
Numbly, Bess entered. A plump, friendly looking young woman with curly red hair looked up from a desk and smiled.
“You must be Bess. I’m Muriel. Welcome to the Alpine Song. Why don’t you put your bags behind the desk for the time being? Give me about twenty minutes, and I’ll be able to show you the place, get you settled. Max left me with a pile of bookkeeping while he went off to do something important. So, why don’t you look around? Oh, and there’s a restroom right down the hall to your left. I’m sure you could use one after that long ride. Would you like a drink—a Coke or something?”
“No, thanks. I’m fine. To the left you said?”
On first impression, the place looked nothing like the brochure, and Bess wondered for the second time why it was called the Alpine Song. To her Bronx-bred eyes, her own neighborhood was easily as hilly, maybe more so. There were a few pines, to be sure, but nothing could she see of the forest prime
val and certainly no murmuring pines and hemlocks. So it wasn’t exactly Longfellow, but perhaps the place had been named by a romantic who could hear music in the wind, music that she couldn’t hear. Of course, you’d need wind to hear any such thing, and it was hot and still today. Okay, Bess, enough already. Shut up your imagination and open up your real eyes and ears. Besides, you should know that no place looks like a brochure.
There was a large swimming pool just across the road from the main house, empty now and undergoing a facelift, which no doubt would make it inviting by the time guests arrived. The lake she had imagined was nowhere to be seen. It did exist, she would soon learn, but it was a couple of miles away, and the hotel provided transport to shuttle guests to and fro. She suspected this was driven by the nitwits who had brought her here and promptly decided she would forgo seeing the lake until she could be escorted properly, preferably by that brilliant, sensitive young man, the one with the canoe.
Nevertheless, the Alpine Song was a pretty place, she found, if not the paradise of her overheated imagination. The main house, guest bungalows, and outbuildings were painted a fresh lemony color with attractive green shutters. There was a lush lawn with shade trees, and flower beds filled with petunias, snapdragons, and other blooms she couldn’t name. Even better, there were some inviting and mellow-looking woods surrounding the main area. She might even find a spot to create a watercolor or two.
When she came back to the desk, Muriel was ready for her. “Let’s get you settled in,” she said. “Actually, you’ll be rooming with me. I hope you don’t mind.”
“Of course not. Not if you don’t, that is.”
“I’m sure it will work out very well. There’ll only be the two of us, which is kind of a luxury,” Muriel commented. With a little sigh she looked at the scene around her, full of the noise of hammers and drills, workman popping up around corners. “You know the pre-season week around here is like a madhouse—it is at every hotel—and you probably won’t meet Max for a few days. Don’t worry about it. If he were to notice you too soon, it might give you the impression that you were someone special. He wants us all to remember that we are worker bees. But don’t worry about it. He’s really quite harmless, and at heart he’s a worker bee himself.”
“But I’m not really sure what I’m supposed to do. When and where do I work?”
“Don’t worry about it. Just follow my lead. It will all begin to make sense in a couple of days, and there’ll be plenty for you to do when the guests start pouring in.”
Bess was beginning to warm to Muriel. She was quite friendly and helpful, welcoming, really, and Bess was grateful. Muriel would ease her discomfort at being the new girl in town.
The one-room cabin they were sharing turned out to be a decent size and rather private, maybe a little in disrepair, but close to the woods and away from the guest accommodations. It had a bare-bones but entirely functional bathroom, just for the two of them, which was in itself a luxury to Bess. There was even a little front porch. How lovely to sit out here and sketch or read. She turned to Muriel with a smile of genuine pleasure, which quite suddenly turned into an enormous yawn. Muriel gave a little laugh.
“Anxiety about the unknown is exhausting, isn’t it? I remember the first time I came to this place. I didn’t sleep a wink for two days before I got here. I bet you sleep well tonight!” Muriel gave her a friendly wink. The future was looking rosy.
It took Bess a whole three days before she allowed herself to wonder what she had ever done to make that skunk, Lillian, hate her so much. For only someone who bore her malice would have sent the city-bred Bess, blameless and defenseless, to this Garden of Eden without so much as a can of DDT. Years later, Bess had only to scratch a mosquito bite to conjure up her first week at the Alpine Song. She had arrived just at the onset of a heat wave that would blanket the state and most of the East Coast with oppressive humid air. It was little use to tell herself it would be worse in the city because there, at least, she wouldn’t be eaten alive. Those welts all over her arms and legs, even her face! The quaint woodsy cabin she shared with Muriel had screens, but they were poorly fitted or the window frames had warped or something, and every bug that lusted for blood told all his friends that come nightfall it was party time.
Muriel, though less susceptible, was sympathetic, and she promised to use her influence with Max to get him to fix the screens. She wouldn’t even approach him this pre-season week, however, so together they devised their own defense. They wheedled heavy plumbing tape from the workmen and plugged up the holes and spaces around the screens. They collected every flashlight they could lay their hands on and piled them in a box on the porch. The first one home at dark would immediately light the flashlights in a row across the porch and turn on the porch light, open the door quickly and duck as the horde of winged furies attracted by the lights whooshed out the door, and then rush inside and hurriedly slam the door. They slept with their heads under the sheets to avoid any stray bloodsuckers. They used up a lot of batteries and braved the wrath of Max, who was a stickler for saving electricity, but they were beyond caring. Then Bess discovered poison ivy. What good was it to look great in shorts if your legs were continually covered with blisters and calamine lotion?
Toward the end of her first week, a lean man with thinning white hair wearing outdoor work pants and shoes hailed her. Although she’d seen him around, she had thought he was a laborer, but it turned out this was her boss. Her first encounter with Max taught her two things: first, resort owners are not likely to be patrons of the arts; second, if an opportunity is too good to be true, it probably is.
“I don’t know what kind of cockamamie story that Lillian told you, but our guests, they’re not very interested in arts and crafts. The kiddies, they want to be in the pool or outside playing games. The mamas and papas, they want to get a little sun, rest, eat, maybe drink a little more than is good for them. For most of them, this is a once-a-year vacation, and they want to be waited on, entertained. Not very high-class entertainment, you understand. That’s the way they like it, so that’s the way I like it.”
“But why did Lillian say . . . ?”
“Lillian, she’s a friend of yours?”
“Not really.”
“Good! But I have no time for gossip. Your contract says help out as needed. Maybe on a rainy day a kid wants to make a clay ashtray, but I don’t think so. Mostly you’ll help Muriel in the office. Also run errands, take over the reception desk when the girl’s on a break, bring the livestock to the kitchen when the busboys are really busy, but no waiting on tables—that’s for the waiters. They don’t like nobody should interfere with their tips. So you’ll hang around the canteen and the card rooms in the evenings and make yourself useful. No dancing with the help or the guests, unless the paying ladies already got partners. And no hanky-panky. You seem like a nice Jewish girl, so I’m doing you a favor. Not just the hundred bucks, which in these times is hard to come by, let me tell you, but also you got practically private accommodations; you get to live in a cabin with Muriel. She’s also a nice Jewish girl, a little older than you. You won’t get into no trouble with her. You understand?”
Bess nodded.
“Good! Meeting’s over.” Max turned to leave and then suddenly faced her. “And—what’s your name—Bess? I’ll get around to fixing those screens maybe after next week, but meanwhile eighty-six those shorts until those bites, or whatever, are gone. It’s not nice the guests should think you got them here—hnyeh, hnyeh—and remember, turn out the lights!”Astonished, Bess nodded again. Did she imagine it or did Max actually wink at her?
She reported to Muriel. “I just got my orders from Max—hnyeh, hnyeh—where did he get that laugh?”
Muriel snorted. “Don’t get me started.”
“So what’s eighty-six?”
“Kitchen slang for ‘dump it.’”
“And I’m almost afraid to ask, but what is livestock doing in the kitchen?”
“It’s slang
for perishables, like butter and milk, anything that can spoil. It’s vital to the survival of this kind of hotel not to waste food, to conserve leftovers. The kitchen is the heart of the place.”
“Does that mean that now that the guests are coming, we dine on their leftovers?”
“You’ll hardly recognize them.” Muriel smiled. “Don’t worry. The food will remain the same.”
Which was quite good, Bess thought to herself. But what did she know? Her own mother was a lousy cook.
“It’s just a first impression, I know, but I didn’t think Max was a bad guy at all. I mean the way people grouse about him, you’d think he was an ogre. And he said he’d try to get to these screens after next week some time.”
Muriel grinned. “If he said after next week, you can figure on August at the earliest. But it’s because he’s so busy and works all the time. And you’re right, he’s not a bad guy at all—one of the best I know to work for. My fiancé’s boss, now, is really a slave driver. Most of the grousing about Max is because it’s expected; you know, you don’t want people to think you’re buttering up the boss. As for Max, he doesn’t want anyone to think he’s a soft touch.”
Bess and Frima Page 3