by JoeAnn Hart
A few members were finding relief in the water, partially submerged like hippos. None were Frank, and none returned her gaze. Beryl Hall and Regina Wolfe were at the far end, lolling in the water with Jay Freylinghuysen, happy to have him ramble on about the 1992 Jaguar XJS he’d just gotten at auction and was looking to sell, or “place,” like an orphan. The women were deeply absorbed in his words, commenting with exaggeration and laughing with enthusiasm, so as to not have to look in Madeline’s direction. The only other person in the pool was Nina Rundlett, sidestroking sadly and slowly. Nature had not, as Arietta promised, come along with another great love.
Only Scott, up on his lifeguard chair, his legs twisted in some unnatural configuration around the armrests, seemed eager to acknowledge her existence. He untangled his limbs and raised his hand in a wave, exposing damp coils of hair under his arm. She wiggled a few fingers at him, then turned her head, feeling flushed.
Where was Frank? He used to always be at the Club on Sunday afternoons, but she hadn’t seen him in almost two weeks, not since she had intimated that Vita was stealing. She must have stung him to the core with her dangerous bit of dirt. How could she have done that?
Shock. That’s how. Automatic self-preservation. Vita had probably just been shooting the breeze, giving Frank her version of the hunt, and wondering out loud if Charles were a part of it. Look how quickly Madeline had assumed her husband had been rampaging through the thicket with a cocked gun. She had no faith in her family at all. If only Frank hadn’t been pushing all her buttons that afternoon, suggesting that she worried more about what people thought about her family than about her family itself. Certainly he knew she was more worried about Charles’s sanity than the appearance of sanity, more concerned about Phoebe’s rebellion than the manifestation of it at the gates. Or maybe he didn’t know. And how would he, when she kept her feelings so guarded? He could only judge by what he could see, and at the moment, what she could see of herself looked pretty pathetic.
The sun beat on her back, pushing her toward the water. She squatted by the edge and dipped her fingers in. Warm, unhealthily warm, ready to culture something lethal. She stood up again and straightened the pleats of her bathing suit. With no energy to pick and choose for the best lounge chair, she sat down on the closest, without leaning back, her bag on her lap, wondering what to do. She missed Frank, the only person who let her talk about the problems in her life. And she had chased him away, for just that very reason.
A phalanx of crows soared overhead. Six, eight, nine. What was that nursery rhyme about crows she used to read to Phoebe? “One is for bad news. Two is for mirth. Three is for. . .” She had never been one of those mothers who memorized her child’s favorites, who carried the entire Mother Goose oeuvre in her head. Reading at night to her daughter had been just one more chore to cross off the list before running off to some meeting or social event. She certainly hadn’t been much of a mother. And what kind of a wife?
Scott stood and stretched on his platform, somewhat elaborately, twisting his torso left, then right, the whistle around his neck swaying with the movement. Madeline realized that he must have interpreted her looking up at the crows as gazing at him. He climbed down from his station like a chimp, using one arm, then another, before dropping to the cobbles. He was barefoot but didn’t seem bothered by the hot stones as she was.
“Hey, Mrs. Lambert.” He knelt on one knee next to her so that their faces were close. He smelled of coconut oil and sweat, a body exuding warmth from the sun. Her lips cracked as she twisted her mouth into a mechanical smile. “Hi, Scott. How are you?”
“I don’t want you to think this is weird or anything,” he said in his soft, nasal way. “I’ve been watching you, and you look like, so bummed. This lady needs cheering up, I said to myself.”
If Gerard Wilton knew Scott was talking this way to a member, saying something so personal, Scott would be fired on the spot. And yet, wasn’t it Scott’s job to save lives?
She opened her mouth to thank him for his concern, but no words came. Tears filled her throat and pressed against her brain. The floodgates of her soul poured out from behind her sunglasses, and she tasted salt on her lips. Ancestors dragged themselves from the briny sea and struggled to be upright and fairly human for what? Here she was, her husband alienated, her daughter an alien, her life a mess.
Scott reached out to steady her. But he must have felt the eyes of the other members upon them, and drew back.
“Mrs. Lambert has had too much sun,” he announced to the group in the pool. He turned to Madeline, pulling her up by her hands to a standing position. Her bag fell to the cobblestones. A brush, some lotion, a bottle of Evian, an old Vanity Fair, and a few wilted marigolds all fell out and stayed scattered in the sun. “Let’s get you where it’s cool.” He guided her to the safety of the pool house, walking backward as if teaching her to dance. “That’s it,” he whispered. “You’re doing good, Mrs. Lambert. You just have a little heat thing going on.” Regina, Beryl, and Jay, standing chest-deep in the pool, were staring, committing every movement to memory.
Nina, who had never noticed all the commotion in the first place, continued her solitary journey from one end of the green pool to the other. A freshly steamed Ellen Bruner held the door open as Scott helped Madeline into the pool house.
Chapter Twenty-five
Flip Shot
G ERARD SAT at his mahogany desk on Tuesday morning, staring out at the lavish landscape through a window free of blinds at last. He had scraped the hawk silhouettes off the glass after the board meeting last week, the House & Grounds Committee be damned. If birds were dimwitted enough to fly into his picture window, then they deserved to be eliminated from the race. That was the natural law. They should in no way be helped by humans to avoid hazards: The stupid must be winnowed out.
Yes, he had a whole new confidence since that fateful meeting, which he had spent under the open window. He had almost cried out in joy when the board, in its own wishy-washy way, had stood up to Clendenning and saved his job.
Of course, he had mortgaged his future for the sake of his present by allowing Vita to proceed with her bloody plans. But in exchange Vita had not just catered to the secret desires of the board but also used her influence with the staff to create an unimpeachable and professional atmosphere at the Club. For the days that led up to the board meeting, the staff, inside and out, upstairs and down, was prompt, polite, organized, and smiling. Oh, those smiles.
He picked up his insulated ERCC mug ($15.99 at the gift shop) and breathed in deeply from the small opening in the lid. Peace and stability now prevailed, in spite of Phoebe Lambert and her freaky friends at the gates. Those kids (and he couldn’t help thinking of them as kids, even though they were not much younger than he was) carried on as if a daily vigil would bring the Bellows goose back to life. He took a sip. Aaah. Let them be. They had not an inkling of the more recent, and extreme, decimation of the goose population that had taken place on Friday.
Birdbrains. He snickered at his own little joke, then stopped. It would not be the least bit funny if they got their claws on a Fothergill Cup menu (Wild goose, Locally raised foie gras). But Phoebe wouldn’t be there, he prayed as he tapped his buffed nails on polished wood. He picked up the reservation list. Oddly enough, neither would her parents. They, old Club stalwarts, had made no reservations. Gerard shook his head. Charles Lambert. The poor bastard hadn’t seemed quite right since he killed the first goose of what was turning out to be a very long goose season. The protest season dragged on as well. Gerard saw Phoebe that morning when he stopped to chat with Aaron Bleane, who breathed unevenly as he leaned out of the guard booth window. Over the sound of the radio behind him, they talked about the Red Sox, but their eyes were on the demonstrators, flapping about with their cardboard wings. Phoebe had the nicest pair. She saw Gerard staring at her and hopped over.
“I’ve got a riddle for you two,” she said, taking off her beak to speak.
“S
hoot.” Bleane took a loud sip of coffee from his Dunkin’ Donuts cup, swishing it around like he was rinsing his mouth. Gerard made a mental memo to ask him to start decanting his coffee into ERCC paper cups.
“What’s a common trade name, three syllables, that starts with B and ends with K?”
Aaron smiled. “Bisquick,” he said. “My wife makes pancakes with the stuff. Throws some bananas in them, when we got ’em.”
“Wrong,” she said, and flapped her wings. “That’s only two syllables.”
Gerard folded his arms over his steering wheel and closed his eyes, trawling the depths of his mind for an answer. Usually, he guessed jokes incorrectly on purpose to give members the pleasure of “getting” him. But not now. He opened his eyes and gave his best Cheshire cat smile. “BusinessWeek.”
“I thought so,” said Phoebe, her wings drooping. She touched the amber beads at her throat, then turned and flapped away.
Gerard wondered what that was all about. Hadn’t he gotten the answer right? Or was BusinessWeek technically four syllables? He and Aaron shrugged at each other, and then he headed up the drive, which, because almost all members were using the rear entrance, was practically virginal these days. Paved in peastone and lined with cobble, it was ridiculously expensive to maintain, impossible to plow, and unnavigable by bike or motorcycle, but the members liked a surface that could give under them. The crunch of tires on stone was the sound of money. They had to sacrifice that sensation for the moment, but they would return. Soon, he hoped. There had been no more incidents to beckon the press, and if he could move the Fothergill Cup events smoothly along this week, the board would soon forget there had ever been a problem. Not Clendenning, though. He would not forget. But neither could he live forever.
The phone trilled and the kitchen light blinked. He moaned. “Hi, Vita. Yes, okay. . .okay. If you must.” He hung up and put his forehead on the desk. Vita wanted some face time with him because—surprise!—she had a problem. Was he the only one in this place who could solve things?
Yes, he was. He lifted his face to the pink sun pouring through the window and smiled at the rolling, pampered greens, the artfully pruned trees, the perfectly formed lake glinting in the distance. The Club’s problems were indeed Gerard’s problems. His to solve. He sat up straight and took a comb from his top drawer, swiveling in his chair and checking himself out in the mirror. This was his job, whose roots led back to when the first Eden Rock managers wore morning coats and white carnations. He could even guess what Vita wanted to talk about. It wasn’t the geese, because the worst was over as far as he was concerned. They’d been butchered in secret and brought over to Luisa’s mother’s house for safekeeping. But over the weekend Vita had mentioned something about changing meat suppliers because she wanted grass-fed beef that had been humanely killed, an oxymoron if he ever heard one. She said it was more expensive, but that she’d serve smaller, intense portions, balancing the plates with heirloom vegetables and Third World grains. But he was not going to roll over on this one. If she wanted to change to an expensive boutique supplier, she was going to have to make the numbers work.
Then, of course, her problem might lie closer to home. On his desk sat the restaurant receipts from the weekend. No Dr. Nicastro. Again. He and Vita must have had some sort of tiff in what-ever sick foodie relationship they had, and now look.
In the mirror, he saw Vita appear like an apparition at the open door, with her dark curls piled loosely on the top of her head and held back with a scarf, no toque. She wore a spotless chef’s jacket, cinched with a full white apron, but her pants were striped with purple. He wasn’t sure he liked this experimenting with tradition. First the white goes, then what? It was just a slippery slope to sweatpants. He was composing a memo about kitchenwear in his head even as he swiveled back around and slipped the comb back in his drawer. Sitting up tall, he folded his hands paternally on his desk, cocking his head in a welcoming and professional manner. Vita held out a plate of cheese blintzes slathered with blue gems of preserves; her lips were stained with them, which brought attention to her toothy smile.
Nervous, he thought to himself. Dear God, the woman was nervous about something. The Vita he knew screamed, slammed cabinets, and waved knives around in a holy terror. But this was something new. New was not good. “What is it, Vita? What’s going on?”
“Gerard, I don’t want you getting upset,” she began, and no sooner had the words come out of her mouth than he stood up in a panic and knocked his coffee over. A stream of brown liquid trickled across his desk. “You’re quitting! I knew it! Six days before the Fothergill Cup and you’re going to desert me! How could you do this? After what we’ve been through!”
“Sit down, Gerard,” she said. “And pull yourself together.” She put the blintzes on his desk and wiped the spill with the bottom of her apron. “I’m not going anywhere. There’s just a small glitch.”
He sat again, eyeing her warily. “Well? Spit it out.”
“The geese for the dinner.”
“Yes?”
“They need to be moved.”
“From Luisa’s mother’s house?”
“They’re not there, Gerard. Where would Mrs. Suarez put a stiff gaggle of geese in her crowded apartment? I lied so you wouldn’t worry. They’re actually. . .,” and she trailed off, looking out the window, where, on the emerald slopes, Canada geese still walked the earth among golfers. Beyond, in the hazy valley, church bells chimed. “Upstairs. Room Thirteen.”
Gerard clutched the edge of his desk and looked around his office, wondering where he was. “What?”
Vita twisted her apron in both hands and took a deep breath. “They’ve been hanging there ever since we butchered them Friday morning. There was no room in the cooler unless we stopped food service for the week, and we couldn’t very well do that.” She held her arms open in a helpless gesture and let her apron fall before taking another breath. “Besides, word would get out and we might have gotten in trouble because who knows what the law says about keeping dead animals in the kitchen—even though that’s all meat is!” She pointed to the ceiling, calling upon the power of heaven. “But now it’s an emergency. The AC in Thirteen broke down. We have to move them into the cooler, Gerard. You and me.”
“No.” He stood up, placing his palms on the desk for support. “No, no, no.”
She leaned closer to keep him from bolting, and lowered her voice. “In this heat, they’ll be rotten by noon. Sell ’em or smell ’em, as they say in the business. They’ll have to go in the walk-in until Fergus gets the new AC installed and the room cooled down, which probably won’t be until the end of the day.”
“But that air conditioner was already broken,” Gerard said. “Fergus told me not to rent the room out.”
“That’s Karma for you. I lied through him, and now it’s come true. The bottom line is, it’s broiling in there and all the other guest rooms are booked. Let the past go, Gerard. I need you now. I can’t wait for Luisa or Pedrosa to come in, and I can’t trust anyone else. You and I have to move the geese before they go from high to rank.” She leaned closer still, right up to his ear. “We’re in this together, Gerard.”
“No, no, no.” Gerard pressed down hard on his desk to constrain it. “Get them out of this building. Now. Now. If any of the members find out what you’ve done, we’ll both be fired.”
“The emphasis is on the word both,” she reminded him. “You agreed I could harvest the geese if I helped save your ass-kissing job. And I did. I can just as easily go back to the board and tell them I’ve had a change of opinion about our glorious manager.”
Gerard released the desk and sank deeply into his chair. It was too much. He’d only just gotten back the reins to his kingdom, and now here was Vita threatening to kick him off the horse again. It was those geese. Those diabolical birds, out to get him. If he could credit them for intelligence, he’d say it was a conspiracy. It was species against species now.
“What are we going to d
o?” he asked, already knowing his fate.
Vita stood up straight and relaxed, smoothing her apron. “We can have it done in a few trips down the fire escape, each looking out for the other. We’ll stack them in Glad bags on the floor of the walk-in for the day, and I’ll keep everyone out of there. No one will be the wiser. I’ll sneak them back upstairs with Luisa before dinner service.”
Gerard shook his head in defeat and whined. “The outside world is sure to find out. I can’t afford any more bad press.”
“Don’t worry about what you can’t control. In a few days, the members will have eaten the evidence anyway. Gerard, have you any idea what the profit margin is on these birds?”
He sat up and laid his hand on the restaurant receipts for strength. Yes, he did know. The geese, dead and hanging, were valuable assets to the Club. If anything happened to them now, Vita would have to create a new menu, at great cost. All the goose plates were completely preordered. In fact, the members who had to settle for cod were squawking. Good. Let them beg for it. Next year, he’d have Vita fatten more geese and save more money. The more dinners on the table, the fewer birds on the course. Who knew that the members couldn’t eat their way through his problem?
He stood up and took off his red linen jacket. He shook it out carefully, like a matador, then draped it on a silent butler. “Let’s get on with it,” he said. He tucked in his white button-down shirt and straightened his Club tartan tie. He was the manager of the Eden Rock Country Club, and he must do what had to be done. Vita held the door open for him, and he walked out into the marble hall with the sound of golden trumpets in his ears.
Gerard scaled the front staircase, which ascended in two flights to the right and left, joining at the top in a broad landing. Vita, ever practical, stopped at the broom closet first for Glad bags. As she searched for the hand vac, Vita worried about having Gerard as a partner in subterfuge, but she was a desperate woman. She had no choice. Professionally, she would be devastated if her geese decayed, and personally, she prayed that the geese would heal what-ever problem there was between her and Dr. Nicastro. She had paged through the reservation book and cheered when she saw his name listed for the banquet. And he had preordered the goose dinner! Lucky him. Her first taste of Mrs. Suarez’s goose was still as vivid to her as her first kiss. After gathering her materials, she joined Gerard on the landing, where he was staring out the Palladian window at the parking lot below. She was glad to see that the Club was quiet. The early golfers were safely on the links. A single tennis ball thumped lethargically at the courts. Best of all, no fanged Grand Cherokee marred the landscape. No Clendenning. Vita and Gerard gave each other a thumbs-up.