Hugo suggested reminding our guests about checkout time and if that didn’t work, telling them that new guests are arriving.
I pointed out that no new guests were expected.
“Doesn’t matter. Bookings could materialize at any time.”
The new life is a sitcom, I told him. Sitting on the floor of my own house in a sea of hole punches, I was collating wedding programs for a complete stranger. Another warning I’d heard, that some bed-and-breakfast owners have trouble sharing their turf—telltale signs are too many rules posted and hosts that seem to be watching the guests around every corner—didn’t apply here because we set up as an inn from the beginning. It was just on principle that I thought guests should leave on time. Aside from that, I had to admit it was fun. With the kids far away for school and jobs, it was a relief to be in a house again that reverberated with happy activity, and be part of it. The bride invited me to the wedding.
Back in the dining room, the guests had finished breakfast but showed no sign of getting ready to leave. They seemed to be settling in. I tried dropping a hint by clearing the table, without results. There was nothing to do but approach the bride, now deep in conversation with her mother. I apologized for rushing them, but having a checkout time was to allow us to get ready for the next guests.
It worked. Half an hour later they were gone and I surveyed for damages. They had picked up the hundreds of hole punches and aside from a paper cup of cold coffee in the parlor, the place was spotless. Taking leftover juice, toast, and a cup of coffee to the table, I opened the guest book. I needed comfort to read what, if anything, our first guests thought. I had given my best for Hugo’s new business and if it didn’t please, it was not for lack of trying.
Beautiful house. Can’t wait to come back for the warm hospitality.
I called up Hugo, who was driving back from New Jersey, and read it to him twice, jubilant because she touched on what I cared about most and thankful that I had kept my mouth shut about the towels and overstaying.
He said he was bringing gifts, rugs, photo albums, silver, and other antiques. More would arrive next week by moving van.
Very nice, I said, but I was thinking about a trip or a series of favors or—I suddenly knew what the payback would be.
We ate Italian food and discussed it while eating. We listened to Caruso and Pavarotti at Sunday dinner. A trip always meant Italy. All delightful, but as the novelty of marrying into an Italian family wore off, I began to miss my own family traditions and yearned to revisit them before they faded to vague or forgotten memories.
The payback was equal time for my heritage. A visit to the farm at Antietam and the little Dunker church where my great-great-grandfather had preached the evening before the Civil War battle. I also wanted to see the gravesite of my half-Indian ancestor and the Seneca lands in New York State. This ancestry represented an unspeakable embarrassment to my German-Huguenot family and was never discussed. In a neatly typed family history, a tiny, cramped hand noted the fact as an afterthought. We would visit Antietam and Seneca territory and we would start cooking and eating American Indian foods.
Hugo agreed to consider the idea more after the upcoming, fully booked weekend at the bed-and-breakfast. In two weeks, all three rooms were reserved for the first time and for two nights. These bookings also came from The Oaks, which was hosting another wedding. Six room nights in the lingo, a big step up. Twelve breakfasts and twelve teas to plan, cook, and serve. The third room was almost ready.
With ten days to go until the big weekend and with two more bookings before that, I decided to go away. This would allow Hugo to experience running the place by himself as I had, and would help him understand it better. I missed Lucy and Amanda and it was my only chance of seeing them anytime soon. So the plan was only half revenge.
Returning from the all-girls holiday, Hugo met me at the airport. “It was a lot of work, running the B&B without you.” He picked up my suitcase.
Tell me all about it, I said, giving him a light kiss.
Listening just enough to gather that all went well with a couple and a single lady who had stayed, I gazed out the truck window at the wide, green fields and lines of oaks, pines, and flowering pear as we approached the Chesapeake Bay Bridge and the Eastern Shore. I missed Amanda and Lucy, but with Hugo beside me and the clean, grassy fragrance of springtime fields mixing with the briny breezes, I felt something almost like coming home.
Home. A complicated concept. A bed-and-breakfast done right is an idealized kind of home, more homey somehow than a real one. We evidently had gotten that part right. But a true home for us, I had to admit, seemed stubbornly elusive, quite imaginable but not exactly within reach.
Hugo was still listing everything that needed doing as we pulled into the driveway. The door to the secret backstairs, which would be used for the first time by guests staying in the small, romantic room at the top of those stairs, needed work. This rickety handmade door was definitely quaint, but the peeling brown paint, which showered chips all over the landing when the door opened or closed and the wind blew around like confetti, definitely was not. The door needed scraping, filling, sanding, and painting. If there was time, the battered wooden stairs needed the same. We started in.
By dusk, both door and stairs were ready for undercoating. Hugo disappeared into the kitchen and I heard the uplifting clink of ice against glass—grown-ups’ school bell. Workday’s over. We walked outside, past tools, paint buckets, ladders, and refuse, to the lawn. From here you could look out to Oak Creek and see lights coming on. A party was in progress somewhere. A jazz group started up.
Stars came out. A wispy breeze drifted off the creek. Behind us the house in its new white paint glowed in the afterlight of the day. Hugo took my hand and we did an easy two-step.
It lasted less than five minutes, but for once I made a point of noticing, and memorizing the moment. The house with its promise of a new life, the grass, the breeze, the music, us dancing. A time of perfect happiness that nothing could ever take away.
CHAPTER
13
Undertoad
A BRIGHT, ENERGIZING MID-MAY MORNING. WE MADE a quick trip to the Western Shore so Hugo could buy last-minute supplies and I could keep a doctor’s appointment. The office headaches were getting worse, although they rarely struck on weekends when I was at the bed-and-breakfast. The doctor thought environmental factors might be responsible and tried tests, diet, medications. Nothing helped. He ruled out a brain tumor because brain tumors, he said, don’t clear up on weekends. After the appointment, I did office work at our house which still served as base camp until we would move full time to the bed-and-breakfast.
Hugo set out around two-thirty that afternoon for the Eastern Shore, late considering all that needed doing in forty-eight hours. Before he left I stood in the driveway next to his truck, where he sat ready to start the engine. We congratulated each other on being really prepared to run a bed-and-breakfast. Each of us had done it alone. This could only be easy. It represented the culmination of all the dreams and work, all the past disappointments set aside, the curtain rising on a brand-new life. Apparently, the stresses hadn’t even dented our marriage. They might have had an opposite effect, Hugo pointed out as he leaned back on the truck seat to catch the sunlight on his face, because this start-a-new-life-on-a-shoestring business was too fragile to survive serious disagreement—and we both knew it.
Little fights were allowed and we took a minute to replay the one about the color for the front door. I had chosen grass-green, as described by Mr. Don Harper, whose family opened the Pasadena Inn across the street in 1902 and he grew up there. A centenarian when I met him at a summer picnic, Mr. Harper said the front door and shutters of our house were always green with cherry red trim on the window sashes.
Wanting to evoke bay surroundings, Hugo insisted on maritime blue. When I consented to blue to make peace and sanded, primed, and painted the door with two glossy coats of a color called Welcome Blue an
d it turned out not to be the blue he saw in his mind’s eye, this caused almost as much trouble as the blackberry muffins. Hugo glanced at his watch. Time was up.
His to-do list for Thursday and Friday was taped to the dashboard:
1. Mow lawn
2. Backstairs, final blue paint & do ahead so no fumes
3. Plane sticking front door
4. Clean up junk, gravel, mulch, 2-x-4s, bags cement
5. Lay timbers in driveway so guests know where to park
6. Test cream waffle recipe for Sunday
7. Food shop, two breakfasts, two teas
8. Buy guest soaps, shampoos etc.
9. Laundry!!
Everyone who’s “been there” warns that the worst part of running a bed-and-breakfast is the laundry. You can’t run the washer and dryer when guests are in our house or out on the lawn because it might interfere with the bucolic serenity they expect. But in a small bed-and-breakfast it’s only a problem, I discovered, if you fall behind. Naturally, we were behind after only two weeks. With laundry stacked on the desk and bed, there was nowhere to eat, sleep, or pay bills. We weren’t even close to having the housekeeping help we promised ourselves once the business picked up. So Hugo planned to get right on it.
My plan called for finishing up the week at the office and arriving Friday night, after Hugo checked in the guests and served the first afternoon tea. I would help out on Saturday and Sunday.
When I’m working and need to concentrate, I usually let the phone ring and return calls later. Maybe this time I needed a break. When the phone rang, I answered.
No one seemed to be on the line.
As I started to hang up, a rasp came from the phone. I couldn’t be sure. It sounded like Hugo and it didn’t sound like him. I had never heard this voice before and went cold. The undertoad, I thought, the unexpected thing John Irving called it, that always gets you when you’re looking the other way.
“What’s up?” I asked. “Where are you?”
“Sick,” he said.
I thought it must be an accident because he was never sick.
“Are you in the truck?”
“Can’t talk . . .”
“Where are you?”
“Fifty.”
“Route 50?”
“Yes.”
“Where on Route 50?”
“Can’t see . . .”
“You have to see. Look, and tell me where you are.”
He said something about Hess Road. I vaguely remembered an exit from Route 50. Did he mean that? Yes, he said.
I told him to call 911 while I called them, too. Minutes later when I called him back, his phone clicked on and I heard a siren.
“They’re here” was all he said.
The siren got loud and I heard walkie-talkies and voices, but I couldn’t make out what they were saying.
CHAPTER
14
The Upside Down
A 52-YEAR-OLD GENTLEMAN WAS DRIVING TO HIS BED-and-breakfast on the Eastern Shore... I didn’t want there to be more and the words kept rerunning when I tried to read the report later. A gentleman was driving to his bed-and-breakfast . . . and everyone lived happily ever after.
Four o’clock, a weekday, rush hour. The roads would be jammed for three more hours. I started locking doors and windows, switching off lights. Call the cat sitter, a small methodical part of myself directed, say you don’t know when you’ll be back. Pack. Don’t forget the muffin recipe. I slipped the index card with my grandmother’s faded script in my shirt pocket.
What else? Linens for the third guest room, also a lamp and a crocheted tablecloth that would do for a bedskirt. Bed-skirt? How could I even be thinking about a bedskirt at a time like this? What time this was I couldn’t say. There was fear in my throat and eyes. Something was horribly wrong.
What next? Call the hospital in Easton where they would be likely to take someone who was injured on the highway—unless it was a helicopter evacuation to a big medical center. But where would that be? I had no idea. I called the hospital and identified Hugo, his truck, the time of the rescue.
They connected me right away to the emergency room and a cardiologist came on the line. One of the upper chambers of Hugo’s heart started beating uncontrollably, he explained. Not a heart attack. They were giving him medicine.
He’s stable, the cardiologist said. “But we haven’t got the fibrillation stopped so he’s going to be here a while.” The cardiologist was clearly smart and experienced. He answered my questions before I could ask.
“There are other things we’ll try,” he said. “This by itself isn’t life-threatening but it can cause blood clots, so we’re giving him medicines to prevent that. His vital signs are good.”
Vital signs? My young, strong husband was between life and death with doctors watching his vital signs. If it did not seem so unlikely I would have been much more upset. I dialed Hugo’s dad.
As the phone rang, I realized it would be important to go easy. A medical man or not, he was almost ninety. My casual greeting didn’t work.
“What’s up, Carol?”
There’s a problem, I said, but everything’s going to be fine. I wanted to let him know that Hugo wasn’t feeling well and he was, just for now, in the hospital.
“What’s he got?”
Atrial fibrillation.
“Jesus!”
I had never heard him invoke a deity, and asked if it was bad.
It can be or not, he said. He would get some information and call back.
By the time I sped across the Bay Bridge it was dark. Slowing down at Hess Road, I spotted Hugo’s silver-gray pickup parked just off the highway in tall grass. This will turn out to be nothing, I decided, seeing that his truck was neatly parallel to the guardrail. He couldn’t be very sick or he would have crashed into the rail. When I get to the hospital he’ll be gone, he will have checked out. I will go to the B&B and he’ll be there waiting for me.
I didn’t exactly know where the hospital was, even though I had been in the pin-neat, picturesque county seat of Easton, a dozen miles from our village, before. There was no one out on the streets walking or driving, an unfamiliar sight to a city dweller. I stopped at a gas station for directions.
When the attendant said, “Straight ahead on your right, ma’am,” I wanted to hug him. The ma’am meant more than he would know. It meant that you and where you are going deserve courtesy, you are not a lost soul driving through the dark, alone without family or friends, to an unknown situation in a strange town.
The hospital looked dark and closed up. Two doors I tried were locked. I walked around to the emergency entrance, where a guard let me in. I signed the log and followed directions up to the second floor.
Three intravenous lines extended from each of Hugo’s arms and bleeping monitors were attached all over his chest. A wall of machines behind him blinked green, blue, and white. His eyes were closed.
I said his name and touched his arm.
Hey, he said without opening his eyes.
I couldn’t think of what to do except hold his hand. He didn’t need or want anything. I topped off his water pitcher and refolded the blanket on his bed. The nurse said they would keep a close eye on him overnight and the doctors would come by early in the morning. Hugo could hardly speak, but agreed when I brought up the idea of leaving to get ready for the guests. In a small town if we disappointed the guests, word would spread and no one could be expected to refer any more business our way.
It was after midnight and very dark without streetlights or a moon as I headed out Route 33, the only car on the road. Past the Three Sisters Café, closed, I turned onto Ditch Road, so-called because of the deep drainage ditches on both sides, and drove slowly, carefully past Big Woods, past the Woman Tree so named for its suggestive branching. It wouldn’t do to get stuck in a ditch right now.
In the driveway it was even darker. By the car headlights, I made my way up the path and unlocked the kitchen door. Swarming m
osquitoes trailed me into the house.
Switching on the light in the “office,” the twelve-by-four teen-foot owners’ quarters, I saw white mountains of towels, sheets, table mats, and napkins piled on the sofa bed and desk and spilling onto the floor, blocking my way. No crying over laundry, please, I could hear Zia Lillia say, and smiled in spite of myself. What a surprise to find her here.
There was no choice. I started on the laundry. The laundry room was still jammed with ladders, paint cans, and lumber, some too heavy for me to move. I stacked the ladders to one side, clearing a narrow path, and put in the first load before I fell asleep on the sofa.
Check-in time was clearly stated on our reservation confirmations as four to six o’clock, but Hugo had told me that while I was away, the guests showed up at eleven in the morning. Sometimes they just do what they want to do, he said, just like us when we’re traveling. The early guests arrived off a red-eye flight from California and he felt he had to let them in, offer tea and a bite to eat, even though lunch and dinner aren’t part of the bed-and-breakfast deal. He concluded that you have to be ready early.
I remembered my grandmother’s expression, “Work backward,” meaning in this situation shop and ready the rooms before doing anything else. Seeing Hugo and talking with the doctors would have to wait . . .
Your desperately ill husband will have to wait? I wondered if I was thinking straight. Hospitalized patients often need an advocate to look after them, speak up, and generally help out. But if I canceled the rooms out from under the guests, ruining the new business on account of him, his spirit might be crushed. There was a lot riding on this project.
As I was considering what to do that morning, Hugo’s dad called. He had talked with the cardiologist, who said Hugo was going to be fine and would probably be discharged today or tomorrow. My spirits lifted. With that news, I decided to go ahead with the arriving guests.
The House at Royal Oak Page 11