Aimee gently added two cartons of organic eggs (cage-free chickens blessed by a shaman, three dollars more than the ShopRite brand) and a container of Almond Breeze. She and her husband, Roger, were off cow’s milk since he’d returned from a medical conference a few years back declaring that dairy was the devil. She held her doctor-husband in such high esteem that it hadn’t occurred to Aimee to prod him on the details. He’d said something about increased risk of diabetes. Or was it Alzheimer’s? The nearly full container of 2% had gone down the drain of their stainless-steel sink, and she’d stocked up on dairy substitutes. Roger Glasser, internist with a five-star rating on Health Grades.com, treated half their hometown of Scarsdale. He even had a drop-in clinic in a less affluent area about an hour away, where patients traveled to see him. What did she know about health and wellness compared to him? She didn’t feel like she knew much about anything beyond after-school soccer clubs and yearbook meetings, not after more than two decades of parenting had turned her once sharp mind into sludge.
In the pantry aisle, Aimee shuttled past the colorful cereal boxes and nearly forgot to grab a box of Honey Nut Cheerios. Well, technically, they were Nature O’s, the artisanal substitute that was twice the price and another sign of her privilege. Her children were coming for the weekend and would want their usuals. It was a sign of how distraught she was that her children’s wants and needs weren’t front and center. In theory, she craved a sliver of life to call her own—to not spend every waking second worrying about whether Zach ever washed his sheets in college, if Scott was remembering to eat, or whether Maddie was holding her cell phone too close to her ear—but this wasn’t the way she wanted to get there. Not by crisis.
Traditionally, for Father’s Day weekend, the five nuclear Glassers celebrated the Hallmark holiday with a decadent brunch at home, a round of golf for Roger and the boys, then dinner at Szechuan Palace. When it had been her turn to be feted a month earlier for Mother’s Day, Aimee’s life hadn’t yet capsized. Two mimosas at breakfast had made her giggly and extraordinarily affectionate, then she’d fallen into a nap during the massage the kids had gotten her, and at dinner she’d been so jolly and rested, she’d indulged in multiple heaps of lo mein and fried rice. Now Aimee could barely get a yogurt down without running for the toilet. At least the bomb Roger had dropped on her would be good for her waistline. After continuous and only moderately successful dieting for four decades, this was a genuine silver lining. Aimee wished she’d been born with her mother’s petite frame, or even her father’s athletic build, but instead she had thicker limbs and a lazy metabolism. “Try no carbs,” her mother would say. “Stop eating after seven p.m.” Louise Goldman was full of suggestions—did the woman ever keep an opinion to herself?—but nothing she could offer would quell this crisis.
Maddie, Aimee and Roger’s eldest child, was planning to drive to Scarsdale from the West Village with her boyfriend-almost-fiancé, Andrew Hoff, tomorrow morning. Maddie was counting the minutes until she got a ring on her finger, scouring the apartment she shared with Andrew in search of a velvet box. “I even looked in the toilet tank,” she’d confided in Aimee. Maddie was twenty-nine and one of those women born with a life plan: work hard, go to a good college, choose a career that will allow for intellectual satisfaction but with flexibility to raise a family, and find a good man to marry before turning thirty. If it was possible to push out 2.5 kids (one boy, one girl, one unicorn), her daughter would figure it out. Maddie had emphasized what a big deal it was for Andrew to spend Father’s Day away from his family, missing the hoopla at their club. Andrew came from a ridiculously wealthy family in Palm Beach—because after a certain number of zeroes in your net worth, it did become ridiculous. His family had been Jewish once upon a time, but traditions gently stripped away with each passing generation—first the mezuzah disappearing from the doorpost, then the menorah getting lost, and finally the “stein” falling off their last name like a weak tree branch. Aimee knew Patsy and Bick (those names!) didn’t love that their son was in love with a girl with Borscht Belt roots. Still, Maddie claimed a ring was imminent. If she was right, it meant Aimee would be mother of the bride before long. It seemed impossible. One minute she’d been spreading Desitin on her firstborn’s diaper rash; the next she’d been discussing oval versus cushion-cut engagement rings with her.
Scott, her middle, was flying in for the weekend later that night. He was in his second year of medical school at the University of Chicago, Roger’s alma mater. The news would hit Scott the hardest. He was the most sensitive of her trio, and he idolized his father. After years of struggling to figure out his place in the family (if Maddie was the hyper-focused all-star and Zachary the adorable baby—they didn’t call him Wacky Zacky for nothing—where did Scott fit in?), Scott knew middle-child syndrome was real. But by high school, her boy had figured out that following in his father’s footsteps would be his calling card. Scott could focus for hours and was a whiz at chemistry. He was the only one of the Glasser kids who ever asked to go to work with Daddy. Maddie fainted at the sight of needles, and Zach preferred video games to everything else, but Scott would spend as much time as he could “assisting” his father in the office. Roger knew the extent to which Scott worshipped him. That alone should have prevented her husband from being so stupid! That . . . and the threat of jail time.
Zachary, sweet Wacky Zacky, was back living at home. Just a month earlier, he’d finished off five years at the University of Vermont—the “extended plan,” she and Roger called it. He’d graduated with no job or career path—at least, none that he’d shared with his very curious parents. “Failure to launch?” her nosy next-door neighbor Betsy Lehman had asked when she’d orgasmically watched the youngest Glasser moving back home. She was always peering over the fence that divided their properties. “Just weeding,” she’d say whenever Aimee caught her snooping. “Weeds are on the ground,” Aimee would call back with forced levity.
She’d been complaining about Betsy’s fake weeding to Roger one night when Zach had come into the kitchen to retrieve a pint of ice cream. “Did someone say weed?” he’d asked. Her son was not entirely without passions.
Betsy’s inquiry had nettled her precisely because it was on point. Zach had only declared a major after repeated letters from the dean warned him he wouldn’t graduate otherwise. He’d finally chosen geography, which sounded more like an elementary school class than a university discipline, and it was a subject in which Zach wasn’t particularly strong. On the long car rides to the Golden, the Glassers would play a geography game to pass the time. One person would say a place, and the next had to follow with a new place that started with the last letter of the old place. Zach, as the youngest, had already been at a disadvantage. Still he refused the hints Aimee and Roger had whispered in his ear, choosing instead to follow “England” with “Doodie” and “Frankfurt” with “Tushy” and, for no reason at all other than a spelling handicap, “Orlando” with “apple.” He’d thought cartography was the study of go-karts.
With hushed conversations and the TV on to occlude the sound, thus far she and Roger had managed to keep the impending crisis away from Zach. It helped that their son was a low level of stoned all day. She wanted to tell Zach not to smoke in the house, that if he was going to live under their roof, he had to abide by their rules. But what rights did they have anymore? Her authority was a phantom.
Zach, Scott, and Maddie were about to find out their father was a criminal. Not just any criminal, either. Roger had, allegedly, violated four federal and six state statutes, and faced up to fifteen years in prison. The children would learn their comfortable, cushy, name-brand-everything lives were based on a lie. The man they’d cuddled with on the couch to watch Monday night football and who’d taught them to ride their bikes safely and never without a helmet had put hundreds of people in harm’s way. These chilling thoughts returned to Aimee for the millionth time as she stood at the bakery counter, studying the b
lueberry Danishes that were Roger’s favorite. For the past twenty years, Aimee had gone to ShopRite once a week to stock up, always making sure to pick up her husband’s preferred indulgence. This time she couldn’t bring herself to pull a number from the dispenser on top of the display case. It wasn’t much retribution, withholding an item from the grocery list, but Aimee would grasp at whatever small victories came her way. Roger’s food choices would be far grimmer in prison, if it came down to that. Their lawyer wasn’t sure yet. A deal was a possibility; a plea bargain that would strip Roger of his medical license but would spare him criminal sanctions. Keeping everything quiet and away from their children, the thing Aimee cared the most about, still seemed impossible.
A “pill mill.” That’s what her husband had been running out of his secondary medical office for the past decade. Unbeknownst to Aimee, their lavish lifestyle was funded by Roger doling out OxyContin scripts willy-nilly. She wondered if patients even feigned pain, or if his laxity and greed were so profound, they didn’t need to bother. Her husband was what the pharmaceutical company who manufactured the painkiller called a “whale,” because he was one of their biggest distributors of product. Hooking people on Oxy had apparently paid for their kitchen renovation, annual trips to the Bahamas, their BMWs, even Zach’s extra year of college. The list of what the drug money had paid for went on and on. Her silk shirt. Their twice-weekly housekeeper Marcia’s salary. Scott’s debt-free medical education. Everything they had was tainted; she could no longer enjoy a single one of her possessions. Aimee had Googled what Oxy pills looked like. They were no bigger than the Advils she popped after a frustrating encounter with Betsy, and they came in a rainbow of pastels depending on the dosage. Now the nubby throw on their living room couch reminded her of the sea green eighty-milligram pill. A mustard-colored vase in their kitchen was the same color as the forty-milligram. Aimee threw them both out.
For all these years, Aimee had believed Roger when he’d explained away their largesse. He’d said he’d stopped accepting certain insurance plans, which meant more full-payer patients. He’d said his practice had expanded to offer holistic services, including nutritional counseling and wellness treatments, which were all out-of-pocket. It wasn’t like Aimee was oblivious to the fact that most doctors didn’t live the way they did. She suspected Roger ordered a couple more tests than absolutely necessary, maybe accepted kickbacks from the physicians he referred to. But hooking innocent people on a debilitating drug that wrecked millions of lives? No, that she’d never imagined. Her brain wasn’t that creative; her imagination stopped at adding pecans to cranberry sauce. Just a few months earlier, a memoirist had come to speak at the town library where Aimee volunteered. The author had told the local audience about losing her life savings because a boyfriend had hoodwinked her. Aimee had nodded sympathetically while thinking, I would never be that stupid. And now, karma. She cringed at her naïveté. Had she always been this foolish and trusting? Gullible, sure. The pranks Peter and Brian used to play on her . . .
As Aimee moved on to the checkout lanes, she spotted Betsy Lehman unloading her cart. Betsy was just one of many women in town who would secretly delight when the scandal broke. Aimee narrowly managed to avoid her neighbor’s detection by swerving into a different lane. She paid for her food so absentmindedly that when the cashier asked if she had any coupons, she responded, “I’m fine, how are you?” After loading the trunk, she collapsed behind the driver’s seat of her X7. The weight of this secret was exhausting—literally. Because Aimee hadn’t wanted to worry Zach, she was letting Roger remain in their bedroom. But sleeping next to him was miserable. Roger even snored like a guilty man. She had barely gotten more than an hour of consecutive sleep since Roger had confessed.
A knock on her window startled her. Aimee begrudgingly rolled down the window.
“Hi, Betsy.”
“Hi there, Aim.” Aimee hated the nickname, especially when it came from someone she preferred to keep at a distance. The only shortening she tolerated was “A” from Roger, and he knew better than to use it these days. “I just saw you sitting there and was wondering what your plans are for this—”
Aimee’s cell phone rang. She eyed the name on the caller ID. Thank you, Maman.
“Sorry, Betsy, it’s my mother. I’ve got to take this.” She rolled up the window so quickly Betsy’s chubby fingers barely escaped getting caught.
Since Aimee’s father had died last year, her mother’s interest in her only child’s life had reached new peaks. Louise and Benny, a mismatch in the dawn of their marriage, had been that rare couple that seemed to grow closer as the decades wore on. Over the years, they’d met in the middle on so many things—Benny had agreed to expensive piano lessons for Aimee and to ordering silk frocks from Paris for both his wife and his daughter; Louise had agreed to an anniversary tradition of Nathan’s hot dogs and a ride on the Cyclone at Coney Island. When Benny had died, it hadn’t so much seemed to Aimee like the loss of a distinct person, but rather that her mother had been halved. Because of this, no matter how busy Aimee was running household errands, responding to stressed texts from Maddie, or keeping track of her boys, she answered her mother’s calls. Even now, with tears pressing against the backs of her eyelids and Scott’s rocky road melting in the trunk.
“Bonjour, Maman,” Aimee said. Louise’s antennae were angled with such precision that any angst in Aimee’s voice was difficult to mask. She braced herself for questioning.
“Oh, darling, thank goodness you picked up. This is terribly important.”
In spite of everything, Aimee smiled.
Louise Goldman, mistress of the Golden, with her predictable flair for the dramatic. It occurred to Aimee that it would have been nice to include her mother in their Father’s Day plans. But her head was spinning with other concerns: protecting Scott, siloing Zach, wondering if the Hoffs would let their blue-ribbon boy propose to the daughter of a criminal. Louise had slipped through the cracks, another piece of collateral damage left in Roger’s wake.
“I’m here. What’s up?”
Out of the corner of her eye, Aimee watched Betsy wheel a shopping cart toward her smug eco-friendly Prius, a casual sway in her hips. Aimee envied the lighthearted way she moved, unloading the groceries to the beat of some invisible song. Aimee had once been that happy woman who went about her daily chores with a rhythm that propelled her, though it already felt like a lifetime ago. In reality, she’d been that person just two weeks earlier—right up until the moment she’d come home from her afternoon shift at the library and found Roger with a drink in his hand, a grave expression knitting his eyebrows together and shadowing his jaw. “There’s something I have to tell you,” he’d said. She’d braced herself for the revelation of an affair, followed by a request for a divorce. Aimee remembered sitting down opposite him, prepared for the sort of betrayal that ran freely through their affluent suburb. If only her problems had been that commonplace! There were so many things she would have preferred to hear. I got a stripper pregnant. I’m secretly gay. I’m running away to the circus. Pretty much anything was better than Hey, I’m a drug dealer and might have killed some people. Not that Roger had the balls to put it that way. He’d tried to tap-dance around it until she’d asked him point-blank: Do you deal Oxy?
Louise’s voice summoned her back.
“I don’t suppose you read the latest issue of the Windsor Word? I hear they’ve put it online,” Louise said. Her “they” referred to the entire universe of people under age fifty.
“No, I haven’t,” Aimee said.
Guilt blossomed in her chest again. She could’ve been a heck of a lot more active in the nominal role she held at the hotel that entitled her to a monthly paycheck. Instead she devoted herself to the care and well-being of her family and tended to the hotel only in fleeting moments of spare time. There was just so little of it. Roger’s white coats needed to be cleaned and pressed, dentist appointme
nts made for the whole family, the pantry kept stocked. Her children’s needs were bottomless. Every task ate away at her waking hours. Scouring for the best sneakers, researching educational summer programs, landing the best SAT tutor ($200 an hour): These were the generous slices of the pie chart that was Aimee Glasser.
She had just been thinking that, with her children grown and flown—two-thirds of them, anyway—it could be a good time to get more involved in the Golden. At times, the fantasy of seizing a professional life for herself had been so appealing that she’d tooled around with business cards on the computer, staring at the neat type that read, “Aimee Goldman-Glasser—Creative Director, The Golden Hotel.” She had ideas for an updated hotel logo that she wanted to show Brian. But if she was really honest, hadn’t she been partly relieved when Zach moved back home? She hadn’t exactly encouraged him to spread his wings when she’d left snacks on the counter and done his laundry. It didn’t matter now anyway. Her empty nest quagmire had been before the Roger debacle. What Roger had done topped any of the sordid tales she’d grown up hearing around the hotel. Her life was reading like a salacious novel.
Aimee pictured the Windsor Word, square and pink, inky pages that left smudges on the hotel furniture. It was the weekly paper that came out unreliably on Thursdays in the area of the Catskills where the Golden was located. For many years, Louise Goldman had edited its arts and entertainment section, which was her way of making sure that the concerts, plays, and comedian acts at her hotel were listed first. Rivals said Louise Goldman had put the B in Borscht Belt, but if that chatter ever got to Aimee’s mother, she would have assumed B stood for beauty.
Last Summer at the Golden Hotel Page 4