Last Summer at the Golden Hotel

by Elyssa Friedland

  “Yes. Phoebe and Michael arrived at the same time as Aimee and the kids. No Roger. Or Scott. It’s probably better. There will already be enough cooks in the kitchen.”

  It was a familiar joke. Whenever one of the owners checked in on food preparation—because preparing two hundred gallons of matzo ball soup at a time was no easy feat—Chef Joe would respond good-naturedly: I don’t need more cooks in the kitchen. He was a master of his domain, not unlike the superheroes that prepared the food on cruise ships, but lately he’d been slipping. Early on in their entrepreneurship, a proprietor of a beloved restaurant, now long-shuttered, in the town of Liberty had told Amos and Benny that the key to proper seasoning was that you should never be able to detect the presence or absence of salt. Lately, the food at the Golden was tasting like it had been prepared in Dead Sea water. Only useful if you needed to clean a scrape with your soup.

  “Have you spoken with Brian about this yet?” Fanny asked. She had positioned herself next to him at the window. He watched her face soften as she took in the forms of her grandchildren. Phoebe was a beauty, a cross between what her mother had looked like when she was young with her strawberry blond hair and button nose, and her uncle Brian with the piercing green eyes. Michael, their brilliant grandson, was a cipher, fiercely private whenever Fanny gave him the third degree.

  “Only a little,” Amos said, putting a hand on Fanny’s. She no longer wore the wedding ring he had given her more than sixty years ago. The medications she took swelled her joints. He’d offered to buy her a new ring, but she refused. “I’m wedded to the past,” she said, and Amos wasn’t sure if she caught her own pun.

  “Well, you should,” said Fanny. “I’m worried about him.” You know I can only be as happy as my least happy child, Amos completed her thought. He wondered if Brian was less happy than Peter. Just because Peter checked more boxes of a so-called successful life didn’t mean he had any more satisfaction than his twin.

  “I will. We’ve just gotten here, though,” Amos said, and rubbed his eyes to signal that he needed a break from the discussion. It was a subject he’d already turned over in his mind dozens of times since Brian had told him about the casino offer.

  The hotel had saved Brian at a time when his life was in shambles. It had enabled him to return to the place where he’d been the golden boy and to feel like a man again after Melinda had eviscerated him. Amos and Fanny had both thought he’d work there a few years and move on—maybe to New York City to pursue a career in sports management, something he’d shown an early interest in back when the Golden had hosted celebrity athletes. Having interests was never Brian’s issue; his problem was follow-through. He was an all-hat-and-no-cattle kind of guy, and if running the hotel had taught the senior Weingolds anything, it was that nothing could replace good old-fashioned hard work.

  When Brian had come to work at the hotel, Amos and Benny had still been young men, relatively speaking. They’d been robust, swimming laps and playing doubles with the rotating cast of sports stars who trained there. Benny, to his great credit, had never once complained or showed a trace of resentment when Brian arrived hat in hand. They’d put Brian on the payroll and had started handing off responsibilities to him. To have a child in need was a delicate thing; Benny had recognized he was lucky that Aimee was so well taken care of by Roger—it had been something he spoke of often. Any income from the hotel that accrued to her was gravy. The same went for Peter, who needed the Golden riches the least of the second-generation kids. Amos wondered what Louise had said privately to Benny about Brian taking on a leadership role, but if she’d complained, Benny had never let on. That was not something to take for granted. The competing interests of families in partnership led frequently to lawsuits and vitriol; so far, they had been spared. It helped that Brian wasn’t the power-grabbing sort. If anything, power was being foisted on him as a life preserver. It was easier to stomach sharing a steak with someone you knew to be anemic, and after the Melinda episode, Brian was as deficient as they came.

  “I just hope these meetings go smoothly,” Fanny said. “It’s a lot of pressure for Brian.” She rolled backward toward the closet, and Amos winced as she struggled to weave between the furniture.

  He and Fanny had only arrived from Florida the day before, and it had taken quite a bit of effort to settle in with Fanny’s new mode of getting around. The steps outside their cottage presented an insurmountable challenge, so Brian had set them up in one of the larger guest rooms, where they could avail themselves of the hotel elevator. It felt strange to be anywhere but their cottage, where framed family photos covered every horizontal and vertical surface and the boys’ childhood projects still hung on the refrigerator with magnets from local businesses.

  “I will try to grab him before we’re all together tonight,” Amos added, watching as his wife bumped into the bedpost. There were so many ways he wanted to help Fanny. To get the cardigan out of the closet for her; to lift her into bed; to bend down to get the reading glasses she perpetually dropped. But she was resistant to showing weakness. At least she’d asked him to speak to Brian. Calming Fanny’s nerves was a small way he could be helpful.

  “Good. I’m going down to see the grandchildren,” Fanny said, and the motorized buzz of her wheelchair sounded again as she went out the door.

  “I’ll be down soon,” Amos said.

  He could use another minute to collect himself before he faced everyone. He missed Benny more intensely now than when he’d died. Walking through the hotel, with an offer to sell pending, Amos could feel his best friend and business partner’s presence everywhere. Benny’s bellowing laugh sounded when Amos entered the comedy hall. He thought of Benny’s ferocious appetite when his favorite apple turnovers were in the dining room. Benny’s shadow loomed when Amos stared at the wooden sign in the rec room posted above the pool cues that said: reserved for benny g. Benny sounded with each bouncing ball on the tennis court and every splash in the pool. Echoes of his friend were in every inch of carpeting; one of their closely guarded secrets stashed behind every piece of plywood.

  Even the worst of their problems took on a hazy afterglow when Amos reviewed them in hindsight, including the worst of their fights. In the hotel’s first decade, there had been a college-age tennis instructor named Daniel, single and the son of prominent guests of the hotel, who was rather fond of giving lessons to the young girls. The very young girls. His hands wandered during serves; he never missed a chance for hands-on teaching. A more robust Larry brought it to their attention. Amos wanted to tell Daniel’s parents; Benny wanted to rough the kid up but good. It was the kind of scandal that could have destroyed the hotel if anyone found out. In the end, they planted drugs in Daniel’s cabin and fired him that way, but not without Benny giving him a swift kick in the nuts and Amos threatening the life out of him. Then there was the kosher meat scandal from 1975, when they found out their supplier was using nonkosher meat from the same source that delivered to the nearby penitentiary. Another mess that would have sunk the hotel—they were only saved by outrageous payouts to keep certain mouths quiet.

  To think there was a chance the entire building would be razed and turned into a windowless casino, dimly lit on the inside, the chorus of the guests’ laughter replaced by the ding-ding-ding of slot machines. He wondered if the tree where he and Benny had carved their initials would survive a change of ownership. Would he appear overly sentimental if he stipulated in the contract that it couldn’t be chopped down?

  He wasn’t a fool; his head was not in sand. Amos knew the hotel was on the decline. Not a single one of its competitors was still standing. Kutsher’s was now a flaky wellness resort; the Concord was a casino where busloads of retirees were dropped off to part with their Social Security checks. Amos meant to drive over and see it for himself. It was called Resort’s World, and it advertised with a massive, blingy sign on the highway. Grossinger’s had been demolished just a few years ago. In the
seventies, Benny and Amos had had it out with the matron herself, Jennie Grossinger, for stealing away some of the bigger stars on their talent roster, including Joan Rivers and Andy Kaufman. After that, Amos had secretly wished their hotel would suffer an outbreak of food poisoning during peak summer season. But when he’d read the news about Grossinger’s being destroyed because the family couldn’t afford to maintain it, Amos had wept for his old rival.

  But even with the guest book filling at a snail’s pace—the Golden used to go through three thick, leather-bound books in a single summer—Amos never imagined a time when the hotel wouldn’t be there. Keeping it alive was about more than providing his son with a sense of purpose. It was about preserving memories for the thousands of families who had come through the double doors with carved G’s for handles, wearing the weight of the city on their faces, dragging their luggage hazily until they could hand it off to a waiting bellhop. After a week or more of entertainment and nonstop eating, of shuffleboard tournaments and Ping-Pong rallies, of schmoozing with the other guests and making matches for their children, the families had left transformed. They’d been lighter. Not actually—a week at the Golden was good for at least three pounds—but their energy had been buoyant by comparison.

  The hotel still had its regulars, the families for whom the Golden tradition was so important that it kept the lights on. The Cohens from New Jersey came back every year to defend their title in the hot dog eating contest. The Felbers of Flushing returned because it was Grandma Ruth’s favorite place on earth and the only place she wanted to celebrate her birthday. (In fairness, it had once been reported to him by her family that Ruth had never been on an airplane.) The Glicks, the Rosensweigs, the Paulsons: They all had their special reasons for returning. But what about the Richmans? George and Estelle had been bridge partners with Amos and Fanny for years, but all at once it seemed they’d gotten fancy and had started to vacation in Europe.

  He walked over to the phone on the desk and dialed the bellman station.

  “Otto speaking. How can I help you?”

  “It’s Amos. Just wondering about some families. Have the Prozans been here recently?” They were the reigning champions of the ballroom dance competition.

  “Oh, no. Not for at least five years. They claimed they saw mouse droppings and never returned. Brian inspected and said they were pencil shavings, but we didn’t see hide nor hair of them again.”

  “What about the Simon family? The ones from Connecticut,” Amos asked. They used to take room 604, a king suite with a soaking tub and balcony, for all of August.

  “Moved to Vancouver ages ago,” Otto said. “Anyone else, boss?”

  “Nah. Thanks, Otto.” He settled the phone back into its cradle and scratched his chin thoughtfully. There was a whole group of families from South Jersey who used to travel to the hotel en masse every summer. It was a barely kept secret that the couples were known to toss their room keys into a bowl on the last night and play mixed doubles off the court. This had gone on successfully for nearly a decade, until the divorces started. The hotel had lost the entire group rapidly.

  Nostalgia was not a sufficient raison d’être. That was the thing with co-owning a hotel with another family, and probably why it was always best to have outside investors. Decisions couldn’t be made on heartstrings alone. And Winwood Casinos had made a very tempting offer for the property. Twelve million dollars to acquire all 1,800 acres. Amos didn’t have to ask if they planned to repurpose any of the existing buildings. He’d been on Winwood’s website and seen their other flashy establishments. Without question, if they handed over the title to them, the bulldozers would storm the gates. The comedy hall where Jerry Seinfeld—before he was Jerry Seinfeld—had cut his chops would come tumbling down. The iconic kidney-shaped pool where Amos had taught the boys to swim would be filled in to make way for another casino building—because these fellas who ran the gambling joints didn’t want guests spending too much time outdoors. Amos put his hand to his chest, feeling the tightness. Was he having a heart attack? No, this was just what it felt like when your life’s work hung in the balance, like your ventricles were squeezing together trying desperately to hold on to something.

  He traced the underside of the desk and felt a thick layer of dust collect on his fingertip. He blew it off and watched the dust mites sparkle in the light streaming in from the window. It was time to face the music. Amos headed for the lobby to greet his family.

  On the stairs leading from their second-floor room to the lobby level, Amos paused in front of the portrait of him and Benny posed in front of the clubhouse at the nine-hole golf course. It was from the baby days of the hotel—early 1970s, if Amos remembered correctly. The boys had just been born and were the hit of the hotel—somebody, maybe it was the bridge instructor, had nicknamed them the Tweingolds. Amos used to joke he should charge the guests to hold them. In the portrait, he and Benny were both in argyle vests, long shorts, and dark socks hiked up to their knees. It wasn’t like the two of them to be self-aggrandizing, but there was a terrible crack in the wood paneling, and Benny had suggested it would be cheaper to just hang a picture over the crack instead of repairing it. Years later, through several rounds of renovations, contractors would come through and ask about patching the wall behind the picture. Benny and Amos would always answer “Nope!” in unison. Some things deserved to remain, even when their original purpose was obsolete. It was like a metaphor of aging. He and Fanny had been at their best when they were parenting small children, cleaning scrapes, and helping with homework, but just because those days were a distant memory didn’t mean they should be put out to pasture. That was kind of what life in Florida felt like, like being in God’s waiting room. Being back at the Golden was like having his body greased with WD-40. The Catskills air always did that for him, made him feel healthy and strong, as it had for the thousands who’d sought refuge there to fight off tuberculosis near the turn of the century. Maybe he and Fanny should return to Windsor full-time. Though he knew before he let the idea really sink in that Fanny’s wheelchair would be a disaster to manage in the snow and that the hilliness would make even his daily constitutional impossible.

  Amos stared at the portrait for one last beat. Why’d you have to go and die on me, Benny?

  Chapter Five

  Aimee

  She should have just powered off her damn phone. She had five missed calls from Roger. She’d hit decline every time—and who knew how many times he’d tried to get through while she was driving through the numerous dead zones en route to the hotel—but after his sixth attempt to reach her, she caved. This was after Roger texted: You are with two of my three children. Please pick up. He’d added a Memoji of himself with prayer hands. It was the pathetic-ness of the overture that made her relent.

  “Yes?” she’d said, making sure not to mask the clipped tone of her voice. She was in the middle of zipping up the dress she’d planned to wear to dinner, but it was still too tight. She’d eaten so little in recent weeks, she’d thought it might fit. Irritated, she let the dress puddle at her ankles and combed through the rest of her suitcase. Couldn’t Roger’s betrayal be good for anything? “Betrayal” wasn’t a strong enough word. It was a crime. She attempted to say it out loud. The dull monosyllabism stuck in the back of her throat like a dry cracker.

  “Aimee,” Roger said, his relief plain. “Thank you for answering. We need to talk.”

  “This is a terrible time. I’m about to go to the dining room to see everyone,” she said. “I’ll call you when I have time.”

  “Aimee, please—” Roger begged. She wondered where he was in their house. At the kitchen table, hovering over a pint of ice cream? Roger was an eater when he was stressed, the opposite of her. Or maybe he was in the den, combing through the family photo albums and wondering how he could have been so insanely stupid.

  “Just listen. I know you said this is a bad time, but I spoke to my lawyer t
his morning. He gave me an estimate of what the legal fees are going to be to defend this. Aimee, I know how much the Golden means to you and your family—but the proceeds from a sale could really help us out. They could keep me out of jail. Please think about us. Our family.”

  Us? Us! Had Roger been thinking about “us” and “family” when he’d agreed to peddle drugs that were destroying entire communities, making people horribly sick? Losing their families. Dying in droves. People were actually dying because of what Roger was giving them. How could she ever share a bed with him again?

  “I can’t do this now,” she repeated as a reel of the past thirty years of their lives together started playing in her mind. She wanted to press pause, but it was like the button on the projector was stuck. She saw the day they’d gotten married in the gazebo by the lake at the Golden, when it was sweltering and Roger pulled off his bow tie during their vows. She relived walking across the threshold of their home three times with newborns in infant carriers. Heard the sound of Roger singing Frank Sinatra at the top of his lungs in the shower while he shaved. It would be a lot to throw away—not that ending her marriage would erase all those good moments, but they would take on a different character. She recalled advice from her mother: Fighting with your husband is like picking at a pimple. It always leaves a scar. Louise had probably been cautioning her not to yell at Roger for leaving the toilet seat up or putting back a nearly empty container of milk. Louise could never contemplate the magnitude of this marital rupture. Her sixty-year marriage to Aimee’s father had been nauseatingly perfect. They’d kissed and cuddled well into their seventies. She and Roger had never been like that. Hell, sometimes she pictured Brian Weingold when they were having sex, and then she’d feel so guilty at how aroused she got that she’d lose interest altogether.