She followed Maddie to the owners’ table, positioned in the same spot since the hotel’s opening summer. Benny and Amos believed in sitting together at every meal, so that no family felt jealous if they chose to join one party over another. They’d chosen the back corner of the room, the table closest to the kitchen, so that they could make quick stops to check on operations, and so what were arguably the worst seats in the dining room didn’t go to a paying customer. Their table for two had become a square when they’d gotten married, then they’d expanded to a round one when the children had come along, then to a long rectangle that could accommodate three generations. They’d been fourteen all together. Traditionally, Benny and Amos sat at opposite heads, but because they’d shared a language only they understood, they could often be heard shouting down the long length of the table to each other in what sounded like gibberish to the rest of them.
When she approached, Aimee thought she noticed Amos avoid her gaze. She hoped the decision about the hotel wouldn’t turn into a Goldman versus Weingold fiasco. Next to Amos sat Brian, and across from him were Phoebe and Michael. On Brian’s other side, a chair had been removed so that Fanny could roll up to the table in her chair. There were empty seats where Peter and Greta would normally be, and of course there was the empty seat next to Aimee that Roger would typically occupy, next to which was Scott’s empty spot. Then there was Benny’s chair at the end, the most gaping hole of all. As if their table were a microcosm of the entire hotel—emptiness where there once was fullness, awkward silence where boisterous laughter used to reign.
Shortly after Aimee had settled into her chair, Louise made her entrance, circling the table and greeting everyone. Then she sat in Roger’s empty chair instead of her usual spot.
“Need to appear united,” she whispered knowingly in Aimee’s ear. Louise smelled strongly of Chanel No. 5 and Pond’s face cream.
Brian, who had joined, dinged his fork on a water glass and cleared his throat. The guy even ahemed attractively. She thought about what other noises he made. Did he grunt in bed? Whisper dirty talk?
Focus, Aimee. She pinched her thigh. There were so many things more important than how sexy the scruff on Brian’s jawline looked.
“It’s great to see everyone. My brother regrets that he—”
But Brian was interrupted by George, the loyal head waiter for the past forty years. His waistline seemed to grow with each year he gave to the job, like a tree whose age could be measured by the girth of its trunk. He didn’t so much walk over to their table as waddle.
“What a treat to see everyone,” George said, swooping in with a large tray. “Chef has prepared all of the hotel specialties for tonight.”
“Pass it all down here,” Zach said. Her son was always hungry. She suspected it was the pot. He couldn’t still be growing, could he? Neither she nor Roger was naturally tall. Not like Brian, who was . . .
George started lifting silver lids off platters with elaborate gestures. Steam rose and fogged Aimee’s reading glasses. She quickly slipped them off. How could she have forgotten to remove them before dinner?
“For the first course, may I present the following: kippered salmon spread, pickled herring in heavy cream, traditional borscht soup, and gefilte fish. And, of course, everyone’s favorite—fried liver in schmaltz.”
Aimee watched her children’s faces go white. Even her own stomach was gurgling at the thought of eating those foods, especially together. It was like a heart attack on a tray. Rendered chicken fat as a cooking ingredient really ought to be illegal.
“Do you have anything vegan?” Phoebe asked from her end of the table.
“I’m Paleo,” Michael announced. “And fried liver is a chess opening, not a meal.”
“Smart-ass,” Phoebe said.
“Michael is a master-level chess player,” Fanny interjected.
“We’re going to gain a million pounds,” Maddie whined.
“Well, I’m not,” Phoebe said. “I’m not eating any of this.” She pulled out her phone and snapped a close-up of a particularly gelatinous-looking herring. “You guys like ‘Herring today, gone tomorrow’?”
“I’ll try something,” Zacky said.
“You will?” Phoebe asked him, wrinkling her nose.
“’Course not. I was joking,” Zach said, pushing away his empty plate. Oh God, Maddie had been right. Why did crushes have to be so dehumanizing? Decades earlier, Aimee had wanted to display her paintings in the hotel art exhibition, but Brian had called the event lame, and so she’d crossed her name off the list and stashed her watercolors behind her bed.
“I’m sorry, Uncle Brian, but this looks nasty,” Michael said. He pulled an energy bar from the man-purse thing he’d been carrying around since arrival.
She watched Brian redden, color rising through the stubble on his cheeks.
These kids! They were all spoiled brats.
“Well, I for one am ready to dig in,” Aimee announced, pushing up her sleeves like she was going to eat Medieval times style. She took two slices of gefilte, a large scoop of kippered salmon, and three helpings of fried liver.
“Should you be eating all that?” Louise muttered at her. “Your blouse is already pulling in the back.”
Aimee swiveled around in her chair and signaled for George to come back.
“Got anything stronger than Manischewitz lying around?”
Chapter Six
Zach
Mom, Brian is talking to you,” Zach said, embarrassed by how quickly his mother was swilling the wine. Since when did she drink this much?
She looked up, a wild flare in her eyes.
“Oh, sorry. What did you say?”
“I was just asking if everything was all right,” Brian said.
“Yes, yes,” Aimee said. “Just lost in memories. I was thinking about the time Maddie fell into the fountain during Miss Golden Girl and her white dress became see-through—”
“Mom!” Maddie yelped. “Seriously?”
What the hell was wrong with his mother? Zach needed to steer things in a different direction. He looked at Phoebe, hoping she might inspire conversation. She was sucking in her cheeks and had her arm outstretched, phone in hand.
“The lighting here sucks,” she said, now swiping furiously with her index finger. Zach looked up at the ceiling. About a quarter of the bulbs in the dining room were burned out, and the crystal chandelier hadn’t worked for years. “None of the filters are helping.”
He tried his luck with Michael.
“How do you like Harvard?” he asked. “You just finished sophomore year, right?”
“I love it,” Michael said. “I’m in a new play. We’re going to perform this summer in Cambridge. A bunch of the drama majors got together and rented a black box theater in Harvard Square. We’re doing The Boys in the Band.”
“That’s great, Michael,” Aimee said. “You’ll have to send us a recording.” Finally, his mother seemed to be returning to herself and had switched to water.
“Your father said you were majoring in economics,” Fanny said.
“I changed,” Michael said, fumbling with the wrapper from his bar.
“Well, I don’t see how being a drama major will help you find employment,” Fanny said, jabbing Amos with her elbow. “What happened to law school?”
“I want to be an actor, Grandma. So being a drama major should be pretty useful,” Michael said. He spontaneously did an aggressive version of jazz hands, which made Maddie and Phoebe laugh while confusing everyone else.
“An actor?” Amos asked. “Since when do you have talent?”
“He comes alive onstage,” Phoebe said, looking up from her phone.
“Thank you, sis,” Michael said. “And may I say that your post about inversion therapy was just divine?”
Phoebe hopped up from the table and did a spontaneous
headstand. Her pants, sheer and loose, fell past her knees and revealed a large cactus tattoo above her right ankle. Why a cactus, Zach had no clue, but it was cool. Maybe he should get a tattoo. But what? Whatever he chose would be lame like a month later.
“Another tattoo?” Amos asked, leaning back to put in eyedrops. “Phoebe, why are you treating your body like it’s a canvas? You want to do art? I’ll buy you some crayons.”
“Do your parents know about this . . . this . . . plant on your leg?” Fanny asked, palming her cheeks like the kid in Home Alone. “We need to call Peter.”
“Dunno,” Phoebe said, plopping back in her seat. “If they follow my Insta, then yeah.”
“Should we, um, talk about the offer?” Zach asked. It didn’t feel like it was his place to bring it up, but it was really weird no one had mentioned the whole reason they were together.
“You mean the hideous casino company that wants to destroy our ancestral home?” Grandma Louise said, dabbing at the corners of her mouth with a napkin. “Benny is rolling in his grave.”
Ancestral? Hadn’t his grandfather built it from scratch in 1960?
“They may not raze everything,” Amos said. “The golf clubhouse is new. Wasn’t that countertop stone imported from Italy, Brian?”
“Does anyone else think it’s weird that ‘raise’ and ‘raze’ sound the same but kind of mean the opposite?” Michael asked.
Zach appreciated Michael’s attempt at levity but seriously questioned his timing. That could be a bit of a problem for an actor.
Fortunately, George swept in at that moment with another heaping tray.
“Chef Joe wants you to try his new kugel recipe. He’s always innovating in the kitchen,” the head waiter said, doling out small plates with square wedges of kugel on them.
Brian looked down at his piece, jiggly in the center and burned at the edges. “What’s different about this?” he asked.
“Normally it’s just apple cinnamon. Chef added raisins!”
“It’s delicious,” Fanny said with a mouthful.
“How much are they offering again?” Zach asked. “Do we have a term sheet to review?”
When everyone just stared back, he added, “What?” and shrugged his shoulders. “I took some business classes in college.”
“Sweet,” Phoebe said, and snapped a picture of him.
Chapter Seven
Brian
Brian awoke Sunday morning in Angela’s bed with a jolt. He didn’t normally wake feeling anxious. If anything, it was the opposite. He tended to leisurely let his eyes flop open, then work his body through a series of relaxing stretches. Finally, he’d swing his feet to the ground and make for the coffee machine. He almost never set an alarm.
Angela had to be at work for the breakfast shift most days, so she served as his wake-up call on the nights he spent at her place. After she left, he’d usually flip open his laptop and search through his favorite porn site for new posts. Angela satisfied him—she was pretty adventurous and rarely said no—but there was something deeply satisfying about going it alone, especially in the mornings when he had the place to himself. But this morning, he was out of bed before seven, drinking coffee and without giving porn a passing thought.
Dinner the prior evening had not been enjoyable. He’d missed having his brother there, even if his absence had come as no surprise. Peter worked himself to the bone in a soulless corporate tower all day and night. To what end, Brian couldn’t understand. To gift Greta another handbag made from an endangered species? The last time she’d been at the hotel, his sister-in-law had made a stink about the uneven cobblestone paths that connected the buildings because she’d said they were ruining her Louboutins—his niece had told him those red-soled shoes cost more than a thousand dollars a pop. When Brian had heard that, all he could think was that each pair could make a sizable improvement to the health care plans they offered their employees. Or combined, assuming she was the Imelda Marcos of New Jersey, the money could mean a new swimming pool. The floor of the existing pool was so rough and gravelly, the hotel medic was routinely called to remove chunks of plaster from bare feet. Brian knew it wasn’t his twin’s job to subsidize the hotel, but he couldn’t help fantasizing about all the ways Peter’s money could improve the Golden.
At the very least, Brian was glad that Peter had sent his children. Phoebe was as millennial as they came, but at least she was cashing in on her egocentricity. And Michael, he was such a smart, quiet boy—Brian yearned to know him better. The actor announcement had come as a shock to him, and apparently to everyone else, too. What else did they not realize? Fanny used every opportunity to work the dining room at the Golden to find matches for her grandchildren, and she certainly wasn’t asking any of the guests if they had any nice boys for Michael. Even the wheelchair didn’t slow her down. The night before, she’d rolled up to several tables inquiring about single girls, even after Michael had mentioned that he’d gone into New York to see Angels in America on Broadway three times.
Brian thought the stroke might have rejiggered Fanny’s brain chemistry, but having a brush with death had made her even more intent on seeing her family settled. And not just settled, but settled in the way becoming of a Weingold: married (to someone of the opposite gender), proper job (one that required an advanced degree, preferably), nice house (minimum one acre of land in a fashionable suburb). He tried to cut his mother some slack, especially in her present condition. It pained him to watch how cumbersome her movements were, the clunky and inelegant way she moved around the place that used to feel like a second skin. Still, he wished she would relax. Times were changing, and she wasn’t on board.
Having his father around was a mixed bag. With his parents spending more time in Florida, Brian finally felt a genuine independence in leadership that simply couldn’t manifest under his father’s watchful eye. Yesterday, in the presence of Amos, he hadn’t been able to escape the scepter of judgment. Amos had asked him why he wasn’t booking midweek entertainment. Brian had seen Amos chastise the waiters for not refolding the napkins when a guest went to the restroom. He’d spotted his father studying the daily list of activities with a critical eye. Having his parents back on campus was eroding his confidence. And what had he been thinking with that menu last night? His parents didn’t eat like they used to—they were on low-sugar, low-salt diets, and the kids wouldn’t touch anything that wasn’t triple-certified organic. Popular hotels were serving farm-to-table cauliflower “steaks” and farm-raised branzino with sautéed kale in malted beer jus. At the Golden, they were adding raisins.
Officially, Amos and Benny had given Brian the run of the place ten years ago, a titular shift at first. Chief Executive Officer had been slapped into his email signature, with little else changing. But gradually they’d allowed more slack on the rope. Brian had developed a feel for hotel management and didn’t shy away from those innovations he could get Benny and Amos to approve. Still, the hotel had faltered.
So much of the decline of the Golden had been out of Brian’s control, and had started long before he took over. It was the three A’s that had sunk the Catskills, reporters and historians said. First came air-conditioning. With AC available in the city, urban dwellers didn’t feel the need to flee to the mountains in the summer. Then came air travel, which was constantly getting cheaper. Just last night, Brian had gotten a pop-up ad on his phone advertising a $69 flight to Iceland, a stunning Nordic blonde beckoning him to the Blue Lagoon. That was certainly a more exotic way to cool off in the summer than a visit to the Catskills. Finally, there was assimilation. Jews were no longer forced to barricade themselves into the hotels that welcomed them.
Brian had been so exhausted by the evening’s end that he’d virtually crawled into Angela’s bed and let her pat his head gently until he’d fallen asleep.
“Family will do that to you,” she’d said when he’d come into her condo bleary-eyed.
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Now she was at work, and Brian contemplated the day ahead. The first official meeting of the families was due to start in a couple hours. Dinner had been a warm-up, and not an auspicious one. He reached for his cell phone and found a message from Howard, the president of Diamond Enterprises, the holding company that controlled Winwood Casinos. What now? Brian thought. Howard knew the families were meeting this week. And he’d promised they had until Labor Day to make a final decision.
Nobody knew this, but Howard had approached Brian a full three weeks before he’d shared the offer with his family and the Goldmans. He’d told himself it was because he needed to run numbers, that when he presented the offer, he wanted to have answers to the obvious questions: Is the purchase price fair? What will the profits be after taxes? Should we seek out other buyers? But the thinly veiled truth was that Brian just couldn’t face what he perceived as the inevitable. He was going to lose his job and the only home he’d known since he’d found Melinda in bed with another man. Running the hotel had saved him, even if it felt sometimes like he was captaining the Titanic. When he thought of moving into the future without the hotel scaffolding him, he got weak in the knees. In the back of his head, he thought how much easier it would be if he had just told Howard “thanks but no thanks” and gone on with his life. Nobody had needed to know.
Because there were still times, on sunny days when the pool rippled in the breeze and the lawn shone verdant, that he brimmed with hope. At closing time, once he was done reviewing payroll and meeting with the dining captain and the head of the maintenance crew and he’d approved yet another room rate reduction, Brian would sit in the swivel chair in his office and prop his feet on the desk. In that comfortable position, he imagined scenarios where the hotel became the vibrant, bustling center of culture and amusement it had once been. The problem was that he wasn’t sure how to get from point A to point B; he had a million ideas and no clue about execution. The interns from Cornell were good, especially Lucy. But as quickly as they arrived, they were gone, and Brian was left alone to follow through on their “action items” lists and stare at their “inspiration boards.”
Last Summer at the Golden Hotel Page 9