Last Summer at the Golden Hotel

by Elyssa Friedland

  “How’s Roger?” Louise asked. They were outside the closed boardroom door. She felt sorry he’d been abandoned over Father’s Day weekend, though she appreciated her daughter putting Goldman business first. Aimee, like so many children of her generation, could view family obligations a little too à la carte.

  “Why do you ask?” Aimee said.

  “I ask because he’s your husband and the father of your children, and it’s Father’s Day and he’s home alone with a stomach bug.” Goodness, Aimee could be so up in the clouds.

  “Oh. He’s fine. Feeling much better. The kids will call him later. Shall we go in?”

  “Yes, in a second. Any news on . . . ?” Louise tapped Aimee’s ring finger, where she wore her much-upgraded engagement ring.

  “Huh?” Aimee asked. “Oh, you mean Maddie. I think soon. Certainly she hopes so.”

  “Well, all right, then. Gown shopping will be upon us,” Louise said.

  “Probably not. Kids these days don’t do the whole black-tie wedding bit all that often. I mean, the Hoffs are showy, but even with that, I doubt you’ll need a gown. Let’s not jinx it, anyway.”

  “You’re right. Pooh pooh,” Louise said, pretending to spit. “It can get muddy up here, and a gown could get destroyed.” She observed her daughter’s raised eyebrow. “I know what you’re thinking. Maddie isn’t getting married here if we don’t own the hotel anymore.”

  “Maman, Maddie isn’t getting married here even if we still own the hotel,” Aimee said, putting a patronizing hand on Louise’s elbow. What did her daughter mean by that? Why wouldn’t Maddie want to get married on a sprawling, majestic property that her family owned? Only a chosen few were lucky enough to even have such an opportunity.

  She would never understand kids these days.

  * * *

  • • •

  The boardroom was freezing when they entered. Brian was against the far wall, fiddling with the thermostat. Louise tightened the cardigan around her shoulders.

  “Morning, Louise. Morning, Aimee,” he called out to them. “Sit anywhere around the table. I thought we’d keep things casual.”

  “Good morning, Brian,” Aimee said softly, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear and smiling coquettishly. Louise appraised her daughter’s dress and heels again anew. Aha. The four-decade infatuation lived on.

  “Fanny, Amos,” Louise said formally, and took a seat across from them. She gestured for Aimee to sit next to her. She preferred a two-against-two setup.

  Fanny’s chair made her sit taller than the rest of them. Louise wondered if that made her uncomfortable, or if she liked having a presence. After Fanny’s stroke, Louise had sent flowers and a Zabar’s platter over to the Weingolds, and visited a few times. Fanny’s body was paralyzed on the left side from the waist down. Still everyone kept saying how lucky she was. Louise marveled at Fanny’s positive attitude, with a sinking feeling that she wouldn’t handle things nearly as well if the stroke had befallen her. Fanny would never dance in the Golden ballroom again or stand in photographs next to the talent. She wouldn’t walk down the aisle at her grandchildren’s weddings. And yet she seemed so grateful to have made it through the stroke with her mental faculties intact. It had made Louise envy Fanny, and not for the first time. “I can still play mah-jongg and canasta,” Fanny had said, her face forming a smile that was bookended with two deep dimples. Those dimples, deep ravines, were the only physical trait she had passed on to Brian. They made her look youthful, even as she sat in a wheelchair, silver hair hanging limply over her eyeglasses.

  “Morning, Louise,” Fanny said. “Aren’t you all dolled up for this?”

  Louise grimaced. She hated digs masked as compliments.

  “Sleep all right?” Amos asked. What was making him ask that? Hopefully she’d remembered to put concealer in her handbag.

  “Not too bad. I do not like the new sheets at all,” she said, unable to resist the jab at Brian’s management. “Where are the children?”

  She wasn’t in the mood to waste time with pleasantries, discussing whether the hydrangeas would bloom in blue or white this year. Not a single member of the third generation had arrived, and it was twenty past ten.

  “Um, let me text mine,” Aimee said, fishing for her phone just as Zach and Maddie stumbled in together.

  “Everything all right, darlings?” Louise asked, hoping they noticed her deliberate clip.

  “Yeah, why?” Maddie asked. “We’re on time.”

  No, you’re not. But Louise held her tongue. Because at least her grandkids had beat the Weingold kids.

  “I think we can start,” Brian said. “I’m sure Peter’s kids will be along shortly.”

  “We’re here, we’re here,” Phoebe said, bursting into the room with Michael behind her. They were both red-faced and panting, dressed in athletic clothing.

  “We went for a jog,” Michael explained, removing a sweatband. In her lycra, Phoebe physically resembled the hotel’s long-gone aerobics instructor, Jenni. “Stick out your tail,” Jenni would say in class, singling out Louise, who could never seem to master a butt-blaster. Jenni had no trouble sticking out her own tail. That woman had used the straddle stretch for more than just her muscles, leading to her eventual termination after Glenda Perl found Jenni “lunging” with her husband, Sam Perl.

  “It was so beautiful. I, like, totally forgot how gorgeous it is up here,” Phoebe said, plopping into a seat next to her grandmother and planting a kiss on Fanny’s cheek. The familiar flare of jealousy bloomed in Louise’s chest. Why didn’t Maddie and Zach hug her? She knew she had a formal carriage—they’d called her Grammy Fancy when they were little—but that didn’t mean she didn’t want to squeeze their cheeks.

  “I’ll go with you next time, Phoebe,” Zach said.

  “I bet you will,” Maddie chimed in with a smirk.

  “Now that we’ve all discussed our exercise plans,” Brian said amiably, “why don’t we get down to business?” He passed out packets. Louise took hers half-heartedly. The cover page said about diamond enterprises. She didn’t care a fig about Diamond Enterprises and its management team. The CEO, Howard, looked like a buffoon with that silly bolo tie. The hotel was either going to remain in their families or be sold. This wasn’t like giving a dog away and making sure you were passing your pet on to a good home. If the Golden was sold, that would be the end of it. She hated to think of it becoming a casino—especially since she had watched her family’s coffers drained in the underground card rooms of Montreal. Gambling was such an ugly business. Louise’s stomach would turn when she saw the men playing bridge for money in the card room. It brought back the worst memories of her mother crying at the kitchen table, begging her husband to stop. “Think of Louise,” she would moan in French. “Think of Louise.”

  She feigned interest while everyone else started to leaf through the packets. Underneath the one about the buyer was a thicker packet with graphs and spreadsheets that made her head spin. She had a nose for business, but it was less informed by calculations than driven by an innate sense of what worked and what didn’t. She trusted her instincts over any calculator. Benny had been like that, too. Amos was the stickler for running numbers. All science and no art, that man. What business did he have in hospitality?

  “You’ll see lots of important figures in the second packet. Our occupancy rates over the last five years, operating expenses, marketing budget, demographics. It’s a lot to take in, and I don’t think this first meeting is the time to make any decisions. We should be talking, asking questions, seeing what page everyone is on,” Brian said.

  “Thank you, Brian,” Aimee called out. “This all looks very useful.”

  “I have an email from Peter that came in last night,” Brian said. “I thought I would read it out loud.” When no one answered, Brian produced a folded piece of paper from his pocket.

  T
o All—

  I have had some associates at my firm pull some numbers and I think we can ask Diamond to come up to fourteen million reasonably. Can share my data if needed.

  Yours,

  Peter

  “So I guess that’s a vote to sell?” Aimee said.

  “Not necessarily,” Amos said sharply. “I think Peter is just saying we should get a better offer before we decide.”

  “Well, if he could have made the time to be here, we would know what he wanted,” Louise said, her hands fluttering to her mouth. She was normally composed to a fault. Her mother had schooled her that way. Even when their family had had to give up their six-bedroom house in Westmount and move to the third floor of a triplex in Côte Saint-Luc, Celine Frankfurter had scavenged thrift shops to dress Louise in fine frocks and would give her a good slap across the cheek if she saw her using the wrong fork or forgetting to lay a napkin on her lap. But the Weingolds could unhinge her, unleashing a sharp tongue she normally kept in check.

  “Peter runs one of the biggest law firms in Manhattan,” Fanny said predictably. As if to threaten Louise, she rolled her chair closer to the table so she could rest her fists on it. Unmanicured nails, naturally. And there was a salon in the hotel, where owners received treatments without charge.

  “Guys, chill,” Michael said. “I’ve been in touch with my dad, too. He’s on it. We’re all in this together. Let’s take a moment and breathe.”

  “Are we just thinking sell or keep, or are we also thinking of ways to cut costs and change things up?” Maddie asked. Louise gave her an approving nod. “I mean, when Hoff Global is looking at a company, Andrew’s family doesn’t just think about whether they can sell it or—”

  “Exploit the workers and get richer?” Zach asked. Phoebe laughed, apparently multitasking as she typed furiously on her phone. The nerve of that kid. She had her dirty sneaker propped up against the table.

  “Shut up,” Maddie said, obviously kicking her brother under the table, because Zach jolted and shouted, “Ouch, Fattie.” It was his cruel former nickname for his older sister—“Fattie Maddie.”

  “Mom!” Maddie.

  “Mom!” Zach.

  Aimee was staring out the window. A sliver of mountain was visible through the gap in the curtains. Louise remembered choosing the taupe damask from which all the curtains at the hotel were made, nearly six decades earlier.

  “Aimee!” Louise said, waving a hand in front of her daughter’s face. “Your children are about to kill each other. You might want to chime in.”

  “Sorry, sorry. Kids, knock it off. I mean it. Brian, what are your thoughts? You know this place on a day-to-day basis better than any of us. Is there a chance we can turn things around?”

  “Well, I have thought of several measures that could help our bottom line.” He shuffled through his papers. “We could switch to silk flowers on the dining tables. We spend approximately two thousand each week on arrangements.”

  “Ralph counts on our business. This would kill him. Benny was very close to him, too,” Amos said, knowing that bringing up Benny would earn Louise’s sympathy vote. But she was already against Brian’s suggestion. Fake flowers were gaudy. What would come next, plastic cutlery?

  “I have other ideas,” Brian said. “We could cut out afternoon tea service and save on labor and food.”

  “No!” said Louise, Amos, and Fanny in unison. Food was at the heart of the Catskills hotel experience. Most guests would rather give up their pillow than a meal.

  “I have a thought,” Aimee said, hunched forward on her elbows. Louise hated when Aimee slouched. “Why don’t we cut back on some of the free programming? It seems reasonable to charge for the dance and canasta lessons.”

  Brian nodded. “I like that. Since when is anything free these days?”

  Louise exchanged glances with her fellow senior statesmen. Their children just didn’t get it. They were missing the beating heart of a Catskills summer. You put your wallet away and enjoyed, leaving behind the daily acts of commerce in the city, along with the traffic and smog. She hoped Amos or Fanny would speak up so she wouldn’t have to contradict her own daughter, but Fanny was now crocheting some hideous scarf, and Amos was twirling his pencil in circles.

  “No offense,” Phoebe said, though it was obvious something offensive was coming. The air-conditioning kicked on, and she waited patiently for the rattle to quiet before continuing. Zach was staring at her in wonder, waiting to receive whatever pearls she meant to impart, like Moses receiving the Ten Commandments. “But all these ideas suck. You’ll save some money but just piss off the guests. You’re putting a Band-Aid on things instead of making real changes. Like this brand I did a project for, RePoached—they sell water bottles made out of elephant tusks that have been confiscated from poachers and then donate the—”

  “Honey,” Fanny said gently. “We all appreciate you taking an interest in the hotel, but we have to make a very important decision, and time is of the essence.”

  Since the stroke, Fanny’s speech had borne remnants of the brain trauma, and she pronounced “decision” like “decishin” and “essence” like “eshensh.” Louise wanted to strangle her grandchildren when she saw them stifling giggles.

  “Mom, let’s hear her out,” Brian said, pushing his papers aside.

  “Thanks, Uncle Brian,” Phoebe said, crisscrossing her legs on the chair. “As I was saying, these water bottles just weren’t selling well no matter what they tried, even with me as the brand ambassador. And then one day it occurred to them: They should add insulation and sell them as green juice thermoses.”

  “Meaning?” Amos asked, his patience visibly wearing thin.

  “Meaning you need bigger changes. You need to be hip and modern, and seriously, the Golden needs to be at least remotely cool. No offense, but nobody young would come here if they weren’t forced. It’s like a place you get dragged to by your grandparents. But, like, with some major changes, this place could totally be a hipster paradise with a waiting list for a room.”

  “She could be on to something,” Brian said. “There have been articles recently about the Catskills being in vogue again. The small changes aren’t going to add up to a hill of beans when we’re this much in the red. I mean, sure, we can change our laundry service or our soap supplier—”

  “Speaking of soap, actually, there’s a really cool bee pollen soap sold in my neighborhood that I think would be awesome to have in the guest rooms,” Maddie said, eyes wide. It was refreshing for Louise to see her granddaughter enthused about something that didn’t start with the phrase “Andrew says.”

  “I love bee pollen facials,” Michael said. Louise shuddered. She hated when men were precious about their appearance.

  “That may be, but our guests hate bees,” Amos said. “You know how much money Benny and I laid out to those damn exterminators over the years to get rid of wasp and hornet nests, and how many complaints we got about bees swarming the outdoor buffets? We’re not bringing bees to the hotel.”

  “The bees won’t be here, Grandpa. It’s their pollen,” Phoebe said, laughing. “You’re so cute. Although . . . we could have an apiary.”

  “That sounds awesome,” Zach added. He’d once had a girlfriend who was into stuff like that. Sheep’s milk hand cream and beetle juice massage oil. She’d brought a whole basket of the stuff when she’d come to Louise’s for dinner. Ever heard of flowers? Louise had wanted to ask, but instead she’d said, “Oh my, how lovely,” and dumped the whole basket in the trash after the girl had left.

  “Wait, OMG, I just had an even better idea,” Phoebe said, now on her feet. She assumed a ridiculous pose where she had one arm stretched in front, the other in back, her knees in plié. “Two words: GOAT. YOGA.”

  “What?” everyone seemed to say at once.

  “Here it is!” She presented her phone to the table.

/>   “I see a woman contorting her body with a goat climbing on her back. Such things are expressly forbidden in the Bible,” Amos said.

  “This is a Jewish hotel!” Fanny was averting her eyes.

  “On that note, actually, Andrew says that the Golden is way too—” Maddie started.

  “What happens when the goat has to go to the bathroom?” Aimee asked, squinting at the screen.

  “I’d try it,” Zach said.

  “I think we’re maybe getting ahead of ourselves,” Brian said sensibly. Louise looked at him thoughtfully. Why had she always thought he was a disappointment? Could it really be just that she was jealous Fanny had two children and Brian was so devastatingly handsome, it was hard for Louise to handle him being intelligent, too? Other people’s misfortunes did have a way of boosting her just the slightest, of making her own struggles manageable.

  “I do agree modernizing is a good idea,” Brian said. “We can start by having a social media presence. I should have gotten on that ages ago. I’ll ask Lucy.”

  “Already done,” Phoebe said triumphantly. “I set up @Golden HotelCatskills yesterday on Instagram and Snapchat.”

  “And?” Amos asked. “Is that like the Facebook?”

  Even Louise was embarrassed on behalf of her generation. “It’s just Facebook,” she said quietly. Walter had asked her out on Facebook actually, via a direct message.