Before she slipped on her glasses, she reached for her cell phone and powered it on. Squinting, she saw what she had been dreading. Not a single text message had come through overnight. Which meant Andrew was firmly planted under his parents’ thumbs.
She felt new tears springing from her eyes, even though she was sure she had dehydrated her body the night before. The revelation about her dad had slicked Maddie in a cold, relentless sweat. Her mother must be dying a thousand deaths. And poor Scott, her father’s lackey, about to walk into a storm his worst nightmares couldn’t portend. Everything was falling apart at once.
Incinerated by the empty green and white text app without the telltale red circle, Maddie’s head thudded back to meet the pillow. How could he? Did their two years together mean nothing? She didn’t know how the unraveling of their relationship would play itself out, only that its end was inevitable. She could text him that it was over—say that if he couldn’t stand up to his parents while they maligned her family’s heritage, they were finished. Or she could wait a bit longer, just to be sure Andrew didn’t grow a pair. One thing she knew from staring at her vacant phone—Andrew was who she wanted in a crisis. She longed to curl into a ball on their sofa and have him stroke her hair, even as he was the one causing her pain.
Their breakup was going to be excruciating. And today was voting day.
Before she’d left for Florida, Maddie had been certain she was on the side of selling. The hotel depressed her, beyond the smell in the closets and the decrepit furniture. Everywhere she turned, she saw signs of disrepair: peeling paint, chipped plates, threadbare carpets, rusted faucets. And the guests were geriatric, moving like snails from the card room to the dining room in repetitive loops three times a day. One of them had gone and died last night! There was something unsustainable about a resort where half the guest conversations started with “Remember when.”
But after that sour evening with the Hoffs and the last twelve hours at the hotel, Maddie felt her mind shifting. She’d licked her Golden Palette clean last night—there wasn’t a better linzer cookie to be found in all of New York. Then Zach had convinced her to play midnight tetherball. It was the most innocent fun she’d had in ages, and she’d been able to put Andrew and her father out of her head as the ball whizzed by and the lake sparkled in the background. She was really freaking tempted to vote against the sale. F U, Mrs. Hoff and your stupid friends. You think you’re so much better than my family? The way their crew gossiped was no different than the Golden guests, rating spousal potential like credit scores.
She dressed while checking her phone at least half a dozen more times in between mascara swipes and shoelace tying, then headed to the dining room for breakfast. If she ate early enough, she could hopefully avoid seeing any Goldmans, Glassers, or Weingolds.
The lobby was predictably empty, except for Larry, who appeared to have spent the night at the concierge station. He had his head down, and a shiny thread of drool ran from his mouth to the stack of daily activity schedules he had fashioned into a pillow. She eyed the coffee station with gratitude, even though it was sure to be prison-quality compared to the cold brew at Blue Bottle that she and Andrew picked up every morning before work. But it was fuel, and she needed it after a crappy night’s sleep. A pink Post-it Note affixed to the coffee urn read: out of order. Jesus, seriously? Not even an apology!
She slumped onto one of the floral-patterned couches in the lobby and pulled her Kindle from her purse. She and Andrew had made joint New Year’s Resolutions, which included reading more. Maddie was in the process of rereading the same page for the third time when she heard a rapping on the front door of the hotel. The door was kept locked overnight, a lesson she and her brothers had learned the hard way when they’d snuck out as teenagers to drink at a local pub, come back at 2 a.m., and were left to sleep outside. She looked up and startled, dropping her Kindle onto the floor. Behind the glass was Andrew with a bouquet of azaleas in his hand. Maddie ran to greet him.
“Hi!”
She thrust herself into his arms, and the bouquet fell to the ground in a soft landing. Petals flew in the wind, and Maddie heard an awake Larry saying: “He loves you, he loves you not.”
“He loves you,” Andrew said, taking a step back and looking around. “I’m so sorry. I hope this is okay that I showed up here.”
“It’s more than okay. I was getting whiplash from checking my phone so many times. I need a massage, but there’s no spa here. Only a cosmetician who believes blush goes on in stripes.”
Andrew made the adorable bewildered face he always did when she talked about anything feminine, where he furrowed his brow and cocked his chin to the right. It was the look he’d given her when she’d asked him if she should wear wedges or a kitten heel to their friend’s Memorial Day barbeque in the Hamptons. “Kitten heel? As in a cat?” He’d started meowing, and she’d laughed hysterically, and they’d had really great sex before the party. Andrew could be such a goofball when he wasn’t around his parents.
“I was going for the element of surprise. Listen, I’ve done a lot of thinking since you left Florida. It’s absurd that I’ve never come with you to see the hotel. I know how important it is to you and your family. And I should have stood up to my parents at dinner. They’re all about hotels on private islands and using the jet, but the truth is that they’re miserable. I can’t think of any trip we’ve ever taken where the memories remotely compare to what you’ve described here.”
She stood on tiptoe and kissed him passionately, noticing how deep the circles under his eyes were. They were both sleep-deprived and in love.
“You look like you need coffee. Sadly, the machine’s broken and breakfast doesn’t open for twenty more minutes. Want to sit down?” She tugged him toward the couch where she’d been pretend-reading.
“I am tired,” Andrew admitted. “But I’m too excited to sit. Show me around.” He took her hand and gave it a gentle tug.
The early morning air was crisp, and the smell was the perfect mixture of freshly cut grass, mountain air, and wildflowers. They laughed when they got socked by the oscillating sprinkler.
She showed Andrew everything: the rec room, the card room, the auditorium, the dining room, the nightclub, the tennis courts, the golf clubhouse, the water sports area, Lake Winetka’s rocky “beach,” Roberta’s salon, the lounge, and the iconic kidney-shaped pool, where Maddie had splashed away her childhood summers, blasting water pistols at Zach and Scott. Even though the rowboats were rusty, the clay courts full of potholes, and the pool water an unsettling shade of gray, Maddie felt a surge of pride taking Andrew around. They concluded their tour in Memory Lane.
“These pictures are incredible,” Andrew said, his nose mere inches from the display. “So that was your grandpa when he was young? And that’s the Gold Rush competition you’ve talked about? The trophies are huge. What’s that picture?” He pointed to a photograph that looked to be from the sixties, based on Grandma Louise’s full-skirted peach shift dress with a white leather belt around the waist.
“Oh, that’s the talent show. That’s one tradition everyone agrees was okay to retire.”
“But what are they doing?”
Maddie came closer to the picture. “Oh dear. It looks like they’re reenacting Marilyn Monroe’s ‘Happy Birthday Mr. President.’ Except instead of Marilyn Monroe, it’s Marilyn Moscowitz and her backup dancers, the Brooklyn Babes.”
“Holy shit,” Andrew said, his face mere inches from the photograph now. “Maddie, look.” He pointed to one of the dancers, second to the end, wearing a skimpy two-piece, heels, and a sailor hat.
“What is it? You think she’s hot?”
“Maddie, that’s my grandmother.”
To: Brian Weingold
From: Howard Williams
Subject: Sale of the Golden Hotel
Brian,
This email is to confir
m our understanding that your family and the Goldman family will respond to our offer to purchase the Golden Hotel by 5 pm EST today. Should we not hear a response by that time, we will proceed with alternate plans to buy an adjacent property.
Kindly,
HB
Winwood Holdings, a subsidiary of Diamond Enterprises
“Where everyone is a high roller”
Chapter Twenty-Six
Brian
Brian did not expect that on the day the future of the hotel was decided—and by extension his career either finished or furnished an extra life—he would be at a doctor’s office with his girlfriend looking at a fuzzy sonogram image of his unborn child. Life had thrown him another curveball, and this one looked like a white alien wearing sneakers, gestational age nine weeks.
“Let me get that jelly off you,” Dr. Leeds said, using a wad of paper towels to wipe the aqua goo off Angela’s still taut belly. “Everything’s looking good. Baby is the right size, the heartbeat is nice and strong, and despite the fact that this is technically a high-risk, geriatric pregnancy, I feel good about what I’m seeing.”
Brian watched Angela’s face. Was there not a more diplomatic way to speak to a mother over the age of forty? He wasn’t sure Dr. Leeds was right for them as a long-term care doctor. In the towns surrounding the hotel, there weren’t many options, and the ultrasound machine in Leeds’s exam room looked like a personal computer from the 1980s.
“Thank you, Dr. Leeds,” Brian said. “That’s great to hear.”
“Let me step out so you can get dressed,” Dr. Leeds told Angela, who was struggling to stay covered underneath a paper-thin gown in a room that felt like a meat locker. “Congrats, Mom and Dad.” He shut the door behind him and left the soon-to-be parents, their quivering fingers holding black-and-white images of their baby.
“It’s not a Polaroid,” Angela said. “Not sure why we’re both shaking these so much.”
The doctor had called him Dad. He wasn’t a dad, though. Not yet. Amos Weingold was a dad. He’d taught his boys how to swim and fish and unclog a toilet and rewire an electrical circuit. He’d worked his ass off for decades to provide for his family. Was Brian capable of such things? To nurture and love someone without a trace of resentment, like his mother, who’d cooked dinner even when she had a headache, and his father, who’d stayed up to watch the Mets with his boys even though he needed to review the books? In hindsight, Brian wondered if Benny’s chicanery had happened because Amos had been so distracted by his family. Aimee had been a less demanding child than him and Peter. Louise would say she could give her child a canvas and some paint and not hear a peep for hours.
Brian believed he had the capacity to be a good father, but would he really know until the baby came out wailing seven short months from now?
“Angela, I’m so impressed with you,” he said, bending down to get the neat stack of her clothes piled on the spare chair.
She put a finger to his lips and the gown slipped off her shoulder. Brian adored the heart-shaped birthmark at the base of her neck. He would peck it repeatedly when he was tipsy. There was genuine affection between them. But he had felt something possibly stronger two nights ago.
“Brian, you and I have a lot to discuss. But not today. Today is about the hotel and your family.”
“You’re amazing, Angela. Truly.” He felt gratitude for this woman warm his body like a vapor rub, and he bent down to kiss her stomach.
* * *
• • •
Brian walked into the final family meeting feeling about as nauseous as Angela seemed every morning. He was pregnant with stress, molecules multiplying inside him at such lightning speed, he worried he could vomit at any minute. Grave faces greeted him upon arrival. Nobody mentioned the baby—either they felt too awkward, or Mr. Green really had died at the perfect moment and they hadn’t heard.
Shaggy was an unexpected attendee. The golden retriever was sitting on one of the chairs around the table, sniffing to a staccato beat and looking thoroughly unimpressed. An old girlfriend of Brian’s had once said all men were like dogs, and he wondered if there was symbolism behind Aimee’s choice of companion this morning. What an asshole Roger was, and stupid, too, to risk so much for greed. Aimee deserved so much better. Brian had never liked the guy. In fact, the doctor was generally disliked around the hotel. On more than one occasion, he’d had the audacity to send back wine, as if the Golden were the Ritz in Paris. The waiters used to make fun of him behind the barn doors leading to the kitchen, putting on a faux-French accent and saying, “Excuse me . . . I ordered ze 2016 Manischewitz and zis ees clearly ze 2017 Kedem.” He was the kind of guy who flipped out if someone called him “Mister” instead of “Doctor.” The only reason Brian was upset about what was coming to the guy was that Aimee and the kids would be collateral damage.
“Let us not speak of last night,” Amos said, breaking the pin drop silence with a call for more silence. Brian agreed. Whatever had happened between Benny and Amos, whatever was going on with Roger, whatever long-standing resentments existed between the matriarchs, it all had to be set aside, at least for today. Nods intimated that the group agreed to a temporary moratorium. They had to vote. Fighting could happen later.
Brian wondered how many in the room were in the same place that he was: undecided. Until the voting cards were handed out (Phoebe had created nifty ballots on her laptop, with matching envelopes that would be stamped rather than hand-marked to preserve anonymity), Brian really didn’t think he’d be able to make up his mind. He had been leaning toward selling at first. It was hard for him to ignore the numbers, especially as he was the most intimately acquainted with them. He watched the way the hotel bled money every month, paying a bloated staff, repairing essential equipment like the AC condenser and pool filter while the guests bellyached about cosmetic repairs though the carcass was rotting. But having everyone converge back on property, Brian felt his heart shifting. How could they lose their summer home? Would he and his parents be able to stomach the sight of the wrecking ball leveling their legacy? But was a legacy something enshrined in bricks and mortar, or could it live on in photographs and apocryphal stories? And now there was the baby and Angela to think about.
His indecision called his ex-wife to mind. When he and Melinda went out for dinner, she would say she couldn’t choose an entrée until the waiter came with pad and pen. She needed the pressure. Well, that’s exactly how he felt now. All night long he’d ventured guesses as to how everyone would vote. He was fairly certain of one thing: It was going to be a close one.
Brian looked over at Scott, who must have arrived just hours earlier. His clothes were rumpled, and dark circles made his eyes look like they were in deep sockets.
“How’s med school?” Brian asked him.
“It’s hard,” Scott mumbled, and Brian was about to laud him for working so diligently, when he continued. “But I do have some news. I decided on the flight here to change my area of medicine. I was going to go into internal medicine like my—well, you know. But I actually really hated it. I’m going to do psychiatry instead.”
“Are you, Scott?” Louise said, clearly shocked. “I had no idea you were interested in that.” The “that” might as well have been “phony-baloney woo-woo medicine.”
“Nobody knows anything about their grandchildren,” Fanny said through thin, pursed lips.
“Well, I think that’s great, Scott,” Greta said. “Therapy has been a wonderful thing for me. Peter and I decided to see a couples’ counselor when we get back.”
“Seriously? What is with everyone?” Amos glared at his daughter-in-law. “Does nobody believe in privacy anymore? Benny and I used to sit around playing cards with the men until four o’clock in the morning. You think anyone said they weren’t getting along with the old ball and chain? Hell, no. You think people shared about their business problems? Absolutely not. We talke
d about poker, sports, politics. Everything else is a family matter.”
“Grandpa,” Michael said, extending his hand toward Amos’s. “We are family. All of us. The Goldmans and Weingolds and Glassers are closer than most blood-related people. And there’s nothing wrong with talking about personal stuff.”
If there was anyone among them who could make that statement with gravitas, it was him.
“I agree,” Aimee said. “Scott, that sounds fantastic. I’ll be your first patient.” A nervous laugh escaped, swallowed by the sound of the air-conditioning kicking on.
“So, we ready?” Brian said. He eyed the ballots stacked at the center of the boardroom table.
“I don’t think we’ll ever be ready,” Peter said. “But we don’t have much choice.”
Slowly, Phoebe circled the table, handing out the ballots. Amos put his eyedrops in. Aimee pulled out her reading glasses. Fanny adjusted her wheelchair. The kids fiddled with their cell phones. Brian pictured the sonogram image.
It took at most five minutes for everyone to vote and place their ballots into the shoebox that someone had intelligently thought to bring.
Brian took the box over to the corner of the room and went through the votes one by one.
He returned to the table moments later.
“A decision has been reached,” he said.
“Yes?” everyone seemed to say all at once.
He looked back at the paper where he’d done his tally one more time to confirm his eyes weren’t sending an incorrect signal to his brain. Then he scanned the faces of his family and the Goldmans one more time before making the announcement.
Last Summer at the Golden Hotel Page 24