Last Summer at the Golden Hotel

by Elyssa Friedland

  “This will be the last summer at the Golden Hotel.”

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Amos

  All at once, Amos felt the room spinning. The boardroom table lifted off the ground and tilted on its axis. He wanted to reach out and put it back in place, but it would be too unwieldy. The landscape paintings on the wall rattled, and everyone’s voices garbled into one cacophonous stream. An invisible fist—whose was it?—grasped his heart and started to squeeze. And then all he saw was blackness.

  “Dad? Dad? Are you okay?” Peter was on top of him. Or was that Brian? They looked different, but their voices had always been similar.

  “Amos, drink some water.” That was Fanny. He heard a motor buzz. Her chair. Fanny was coming closer to him. The sound of her approach throbbed in his ear.

  “Someone get Roger,” Aimee wailed. “He’s upstairs packing. Maddie, Scott, Zach, get him fast. Tell him to bring his medical bag.”

  Amos heard the scrape of chairs and the thud of footsteps. They were getting Roger. Was it because of him? He wondered what a heart attack felt like. Fanny used to repeat the warning signs to him. Shoulder pain. Shortness of breath. He didn’t know if he had either of those. Mostly he felt numb.

  And then there was a bottle of water being lifted to his lips. He thought he recognized his granddaughter’s hand, all those jangly bracelets she wore shooting laser beams at his pupils.

  “Have a sip, Grandpa. It’s important.” He did as he was told.

  The door to the boardroom opened.

  “Caught him just as he was driving away,” Scott said, panting.

  “Amos, it’s Roger. I’m going to ask you some questions. Is that all right?”

  He nodded. What choice did he have, anyway? Amos was no longer calling the shots. He was old, and other people directed the course of his life.

  “Can you see how many fingers I’m holding up?”

  Three.

  “What year were you born?”

  Nineteen thirty-six.

  “Are you seeing spots?”

  “He has MD,” Fanny shouted. But he wasn’t seeing spots anyway. He was seeing everything clearly, but all at once. The day he and Benny had broken ground on the hotel. Peter’s wedding. Phoebe’s tiny hand in his at the hospital the day she was born. Fanny on the ground after her stroke. Bette Midler singing her heart out in the ballroom. Brian’s face when he’d returned home after Melinda. Everything in stark relief but out of order, layered like tissue paper.

  “All right, I’m going to take your vitals. Try to breathe normally.”

  Amos felt Roger’s fingers on his wrists. Everyone quieted while his pulse was taken. A bright light shone in his eyes. Then his mouth was forced open. More instruments. Cold ones. Prodding that left him feeling less human than ever before. The quiet in the room broke, and a chorus of “What happened?” and “Will he be okay?” sounded.

  “He’s going to be okay,” Roger said. “It was a panic attack. All vitals check out. Pulse is slowing. No signs of visual impairment. But he should rest for the remainder of the day.”

  “Thank you so much, Roger,” Fanny said. “We really appreciate you rushing back to help.”

  “Of course. Is there anything else I can do?”

  Amos saw everyone in the room look over to Aimee for direction.

  “We’ve got this,” Aimee said. “I saw Dr. Miller sign the guest book this morning. He’ll help us with anything we need.”

  “Dr. Miller is a podiatrist, and he’s deaf in both ears,” Peter said.

  “Doesn’t that just make him deaf?” Michael asked.

  “For some reason that’s how his wife likes to describe it,” Brian said.

  “We’ll manage without Roger,” Aimee said, this time more firmly.

  Amos saw his sons exchange glances and agree in their telepathic twin way not to argue.

  “I’m feeling better,” Amos said. “You should go. Thank you.”

  He watched Roger silently pack his medical bag and wave feebly at his children. “Aimee,” he said when he got to where she was standing. “We’ll talk?”

  She acquiesced with just the smallest movement of her chin, and Roger turned to leave.

  “Drive safely,” Aimee said quietly when his hand was already on the doorknob.

  “Dad, you gave us quite a scare,” Brian said, kneeling beside him. Something about what Brian said echoed in his head. You gave us quite a scare . . . But Amos was the one who felt scared. Scared about what would happen to Brian without the hotel. Scared about knowing how little time he had left. Yes, he was “retired,” but was that an accurate description when he called Brian at least twice a week to check on things? When he still got to close out the season as the hotel’s co-founder, guests shaking his hand and telling him what a special place he’d built? The sale of the hotel felt not so much like the shuttering of a business; it felt like the closing of a life. He imagined a sorry, we’re closed sign around his neck, strung with the heavy links of a metal chain.

  “I’m all right,” he said, looking at his boys’ faces. In Peter’s he saw a renewed hope. Something positive had transpired between him and Greta. Not since their courtship days at the Golden had he seen them hold hands and kiss on the lips. And Brian, he didn’t look as crushed by the results of the vote as Amos would have predicted. If anything, he looked dazed. Hell, maybe he’d even voted to sell. Though he wasn’t necessarily book smart like his brother, he probably could have gone further than balancing payroll and reordering housekeeping supplies. Brian didn’t fit in this Podunk town, not all year round. But what was that last night he’d heard about a baby?

  “Do you want something to eat? I can get George to bring you a fruit plate.” Fanny was next to him now, fussing. He was supposed to care for her after the stroke, not the other way around. But when he approached anything close to caretaking with her, she’d shoo him away. “With your eyes, it’d be the blind leading the blind.” He knew she hated to feel helpless. Fanny had been a bustling, frenetic woman before the blood decided not to travel to her brain, and she must hate to be stripped of caretaking, her raison d’être. It was like how he felt impotent without his identity as the lovable innkeeper. He wondered if possibly Fanny had voted to sell. She had made comments in recent years like, “Who needs all that agita?” and “Wouldn’t it be nice to stay in Florida full-time?” But no, it would be hard to imagine she’d vote to sell something so precious to him.

  Aimee and Louise were wild cards. Aimee needed money—or rather Roger did, but they were tangled together, with children who hung in the balance. Louise loved the hotel dearly, but he knew without Benny it brought her more pain than pleasure. And the grandchildren. They had all sorts of lofty ideas about how to modernize, but many of them were impractical. Did that mean they’d voted to sell, or were they idealistic and hopeful like he’d once been? Amos simply didn’t know, and with the decision made, it really didn’t matter. The others had complicated lives in which the hotel played only a supporting role. For him, and for Benny if he’d still been here, the choice would have been a purer calculation. How he’d hated to hear Benny’s name dragged through the mud last night. If they only knew the truth about the mortgages. Maybe one day he would share it. Or not.

  “What do we do with the money raised by the 5B? Can we, like, give it back? So far they’ve raised over two hundred thousand dollars,” Phoebe said, flashing her phone around.

  “I don’t know,” Brian said, scratching his chin. “We have to notify them that we’re selling. And then I guess it’s up to the organizers.”

  There was a knock on the door.

  “Come in,” Brian called out.

  It was the intern. The girl with the ladder of earrings posted through her cartilage who’d called the fire department the other day.

  “Yes, Lisa?” Amos wanted to assert his voice, to prov
e he wasn’t going the way of Milton Green anytime soon.

  “It’s Lucy. I’m afraid there’s a problem in the kitchen. Mrs. Lewison insisted on making her own challah for Friday night dinner. The staff tried to keep her out of the kitchen, but she pushed her way through. Anyway, she broke two ovens, went through three dozen eggs, and is screaming at Joe for buying the wrong yeast.”

  “Okay, okay. Tell Joe I’ll be over there in a few minutes,” Brian said.

  With the hotel sold, they wouldn’t have to deal with these kinds of issues anymore. Crazy guests, unhappy staff, broken kitchen equipment—it would eventually bundle into one faded memory. Before they knew it, they wouldn’t recall whether the bed linens were white or ivory, or whether they did brisket or roast chicken for the first Friday night of the season. They wouldn’t know where the tennis balls were kept hidden or what year the wild bear had gotten into the swimming pool. Mrs. Teitelbaum would get confused with Mrs. Turtletaub and nobody would remember the house rules for poker.

  Lucy flashed a thumbs-up and took her leave.

  “So now that we’ve reached a decision, when is everyone planning to leave? Not that we need your rooms vacated because of demand, obviously,” Brian said, sheepish grin softening his chiseled jaw.

  “Um, I don’t know,” Aimee said. “I guess I hadn’t really decided. I suppose we can leave now, can’t we? Kids, what do you think?”

  The youngsters exchanged glances.

  “I’ll stay the rest of the weekend,” Maddie said. “Andrew’s just arrived, and I want him to get the full experience.”

  “I’m game,” Zach said.

  “I can access most of my study materials online, so sure, why not?” Scott said. “This beats the library.”

  “Well, if my kids are staying, then I am, too,” Aimee said. “I can’t believe I’ve been here a whole week and I haven’t gone in the pool once.”

  “Peter, you must need to get back for work, no?” Fanny asked. It was shocking that Peter had made it up to the hotel at all, that he hadn’t just tried to manage the Michael flare-up via Zoom. Surely one of his minions could have drafted an email on the matter of his child’s sexuality.

  As if on cue, Peter picked up his iPhone. The man’s work was unrelenting.

  “Actually, I’m just texting Greta. I think it might be nice to stay through the weekend.”

  “Wow, so we’re all staying,” Brian said. “That’s really . . . I’m just . . . it’s so . . . this is great. Although I still don’t have any entertainment lined up for tomorrow night.”

  “Oh, I have a question,” Maddie said. “Grandma, Amos, Fanny, do any of you remember a woman by the name of Estée Feinberg?”

  “Do you mean Esther Feinberg?” Amos asked.

  “That hussy!” Louise called out.

  “Such trash,” Fanny said, waving her hand dismissively.

  “Who could forget Esther?” Amos said, laughing at the memory. He hadn’t thought about her in decades. “She slept her way through the waitstaff at Grossinger’s, Kutsher’s, the Concord, and the Golden, and when she ran out of men there, she hit the bungalow colonies. Why do you ask about her? Not a classy broad, that one.”

  “Um, oh my God. This is insane,” Maddie said, a wide grin taking over her face. “Esther—well, now Estée—Feinberg is Andrew’s grandmother.”

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Louise

  When the ballots had been placed in front of her, Louise had been trembling. She’d hoped nobody had noticed the way her hands had shaken when she’d gone to stamp them. It was unbecoming of a woman her age to appear this uncertain. Maybe they would think she had Parkinson’s with all that shaking. She’d looked to see if others were feeling similar distress, but it had been poker faces all around. Of course, only she had a vote that counted twice.

  Benny, her love. The man who had lifted her when she was down, who had made her feel like a princess again after her father had lost everything. And he’d been good to her mother, too, welcoming Celine to the hotel every summer and describing her as a very renowned and influential woman in Montreal, even after she was forced to fire all the help and clean her own toilets. Never gossiping about Louise’s father, even though the stories would have gotten a lot of traction in the card room. Benny would even buy jewelry for her mother and, knowing she’d be too proud to accept a gift, tell her these were unclaimed items left behind by the guests. Who cared what flirtations—or more—he’d dabbled in on the side? She had secrets, too, worse than his. A betrayal that would have slain him. How could she vote against him? A vote to sell was a vote against her late husband. It was that simple.

  But then there was her daughter. Aimee needed the money from a sale. Whether she used it to help keep Roger out of prison or to support the kids—especially the grown-and-unflown Zacky—or both, it didn’t really matter. Her daughter would benefit the most from a million or so dollars in her bank account, because the government would seize everything that could be traced to Roger’s business. With these twin urges tugging her in opposite directions, when Brian had announced that everyone should keep their eyes on only their own ballot, Louise had stamped one ballot in support of the sale and one against.

  The decision to sell had relieved her, though she’d tried to keep her face stoic when Brian had announced it. Keeping the hotel was a way to honor her husband, but he was six feet under. A decision to sell helped Aimee in the here and now. And life, as her own mother often remarked, was for the living.

  But then Amos had nearly collapsed on them, and Louise had felt terrible all over again. What had she done? Was it her split vote that had tipped the scales? Only Brian knew the tally, and as CEO, he had made the decision not to share it. Everyone agreed with his decision to keep the final count private. It relieved them all of feeling their choice was the one that had summoned the wrecking ball.

  After Amos had been declared well enough to go to his room, their group disbanded quickly. An urgency was setting in, to soak up every last thing the Golden had to offer before the title transferred. Aimee headed for a dip, Peter went to meet Greta for tennis, Brian needed to deal with the challah disaster, and the kids decided on an impromptu Ping-Pong tournament. Fanny suggested gin rummy to Louise, but she demurred. She knew where she wanted to be, and this was her best chance to get there alone. But first, a stop was needed at her cabin.

  Louise pushed open the door and found a young gal from housekeeping inside, wiping down the countertops in the kitchenette.

  “Mrs. Goldman, I’m so sorry,” she said. Louise studied the young woman quickly gathering cleaning supplies and loading them onto her cart.

  “It’s no trouble,” Louise said. “Though it would be better if you would come back a bit later. Tell me”—she squinted to read the name tag affixed to her uniform—“Carol, how long have you worked here?”

  Carol looked flustered. Louise was always gracious to the help, but if she was honest with herself, there were few she’d gotten to know well.

  “Ten years, madam,” Carol said. “I love it here.”

  Louise smiled at her, because what else could she do? Tell her that she’d soon be out of a job, but that hopefully Brian could finagle employment at the casino? But even that was a long shot. By the time Diamond built their behemoth, it would be years that the Golden staff would be without income. There was a part of Louise that wanted to know the gory details—How many children did she have? Did her husband have a job?—but what would be the point? More heartache.

  After Carol had left, Louise let out a shudder. So many livelihoods were about to be upended, though it could hardly come as a surprise. If Carol had friends on staff who had worked at the hotel longer than she, she would know it had once been a place where overbooked rooms meant working extra shifts and running out of clean towels and linens. She would know that she worked at a shadow of something once great.

 
Louise opened up the closet in the bedroom and pushed aside the matching pants and sweater sets she’d grown accustomed to wearing in recent years. They weren’t sloppy, like the yoga outfits the mothers pushing strollers on the Upper West Side wore. Her outfits were neat, cashmere tops and narrow slacks fitted around her slender body. Still, the ensemble was a far cry from the silk dresses and linen trousers she used to wear, her handbag and shoes always a perfect match. Flexing her aching calves, Louise knew she needed to throw in the proverbial towel. She was growing older—no, she was old—and was a widow to boot. But for the next half hour, she would put that realization aside.

  The mint green chiffon gown, with its lovely beaded bodice and lace trim at the neckline, hung pristinely preserved in a black garment bag, in which paper stuffing kept the dress’s shape. Louise knew it would fit because she kept to a very strict diet. She never stepped on a scale, but if her pants ever felt snug, she simply abstained from her morning bagel until her waistline shrank back. It was hard to close the dress without Benny to help with the zipper, but a wire hanger eventually did the trick. She slipped into her matching heels, ignoring the protest from her arches, and draped a white fur stole over her shoulders. Now she just had to pray nobody saw her on the walk. Luckily, she knew a back trail that led to the theater. It was the same place Aimee and the Weingold boys used to smoke and drink, thinking they were being stealthy. But Louise knew their every move. Not that she ever punished her daughter or ratted out the twins. It had been her feeling—Benny’s, too—that it was better for the kids to get into trouble at the Golden. Let them feel like rebels in their own backyard so they didn’t seek out the sensation elsewhere.

  She made it to the empty auditorium without detection, just a little mud on her shoes. She wished she could have called for a golf cart, but how would she explain this getup? Louise found the microphone and stand in its usual place and dragged it to the center of the stage. Feeling silly, she tapped the mike and said “Testing” in a soft voice. The reverberation, though expected, made her jump.