by Ann Beattie
“It’s not so much that I disapprove. I only think it’s sad.” Years before, Hetherly and his second wife, Maude—she had never known his first wife, because they’d eloped and separated after the first few months of marriage—had pursued adoption, even though it was clear their marriage was rocky. And what had happened but that twin boys were found—not one child, but two—and in exchange for his not having to support the boys, his soon-to-be-ex-wife’s lawyer had gotten him to agree to say nothing about the divorce to the adoption agency. So really, it was hardly her concern, if that was what Hetherly had felt comfortable agreeing to, and if it was what Maude wanted, as well. She supposed James might think she disapproved because she so often changed the subject when Hetherly mentioned the boys. He hardly knew them, hardly saw them at all—but her disapproval was not so much because he’d dismissed his sons as an intolerance for people who pretended. He didn’t care about the children. He never had. So why should she ooh and aah about their crayoned pictures? Why feign interest in their hobbies and preoccupations, when Hetherly, himself, knew only what his ex-wife reported?
“You have your face set in that I’m-hard-hearted-and-proud-of-it look.”
“Give me a break,” she said, turning away from the sliding glass doors that led to a tiny balcony. In the distance, she could hear sirens. “The sun was in my face.”
“Sun is what you came for,” he said, crossing the room and putting his arms around her.
“Give me a break,” she said again. “On my back, with a hat brim over my sunglasses—not blinded by light glinting off the gulf.”
The next morning, she didn’t hear James leave the room. When he left early, he was kind enough to shave with a razor, instead of the electric shaver. Though there was a coffee maker in the room, he had obviously decided to spare her the burbling and to find his morning caffeine elsewhere. It was after ten when she awoke, startled into consciousness by the wail of sirens somewhere near the hotel, and ten-thirty by the time she’d washed her hair and showered. It was not until then that she saw the little piece of paper by the bathroom sink: a note telling her that Hetherly’s aunt had come with him, and that she would be at the pool. How rude, to put her in the position of spending Christmas with someone she had never met. She could hardly believe Hetherly’s nerve. She could also not think what to do except to have some breakfast and then go to the pool. It was Christmas, after all: one of those days on which you were obliged to be nice. She was in the elevator before she wondered how she and the woman would recognize each other. Having her coffee and croissant, she became preoccupied with the question. Perhaps his aunt would be the oldest person at the pool. But, if so, how could she march right up and say hello? Wouldn’t his aunt figure out how she’d been recognized? Or perhaps he’d described her to his aunt. Yes; it seemed likely he would have. So that left her wondering how she’d been described: middle-aged? Dyed brown hair? A little too smiley, too sure of herself? She’d heard that one more than once, sometimes disguised as a compliment, sometimes as the insult it clearly was. The nerve he had, bringing his aunt, uninvited. Though she supposed if he’d asked, she would have found it difficult to say no. It was Christmas. She finished her breakfast and asked the waiter how to get to the pool. He smiled: a trim, dark-skinned man with a slight paunch, wearing khaki bermudas, a white shirt, white socks, red sneakers, and foam antlers on his head. He gestured behind her: through the restaurant, into the courtyard. She was very close to the pool.
The hotel’s courtyard was a pretty area, rectangular, trees in the garden strung with lights, though in the daylight, of course, no lights were turned on. The hurricane that had come through Key West had apparently done little damage, though here and there when you saw something odd, you suspected the hurricane was the explanation. The trunk of a slanting palm tree, minus its fronds, protruded five feet or so from the ground and had been wrapped in silver, tied with red bows. Atop it sat a plastic reindeer head, on which someone had plopped a Santa hat. Protruding from the base of the trunk were two hooves that looked very real. They might even have been something provided by a taxidermist. She looked away, not wanting to think about it.
A woman about her age, wearing a white bikini, waved, and her eyes widened with surprise. Then she realized that the woman was waving at a blond boy behind her, struggling to carry three cans of Coke. At the far end of the pool, she saw a cabana with a man inside, dispensing towels. Around his head he wore a furry headband with bells dangling from it. “May I give you one or two towels?” he asked, as she approached. She asked for two. “Room number?” he said, picking up a pencil with a Santa head where the eraser would normally be. She reached in her shirt pocket for the key. “Two-eleven,” she said. “Ah,” he said, and reached behind him to a clipboard, from which he took a folded piece of paper. He held it out to her. It was a note from Aunt Rose. It said: “It would be pleasant to join you at poolside, but I realize that this is your vacation, so perhaps tea later this afternoon would be best.” She read it, frowning. The poor woman had gone down to the cabana but had not stayed, because she thought she might be intruding? Suddenly, her heart went out to her. She asked where a house phone was, and the man reached beneath the counter and put a cordless phone in front of her. The phone was white and had no Christmas decorations. She dialed the hotel operator. After being told the person’s name, and that she was at a Hilton Hotel, and wished a Merry Christmas, she was asked, rapid-fire, how her call should be directed. It was only then that she realized she did not know Aunt Rose’s last name. But of course she must be registered under the name Hetherly. She and her nephew must be sharing a room. It was so obvious that she was shocked when the operator said there was no Hetherly registered. Confused, she spelled the name. No; there was no person by that name registered. “They checked in early this morning. Four hours ago. Something like that,” she said. The person on the other end said that the computer had just been updated, and that no Hetherly was registered. She was wished a happy holiday.
“They say the person who left me this note isn’t registered here,” she said to the young man in the cabana. “How am I going to find her?”
“I don’t know, ma’am,” he said.
“Did this lady stay by the pool, earlier? Did you see her?” she asked.
“That would have been before my shift,” he said.
She nodded. It wasn’t his problem. It shouldn’t be her problem, either. Before she got any more upset, she decided to spread a towel on a lounge and enjoy the sun, while she thought about what to do. She walked on the opposite side of the pool from the mother and the blond boy, because the boy was pretending to dive-bomb all the lounges on that side with whatever he held in his hand. She picked a lounge near a little table and put her suntan lotion down, then took off the denim shirt she’d worn over her bathing suit, lifted the suntan lotion, and put the folded shirt underneath it. She hadn’t wanted to have to visit his aunt, so why was she so perturbed? Because everything was so inefficient, these days; inefficient and inconclusive. American Express was investigating a charge on her latest bill for a magazine she’d never subscribed to (or received); she had called the bank twice, asking for a copy of a canceled check, and it still had not been sent; she’d ordered a funny present for her best friend from a catalogue in early November, and it wasn’t until the day before Christmas that she got a postcard saying the item was out of stock and wouldn’t be shipped for another three weeks. Her own mother was alone at Christmas; her brother had said he and his fiancée would visit her, but he had come down with a cold and canceled their flight. Christmas, itself, was a rather inconclusive holiday: it seemed to mark the end of the year that had passed, though it was not yet New Year’s. She put some suntan lotion on her throat and face, careful to pat, rather than rub. Even as a small child, her mother had given her hints to avoid aging: never scrub; always pat gently. Pat, pat, pat. She always felt like she was roughhousing with herself if she put a towel around her body and pulled it back and forth. She re
arranged her other towel under her feet and leaned back to soak in the sun. From speakers hidden somewhere, she heard bells ringing out a tinkly “Santa Claus Is Comin’ to Town.” Sure. Maybe in the biplane flying overhead, advertising some seafood restaurant. Or maybe he was inside the hotel, bending the concierge’s ear. That might be what was occupying the concierge. (“Whaddya mean you don’t have a Hetherly? Ho ho ho.”)
She surprised herself by falling asleep so soon after arising. When she awoke, it was almost an hour later. Two teenage girls in bikinis were sitting a few lounges away, talking about the best way to apply nail polish. Apparently, it should be done just the way you’d imagine, but afterwards you should stick your hands in the freezer for sixty seconds. Across the pool, she saw the cabana boy opening an umbrella, trying to crowd three lounges for a family underneath. She got up and asked the cabana boy, when he returned, if she could use the phone again. He handed it up silently. She dialed the concierge. A man’s voice answered on the third ring, wishing her a Merry Christmas. She cut him off before he could tell her his name, and where she was staying, etc., etc., by asking, in a louder voice than his, if he could help her locate a “Ms. Hetherly. H-e-t-h-e-r-l-y.” He said he would transfer her call to the operator, but she said that no, she had tried that, and for some reason, they hadn’t been able to find the room number. “You’re sure this guest is registered here?” he said. “Yes,” she said, although she was less and less sure. “Checking H-e-t-h-e-r-l-y, I’m sorry that no one is listed by that name. Is there another name the guest might be registered under?” Well, yes, her own name, clearly, but she didn’t know what that was. “There’s no way you could check by looking at first names, is there?” she said halfheartedly, instead of answering the question. That elicited a clipped “No there isn’t. I’m sorry.” Okay: she would wait to be found.
She swam. She ordered lunch and ate a Caesar salad with shrimp and was amused when some croutons blew away in the breeze. A large seagull swooped and got them almost immediately. Between swimming and eating she had gone into the hotel to get a newspaper. After lunch she read it, thoroughly, reapplying suntan lotion and putting on her shirt, in case she was getting too much sun. The biplane buzzed across the sky and, as she watched it pull its ripply message, she saw, in the corner of her eye, a parasailer. She wondered if she’d ever have the nerve to parasail and decided it was unlikely. Stocks were down, but they’d finished high for the year. James had left their money in the market after the fall plunge, and he’d been right not to panic. There it was: the reward for waiting.
Oh, come on: she wasn’t a character in Godot.
She left the newspaper, towels, and suntan lotion on the lounge and went into the hotel. She took the elevator to her room, which had still not been cleaned. She peed, then eyed the bed, thinking of pulling the curtains and taking a luxurious afternoon nap. She never napped. James loved to nap, but she never did. It kept her awake at night. She stretched out on the bed, certain that the bright sunlight would keep her awake. With her arm thrown over her eyes, it was pleasant to lie there. Much nicer than being on a boat. As a child, her mother had told her to count sheep if she had trouble relaxing, but sheep were actually interesting creatures—maybe not so fascinating that they’d keep you awake, especially pre-Dolly—but more interesting than boats. If she really wanted to fall asleep, she could probably imagine charter boat after charter boat—white boats of a particular size, not boats she’d seen, but generic boats. Sort of sail-in-the-bathtub boats. Boats out on the water, fishing lines thrown over the sides, bail buckets by people’s feet, buckets filled with gray wriggly worms.
She sat upright. What a hideous image. What a thing to think of on Christmas Day. She was doing it again: seeing something simple and examining it, zeroing in, zeroing in, until it became ugly. The shiny finish on a wood table? She’d see the scratch. She even knew what the damnable tendency was: she was always probing her own inadequacy. She was still convinced of her own inadequacy. So, okay; she’d been to a good shrink, she knew that. See the tendency, stop it. Say out loud to yourself, if necessary: Stop it.
“Stop it,” she said, so loud she ended up choking. She sat up quickly, fighting to catch her breath. As the paroxysm ended, she straightened her back, catching sight of herself in a mirror hung from the back of the bathroom door. Her eyes were tearing; her hair, first blown in the wind, then tangled underneath her as she lay in the unmade bed, made her look like a cartoon crazy lady. She wiped her eyes with the palms of her hands and smoothed her hair, then got up and found her brush and brushed her hair for a long time before checking her image in the mirror again. She decided that even at her worst, she did not look forty-nine. Early forties, but not almost fifty. Maybe mid-forties, if she was having a bad day, but still attractive. And James had come back to her. As he pointed out, he had never left. He had slept with some woman at work a few times—a few times, meaning exactly three—three times, and the last time, according to him, he had begun to cry and had broken it off, and as soon as the unnamed woman—she did not want to know the woman’s name—as soon as the woman stopped calling and hanging up two or three or, sometimes, four times a night, their life would be back to normal. She would be a woman who worked as a docent at the art museum and who taught needlework workshops on weekends and who sometimes stretched out on a hotel lounge while her husband fished. She thought that they had “retired” to Florida too early. Yes, the climate was nice, but the whole state was full of malcontents, dropouts, oldsters she had nothing in common with . . . except that, sadly, she did have something in common with quite a few of the women: women who developed myopia defensively, perfecting their techniques with needle and thread as someone, or something else spun a larger web in which they struggled. Since everything that happened happened whether or not she was the center of the universe, it was a waste of time, and verged on paranoia, to personalize everything. In a grand drama, you could always claim the central role, but if you saw life more realistically, as being a parade of extras who’d reported routinely for work, always a little too early in the morning, your own suffering, and even your triumphs, were not so significant. Applause did not routinely follow the acts of one’s life. That tired old idea of life as a play. The only problem was that there was a script, but you might be assigned to play any role at any time. You might have a different role depending on the day. One day, a young woman who got involved with married men. The next, the middle-aged wife whose husband slept with younger women. Well, that script was pretty well thumbed. Also, the theme music always played in your head. At the moment, it was in conflict with the music coming from one of the maids’ radios. Christmas music was playing as the maid opened the door, quickly said, “Sorry,” and backed out of the room. The music had been “Frosty the Snowman.”
Three o’clock. Just the time for tea. Or four. Four o’clock. Did people drink tea into cocktail hour? Or was five o’clock a little early for cocktails? When she checked again at five, Aunt Rose was neither inside the restaurant, nor outside, where tables and chairs faced the gulf. Maybe at the last minute she’d decided to join the men on the boat. Why would she want to have tea with a total stranger, any more than that stranger would want to have tea with her? She might be out on the boat, pulling in grouper, yellowtail, rebaiting her hook. Why assume that Aunt Rose was a little blue-haired lady teetering along for the trip? Maybe she had better sense than to hang around a half-empty hotel on Christmas, watching people in antlers serve tourists iced tea with candy-cane swizzle sticks. Maybe she was enjoying a slug of Jack Daniel’s—that was Hetherly’s drink of choice. Maybe, instead of being an arthritic hobbler, she was as adventurous as a one-legged pirate, come aboard to make mayhem and to overthrow the party. Roy Lichtenstein does Classic Comics: “Stand back or I’ll halve you with my sword!”
Across the restaurant she saw the blond boy, asleep, leaning on his mother’s arm. The mother and another woman were having something to eat at one of the booths. Here were tired people at the e
nd of the day: parents and children; insignificant moments that nevertheless tugged at the heart, played against a backdrop of hotel employees, already foreign to these shores, metamorphosed for a day into harmless animals cavorting among easily amused tourists.
She debated between ordering a glass of wine or a pot of tea and decided to have the wine. What was all this preoccupation with tea? She never had tea. She preferred coffee, but it was too late in the day for coffee. She ordered white wine, making her selection on the basis of which wine was most expensive.
When Aunt Rose came into the restaurant through the sliding glass doors that opened from the pool area, she recognized her immediately. For one thing, there was a strong family resemblance with the high brows and the hooded eyes, but most of all, she recognized her from her fatigue. The sleepy eyes might have been part of it, but both Hetherly and Aunt Rose had the same slumped shoulders atop ramrod-straight spines. It was as if they were larger people than they should be, so they had found a way to accommodate.
“I was having a facial. Forgive me if I’m late. Also, forgive me for appearing without makeup. I couldn’t see the point in having all that steaming, just to put on foundation,” Aunt Rose said.
No hello? No explanation of how she’d decided to approach this table, instead of the one where a small blond woman ate alone, no clue about how she knew what she looked like?
“There was a time when I thought you’d be my niece,” Aunt Rose said. “I imagine there was a time when you thought that, too, though no one really thinks about families when they’re joining lives with another person, do they?”
She wanted to think that the woman was astonishing, but actually, once past her initial surprise, it seemed she had known her forever. It was as if two old friends had gotten together to communicate with gestures and brief expressions.
“I tried to find out what room you were in. You didn’t leave me your room number. And I’m embarrassed to say that I don’t know your last name,” she said.
