Summer Accommodations: A Novel

by Sidney Hart

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah, I’m coming.” I got in line and moved along until it was my turn. I was still so upset by the image of Harlan and the woman that I lost control of the ball and ended up kicking it out of bounds.

  “What was that?” Ron offered with his usual tone of annoyance.

  “I got distracted.” I said, trotting back to the end of the line. One of the team’s better players, Spider Johnson, came by and slapped me on the ass in a gesture of encouragement. No words were exchanged.

  When my turn came again I dribbled to the right side of the basket but then spun around, ran backwards to the left side, feinted to my right and then tossed a hook shot over my head missing the backboard and the rim by about two feet, the ball describing a beautiful arc in empty space. Several of the good players made some catcalls at me and as I slunk away in a travesty of humiliation, my face buried in my hands like Adam in Massaccio s “Expulsion from Eden.” Harlan called out from the bleachers, “Good try Jack.” You could feel the tension suddenly rise on the court. None of the ballplayers liked Harlan, not one. It was as though every one of them perceived a quality of dissimilarity in him. I had known a lot of good ballplayers growing up. They had no problem playing with a frivolous and punky guy who kept a lit cigarette in his mouth on the court, or wore old, worn down loafers with crushed down backs that no longer gripped his heels so that he scuffed along the court dribbling carelessly mocking only himself.

  Those guys were just as they were and didn’t pretend or aspire to be other than that. Harlan, however, Harlan emanated an aura of intentionality, a sense of purpose that others seemed to construe as scheming. I resented that harsh assumption.

  “Well, well, well. We are all honored to be visited by Mr. Harlan Hawthorne on this fine afternoon.” Spider Johnson’s Mississippi drawl made his sarcasm feel more cutting. “To what do we owe this pleasure, sir?” Ron positioned himself next to Ivan Goldman and smirked at Harlan. The other players sensing a confrontation of sorts stopped shooting and held on to their basketballs while they watched and waited.

  “Why Mr. Johnson it is so very kind of you to ask. I happened into the neighborhood and thought I might visit with our Mr. White.” Harlan’s voice was soft but very clear, hinting in its cadences that it might tend to inflect towards a southern prosody. To me this was a dangerous choice. Still smarting from their defeat in the Civil War southerners were proud and prone to take insult, especially from Yankees, and then likely to demand what they called “satisfaction”. While I had never seen a knock-down drag-out fight between waiters there had been the occasional shouting match about the usual things—girls or money. This dispute seemed more serious and I stepped forward to stand up for Harlan.

  “Harlan is a good friend, Spider, I invited him to come down and take some practice with us.”

  “That’s a goddamn lie!” Ron shouted. Without even looking at him Spider extended his long, left arm, the palm of his hand facing back to keep Ron in check, and slowly approached me.

  “Well now, Jack, did you know our ladies’ man was sitting out there in the ball field while we were playing, sitting out there in the ball field with one of his many lady friends? Did you know that? Do you think he was going to bring her out on the court with him or did she go back to her room to tape up her ankles before she tried a fast break. Or did she make a fast break when she saw all of us just on the other side of the bleachers? What do you think, Jack, what’s your opinion on this matter?”

  “Or maybe she was going to get knee pads for the other kind of games she plays with Harlan,” Ivan interjected, causing some of the other players to laugh the locker room laugh.

  “Uncalled for, Goldman,” Spider said in reproach.

  “Spider, where you get this idea of a ladies’ man from is a total mystery to me. Ask Jack, he’ll tell you that I’m involved with Heidi and why would I want anyone else if I have her?” Exactly the question I wanted to ask but this wasn’t the time or place to inquire and before I could support his claim Spider continued.

  “Well, Mr. Hawthorne, there happen to have been a few unhappy ladies I’ve heard about and strange as it might seem to you, each of them was unhappy about something having to do with you.”

  “I’m awfully sorry to hear that. You know, maybe part of their problem is that I’m just not available, have you considered that possibility?”

  “Not available? Who was that I just saw on the softball field? Tell me it wasn’t you, say it isn’t so Harlan.” Certain he had trapped Harlan in a lie Spider sounded smug.

  “It was me on the field. In broad daylight in the middle of the day on the softball field talking with Heidi’s sister-in-law Doris about a party for Heidi’s birthday next week.” There was a righteous tone in his voice now, and nothing of the south. Spider stared back at Harlan and clenched his teeth but said nothing. Harlan walked right up to Spider and standing face to face said, in a friendly and forgiving voice, “If that expression on your face is an apology I accept.” and then turned and walked slowly away. Everyone was silent as he left until one of the players bounced a basketball and I almost jumped out of my shoes with surprise. Ron and Ivan muttered to each other and the All Stars, as the hotel team was known, passed balls back and forth among themselves but Spider stood alone, his teeth still clenched.

  “It’s true about Harlan and Heidi,” I said approaching him. “They are together every night as far as I know and that was Doris Braverman on the softball field.” I had no idea who that was in the grass but hoped to God it was Doris. Maybe Harlan was telling the truth after all. Maybe the woman on the tennis court was seductive but maybe Harlan wasn’t seduced. But the woman at the lake cottage … I didn’t know what to believe. Spider looked down at me from his six inch advantage and just shook his head slowly from side to side.

  Chapter Seven

  What confronted me then was the issue of credibility, not just Lenny’s but Harlan’s as well, but let’s start with Lenny; to believe Lenny was to buy the Brooklyn Bridge from a sharpie in Grand Central Station but to dismiss his story out of hand was to risk being as doctrinaire as the members of the French scientific establishment who mocked the work of the great Louis Pasteur. What if he was right? What if his story was true? What if everyone dismissed it because it came from weird Lenny? It could be one of the great stories of the decade for sure, perhaps of the century. A conundrum? Maybe, but it was worth looking into. Harlan was a different matter entirely, one befogged by my adoring allegiance and need to sustain his unblemished image despite ample evidence to the contrary. During the month of July I had experienced many blows to my pride and disappointments of my expectations. Harlan’s secretive womanizing was the most recent disappointment and no matter how I tried to rationalize and find innocent excuses for his behavior it was clearer all the time that was who he was. I had said nothing to him about that little hootchie-kootchie display on the tennis court or the woman I’d seen him visit across the lake but after the episode on the basketball court I decided to view him as if through different eyes. He no longer seemed to be like the abashed movie star in a throng of admiring fans, but an ardent womanizer who made good use of his sexual capital. Yet, despite that and Ron’s mistrust of him, I decided I would take the Judge Crater problem to him. I knew Ron would object but I thought Harlan might provide some reasonable sense of perspective on the whole matter of Judge Crater. After all, he was a Harvard man.

  It was a very hot day and it was likely he’d be at the swimming pool taking the sun and reading. When I got there I saw several girls, and some women as well, who had settled near him laughing and talking loud, glancing over at him frequently trying to catch his eye, but he never once looked up from his novel. Was he teasing them? He had paid attention to so many different women in so many places, girls and women of all ages, it was hard to understand him.

  “Hi, Harlan, can I talk to you for a minute?”

  “Jack!” he called out my name in loud surprise as though I had just reappeared after be
ing given up for lost in the Antarctic. “Of course, of course, should we go somewhere else?” he asked, beseeching me with his eyes to say yes.

  “Well this is pretty private,” I said, looking back at the suntanned beauty sprawled on the nearest chaise. She quickly averted her gaze and frowned.

  “‘Nuff said,” and he closed his book and rose from his chair. Taking me by the elbow he led me to the concession stand facing the shallow end of the pool where young mothers cavorted with their children. For a few seconds I feared that his presence there would so distract some of them there soon might be dead babies bobbing in the water like apples in a tub at a Halloween party.

  “I don’t know what it is with those women. They see me with Heidi every night and still, well, what did you want to talk to me about?” This wasn’t the time to confront his flirtatiousness or to inquire about the woman across the lake or his tennis partner or all the other episodes that accounted for my recent mistrust.

  “Do you remember judge Crater?” Harlan turned to look at me the color draining from his face. He became unsteady on his feet and he grasped the ledge of the countertop.

  “Are you OK Harlan?” I asked in alarm.

  “It must be the heat. Jerry can you give me a glass of water please?” he said to the man tending the stand. “I was in the sun and I must have gotten dehydrated. That was stupid of me. Put some lemon in it if you could Jerry. Yes, of course I can remember judge Crater, judge Joseph Force Crater, who doesn’t remember him? Why? Why is he on your mind now?” Harlan seemed very fidgety. He lit a cigarette, took a big mouthful of his water and then soaked the tip of his Lucky Strike by putting it back in his mouth before he had even swallowed. Then he had a coughing fit.

  “You know Lenny, the handyman, the one with the misshapen face?” Harlan nodded. “Well he says that Crater is buried in an old well on the property and he took me and Ron to show us where it is.”

  “And you and Ron believe Lenny?” He took a drag on his Lucky and cocked his head when he looked at me, but it wasn’t with his usual ironic amusement.

  “Well that’s why I’ve brought it to you. I don’t know what to believe. It’s possible. You said yourself that Heidi told you this place was once a roadhouse during prohibition and that’s exactly what Lenny says. But he says that Heidi’s father ran the place then too, not just in the last twenty years.” Again Harlan seemed skeptical.

  “That’s ridiculous. Ben Braverman was a general contractor, in the building business,” he explained, recognizing my ignorance of the term. “Ben is accused of all kinds of criminal acts. He’s supposed to have once killed a dishwasher by kicking him to death in the parking lot, and now it’s about how he ran this place as a roadhouse in the twenties. The next thing that you’ll hear about is his being responsible for the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, for God’s sake.” Harlan was surprisingly strident in his defense and the mothers in the kiddy pool began to stare daggers at me. If Harlan was upset it had to be my fault because Harlan was always even tempered and composed. That’s the thing about attractive people; not only are they perceived as implicitly better and more desirable than others, they also may be seen as more virtuous. It takes a very long time to relinquish assumptions like that.

  “Why are you getting so upset about Ben Braverman’s reputation? I was only asking what you thought about the idea that Judge Crater might be buried in an old well on the grounds.”

  “Well … I think … I don’t know, I … you’re right. It’s just that I’m very protective of Heidi and anytime her father’s name and reputation come up it’s a very big deal to her.” He calmed and the mothers in the wading pool went back to attending to their children. “I apologize Meh,—JACK! So, is judge Crater buried here, is that the question? I don’t think so. There have been so many reports about the judge since he disappeared, what, twenty-five years ago? He’s been seen in the mountains in California, in Mexico, North Africa, Paris, Canada, and all over Europe. I think he’d find a better place to go than Braverman’s if he was looking to gamble or to escape from his wife.”

  “Who said he was trying to escape from his wife?”

  “Well, that was one of stories about him, that he had a lot of showgirl girlfriends and was a big time playboy. But then the other story was that he was an upstanding lawyer and a real scholar which was why he was appointed to the State Supreme Court. Of course,” and here Harlan smiled a smile that I remember vividly even today, a smile that I did not interpret correctly at the time, a smile I perceived as simply his pleasure in the ambiguities in the ways of the world, “it may be that both of those stories were true. Who says smart can’t be sexy too?”

  “How come you know so much about him?”

  “I once did a paper at Harvard about him and Anastasia Romanov, the Russian Princess who people said had escaped execution by the Bolsheviks. Each of them disappeared but was never given up for dead so I called them ‘The Revered Disappeared.’ The Princess was not nearly as fascinating as the judge. She was just a teenager when she disappeared she’d barely begun to live. But the judge was already forty-one when he vanished and there were all kinds of stories about him. Anyway, I don’t think he’s in the well, but I’d be interested in seeing where it is.”

  He coaxed the ash off the edge of his cigarette, placed a fresh Lucky between his lips and used the ember of the one he had been smoking to light it. I had not seen him chain smoke before.

  “I’d be glad to show you but I don’t want Ron to see us. He’d be really pissed off because he believes Lenny and he’s planning to get a news reporter up here from a New York City television station to get the well dug up. He says we could be famous for turning up the judge.”

  “You could also split the reward for finding him, five thousand dollars. Buy yourself a nice little car, an MG or an Austin Healy. But it won’t happen because I don’t think he’s there.”

  “Why are you so sure he’s not in that well? Nobody knows where he is.”

  “You’re wrong, Jack, somebody knows where he is, somebody or somebodys. The judge didn’t just disappear. Either he was kidnapped or he just decided to vanish, but there is someone who knows what happened.” He crushed his Lucky Strike on the heel of his shoe and then GI’d his cigarette, stripping the paper down the seam and shaking the remaining tobacco shreds out on the ground to be blown away by the wind. “I also find it hard to believe that someone would go to all the trouble and expense of closing down a well and digging a new one to get rid of a body. There are miles of woods here where nobody ever goes and a lake right across the road where you could dump a body in a barrel of cement and lose it forever.” He wrapped his book in his towel and stuffed it under his arm like a football. “That Lenny. What a pathetic creature he is, misshapen face, mentally defective, heavyset and clumsy, Heidi’s father is very generous to keep him on here. Do you know why he does that?” I shook my head. “Because he was the only son of the family who used to own this property. It’s the only world Lenny has ever known. He’d be completely lost if he was put off the grounds. Ben is not the monster everyone wants you to think he is. As far as Lenny is concerned he is at home, doesn’t matter who the owner is, this is his home.” We started back towards our room but after walking a few steps Harlan stopped and turned to me again. “Let’s go talk to Lenny together. I’d like to hear what his story is from him.”

  We walked around to the back of the waiters’ lodgings and then into the area where Lenny showed Ron and me the site of the old well. Harlan was quiet and I watched him as he studied the trees and inspected the grass. It seemed that there was nothing that he didn’t find interesting and nothing about which he didn’t know something.

  “It’s right over here. It’s a circle of stones and Ron found some mortar when we were scratching around in the dirt.” Harlan knelt over and brushed aside the tangle of weeds we had covered the ground with.

  “I thought it might have been the foundation for a silo that you were shown not a well but this dia
meter is too small for that.” He stroked his chin and looked around. “I bet there was another building near here once.” He looked over to the house where the social staff and housekeepers lived and then back at the waiters’ quarters. “I think it would be in this area,” he said, pointing in the direction of the shack where Lenny and the other handymen and dishwashers were billeted.

  “Why, what makes you think that?”

  “This well is too far from the main house. You don’t need to look so far for water here with a lake and a stream right on the property and reservoirs just up the road from here. The water table must be pretty high all over so a well this far from the main house would be unusual. I don’t know where it was but there was a different building here. Let’s get Lenny.”

  We were several yards away from the shack where Lenny lived when the smell of cheap wine blew into our faces and Harlan grimaced with recognition. “That’s just the saddest smell, the smell of dreamless sleep and wasted lives. It’s not just cheap booze, it’s worse, much worse than that. It’s the smell of hopelessness. The smell of down and out and nothing left to do but wait for death.” Two dishwashers began to argue, their quarrel slurred and muffled by their muscatel delirium, and Harlan shook his head wearily. “Lenny; Lenny?” he called out.

  “Who’s that?” Lenny’s voice came back suffused with the pleasure of being wanted by someone.

  “It’s Harlan.” There was a loud crash, a shout and a string of unintelligible expletives but Lenny came outside while the fight inside grew louder.

  “Hold it down in there!” Lenny called back over his shoulder. “Hi Harlan, Melvin, what can I do you for?” He laughed, part nervous laugh part happy laugh and kept his eyes fixed on Harlan. “Can you keep a secret Lenny?” Lenny nodded so vigorously I thought he’d break his neck. “Jack here told me about the well you showed him and Ron and …”