Trophy House

by Anne Bernays

  Meanwhile, I was tutoring myself in the buying of antiques. I went to a couple of shows, one in Boston, one in Rhinebeck, New York, spread out over the Dutchess County Fairgrounds. Some of the stuff was spectacular. I wanted to know why it had ended up in a tent rather than in the houses of the owners’ children. Hard times? A rejection of their parents’ style and taste? I bought some books and magazines. I talked to people who seemed to know about how you decide what’s substantial and what’s going to fall apart. I liked seven-foot-high bureaus and hefty beds. I liked washstands with a hole for the basin. I hated stripes on anything. I was tempted to ask Raymie to help me decide whether or not to buy a sleigh bed from a dealer in Chatham, on the Cape. It was twenty-five hundred dollars. Even if the money wasn’t coming out of my bank balance, I balked at paying so much for a bed. I finally told the owner of Chatham Antiquities—who told me right off the bat to call him Guy—that I would like to buy the bed. He said, “You’re making a very wise choice; this is one of the finest examples of nineteenth-century craftsmanship I’ve seen in ages. I believe William Howard Taft slept in it—all three hundred pounds of him.”

  “You told me that the last time I was here,” I said, smiling so that his feelings wouldn’t be hurt. I wondered why he felt he had to keep selling the bed after I agreed to buy it. Guy stroked the headboard. “Feel the luster,” he said, examining his palm. “Where is this handsome piece going?” he asked, almost as if he were reluctant to lose it.

  “Truro,” I said.

  “Oh my,” he said. “That is a ways.” Not really, I told him. A matter of less than an hour. He said he had a mover who worked for him two days a week. Any day would be fine, I said, since this is going into a bed-and-breakfast that isn’t going to be open for business for a while yet. “A B & B,” he said. “Oh dear. I hope you’re not going to allow smoking in your establishment.”

  “It’s not mine,” I said. “I’m just the person buying the furniture.” I refused to identify myself as an interior decorator. “Why didn’t you tell me you were a decorator?” Guy said. “I would have taken a little something off the price.” I told him I wasn’t a professional but was doing this for friends. If I had been told a year and a half earlier that I would ever refer to Mitch Brenner as a friend, I would have sneered, “In a pig’s eye.” And now look.

  Mitch and Raymie were crazy about the bed. “Sturdy enough for a fat president,” I said. “I have my eye on a canopy bed in Yarmouthport.”

  There was a lot to do. I was finishing Peter Pan; the editor was pleased with my work but kept tweaking things. He objected to the nose I gave Peter—too adult. He objected to the dimples I gave Wendy. “Too cute. Dimples are out.” He asked me to deepen the colors—too pastel for what he had in mind. He was the most demanding editor I had ever worked with and it made me doubt my own competence. If he didn’t like my stuff, why did he choose me? A couple of times I considered dropping the project and giving the money back. David told me not to. “I know this person,” he said. “He’s one of the best. His books—every other year at least one prize. Stick with it.” I wanted to hug him but I was sitting at my laptop.

  I bought furnishings for the house with deliberate slowness. Mitch kept at me. “At this rate, the place won’t be open until next summer. Can’t have that.”

  “You weren’t seriously thinking of having guests this summer?”

  “I was.”

  I told him, sure, if he wanted me to buy the first thing I saw, okay, but it wouldn’t be what he wanted. “I’ve got to take my time,” I said. Raymie and I took a long walk on the beach during which I asked her to help put the brakes on Mitch. She promised. I felt a rush of warmth for my friend, who had, incidentally, dropped the preppy look and was more than halfway back to her old style of old clothes: aged jeans and a ratty old sweater. I wondered if Mitch had noticed the slippage.

  The brochure was a rush job, but it came out fairly well, with my photograph (I wanted black and white, Mitch wanted color; I did color) of Trophy House on the front cover and, inside, a view of the beach and another of the deck with tables and chairs arranged prettily, potted flowers on the tables, cushions on the chairs and a boiled lobster at each place setting. I told him I felt funny about the lobster pictures—we were a B & B, after all; dinner was not included. “No one’ll make that connection,” Mitch said. “The lobsters give the place extra class—not that it needs it.” None of my pictures had the slightest suggestion of ambiguity or bad weather. Mitch loved my work. Trophy House was a paradise within a paradise. He had several thousand brochures printed in Boston and distributed them to travel agents and chambers of commerce. And halfway through August, when I had finally finished buying beds, bedside tables, chairs, love seats, bureaus, towels, sheets, curtains, rugs, vases and pitchers, bowls and potpourri, he hired a Webmaster who designed a Trophy House Web site. We were off and running. I had become a constituent of the enterprise.

  Mitch decided to celebrate the grand opening of Trophy House with a Labor Day bash. “I know we don’t have much time,” he said, “but I’m going to open with as many dogs and ponies as I can round up.” Raymie said, “Mitch, Labor Day’s only two weeks away. We can’t possibly do this in two weeks.”

  “I thought you knew me, baby,” he said, squinting his eyes into a love twinkle. “Just you watch.”

  Mitch engaged a Boston publicity person at an inflated price. Raymie reported that the woman—her outfit was Synergy by Sylvia—doubled her fee because this job meant she would have to stop working for her other clients for two weeks. “Mitch was okay with that,” Raymie said. “I told him that people in Truro hated publicity. You know what he said? He said, ‘They’ll like this.’” Mitch obtained a list of every registered voter in Wellfleet, Truro, and North Truro and instructed Sylvia to send out invitations to every one of them by e-mail. Sylvia argued that printed invitations were more appropriate. Mitch said getting them made would take too long. She was skeptical but, as she told Raymie, “It’s his money, it’s his party.” The invitation asked them to “help inaugurate Trophy House, the only world-class Bed-and-Breakfast on the East Coast, featuring a spectacular view of Cape Cod Bay and equally spectacular sunsets. Once your friends stay here, they will never want to spend a week anywhere else.” With this last blandishment he had hooked into the Truroite’s dread of houseguests. Houseguests had a way of spending more time in your house than they were invited for. He hired my son Mark’s rock group, Dandruff, to play for three hours. The food was to be catered by Puff Pastry, a place in Provincetown that specialized in gay and lesbian parties, figuring, as he said, “that those folks really care about good food, and know how to present it.” He rented four all-terrain vehicles and four young hunks to drive them from the two closest public lots, where guests could park, up (or down) the beach to the foot of Mitch’s stairs.

  I found myself caught up in the excitement; then I stepped back and wondered what the hell I was a part of. Distressed by the Brenner style, so antithetical to what washashores and wannabes cherished, I still viewed Mitch as a panther who had crept into the aviary. I called David and told him about my misgivings. He asked if he was invited to the party. “Of course you are,” I said. “What do you think?”

  “I’m looking forward to it,” David said. “You’re taking this too seriously.”

  “You don’t understand.”

  “I think I do,” he said.

  Where do you go from this? I told him Beth was disgusted with me. “She thinks I’ve sold out to the enemy. As far as I’m concerned, the enemy [I was thinking of the way this country had turned from a nice, somewhat naïve kid into a cynical bully] is far worse than Mitch Brenner. At least he wants to do something about his mistake.” David said that Beth would probably get over her attack of ideals. “I’ll bet she comes to the party.”

  “I’ll bet she doesn’t. What are we wagering?”

  “There’s nothing I really want,” he said. “Except you.” I figured he meant it maybe ab
out sixty percent.

  Mitch was delighted when most of Truro’s washashores showed up at his party. Not only year-rounders who lived here in well-insulated houses back in the woods and away from the most howling of winds, but some folks who actually worked here: off-duty policemen, employees of the library and Town Hall, owners of big dark restaurants on or just off Route 6, and a couple of motel owners. Every segment of this insular winter community was represented. I caught a glimpse of Norman Mailer and his wife and a couple of small children, one of whom he introduced as “Wiggy.” Still, I was certain that what drew these people to the party was more curiosity than a desire to help Mitchell Brenner celebrate. Truro folks wanted to check out the house and declare it showy, impossible. Raymie drank wine nervously. Mitch was wearing white loafers with no socks, a blue cotton blazer and a captain’s hat with a visor. Mark and his group played loudly, numbers that sounded great but that I couldn’t have named if you held my toes to the fire. David talked to Raymie and my Peter Pan editor. The food—a raw bar of cherrystones and oysters, small triangular spinach pies, chicken wings, cheese and onion roll-ups, slices of smoked salmon on black bread—couldn’t have been better. The waiters and clam shuckers wore pink cotton jackets and white pants. Mitch invited his guests, only a few of whom he actually knew by name, to inspect the place. People formed an orderly line and made their way through the house, subdued, as if they were in a national shrine or a famous writer’s abode. I placed myself in back of a woman I didn’t know who, with her husband, I had heard making a remark about Mitch’s having greased a couple of palms to get a business variance. But when she saw the first of my rooms, she said: “This is perfectly lovely. I would stay in this room myself. Who would have thought it, from the outside?” I slipped away.

  With a glass of champagne in his hand, Mitch Brenner welcomed his guests; several of them stared at their shoes while he talked. Their loss. They will never be willing to give a man like Mitchell Brenner an even break, so why try to win them over? They have nasty, chilly little souls. I wanted to go step on their feet. David came up behind me and nudged my shoulder with his cheek. “Look who’s coming up the beach,” he said.

  It was Beth. She was striding up the beach with—oh my God—Pete Savage, the P’Town cop. Something terrible must have happened. Had Halliday struck again? I ran to the top of the stairs and as soon as she got into hearing distance I called out to her, “Beth, are you okay?”

  She looked a little sheepish. “Pete and I wanted to see what kind of circus Brenner puts on,” she said. She let me give her a hug. “I left my things at the house, Mom. I can stay ’til early tomorrow morning.” She grinned at Pete.

  “Do you mind if I ask you something? I didn’t know you two even knew each other…” I paused, scrambling for words. “Are you two an item?”

  “An item? Mom, this is century twenty-one. But yes, as a matter of fact, we’re seeing each other.” And as she said this, their eyes locked. Pete Savage, a short, compact person with a shaved head, an earring, and a decent smile, looked as if he enjoyed sex, food, and apprehending malefactors to the fullest. Whether or not he sprang from blue-collar stock didn’t especially interest me, though, to be perfectly honest, he had the earmarks. His beefy hands, for one thing, and a certain nondefined quality to his chin and nose. I’m not a snob, I’m merely describing. At this point in my daughter’s life, all I wanted was for her to find a guy who (a) wouldn’t beat her up, (b) wouldn’t ignore her, (c) didn’t drink to excess, and, should she choose to have a child, (d) would be a loving father. If his own father had caught and filleted fish for a living, that was fine with me.

  I hadn’t asked them how they met, but Beth was good at reading my mind. “We met at a party in P’Town,” she said. “He was standing on the deck all by himself with this disgusting purple drink in his hand. He didn’t look like he was having a very good time. So I just went up to him and started talking and—the rest is history.” She gave him a look of unmistakable love. He put his arm around her still-slim waist and drew her against his hip. “Your daughter is a wonderful person, Mrs. Faber,” he said. “But you already know that.”

  Beth seemed embarrassed by Pete’s directness. “Is David here?”

  I nodded. “He’s around here somewhere. Would you like to see the inside of the house?”

  I took Beth and Pete on a tour of the guest rooms, while trying to regain my balance, which Beth had knocked me off. She was mostly silent, but I could tell she liked the rooms. I was prepared for her to say something like “What a waste,” but she didn’t. “You did okay,” she said finally. Back outside, Beth dropped another bombshell: “I’m going to open a wedding planner business in P’Town.” She must have seen my surprise. “It’s okay, Mom,” she said (while all the time basking in the light of her newfound lover’s love). “I’ve done a lot of research and I know exactly what it entails. I applied to the Cape Cod Five for a small business loan.” Here, Pete interrupted: “They liked the cut of Beth’s jib,” he said admiringly. “They approved the loan.” She said that a lot of people thought that same-sex marriage was going to be legalized within a year. “Gays and lesbians—don’t ask me why, I really don’t understand it—want to do it the most traditional way. They want all the trappings—gold rings, a three-tiered cake, formal clothes, matchbooks with their names intertwined, a catered, sit-down dinner. The works.”

  “Sounds to me like they want to outstraight us straights,” I said. “Are you sure it’s not a put-on?”

  “Yes, I’m sure. They’re very serious. A lot of them have done it already—only without it being legal. But that’s going to change. I’m getting in on the ground floor, so to speak. There’s a shitload of money in weddings.”

  “What do you think of all this?” I asked Pete.

  “I think it’s a great idea,” he said. I had the impression that he would find any idea of Beth’s a great idea.

  “Does one of the two change his or her name?” I said.

  “What do you mean?” Beth said.

  “Like in a straight marriage. The woman usually takes her husband’s name.”

  “Whatever,” Beth said, abruptly switching gears. “I want a bunch of those clams. C’mon, Pete, let’s eat!”

  David said he knew Beth would show up. “She really loves you.”

  “Sometimes I’m not so sure,” I said, starting to tear up. I told him about Beth’s two pieces of news.

  “Good for her,” he said.

  “It probably won’t last,” I said. “What are she and the cop going to talk about?”

  “Crime and prime ribs. I hope in equal amounts,” David said.

  “I should let go?”

  David nodded. “What is it you really want?” he asked.

  “If only I knew.” And then it came to me: “I suppose this.” I nodded toward the west. “I think this is the most beautiful place in the whole world. Of course I haven’t seen the whole world but enough of it to know this ranks right up there. My legs go soft when I look out over the bay and watch the water moving softly like a dream. You’re going to think I’m nuts, but sometimes it’s almost pornographic. Do you know what I mean?”

  David nodded. “I don’t think you’re nuts. Just, is it enough?”

  “I used to think it should make me happier, more excited, more hopeful. And, bad as it was—and still is—I don’t think this mood is really connected to September eleventh. I guess I’m like one of those Henry James characters, where happiness is just around the next corner. You’re not like that, David.”

  “I’m not?” he said. “Are you absolutely sure you don’t want to be your daughter’s first client?”

  About the Author

  Anne Bernays is a novelist (including Professor Romeo and Growing Up Rich), and co-author, with her husband, Justin Kaplan, of Back Then: Two Lives in 1950s New York. Her articles, book reviews and essays have appeared in such major publications as the New York Times, Sports Illustrated, and the Nation. A longtime teacher of
writing, she is co-author, with Pamela Painter, of the textbook What If? Ms. Bernays currently teaches at Harvard’s Nieman Foundation. She and Mr. Kaplan have six grandchildren. They live in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and Truro, Cape Cod.