The House at Royal Oak

by Carol Eron Rizzoli

  Looking out the window on a mid-December day at the flowering quince in our front yard, a guest asked what it was. Hugo told him and then lapsed, remarking that the quince usually blooms in early April. “But there’s no such thing as global warming, is there?”

  The guest bristled. “There certainly is not. What there is is an effort to discredit our hardworking leadership in Washington.”

  Exactly, Hugo answered, trying to retain a shred of poise, along with his self-respect.

  Back in the kitchen, he scowled. Slam-dunked again.

  At that time it was unimaginable that a perceptible shift in attitude would ever take place. It started when Vice-President Dick Cheney, a part-time resident a few miles away, accidentally shot a fellow quail hunter in Texas. At the gun store Hugo fell into discussion. Everyone agreed it was unfortunate, but the man who sold Hugo shells expressed the prevailing sentiment most succinctly. “Thanks to heaven the vice-president didn’t shoot that lawyer in the face anywhere around here! He would have screwed our safety record.”

  A newspaper editorial calculated how long it would take to repair damage to the statistics if the vice-president had shot someone in Talbot County. In any event, much care is taken during hunting season and almost everyone who walks, jogs, or bicycles wears blaze orange. One neighbor sports a penitentiary-orange jumpsuit and a welder’s mask when he ventures out because not even a local knows when birdshot will come flying out of the woods.

  A bigger shift in acceptable subject matter occurred as the Iraq war worsened. The jabs at Democrats and suspected Democrats stopped—they just stopped cold—as if this had never been a major sport, and politics altogether faded to an almost nonexistent topic. I wasn’t sure about this until the heating and air-conditioning repairman came by to check the furnace.

  As he wrote out the invoice, he said he guessed we wouldn’t be needing the furnace half as much as the air-conditioning this year. It was a really good thing we had finally put it in. “The industry journals we get, they all say it—and I don’t know what side you’re on politically, but I can tell you—this thermal warming thing they talk about, it’s happening, it’s here.”

  Even before all that, dodging political discussions was easier than avoiding hidden conversational land mines, of which there seem to be an unlimited number.

  Like the pigs.

  Driving out to a farmstand on St. Michaels Road, I passed a new fenced enclosure of animals and slowed down for a better look. Definitely pigs. Someone had tried to start a garden center on the site, but owing to regulations or politics, the garden center was not allowed. The nursery stock already dug into the ground was dying. The newly arrived pigs, I saw, were large and robust.

  A few weeks later when I drove by again, I was startled to see a rusty old station wagon parked inside the pigpen, tires flat, doors open. Spray-painted on the windows in fluorescent pink and green was “OINK-OINK.” Within days the pigs, as could only be expected of pigs, issued their own scatological statement. More weeks later, pigs, car, and fencing vanished, as if they had never been.

  Meanwhile, a couple of miles closer to town a new business opened up with a field full of too many hundreds of recreational vehicles, boats, and trailers to count. It reminded me of what Eugene McCarthy, who once lived along the Chesapeake watershed, observed: “Nothing in the country is ever quite as simple as it seems.”

  When I ventured to ask a knowledgeable local about the curious appearance and disappearance of the pigs, it was my turn to be slam-dunked. “Those animals belong to a very nice family. The family owns a lot of land around here, always have.”

  Sticking to wildlife sightings is a safer bet and it’s one of the best surprises of our new life. “I saw a Monarch,” someone will greet you. “Just one, but they’re on the way.” A shopper at the market says, “I hear quail in the woods again. They were gone so long, it’s wonderful to have them back.” Scott Kilmon reports, “The barn swallows are here” and “Got the first striper yesterday.” A boat captain announces, “The ospreys are back in their nest on channel marker nine.”

  I’ve started to join in. “For the first time I saw a ruby-throated hummingbird,” I say at the farmers market. “It was feeding on my trumpet vines and when it flew away I saw gold dust, pollen, on its beak and throat.” The farmer who sells sweet corn was impressed, but don’t try to one-up anyone with your sightings.

  “Do you know what my cat did yesterday?” she answered. “She brought a baby rabbit in the house and I found them napping side by side.”

  The cat wanted a pet? I asked. “Oh, no. The cat has done this before and I always set the baby rabbit free before the cat can carry out her evil plan.”

  CHAPTER

  21

  Guests and Geese

  THERE ARE SO MANY GOOD GUESTS THAT WHEN A BAD one turns up, it always comes as a surprise. It was June, I remember, because the scent of honeysuckle mingled with the deep aroma of cigar smoke as we rounded the driveway after a late-night walk. Laughter echoed from the front porch and I saw the orange glow of sparks as a smoker tapped away ashes. The voice of Ella Fitzgerald drifted from the open front door of our house.

  Men in tuxes and women in cocktail dresses sat on the porch. A pleasing sight except for the sparks and the door open to mosquitoes, wasps, snakes, foxes, coyotes, and who knew what else. Maybe we should stay up, I suggested to Hugo as we slipped discreetly in the side door, to monitor the party.

  “Not necessary.” They seemed exceptionally polite and courteous when they requested an ice bucket earlier, he reported, and they’d asked permission to smoke on the porch.

  It was too late to bake the almighty muffins anyway, so I set the alarm and sank into bed. Hugo watched the late news on TV and followed me upstairs.

  All seemed well. In the morning the muffins got baked on time. The polite guests ate, paid, and left. The charges went through on their credit cards.

  The next day as incoming guests drove up, Hugo asked what I had done with the CDs in the parlor. He wanted to put on some music.

  Nothing, I told him.

  “Well, they aren’t here. You must have put them away.”

  “Nope.”

  “I’m looking for jazz—you know, Mulligan, Miles, Ella, Parker, Sarah Vaughan, any of the good jazz stuff.”

  He settled for a new-age CD that we occasionally used as background. After checking the guests in, we hunted around, opening and closing drawers all over the house. Every jazz recording was gone.

  “Damn, I hate guests!” Hugo said.

  “You left too many CDs lying around,” I pointed out. These particular guests were visiting from a part of the world where a jazz collection like that would be difficult if not impossible to assemble. I felt betrayed at the loss, but more embarrassed by our own inexperience.

  I quickly set it aside as just another lesson learned. But Hugo brought it up for weeks, getting upset again at each retelling. He seemed less resilient than the old Hugo, who would have been joking about it by now.

  A couple sat at a table by the window in the dining room. I said good morning and set down their breakfasts. No response. As I started moving away to the next table, the woman spoke up. “Is there a drugstore around here?”

  That explained it. She wasn’t feeling well. I gave directions and noticed that she seemed to have a shiner, probably painful.

  She went upstairs and he briefly went out. Then they stayed in their room all day. An innkeeper has to notice such things to avoid disturbing guests when they want privacy.

  Late in the afternoon I passed them in the hall as they were on their way out, all dressed up. He in jacket and tie, she in a smart black dress. I saw bruises up and down one arm. The shiner was mostly concealed under makeup.

  Worrisome. I considered the possibilities of physical abuse, drugs, or that it was just a normal course of events. My body looked something like that while we were doing construction.

  The next morning when neither of these guests appear
ed for breakfast, I told Hugo my fears. Complete silence came from the direction of their room. The woman could be dead from a drug overdose or a blow. At 10:30 I cleared away their untouched breakfasts. A few minutes after 11:00, checkout time, we discussed what to do. Knock on their door or run the vacuum cleaner in the hall outside their door? Hugo knocked and I started up the vacuum.

  A muffled man’s voice from the other side of the door said they were getting ready to leave and needed more time. At noon they walked down the driveway to their car.

  The room was an ugly sight. Empty beer bottles filled with cigarette butts and, thoughtfully, water lined the windowsills. The room would have to be aired, all the linens, pillows, coverlet, and curtains washed before we could book it again. The “No Smoking” sign was upside down in the dresser drawer. I found two more drawers filled with neatly folded women’s clothing. Apricot and green T-shirts, shorts, brightly embroidered skirts, belts, hats, a shawl. Clothes for a happy time.

  Grateful that there weren’t any dead bodies, I packed the clothing in a box and stored it on a shelf in the laundry room. A violent incident could seriously damage the reputation of our fledgling business. In a small town people talk, of course, and they remember.

  Everyone remembers and still talks about a woman who plotted to poison her husband at a murder-mystery weekend held by a local golf resort. Friends thought she was joking until the sheriff opened an investigation into his death. The judge, clearly shocked, described it as a Hamlet-like play within a play and she was sentenced to thirty years in prison.

  The resort survived this, and St. Michaels holds securely to its reputation as a charming, quaint, very nice town—the town with no traffic light, the town that fooled the British. Maybe we could survive an awful event, too, but I was left with a heavy heart, wondering about my responsibility to guests. Where does being nosy end and caring concern begin?

  Then came the guests who wished to observe their religious holiday. They would relax, stay in, talk, and eat with their friends. For twenty-four hours the world would be closed out. I envied the beauty and serenity of this, and said so.

  Never did I suspect that their rituals involved filling my cracked, antique washbowl, a gift from an old friend, with water and floating sticky brown candles in it. Water and wax leaked out and the wax got all over the white bath towels. I tried heat, stain remover, and bleach before cutting the towels into pure cotton cleaning rags. Neither did I guess that these guests would stock in enough food to feed a village. Straightening their rooms after the first night, I found platters mounded high with fried chicken, salads, breads, and cake. There were fruits, candies, bottles of wine, juice, and soda everywhere. It was impossible to know what to do, so I just left everything.

  When these guests departed, Hugo went in the parlor to check on things and ran into big black plastic trash bags, loaded with empty bottles and leftover food, that were leaking onto the rose Bordeaux rug. I wondered about a holiday that allowed them to waste so much and wondered if they stored garbage bags in the middle of their own living rooms.

  At times like this it was tempting to blame everything on Hugo. The first time I allowed myself a flash of anger since his illness was over these guests. You, I pointed out, are the one who decided to open our home to complete strangers. What did you expect!?

  Yes, he did that, but I learned something, too, and it wasn’t flattering. I’ve learned that it takes true generosity of spirit to run a bed-and-breakfast right. You can run one any which way, but to do it right takes something more. Yes, I like helping an elderly guest up the stairs, carrying his glass of sherry so he can hold onto my arm with one hand and the banister with the other. I like welcoming guests and seeing that they are comfortable and well cared for. I enjoy their smiles, their thank-yous for a wonderful, restful time. But the religious celebrants taught me that I might come up short in the generosity department. I might come up short the next time guests act up.

  I’ve learned that the excitement and discoveries this life offers are countered by the delusions and mysteries it strips away. In the end, like so many endeavors, it’s about yourself. Do you have the heart to do it right?

  This is not to suggest that we are model innkeepers—far from it. The worst faux pas so far? Well, Hugo was exasperated when guests backed their car into an iron flowerpot four feet high, knocking it over and cracking bricks on the walkway. A crash from the driveway drew his attention as we were clearing the breakfast tables. From the dining room window he saw the driver get out of his car to reposition the pot.

  “Dumbasses!” Hugo fumed, violating Innkeeper Rule Two, which is second only to Rule One about not contacting guests when they leave valuables behind. Rule Two is to never talk about guests before they have checked out and left the county. You might see them go out with golf clubs, but you might not see them come back in. You might see their car drive off to a dinner reservation you yourself booked for them, but both guests might not be in the car.

  “Be quiet!” I hissed. “The guests might hear you.”

  You worry too much, Hugo said. He had seen all the other guests all go out half an hour before. I glanced around the corner into the parlor and there of course sat one of the guests, looking up from his newspaper.

  Hugo was mortified and visibly subdued for weeks after that—and I would have lectured him mercilessly on his gaffe, if this had happened before adversity shook my priorities into better order. But it was definitely this very experience that saved him from a terrible mistake when the worst of all visitors showed up.

  A hotel will often “hold” rooms for events such as weddings, but a small inn can’t because you might be left with no bookings at all. Even one no-show at a three-room inn means a big bite out of a slim income. Booking a room, we tell callers, requires a one-night paid deposit.

  When a man asked to hold all our rooms for his wedding, Hugo explained the policy. He never sent in a deposit and many months later we booked the rooms for other guests. On the weekend in question, six young women carrying suitcases and garment bags arrived on our front porch, introducing themselves as the bridesmaids. I cringed. Hugo told them there were no reservations.

  Less than five minutes after they left, a man in shorts, sweatshirt and ball cap on backward pounded on the door. It was the groom. Furiously chewing gum, he advanced toward Hugo, who again explained the policy and apologized.

  The fist came up fast. Hugo closed his eyes and turned away. When he opened his eyes he was surprised that he was unharmed.

  The groom evidently controlled himself at the last second and was walking away, but not before flinging open the gate so hard it snapped its antique hinges. At least he was gone. The gate could be fixed. One guest in almost a thousand.

  “I wish I’d flattened him,” Hugo said that night. He was more upset than I had seen him since a customer over fifteen years before shoplifted a book from his store. When we went to bed, I rested my head on his chest and felt his heart beating in a wildly irregular pattern. “Are you going to be all right?” I asked, probably for the hundredth time. He said his heartbeat was often like that, it was just a new fact of life, what all the eleven pills were for.

  For my part, I started expecting trouble. Maybe a bed-and-breakfast is bad for him, maybe he’ll die doing it, I worried. Alternately I tried to contain my fears, important if we hoped to beat the odds of burning out, which in this business run high. At times like this, I got in the habit of sitting down to reread notes left online or in the guest book. One of my favorites:

  Thank you for a respite from the “real” world. After all the real world is right here.

  Another favorite came from a friend of Hugo’s and a former bookstore employee, Evan Parker, whose business card read, “Surreal and Fantastic Art, commissions accepted.”

  Two state-of-the-art Harleys roared into the driveway. Now it’s our turn, I expected, to host Hells Angels. I looked for Hugo but he and his truck were gone and I seemed to remember him saying something a
bout steak, beer, and laundry soap.

  Two couples were booked for the steamy, late August weekend. There was no telling if these were the guests or “drop-ins” hoping for a last-minute vacancy.

  I watched from the office window as riders in black leather dismounted from each bike. When they removed their helmets I saw two men and two women. A small Hells Angel contingent at least.

  As they headed up the path between the boxwoods, I tried to compose my expression. At worst they will trash the place. If it can be fixed, I heard my mother’s and grandmother’s intertwined voices saying, it isn’t so bad.

  And if they torch the place, then like phoenixes we’ll start over again. Starting over, I decided, has its charms. A new start generates amazing energy.

  I went out alone to greet the guests. The first sign that I might have jumped to the wrong conclusion was the absence of piercings or tattoos. We shook hands as they introduced themselves. The women were laughing.

  “We only do this a couple of times a year, fortunately,” one said, rolling her eyes at the guys and straightening her pearl necklace. “Now that they have to sit at desks all day like grown-ups, they like to get out once in a while and pretend they’re kids.”

  Never do I ask guests about their work, with the thought that if they want to discuss it they will, and if not, if they are seeking a rest from the “real world,” so be it. That’s often why they have chosen to come here in the first place, to a quiet countryside bed-and-breakfast.

  The next morning Hugo went out as they were suiting up, getting ready to tour the area, and admired the glinting bikes. It came up that the guys supervised a new three-state security detail of motorcycle police. They offered to take us out for a spin. I had no intention of going, but Hugo looked tempted, even as he thanked them for the offer.