The Seduction of Water

by Carol Goodman

  She looks back at me and I see a look I haven’t seen on her face in years: uncertainty.

  “Yes,” she says, “this is what I thought I wanted.”

  After dinner there’s music and dancing on the terrace. I’m always nervous having events on the terrace after dark because even though the steepest drops are fenced off and posted with cautionary signs there’s always the chance someone who’s had too much to drink will ignore the signs and wander out onto the edge of the ridge and fall. We’ve had a number of sprained ankles and broken wrists and I think we’ve gotten off lucky—there are places where a person could fall and break worse. I would be happier prowling the perimeter myself but I’ve got to get upstairs and go through the registration book and get it back to Harry’s room before he’s ready to give it to Gordon del Sarto. Fortunately Harry is surrounded by an admiring throng clamoring to hear more about his wartime exploits. He won’t be going up anytime soon. I notice Joseph hovering around the edges of the crowd and deputize him to keep any stragglers off the precipices, suggesting he start with Phoebe Nix who’s wandering around the edge of Evening Star, out onto the rock ledge beyond it.

  Up in my room I take out the registration book from under my mattress. I start at the beginning and read each name twice, hoping one will strike a chord. I recognize some of the names as those of families who came regularly to the hotel each summer, but I notice that many are women—widowed or never married—who came with friends or sisters or a niece, perhaps. There are, of course, men, but they’re often registered for shorter times—a weekend here or there wrested from a busy work schedule. I suppose by 1973 there were fewer families who had the leisure to spend whole summers in the country, and those who did were probably buying houses in the Hamptons or the Berkshires.

  The book is organized to hold a day’s arrivals on one page and as I go on there are many pages with only one or two entries—or left entirely blank. It’s depressing, after a while, like reliving the hotel’s decline. As a child I was only half aware of the slow diminishing of the guests—it meant less work for me, more time to run free in the woods and, later, after my mother was gone and no one had time to keep tabs on me, hitch rides across the river and take the train down to the city. By the time I was a teenager I couldn’t imagine anyone choosing to leave the city to come stay up here.

  I am midway through July when I come across Mr. and Mrs. Peter Kron, Phoebe’s parents. I notice that she was wrong about the suite they stayed in—it was Sunnyside, on the first floor, not Sleepy Hollow on the second.

  I turn to the next page and a picture slips out of the book and slides onto the floor facedown. Bending down to retrieve it I see there’s a stamp on the back—a circle of pine boughs with the inscription: SUMMER MEMORIES AT HOTEL EQUINOX, 1973. Another of my mother’s ideas. She had a stamp made up each summer and put it on the back of the pictures the hotel photographer took. Maybe I should start doing that.

  I turn the picture over wondering what it’s doing in the registration books. It’s a dinner-party portrait of three couples—like dozens I’ve seen before from this period—the women’s teased hair and the men’s wide ties and sideburns placing it as early 1970s. Only my mother—who, along with my father, is the only figure I recognize at first—looks timeless. Her black hair is looser and more natural than the other women’s tortured hairdos. Even the one woman in the group who’s adopted a more modern look—bangs and long straight blond hair, a Marimekko mini dress—looks dated. Her eyes are too heavily made up and her bangs are cut so low on her forehead, the edges tapering down over her temples, that she looks like she’s wearing blinders. It gives me a little thrill to notice that not only my father, but the two other men as well, all have their eyes on my mother. I turn over the picture and read beneath the green stamp the names of the people in the picture. Dr. and Mrs. Lionel Harper, Mr. and Mrs. Ben Greenfeder, Mr. and Mrs. Peter Kron. Turning the picture over again, I look with interest at Phoebe’s mother, the famous poet—who’d have thought she’d wear so much eye makeup!—and then at Phoebe’s father. He’s handsome in a slightly dissolute manner, his face a little too thin, his lips curved in a sensuous smile. I remember Harry said that his experiences during the war—in an Italian POW camp and then hiding out in the Italian countryside—had left him restless. I study his eyes, which are dark and ringed with shadows. They look more haunted than restless—and they’re also fastened on my mother. He’s obviously smitten with her. Suddenly I have an inclination that this must be what Phoebe has been hinting at—that her father had an affair with my mother. There must be some reference in her mother’s journals that’s led her to that assumption, and seeing the expression in Peter Kron’s eyes I can believe that it might have been true. What I can’t figure out is why she would want me to know.

  Chapter Nineteen

  THE NET OF TEARS

  The first time he put the jewels on me he placed them around my neck. I knew that wasn’t how they were meant to be worn, but I saw the way his eyes glowed at the sight of me and when I looked at myself in the mirror I liked how the pearls encircled my throat and the green teardrop trembled with my breath.

  “Look how it matches your eyes,” he said, standing behind me as I sat before the mirror, “as though it were made for you.” And his hands circled my throat, pressing lightly, but I could feel the strength in them. The pearls and diamonds shook as if afraid for me. I closed my eyes and heard the roar of the ocean. I thought of the mother who wove this as her parting gift to her daughter. I thought of my mother who went too quickly to think of leave-taking presents, leaving only burdens.

  I forced my eyes open. My throat was bare but I could see a ring of glistening moisture where the stones had lain—a remnant of the dew and ocean from whence they came—and I could see, in the mirror’s reflection, Connachar returning the crown to its hiding place.

  I flip through the rest of the book but there are no more surprises after the picture, which I decide to keep. There’s no reason to think Harry would miss it. I slide it into my night table drawer, facedown, and pick up the registration book. Checking my watch I see it’s only nine-thirty—early for Harry to retire. I still have time to replace the book. But when I look in my evening bag for the master key I see it’s missing. I look around my room, but it’s nowhere to be found. I’d been in such a hurry to get downstairs before that I’d left my room door unlocked; the last time I used the key was to let myself in Harry’s room, so there’s no reason to think it’s in this room. Still, I get down on my hands and knees and crawl under the bed to look for it but end up with nothing but dust on the hem of my dress and a splinter under my thumbnail. I even run my hand in between the mattress and bed frame, but find nothing. Sitting back on the edge of my bed, I take the spare room key from the bedpost and press it into the palm of my hand, reassuring myself that I am not locked in, but still I feel trapped. How am I going to get the registration book back into Harry’s suite? How am I going to explain to Aunt Sophie that I’ve lost the master key to all the rooms in the hotel?

  I’ll just have to retrace my steps and find it. I slip the spare room key into my purse—even though I still leave my door unlocked—and, taking the registration book, go down to the third floor. When I’m sure the hall is empty I open the abandoned dumbwaiter where Aidan and I stashed the sheets last night and slip the book in under them. At least now I won’t have to go all the way back to my room if I find the key. When I find the key, I correct myself. I have a pretty good idea now of where it is—in the library where I spent half an hour with Aidan before dinner.

  When I go into the library, though, I’m dismayed to discover that the folding chairs and slide projector have been removed, the rug freshly vacuumed, and the divans and easy chairs put back. The key could have been found, sucked into a vacuum cleaner, or swept under one of the big overstuffed chairs, or stuck behind the cushions where Aidan and I were. I’m ready to explore the last possibility when I realize I’m not alone.

  “
Are you looking for something, Iris?”

  Hedda is in a high-backed wing chair facing the fireplace, which is why I didn’t notice her at first. That and the fact that the reading light above the chair is unlit, leaving her in a pool of shadow. I sit down on an ottoman in front of the cold grate and see that her arthritic hands are twined around the stem of an empty brandy snifter.

  “I was just checking to see if the cleaning staff put the room back all right after Gordon’s lecture.”

  “I see you’re taking your managerial role quite seriously. Harry was singing your praises this evening.”

  “He’s brought the hotel back to life. I’m grateful—my father would have been so pleased to see it returning to its former splendor.”

  “Would he have? True, Ben loved the hotel but he also saw how it devoured Kay.” Hedda lifts the glass up, her two hands encircling its crystal globe, and looks around the room, taking in not just the library, but the darkened courtyard beyond the French doors, the distant sounds of a band playing on the terrace, and the whole bulking weight and life of the hotel surrounding us. “Do you really think he’d want to see you giving yourself up to it?”

  “I’m hardly giving myself up . . .”

  “How far have you gotten on the book, then? Do you have any more for me to read?”

  I look into the empty hearth and suddenly feel cold—cold enough to wish for a fire there. At least a fire would give me something to busy my hands with. Instead I notice that I’m plucking at the loose threads in the ottoman—a nervous habit my aunt had reproached me with throughout my childhood.

  “I think I’ve found something out,” I say, hoping to deflect her request for written material. At least I can show her I’ve been busy with something other than hotel management. “I think you were right that my mother was having an affair that summer and that it was someone she knew from before. I think it was a married man that she gave up and then he came to the hotel with his wife that summer. The affair resumed . . . and when the man went back to the city he convinced her to come meet him . . .”

  “Hm. And do you have a name for this mysterious married man?”

  I can hear the skepticism in her voice and indeed the story as I’ve reconstructed it does sound fanciful. Why would Kay and Peter Kron meet at the Dreamland Hotel in Coney Island—surely he could afford something more glamorous? And why register under the name McGlynn? I’m ready to abandon the whole theory, but seeing the look in Hedda’s wide-spaced gray eyes—that look of cool assessment as if I were an awkward line of prose to be excised—spurs me on.

  “I think it was Peter Kron,” I say. “Vera Nix’s husband. Phoebe’s mother. Harry’s—”

  “Yes, I know who Peter Kron was,” Hedda snaps. She shifts in her chair and the brandy snifter tilts in her hands.

  “Let me take that,” I offer, leaning toward her, but then I see that her fingers are frozen around the crystal stem. I can see little half moons of moisture where her fingertips press on the glass and I’m afraid the delicate crystal will break under the pressure. She manages to uncoil her right hand and then use it to loosen the fingers of her left hand. I look away, embarrassed for her. When I look back the glass rests on the table beside her chair and she is recomposed, as if the struggle with her hands was something she had observed that had nothing to do with her.

  “Peter Kron,” she says. “That’s an interesting possibility. I knew him a little because the first agency I worked for represented his wife. The way she treated him, you wouldn’t blame him for having an affair, but I don’t think Kay would have been his type . . .”

  “You wouldn’t say that if you saw the way he looked at her in this picture I found . . .”

  “Really? I’d like to see that. I suppose it is possible.” Hedda’s fingers have curled in on themselves, like a sweater that’s been too tightly knit. “They did know each other before Kay came here.”

  Now it’s my turn to be surprised. “How?”

  “Kay worked at the Crown Hotel before she came here, and that’s where Peter and Vera lived. In the penthouse suite.”

  “Harry’s first hotel? I didn’t know that’s where my mother worked. Wouldn’t Harry have known her then?”

  Hedda smiles, as if my immediate interest in Harry confirmed something she suspected. “Well, Kay worked there as a maid. I can’t imagine Harry taking much notice of a maid, can you?”

  I shake my head. It’s something I’ve noticed about Harry. Although courteous with all the staff, if he has to address one of the maids he focuses on a point a couple of inches above her head. It must be a British aristocracy thing stemming from years of ignoring the downstairs help. “But then why would Peter Kron have been any more likely to notice her?” I ask.

  “Oh well, Peter . . . he was another story. He took altogether too much interest in the maids, if you know what I mean. There was always one or another he was supposed to be having an affair with . . . several girls had to be let go . . . I’m sure it was the bane of Harry’s existence. And Vera! Well, you’d feel sorry for her if she wasn’t such a handful herself. Imagine living in a hotel suite with all those young girls in their fetching uniforms traipsing in and out all day. There are references to it in her poems . . . ‘Black and White Ladies,’ ‘The Dominoes’ . . . she must have gotten used to it, but then if she thought one had become important to him . . .”

  “Like my mother?”

  Hedda nods. “And if that one turned out to be a writer . . . I think that would have killed Vera.”

  “When did she die?”

  For a moment I think Hedda hasn’t heard my question, but then she answers, reeling off the facts with a coldness that surprises me even coming from her.

  “Vera and Peter died in the spring of 1974. Their car went off a cliff in the south of France. Vera was driving. The family found a note back at their villa saying she’d wanted to kill herself since the baby was born. The current theory is that she was suffering from postpartum depression.”

  “Damn. So she took her husband with her even though it meant leaving her baby without parents. How amazingly selfish—what could drive a woman to that?”

  Hedda lifts an eyebrow but remains silent.

  “Do you think it was because she knew Peter Kron loved my mother? But my mother wasn’t even alive by then!”

  “It would have killed her if she thought Peter still loved your mother. She was incredibly jealous of other writers. If you can prove that Kay was having an affair with Vera Nix’s husband I can tell you it would greatly increase public interest in your book. Think of it, a love triangle involving a wealthy British peer and two American writers—all of them dying tragically within one year. I’d say that story was worth more than running this damned hotel, wouldn’t you?”

  I leave the library so charged with what Hedda has told me I almost forget about the lost key and the registration book I still have to return to Harry’s suite. I can’t afford to lose Harry’s good faith just yet. Not until I’ve learned what I can here. I stop by the front desk and check the office for a spare master key but remember that Harry’d had us remove it—“too risky, anyone could get a hold of it,” he’d said. Remembering his caution I’m half sick thinking I’ll have to admit I’ve lost mine.

  I’m just leaving when I hear voices coming from the east porch, a small porch off the lobby where guests often have coffee and read the morning papers that’s usually empty at this hour. I listen to the voices and recognize Ramon’s. He’s reciting a romantic speech from A Midsummer Night’s Dream, something about the moon, “. . . the moon (governess of floods), pale in her anger, washes all the air . . .” I smile, remembering his flirtation with Mrs. Rivera—Paloma, I remind myself . . . and then realize that of course all the maids have master keys so they can clean the rooms. I peer through the half-opened door, but it’s too dark to see anything. I can see why they’ve chosen this spot, though. With the inside light off, the terrace looks like a fairyland with its view of Japanese lanterns
strung along the path glowing like fireflies and the guests, in their pale linen suits and shimmering silk dresses, aglow in the moonlight like creatures from another world.

  “Ramon,” I whisper into the darkness, sorry to break the spell, “are you there?”

  I hear a shuffle and a little gasp and Ramon comes to the door rumpled and embarrassed.

  “We didn’t think anyone would notice us in here . . .”

  “That’s okay, Ramon. Listen, I need a favor.”

  When I ask him for Paloma’s key Ramon nods curtly and goes back into the darkened porch without asking why I need it or what has become of my key. I am grateful, but reminded, also, of where such blind devotion springs from—my mother again. I think of the fact that Ramon knew my mother for only a couple of months and yet he has retained for almost thirty years an image of her as his savior. I can’t imagine having that kind of influence over anyone.

  “Paloma is a little worried about having her key back for the morning shift,” Ramon says, pressing the key into the palm of my hand.

  “Shh, Ramon, I told you not to bother her with that.” Mrs. Rivera appears behind Ramon. Her hair, usually pulled back in a tight bun, is loose and comes nearly to her waist. She smiles at me and reaches forward to close my hand around the key. “Don’t you worry, Miss Greenfeder, I can always borrow a key from one of the other girls.”

  “I’ll get it back to you tonight,” I tell her firmly, remembering that it was my fault she lost her last job. “Where will you be?”

  I arrange to meet Paloma at the bottom of the back staircase at midnight. Feeling a bit like Cinderella, I slip through the porch onto the terrace. I just want to make sure Harry’s still down here before heading up to his suite.