Year in Palm Beach

by Acheson, Pamela

  Saturday, August 14

  I felt fine yesterday but took it easy. It was Friday the thirteenth, after all, and the tennis court incident scared me a little more than I let on. Today, as Pam and I are coming home from an early morning walk, I see a young couple in the driveway of the house next door. No one has been at that house since we first arrived.

  Pam and I walk over and introduce ourselves. Fabrizio and Maddalena live in Italy and are here for two weeks to check on the house, which Fabrizio’s family owns. We chat for a while, then continue home.

  Tonight I’m on a mission to have one more burger-and-dog cookout at our cottage before our year is up. The burgers, dogs, salad, potato salad, and all the trimmings are sitting in the icebox.

  Pam and I are sitting in the pool. Peter Allen is entertaining us. I haven’t started the coals yet, but I’m looking over at my little forty-nine dollar Smokey Joe grill. I remember the firemen joking about it. Our house could easily be the only house on this island with a funny little grill like this. The truth is, it is just perfect for us.

  Sunday, August 15

  I read in this morning’s Shiny Sheet that the mayor of South Palm Beach has had a dustup at a local “gentlemen’s club.” The mayor’s been in a dustup in a strip joint. I’m wondering if he has some of that special PR insurance for these difficult times.

  The renters of our New Smyrna house have moved out. I’m wondering if we should go up and check it out. It seems like a waste of time. We’ll be moving back in two weeks, anyway. Why waste a trip? Why waste a night in Palm Beach? I run my thoughts by Blanco and the Duck. We all decide not to drive up.

  Tuesday, August 17

  Yesterday, Pam brought up the idea of checking on the New Smyrna house. She thought we should see it before sending back the security deposit. As usual, she’s right. She also pointed out that it’s only three hours away. The birds and I changed our minds.

  So today we are driving up I-95 blissfully unaware how this trip may be changing our lives. We haven’t made the trip for almost a year, but it is familiar and uneventful. As we leave I-95, head east on SR-44, and cross over the bridge to New Smyrna Beach, Pam says, “This is quite a different picture.”

  I’ve also been looking at the surf shops, sandwich shops, and T-shirt shops. “This is a great beach town,” I say, “but a very different beach town from Palm Beach.

  As I turn in our driveway, Pam says, “I’d forgotten how beautiful it is here.”

  I park, fumble with some keys, and we go inside.

  “Coming here from the cottage,” Pam says, “is like when we came back to the cottage from that little motel room in the Keys.”

  “It’s not the Flagler Museum, but the space feels wonderful,” I say.

  Pam puts the contents of our cooler in the icebox and then we both start our house inspection. The place looks to be in perfect condition.

  “Isn’t this a nice surprise?” I say. “If the rent checks hadn’t been coming in every month, I might not believe there were renters here.”

  We both start to wander around for a closer look. I go out and check on the garage, and when I come back in, I find Pam sitting at her desk in her office. “What’re you doing?” I ask.

  “I’m imagining having this office in Palm Beach,” she says.

  “It’d be nice,” I say, “but pretty tough to move it there. And we certainly couldn’t afford to buy or rent a house like this in Palm Beach.

  “You’re right,” Pam says. “I know.”

  “You want to check the outside and the double deck with me?” I say.

  We walk out to the end of the property by the wetlands. “Everything looks great out here, I say. “It’s almost seven. Shall we have a glass of champagne in the tub?”

  “I’d love that,” Pam says. “I’ve missed our baths together.”

  Inside, I fill an ice bucket and find a half bottle of Veuve. Pam starts filling the tub. After about a half hour of sipping and talking in the tub, we’re rinsing off in the two-person shower. I laugh. “This shower is about the same size as the third bedroom of the cottage. The one we turned into a closet,” I say.

  “The tub and the shower are great,” Pam says. “I’ve missed them. And I want to cook in this kitchen tonight. It’ll be a nice change.”

  We brought dinner with us: arugula, carrots, peppers, garlic, an onion, tomatoes, a box of penne, and a couple of hot and sweet Italian sausages. I have also, of course, brought Peter Cetera.

  Pam creates the salad, and I, the pasta sauce. There is plenty of room for both chefs. Not even a near-collision throughout the entire prep. I’m beginning to think we don’t even really need all this room.

  Pam says, “This kitchen is huge. It’s almost too big.”

  “You’re reading my mind again. It’s creepy.”

  “A game of pool while the sauce simmers?” Pam says.

  “Excellent,” I say. “The table’s going to seem like a football field.”

  It takes us a game or two to adjust, but it appears we’re now bilingual, pool and bumper pool. After several more games, we cook the pasta and have a candlelit dinner in the dining room.

  “I love this table,” Pam says. “And I love these plates. The cabinets are full of stuff I’d really like to have in Palm Beach.”

  “If we had room, you mean?” I say. “Anyway, we’ll be back here in less than two weeks and there’s plenty of room here for everything.”

  We play another game of pool, then go to bed.

  Wednesday, August 18

  Lying in bed in New Smyrna this morning, I’m thinking about houses. In particular, I am thinking about the house I grew up in with my brother—my childhood home, “my house.” That’s what I called it, but even then, it wasn’t really mine. Other families lived in it before we did, and certainly other families lived in it after we left.

  This house in New Smyrna is Pam’s and my house, but it’s only our house now. Different people have owned it and lived in it before and will again. Anyway, I’ve lived in this house and the house I grew up in for almost the same number of years. Pretty soon, I will have lived in this house longer than any other house in my whole life.

  After espressos, we find ourselves turning out of the driveway around nine thirty in the morning, having no reason to stay. As I’m pulling onto I-95, Pam says, “That was fun last night. What a luxury to have all that space.”

  “Yep, it was fun,” I say, “but it was also a little strange.”

  “You mean like we were sneaking into somebody else’s house?” Pam says.

  “Exactly.”

  “Weird, isn’t it? We’ve lived in that house for over ten years,” Pam says.

  We’re both quiet on the drive south and both happy when we get to the Palm Beach bridge. Back home, I gather the newspapers and Pam lets the birds out. They’ve survived happily without us.

  We’re reading the papers with the birds. Pam says, “It’s nice to be home.”

  “I thought we were home when we were in New Smyrna,” I say.

  “It’s confusing, isn’t it?”

  We walk over to Victor’s for lunch. Pam and I are both quiet, a little zoned out, or perhaps zoned in. We are the only ones in the courtyard. Well, the only humans. A heron wanders over to join us. He walks toward us on his spindly legs. Then he has a sudden change of mind and swoops gracefully up to the sky in the opposite direction.

  Thursday, August 19

  Today we pick up cartons at Scotti’s, and when we get home, we find a note tucked into our door. Our new neighbors, Fabrizio and Maddalena, want to know if we would like to come for a drink this evening. Pam calls and says we’d love to.

  We walk over around six with a small bouquet. Chairs and a table with light hors d’oeuvres are set up by their pool. There is also a brass tub filled with ice, two different Italian whites, and a selection of beers. These are good neighbors.

  Over pinot grigio and Peroni, sopressata and mixed olives, we learn that Fabrizio’s
family has owned the house for almost twenty years, and that Fabrizio actually lived in it for four years when he was in college here. Maddalena is a model in Italy and this is her first visit to the States. After about an hour, I look at Pam and she nods.

  “Why don’t you two come over to our house for dinner,” I say. “We’re just going to grill some shrimp and chicken and make a green salad. There’s plenty of food.”

  “No, we can’t do that,” Maddalena says. “We are the ones who invited you.”

  “Look, it’s no big deal,” I say. “We’d love to have you, but we certainly understand if you have other plans. No pressure.”

  They look at each other, Fabrizio says, “We accept, but I’ll bring the wine.”

  The four of us spend the rest of the evening by our pool sharing conversation, laughter, and three outstanding bottles of Italian Sauvignon Blanc, which we learn the Italians simply call Sauvignon. It is almost midnight when we say buona notte.

  “We shall do this every August,” Fabrizio says.

  “That is an excellent plan,” I say, “but unfortunately our lease ends this month.”

  “Well, then you must sign a new lease! We expect you for dinner at our house one year from tonight.”

  Friday, August 20

  We walk home from Scotti’s this afternoon loaded down with a second batch of cartons for the move. Back in the cottage, we stack the new ones with the others in the yellow room. There are probably a dozen or fifteen cartons now, all empty. We have promised ourselves we will start packing today. No excuses.

  “You want to start packing?” I say.

  “Not really,” Pam says.

  “Want to take a walk to the beach?”

  “Maybe a short walk to the beach.”

  We walk over and drop down in the sand. We’re both quiet.

  “We don’t want to leave Palm Beach, do we?” Pam says.

  “No,” I say, “I don’t think we do.”

  “We don’t want to move back to our house,” Pam says.

  “Our dream house.”

  “You mean the one we’ve been perfecting for ten years? The one with two great offices? A perfect kitchen? All that space inside and out?”

  “That house is great,” Pam says.

  “I know it is,” I say. “It’s not that we don’t want to go back there. It’s that we want to stay here.”

  For the next hour, sitting in the sand, Pam and I talk. Then we’re both quiet for a while. We came down here basically on a lark. We had sort of been captive in New Smyrna because of Aunt Jane, and when she died, we were free in a certain way and wanted an adventure. Now we don’t want the adventure to end.

  What’s more, if we hadn’t gone back on Wednesday to check on the house, we’d probably just be packing up in a week or so and moving. And then what would have happened? All this stuff is a perfect example of the law of unintended consequences.

  Pam stands up and stretches. “I think somewhere in the back of my brain I’ve known this for a while,” she says.

  “We both have. But it’s like when we first fell in love and couldn’t admit it to ourselves or each other,” I say, “because we both knew it could never work out.”

  “Well, it did work out. Quite well,” Pam says. “Can staying here work?”

  “Why not?” I say. My answer surprises me.

  “Why not?” Pam says. “Let me count the ways.”

  Back at home, we both get on floats in the pool. “This is another fine mess we’ve gotten ourselves into, Ollie,” Pam says.

  I laugh. “Ten days left on our lease, and now we decide we don’t want to leave.”

  “It might have been easier if we’d figured this out a little sooner. I don’t see how we can make it work.”

  “We can make it work if we really want it to, but right now about the only certainty in this equation is that the landlords want us to stay,” I say.

  “So first we have to find out if we can rent our house in New Smyrna again.”

  “Alex’ll have a pretty good idea,” I say. “I’ll give him a call.”

  I come back out to the pool. “Alex sounded confident that he could rent it and maybe even sell it. He’s going to do some research, make some calls, and get back to us.”

  “Sell it?” Pam says. “Oh, my.”

  Sunday, August 22

  Pam, Duckie, Blanco, and I are reading the Sunday papers in the air-conditioned living room. It’s already in the mid-eighties outside. The phone rings and Pam picks up. It is obviously Alex. Pam seems quite happy with whatever he’s telling her. She says, “Thanks,” and hangs up.

  She then picks up the Book Review section and pretends to read.

  “What, are you crazy?” I say. “What did Alex tell you?”

  “Oh, that,” she says. “Well, he says he knows he can rent it unfurnished on an annual basis, but he also said we should hold off renting because he showed it once this morning and has two clients who want to see it early this week.”

  “Two clients who, what, may want to buy it?” I say.

  “That’s what he says.”

  “And he knows he can rent it?”

  “That’s what he says.”

  “Scary stuff,” I say.

  “We should probably check with Bob,” Pam says “and go online. See if there are any new rentals on the market down here.”

  “Good idea. We should know what’s out there,” I say. “But it’s got to be in town.”

  “For sure,” Pam says.

  “I can’t call him now, and tomorrow I know you’ve got to finish that project,” I say. “So I’ll do the research tomorrow and report to you at cocktail hour.”

  Monday, August 23

  It’s evening, almost seven o’clock. I’m out by the pool with the Mamas and Papas. Pam comes out. “I just e-mailed that article. Do you have any news for me?”

  “I’ve got a real estate report for you,” I say. “You want the short version?”

  “Definitely.”

  “There are seven comparable rentals available at this time. Four we saw when we were looking last year and we hated them. There’s one that’s almost okay, but it doesn’t have a pool. Then there are two that are possible but they’re almost as far north as the Breakers.”

  “I think that’s too far out of town,” Pam says.

  “I agree,” I say. “Whoever said ‘location, location, location’ was absolutely right.”

  “In fact, if I had to pick an exact street and an exact block,” Pam says, “it would be exactly where we are right now.”

  “So, if we’re going to stay here, we’re going to stay here.”

  “So, why don’t we see if we can really stay here,” Pam says. “Let’s dry off, take the Mammas and Papas inside, and go through this cottage room by room, closet by closet, drawer by drawer, and see if we actually want to live in this space, this cottage.”

  We start our tour in our bedroom. We decide the room is small, the closet space smaller, but agree we both like the room a lot. It’s cozy and relaxing.

  Pam heads into the living room. “I love this room,” she says.

  I’m following her in. “The pink took me a while to adjust to,” I say, “but I do like the room. It works for us.”

  “We call it coral, not pink,” Pam says, “and the tray ceiling, the fireplace and the bookcases make it my favorite room.”

  Moving though the swinging door to the kitchen, I say, “Well, it’s small.”

  “And it’s ugly,” Pam says. “But, you know, since it’s a galley kitchen, it works.”

  “A galley kitchen,” I say, “remember the galley on the boat? What happened to us?”

  “What do you mean?” Pam asks.

  “We lived on a boat for two years that was about the size of the little guest cottage. Yet somehow we had plenty of space. Then what happened? Where did we get all this stuff? Why do we need it?”

  “You’re right,” she says, “and we have three times this much stuff b
ack in New Smyrna.” Pam walks over next to me, tilts her head, and looks up. She says, very slowly, “You know, all the stuff that made this year special, all the stuff that makes our life in Palm Beach special, that makes our life together special, well, none of it is stuff.”

  Well, that was easy. It only took us fifty-one weeks to figure out we want to live here, in this cottage, and that we have way too much stuff that we don’t know what to do with. I guess we’re not what you would call “quick studies.”

  Tuesday, August 24

  The stuff discussion continues over breakfast and soon turns into a specific “things” discussion. “If we sell the house or rent it unfurnished,” Pam says, “do we just get rid of all the furniture and things?”

  “We don’t want to store it. Samantha doesn’t want it,” I say. “So the answer is probably, if it doesn’t fit in this cottage, it’s history.”

  “My aunt’s bureau? Your dad’s desk? The pool table? How can we do that?”

  “What do you think I was thinking about last night instead of sleeping?” I say. “The bureau and the desk will fit in the cottage. The pool table won’t.”

  “The dining room table won’t, either,” Pam says. “Do we really want to do this?”

  “Let’s take a walk, see if we can answer that question,” I say.

  We walk over to the lake and sit under one of the giant banyan trees. We talk for almost an hour, and it’s helping. We are getting clearer. Pam and I are coming to the same conclusion. Finally, Pam says, “We do want to move down here. We both love living here. It’s okay to get rid of those things in New Smyrna.”

  “I think it is okay, and it’s probably time,” I say. “To paraphrase what you were saying last night, the best things in life aren’t things. And yes, we both love living in Palm Beach.”

  “Okay,” Pam says, “there’s just one more question, and we should think about it today and sleep on it tonight. It’s the big one.”

  “You mean, do we really want to walk away from our dream house?” I say.

  “That’s exactly what I mean. That would be a huge step.”

  Wednesday, August 25

  We didn’t exactly “sleep on it.” In fact, we didn’t exactly sleep. But we’re now sitting together on a chaise out by the pool, and it’s getting light. The birds are still asleep, the newspapers still in the driveway.