The Beach Club (21 page)

“Douglas!” Mrs. Kershner said.

“Why don’t you plant corn?” Cecily asked. “Or tomatoes?”

“Or potatoes,” Mr. Kershner added. “Something of substance.”

Mrs. Kershner sniffled. Behind her black cat’s-eye sunglasses, she was crying.

“You don’t respect me, Douglas,” she said. “You ridicule everything I even attempt. And you drag in complete strangers to throw rocks at my spirit.”

Cecily took a step back. She hadn’t meant to throw rocks at anyone’s spirit. Gardens for the poor was a good idea. She thought about tending a plot of land, harvesting tomatoes and corn and shiny green peppers. Putting the produce in a basket and distributing it around Nantucket’s public housing development, to the single mothers who drove a taxi or worked at the Stop & Shop. She wondered what her father would think about this. Cecily drifted away from the Kershners, but she couldn’t help herself from turning around to look at them one last time. Mrs. Kershner packed her things to leave the beach, while Mr. Kershner continued speaking, waving his arms at the water.

At the very edge of the property Cecily found Maribel asleep facedown with the straps of her bathing suit untied. Her blond hair was caught up in a messy bun and her back was brown and slick with oil. Cecily sat carefully next to Maribel’s towel and looked to her left at all the umbrellas neatly lined up in rows and columns. It was like an obstacle course she had to complete in order to get to this safe place, this good place, next to Maribel. With Maribel, Cecily could be herself; with Maribel, Cecily could talk about love.

Cecily had been in love for almost a year with Gabriel da Silva, a Brazilian who lived in the dorm across the quad from Cecily at school. Gabriel was a year older than the other boys, and taller, more muscular, more sophisticated. He spoke three languages—English, Spanish, and the beautiful Carioca Portuguese—and unlike the other boys, Gabriel had a soul. He told Cecily about the favelas in Rio, where children starved. Gabriel had adopted a family in the favelas—a mother and three sons. He gave them money and he watched the little boys while the mother, Magrite, sold coconut ice cream at a stand on Copacabana Beach. Gabriel would like the idea of a garden for the poor. Cecily pictured Gabriel without a shirt, standing under the brilliant Brazilian sun, his dark skin tanning to the color of tree bark, as he shoveled the rich, black earth—
a garden in the
favelas.

Thinking about Gabriel made Cecily impatient. She traced her pinky finger down Maribel’s spine. If Cecily weren’t in love with Gabriel, she would probably be in love with Maribel.

Maribel woke with a shiver and lifted her head. Her cheek was dusted with sand.

“Geez, Cecily,” Maribel said. “You scared me.”

“Sorry, lady friend,” Cecily said. “I’m surprised to see you here. Have you talked to Mack?”

“I don’t want to talk to Mack.”

“You do so,” Cecily said. “Otherwise you’d be at the beach somewhere else.”

“It’s the Fourth,” Maribel said. “The other beaches are too crowded.”

“Do you miss him?” Cecily asked.

“Of course I miss him,” Maribel said.

“I miss Gabriel,” Cecily said. They had made love exactly ten times the week before school let out, (discovered once, by the school’s cleaning lady). By the time Cecily’s parents showed up for graduation, the insides of her thighs were rubbed raw.

“It’s not the same thing,” Maribel said. “You and Gabriel are still together.”

“I know,” Cecily said. Cecily didn’t know what was going on between Mack and Maribel. Some stupid, fucked-up
thing
that made them both miserable. “I have something to tell you.”

“Tell me Andrea Krane has checked out,” Maribel said. “Tell me she’s
gone home
.”

“Next week,” Cecily said. “But don’t worry, Mack is sleeping at Lacey’s.”

Maribel hid her face in her hands. “I don’t even want to think about where Mack’s sleeping. It makes me sick.”

“What I have to tell you is…” Cecily waited until she had Maribel’s full attention, or as much of her full attention as she could hope to get with Mack lurking around. “What I have to tell you is that I’m not going to college in September.”

Maribel groaned. “Yes, you are, Cecily.”

“No,” Cecily said. “I’m not. I’m deferring a year. I’ve already signed the form saying I’m deferring. I’m eighteen, I can do that.”

“And next you’re going to tell me that you’re flying to Brazil.”

“And Argentina, and Ecuador and Venezuela. I’m traveling with Gabriel.”

Maribel regathered her bun so that it stuck off the top of her head like a knob. “Everyone’s lost their mind,” she said. “Have you told your parents this?”

“No,” Cecily said. “But I’ve been saving my money. It’s ridiculous how much I make doing this stupid job.” She knew she had to tell her parents soon, although she indulged a fantasy of boarding the plane for Charlottesville and simply continuing south, without telling them at all. If she called regularly, her parents might never know the difference. “They’ll probably disown me. But that would be good for you. The club could go to Mack.”

“What do I care now?” Maribel said. “It’s over with Mack, I told you.”

“You’ll get back together,” Cecily said. Then she heard someone calling her name.

“Miss Elliott.” The voice was low and rich. “Excuse me, Miss Elliott.”

Mrs. John Higgens stood on the pavilion with her cane out in front of her. She was wearing a blue one-piece bathing suit with a tissue tucked into her bosom. Cecily stood up, wiped off her hands, and jogged over.

“Can I help you, Mrs. Higgens?” Cecily asked. Sometimes older women needed an arm to hold on to in order to make it through the sand.

“Yes, my dear, I hope so.” Mrs. Higgens was another person, like Major Crawley, who had belonged to the Beach Club for a hundred million years. “I certainly hope so. Stand with me here if you will and look at the beach. Do you see what’s wrong?”

The edges of the umbrellas fluttered in the wind. Mr. Conroy, in his patriotic trunks, inched his way toward the water.

“No, Mrs. Higgens, I don’t.” It could be anything: children throwing sand, the return of Joe Cadillac, the wrong colored umbrella. “What’s wrong?”

“There are two
black
people on the beach, my dear,” Mrs. Higgens said. “That’s what’s wrong.”

Cecily’s bowels twisted. Not the wrong color umbrella, then, but the wrong color person. She watched Mr. Hayes step out of the ocean. Mrs. Hayes handed him a complimentary beach towel and he dried his face and arms.

“Yes, Mrs. Higgens. Those are the Hayeses,” Cecily said. “They’ve been members since 1995.” The Hayeses were quiet, normal people who respected one another. Mr. Hayes owned an office furniture business in New Jersey and Mrs. Hayes was an admissions officer at Princeton. They had three grown sons.

“I’ve seen the black young man who works here, what’s his name? Vance? He puts up my umbrella, and that’s fine. But working here and
belonging
here are two different things,” Mrs. Higgens said. “Don’t forget, young lady, I knew your grandfather. There were no
black members
when he was in charge.”

Cecily wondered what would happen if she gave old Mrs. Higgens the shock of her lifetime.
For your information, Mrs. Higgens, my boyfriend is black. I make love with a black man and it is the kind of wonderful I’m sure you have never felt
.

“We want you to be happy, Mrs. Higgens,” Cecily said. This was her father talking, the exact words he would say if she sent Mrs. Higgens into the office, which was what she should probably do: let
him
deal with it. But if she was going to start her life as an adult, she was going to have to be brave. “However, if you’re not comfortable with people of other races on the beach, then I guess you’ll have to find another beach club.”

Cecily heard a pained gasp, as though she had stepped on Mrs. Higgens’s foot with a heavy shoe, but Cecily didn’t look back. She marched through the sand the way she imagined Major Crawley marched through Germany looking for Nazis—proudly, and with something to believe in.
We got them all
. She sat back down next to Maribel’s towel.

“What did the old lady want?” Maribel asked.

“Nothing,” Cecily said. She stared out at the cool blue water. Her face burned. “I’ll tell my parents tonight. But right now, let’s talk about love.”

Love, it was all so complicated. That was probably why you didn’t get to the good kind of love until you were a teenager. Cecily’s love for Maribel was the best shade of blue sky and blue water. Her love for Gabriel was a herd of wild horses galloping out of control. And her love for her parents was a nagging toothache, impossible to ignore and forget.

“You did absolutely the right thing, sweetie,” Therese said, her mouth full of tomato sandwich. “I hope we never see the woman again.”

“It’s five thousand dollars down the tubes,” Bill said. He cleared his throat. “But of course when you get to my age, you understand that you can’t put a price on human decency.”

“The woman is a racist pig,” Cecily said. “Who knows how many more of the members are like that deep down?”

“Hopefully none,” Therese said. “But if we hear anyone else making comments like that, we’ll set them straight.”

Cecily looked at her dinner: a tomato sandwich on white bread, and some blue corn chips. A red, white, and blue dinner for the Fourth of July, had her mother’s idea of funny. Cecily couldn’t bring herself to eat. She told her parents what happened with Mrs. Higgens, thinking they would be
angry
at the way she handled it. Then it would be easy for Cecily to be indignant, and to tell them she was leaving. But her parents, much to her dismay, were being supportive; they were being
cool
.

“You don’t remember what this country went through in the sixties,” Therese said. “But it was quite something. Mrs. Higgens is right about one thing, there weren’t any black Beach Club members back then, were there, Bill?”

“I’m embarrassed to say, the Hayeses are the first black Beach Club members
ever
. Wait, that’s not true. The Krupinskis, they were black.”

“Well,
she
was black, he was Polish, remember?” Therese said. “They belonged to the club in, what, ’83 and ’84? They had that gorgeous café au lait child, the daughter.”

“For God’s sake,” Cecily said. “Café au lait? You’re talking about them like they’re something exotic off the menu. You’re as bad as Mrs. Higgens.”

Therese gave her a strange look. “It’s an expression, darling. Okay? My, you’re touchy. And why aren’t you eating?”

“This whole situation has got me really upset, okay?” Cecily said.

Bill frowned. “You’re still so young,” he said. “You have no idea how rotten people can be, but you’ll learn.”

“Bill, that’s depressing,” Therese said.

Cecily walked into the living room, to the bay window that overlooked the Beach Club. It was getting dark and the hotel guests emerged from their rooms to sit on the beach so they could watch the fireworks. Every year, Cecily and her parents watched the fireworks from the widow’s walk. It was amazing to watch from that high up, with nothing separating you and the sky. Cecily turned around. Her parents were eating their sandwiches, munching on the chips.

“I have some news,” Cecily said.

“More news?” Therese said. “More news aside from the Mrs. John Higgens news?”

“We’re proud of the job you’ve been doing, by the way,” Bill said, his voice getting dangerously sappy. “You handled this Mrs. Higgens situation with aplomb.”

“Thanks,” Cecily said flatly. Wishing her parents would stop being so nice. “Okay—here goes—bombs away. My news, you’re ready?”

She was terrified: like jumping off the high dive at the indoor pool at school, like the first time Gabriel unwrapped a condom. She prayed to God, and to her dead brother, W.T., and to Gabriel.
Please let them understand
.

“I’ve decided to defer a year before I go to college, because I want to do some traveling. So I’m not going to UVA in September. I’m flying to Rio instead.”

Cecily shifted her attention to the parking lot: two BMWs, one Rover, one Jag. Mack’s Jeep. Lacey’s Buick. The thousand scattered pieces of broken shell, the million grains of sand. When she felt confident enough to turn back around, her parents were both staring at her. Her mother had mayonnaise in the corner of her mouth. “Honey, I’m sorry, I don’t understand what you’re telling us.”

“I’ve sent a slip to the admissions office at the University of Virginia, telling them I’m deferring a year. I’m traveling through South America with Gabriel instead. Which part don’t you understand?”

Therese turned to Bill. “Bill?” Tears in her voice.

Bill took Therese’s hand. “Cecily, wait a minute. Can you just wait a minute, please? Why are you telling us this? Are you trying to hurt us?”

“It’s not about you guys,” Cecily said. “It’s about me. I need to break away.”

“But you have college,” Therese said. “That’s what Middlesex was for. That’s what prep school
means
—college preparatory.”

“What about you, Mom? You never finished college.” Cecily’s mouth had an acidic tomato taste. “You never graduated from Hunter.”

“I’m ashamed of that,” Therese said. “I didn’t have the smarts for school that you do.”

“Don’t pick on your mother, Cecily,” Bill said. “That won’t help you.”

“Lots of people take a year off,” Cecily said. “Why do you think UVA even has such a thing as a deferral form? Because it happens all the time. Everyone does it.”

“Everyone does
not
do it,” Bill said. “You know I hate hyperbole.”

“Well, you know I hate it when you use words like hyperbole,” Cecily said.

“If you want to go to South America, we can take you over Christmas break,” Therese said. “It’ll be fun!” She tittered. “I’ve always wanted to go to Iguazu Falls.”

“I’ve always wanted to meet the girl from Ipanema,” Bill said.

“I’m going with Gabriel,” Cecily said. “He’s a very nice person. You have no way of knowing that because he wasn’t at graduation. He had to fly back early. But trust me, he’s nice. We love each other. We’ve been in love for a while now.”