Eating and talking didn't seem to be difficult for Eileen to do at the same time. She was shoveling down her food. "They're both in frail health, live in a terrible house, and need lots of help. But they figure their boys have wives, and what are wives good for except taking care of them? That's why I opened the dress shop, to tell the truth. To have an excuse for not becoming their slave. Now when Mother Claypool calls and wants me to come over and clip her toenails or some damned thing, I can say that I can't leave the shop and I'll hire a new maid. Of course, she finds some excuse to fire her right away."
“What unpleasant people!" Jane said. "How old are they?"
“Both are in their eighties. Sam's the older brother, adopted actually, when they were already too old to be first-time parents. It was just like you hear about — many years of marriage without children, then when they adopted, Mother Claypool got pregnant with John. Do you know, this is the first time ever that all four of us have gotten away from them at once. Somebody always has to stay home to take care of them. Even Sam finally got tired of being their slave."
“Even Sam?" Jane asked, hoping the answer would allow her to finish her eggs.
“Oh, Sam's been the perfect son." Eileen said it flatly, without a hint of sarcasm. "But even he's gotten a little snappish lately, which is weird because he's usually so cool and in control of everything. And Marge is a nervous wreck. You saw that last night. The parents are old and feeble and can't last forever — I hope. I know that sounds cruel, but I've never, in all these years, had a kind word from them. Oh, well, I didn't mean to chew your ear off about this.”
Jane had managed to finish her breakfast.
She smiled and said, "No problem."
Five
When everyone had finished breakfast, the tour of the camp commenced with the kitchens, which were much larger than Jane would have guessed. Given enough staff, a great many people could be fed at once. And there was plenty of room for staff to live along the corridor leading off the kitchen area. Benson explained that, as with most summer resorts, the bulk of the employees were college students.
“It's harder to find a reliable supply of workers during the school year, but we manage," he said. "We usually close the Conference Center and just cater to small groups that occupy the cabins."
“What about our own teachers we'd bring along?" Liz Flowers asked briskly.
“They could stay in the cabins, provided reservations are made well in advance, but you'd probably want them in the Conference Center with the students," Benson replied. "And there would be an extra charge, I'm afraid."
“Oh, yes. They'd definitely want to be with the kids in the Conference Center!" Bob Rycraft said enthusiastically.
Shelley muttered to Jane, "Handsome, but dim. Why would any sane adult want to be locked up with a bunch of teenagers day and night? I had a great-aunt who decided to spend her sunset years as a housemother in a boarding school. She lasted one semester and needed years of psychiatric care to get over it. She tended to drool, and become startled at sudden noises."
“I guess there are people like us who manage, sometimes with considerable effort, to love our own teenagers, and then there are those rare and misguided individuals who love all of them," Jane said, shaking her head. "He appears to be one of those. Just wait until all those little girls of his hit puberty about the same time."
“People like him must have suffered either a great deal more or a lot less of the usual angst when they were teens, I suppose," Shelley said. "I can hardly think about those years without shuddering."
“Ladies?" Liz said sharply.
They hurried along to catch up with the group. They exited from the back door of the staff wing, turned right, and walked down a long, winding incline at the bottom of which was a spectacularly beautiful lake. It was fronted by a beach of sorts — not sand, but shingle. A small dock had a single elderly rowboat tied up, and there was a large swimming dock farther out. A shed contained a great many neon orange life jackets, and an old-fashioned wooden lifeguard tower stood sentry. A list of commonsense rules was posted on the front of the tower.
It was cool enough that the thought of swimming made Jane shiver, but in the summer it would be a different matter.
“We're lucky that there's a very slow, gentle slope here," Benson was saying. "And over there, the roped-off area is only four feet deep. That's where we give beginner swimming lessons. Oh, I almost forgot to mention poison ivy."
“There's poison ivy here?" Marge asked.
“There shouldn't be," Benson said with a smile. "I've conducted a war against it ever since we arrived. I don't think there's any left, but I have a handout with drawings and photos of it for you. If anybody sees so much as a leaf of it, please let me know.”
Jane glanced around at the group. Liz, naturally, had a clipboard and was taking notes like mad. She even had a tape measure and marked down the height of the lifeguard tower. Bob Rycraft had gone down to the shoreline and was smiling and nodding, no doubt picturing the lake full of happy kids who would go home and say no to drugs and study like mad, all because of two glorious weeks at camp. Al Flowers had wandered over to the tower and, hands in pockets, was looking up as if contemplating someone other than himself climbing it.
The Claypool brothers were standing together, talking quietly, probably about cars, not camp, Jane guessed. John, the big, blond, beefy younger brother, had his hands clasped behind his back and was looking down, nudging a rock around with his toe. It was a curiously subservient pose for the bigger, brasher man to take.
Meanwhile, Sam's wife, Marge Claypool, was glancing uneasily at the dense woods, looking very nervous, and John's wife, Eileen, had found a log to sit on. She'd taken off her shoe and was massaging her foot.
Benson, apparently realizing that he was being largely ignored, stopped explaining the lake and safety regulations and left them to their own thoughts for a few minutes before saying, "Okay, let's go back up the hill and look at the Convention Center.”
Eileen Claypool grunted slightly as she laboriously leaned forward to put her shoe back on and gather up all her loose belongings. Even for this tour, she was loaded up with jewelry and tote bags.
The Convention Center turned out to be a large, plain building to the north of the main lodge. It was clearly newer than the rest of the camp: two stories, white clapboard and faintly naked-looking. Though neat and freshly painted, it had no shutters, no foundation plantings, almost no ornamentation at all.
“A bit of an abomination, isn't it?" Shelley said under her breath.
“It certainly doesn't fit in very well," Jane responded. "Sort of like a habited nun at a cocktail party."
“Yes!" Shelley said. "The kind of habit with the big white winged headgear.”
Either Benson or the architect had attempted to make the big building look friendlier by adding a porch outside the front door. But it was little, flimsy, out of proportion, and looked as if it had blown up against the building and was merely resting there for a moment before moving on about its business.
The inside of the Convention Center was much Like the outside: plain, clean, practical, and aggressively boring. The ground floor contained a dining area with a practical, spotlessly clean expanse of blue linoleum flooring, white Formica tables, and folding chairs with blue seats that just missed matching the floor and consequently made both look shabby. The rest of the area was for exhibits and meetings. There was sturdy carpet here and lots of room dividers.