“It’s an age thing,” Leo said.
“So now that I’m twenty-eight years old I’m no longer your child? I’ve become, what, your colleague?”
Chantal stood up. “I can’t take this,” she said. Therese hadn’t even realized the girl spoke English. Chantal, wasn’t that a French name? The girl had a flat, Midwestern accent. “This low-level ground fire is driving me nuts. You people don’t need to be playing tennis. You need to be dealing with your issues. I’m going back to the hotel.” She picked up Whitney and took Cole by the arm. He protested, and Chantal said, “Fine, you want to stay, stay.” She marched off.
Therese watched her go. She should probably leave as well. Bill believed that the only people who could fix family problems were the family members themselves. But Therese worried about Cole. The skin around his eyes was red and mottled from so much crying. He wore a little white polo shirt and little tennis shoes. He sat in the grass with his feet out in front of him, his arms crossed.
“I should go, too,” Therese said. “I don’t belong here.”
“Please stay, Therese.” This from Fred. “I don’t think any of us can handle it if another woman walks out.”
“Yes,” Leo echoed. “Please stay. We’ll behave, won’t we, guys?”
“Okay,” Therese said. “I’ll stay.” She winked at Cole. He hiccuped.
Therese concentrated on her tennis-the green ball and her old-fashioned racket-but she couldn’t help noticing the silence that settled over them like the fog. The men barely grunted out the score. Was this their idea of good behavior? If you have nothing nice to say, say nothing at all? Didn’t they know it was unhealthy to hold feelings in?
A little before five o’clock, they were tied at six games apiece.
“Shall we have a tiebreaker to see who gets the set?” Leo asked.
“I agree under one condition,” Therese said. “You men have to talk to one another.”
“Talk?” Fred said.
“Yes, you know, talk to one another, like normal people,” Therese said. “Chantal was right. You need to communicate.”
Fred got ready to serve. “Okay,” he said. “I have something I’d like to talk about. I’ve decided I don’t want to be a lawyer.” He slammed the ball and it whizzed past Leo.
“What?” Leo said. “What did you say?”
Fred and Therese switched sides and Fred took another ball from his pocket. He tossed it up and caught it, and looked at his father. “I don’t want to be a lawyer.”
“You just graduated from Harvard Law School and now you don’t want to be a lawyer? Ninety thousand dollars later and you’ve suddenly had a change of heart?”
“It’s about more than ninety thousand dollars,” Fred said. “It’s about my life.”
“Well, I’m gay,” Bart said.
“Wait a minute,” Leo said, wiping his forehead with the sleeve of his shirt. “One bombshell at a time. You don’t want to be a lawyer?”
“Don’t ignore what I said, Dad,” Bart said. “Don’t pretend like the fact that I’m gay doesn’t exist.”
“No,” Fred said, “I don’t want to be a lawyer.”
The fog was so thick Therese could barely make out Cole at the edge of the court. But he sat there, listening.
Leo looked at Bart. “You’re gay. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do with that. Say great? That’s wonderful? I’m so happy for you? What’s appropriate?”
“How about, ‘Thank you for telling me’?”
“Okay,” Leo said. “Thank you for telling me. And, Fred, if you don’t want to be a lawyer, then what do you want to be?”
“I don’t know,” Fred said. “A motorcycle cop. An independent filmmaker. A house husband.”
Bart looked at his watch. “Our time’s up,” he said. “We have to be off the court.”
“And nobody won,” Fred said.
The fog made it look as though the afternoon were going up in smoke. Therese’s fault, for meddling. As they walked back to the hotel, Cole took her hand.
“I want my mom,” he whispered.
Therese squeezed him to her side. “I know,” she said. “I know.”
The next morning, Therese followed behind the chambermaids with her checklist, inspecting their cleaning jobs. Was the toilet working? Was the temperature of the water in the toilet bowl correct? Did the tile floor in the entryway need scrubbing? Were the lightbulbs working? Therese had twenty-four items on her checklist. In all the years that the hotel had been open, no one had ever complained of a dirty room. Not once.
Therese watched one of her new chambermaids-a girl from Darien named Elizabeth-as she started on the bathroom in room 7.
“Check under the mirror for grime,” Therese said. “Dirt has favorite hiding places and that’s one of them.”
Elizabeth wiped her forehead with the back of her rubbergloved hand. “Okay,” she said. She went back to scouring the top of the toilet, then she turned to Therese. “But do I really have to check the temperature of the water in the toilet bowl?”
“We need to make sure the mixing valves are working correctly. If the water’s too hot the toilet will whistle, and the guests will be up all night listening to it. If the water’s too cold…well, have you ever sat on a toilet filled with ice cold water?”
Elizabeth shook her head.
“It’s no fun,” Therese said. “Just take your gloves off and stick your finger in the water. See if it feels comfortable.”
Elizabeth got two very distinct worry lines in her forehead. “But people poop in that water.”
“By now the poop is hundreds of yards away. It’s clean water, I assure you.” Therese watched Elizabeth pull at her rubber glove one finger at a time and gingerly dip the end of her pinky into the water.
“It’s comfortable,” Elizabeth said.
“For goodness’ sake.” She nudged Elizabeth aside and dragged her own hand through the water. “You’re right,” Therese said.
Therese moved on to room 8, knowing that Elizabeth was rolling her eyes in frustration and would no doubt write a letter home to her mother complaining about her boss who made her test the toilet bowl water. Half the chambermaids Therese hired quit, but the ones who stayed became the world’s best housekeepers.
In room 8, sitting on the unmade queen-sized bed, was Leo Hearn. Therese checked her clipboard.
“This isn’t your room,” she said. “What are you doing in here? You don’t belong in here.”
“I was waiting for you,” he said.
“I’m working,” Therese said. “Why aren’t you with your children?”
“My children hate me,” Leo said. “I can’t get anything right. The nanny hates me and she’s not even related to me. No wonder my wife left.”
“Your kids don’t hate you,” Therese said. “You’re just having a difficult time.”
“I’ll say it’s difficult. One kid is a lawyer in a good practice but he’s gay. He likes men. The other kid is straight but he doesn’t want to be a lawyer. He wants to be a house husband. I told them if I took the lawyer part of Bart and joined it with the heterosexual part of Fred, they’d make the perfect son.”
“Oh, Leo,” Therese said.
“I let that pearl slip after four Stoli tonics at dinner last night. Now neither one of them is speaking to me. It’s like I don’t exist.”
“You hurt them,” Therese said. “You need to apologize.”
“At the time, I thought maybe they’d take it as a compliment. They each got it half right.”
“No,” Therese said. “Because you’re telling them that they only equal half a person in your eyes. You’re not accepting their choices.”
“I don’t know what to do,” Leo said, his broad shoulders slumping.
Therese sat next to him. “You want a piece of advice from an old woman?”
“You’re no older than me,” he said. “But you’re right. I feel old.”
Therese caught her reflection in the mirror over the dresser. If Bill were watching her now, he’d cringe. He’d tell her to pat Leo Hearn on the hand and wish him good luck. But Therese wanted to help. “Twenty-eight years ago, I lost a child. A son. Born dead.” Therese felt Leo shift slightly away from her on the mattress. “And I would give anything to have just one of your three sons. They are strong, healthy, smart, good people and it’s your responsibility to love them. That’s all, Leo, just love them.”