Maribel retracted her hand. “King of the I-don’t-knows,” she said.
She was baiting him, but Mack wouldn’t argue. She was right. He didn’t know a lot of things. For example, he didn’t know how he could possibly be in love with two women. Had he felt this way last year? The year before that? Why was it hitting him so squarely in the jaw this year? Was it part of being thirty? Mack supposed he could confide in Bill, but for Bill, there had only been Therese, and no matter how much poetry Bill read, he wouldn’t understand when Mack said, “I love them both.”
At the end of Andrea’s first week, Mack had his usual Sunday night dinner with Lacey Gardner.
“What do you want to drink, dear?” Lacey asked him. “Dewar’s or a Michelob?”
“I love them both,” Mack said.
Lacey looked at him as though he’d just burped the alphabet. “Would you like me to pour you one of each, then, and you can drink them side by side?”
“I’m sorry,” Mack said. “Michelob. Actually, better make that a Dewar’s.”
“Uh-oh,” Lacey said. “Do we have a problem?”
“A couple of them,” Mack said, taking a seat on the couch. The Sunday dinners weren’t formal; Mack and Lacey each had about nine cocktails apiece and then if they remembered, they ate a sandwich, some cold meatloaf, or Lacey heated up a swordfish potpie.
“How big are these problems?” Lacey asked.
“The biggest,” Mack said. “Love and work.”
“Those aren’t the biggest,” Lacey said. “Health is the biggest. If we have our health, we’re okay. Agreed?”
“Agreed,” Mack said, thinking of James. “Agreed. But are love and money the second and third biggest?”
“Definitely top ten,” Lacey said, bringing Mack his drink. She settled into her favorite leather armchair. She always dressed up for the Sunday dinners that weren’t really dinners-tonight in a bright blue pantsuit with a gold Nantucket basket pin on her lapel. She’d been to the hairdresser and her white hair was fluffed and styled.
“You look great tonight, Gardner,” Mack said. “Have I told you that already?”
Lacey waved at him. “You know why I invite you over here, don’t you? Good for the ego. So, where shall we start?”
Mack sipped his drink. All Dewar’s and no water. “I’m thinking of asking Bill to profit-share.”
“You’re speaking to the oldest of women,” Lacey said. “What does that mean, profit-share? It sounds like one of those horrible terms from the 1980s.”
“It just means that I get a portion of the bottom line. So my salary would depend on how well the hotel does. And we know the hotel does very well.”
Lacey nodded. “What does Bill get in return for giving you his profits?”
“He keeps me happy,” Mack said. “I stay.”
“You’re not happy?” Lacey asked. “That’s news to me. And it’ll be news to a lot of other people, I assure you.”
“I’m happy and I’m not. I’m thirty years old, Lacey.”
“And I’m eighty-eight,” Lacey said. She pointed a manicured fingernail at him and smiled. “Gotcha there, didn’t I?”
“Some things are happening back home,” Mack said. “In Iowa. The boss on my father’s farm is retiring and my lawyer wants me to sell the farm or go back and run it myself.”
“I thought you were all finished with Iowa,” Lacey said.
“There’s five hundred acres with my name on it. I have to go back sometime.”
“That’s the argument for Iowa,” Lacey said. “What’s the argument for Nantucket?”
“I love it here.”
“I concur. Where is better than Nantucket in the summer?” Lacey asked. “If there’s a place more desirable than where you already are, Mack, do tell me about it.”
“If I profit-share with Bill it would be easier to stay. I’d feel like the Beach Club is at least partially mine. I’ll feel responsible for it.”
“I thought you liked not feeling responsible for it,” Lacey said.
“I have to grow up sometime.”
“If you want to ask Bill for part of the hotel’s profits, go ahead. Keep in mind that he’ll have a reason for answering just as you have a reason for asking.”
Mack had already given a lot of thought to what Bill might say. Bill might react as Mack hoped, and say, “Of course we can profit-share, I should have thought of that myself.” Or he could simply say no. Or he could say, “Let me think it over. I’ll run some numbers and get back to you.” The worst thing would be if Bill said nothing, if he wrinkled his brow and retreated into himself, hurt that Mack had even asked for a piece of his business.
“We’ll see,” Mack said.
“Now, what about love?” Lacey asked. “But perhaps it’s time for another drink?”
Mack spun the ice in his glass. “I’ll make them,” he said. He took the glasses to the kitchen and fixed two more drinks, adding a healthy dose of water to his own. “My problem is… Andrea’s here.”
“With James?” Lacey asked. “Is he any better?”
“A little bit,” Mack said. That morning, Mack had helped James shave for the first time. Mack started the lesson by cutting his finger and letting the blood bloom to show James how sharp and dangerous the razor could be. Mack lathered up his face and then James’s face. When James saw himself in the mirror, he giggled uncontrollably.
“Santa Claus,” James said, touching his fingers to the shaving cream and tasting them. He grimaced and spat into the sink.
“That’s right,” Mack said. “When you lather up, you’ll look like Santa Claus.”
“Lather up, lather up!” James said.
Mack shaved a path from his own cheek down to his chin. Then he rinsed the razor. He put his arms around James from behind and said, “Now I’m going to do the same to you.” But James raised his hands to his face and sidled away screaming, “Blood! Blood!”
“No,” Mack said. Andrea was in the next room listening. “There isn’t going to be any blood because I’m going to show you how to do it the right way.” Mack knew that if he nicked James even a little bit, the lesson would be over. But Mack shaved smoothly and James giggled.
“It tickles,” he said.
“Give me your hand.” Mack guided James’s hand with the razor along his face until he was completely shaved.
“No cuts this time,” Mack said. “But sometimes there are cuts. And that’s okay because they’re little cuts.” Mack finished shaving himself and then he showed James how to splash his face with water, and apply lotion.
“Some people use aftershave,” Mack said. “But not me.”
“Yeah,” James said, “not me either.”
“Look in the mirror, buddy, you’re all shaved.”
“All shaved,” James repeated. He touched his face. His faint mustache was gone.
“We’ll do it again in a couple days,” Mack said. “Would you like that?”
James nodded.
“Do you want to show your mom?”
James burst out of the bathroom. “All shaved, Mom,” he said. “No cuts this time.”
Andrea, who had been sitting on the bed pretending to read a magazine, stood up. “You look so handsome,” she said. She touched James’s face. “Did Mack teach you how to shave?”
James nodded proudly, perhaps he was so proud that he lost language, because he said nothing. He let his mother hug him and then James turned and kissed Mack on the lips.
“He’s better,” Mack said to Lacey. “And Andrea is great.”
“So you’re back to two women,” Lacey said.
“I love them both,” Mack said.
“Call me crazy, but I don’t think you love either one,” Lacey said.
“Of course I do,” Mack said. “I definitely love Maribel. And with Andrea-well, Andrea is special. I love Andrea. There’s no other word for it, although I feel differently about Andrea than I do about Maribel. But they both feel like love, Lacey.”
“If you were going to marry Maribel you would have done it already. But you haven’t. And who can blame you? You’re already enjoying the party. Now, do I think you’re going to marry Andrea? No! You’ve been fiddling around with her longer than Maribel.”