When they arrived at the beach, it was as crowded as midday. A patchwork of towels and blankets covered the beach, citronella candles flickered, and in the moonlight, Lacey saw men with sideburns holding hands with topless girls. A radio played the Beatles’ “The Long and Winding Road.” Some of the kids brought picnics-summer sausages, cheese, chicken salad, and cold beer. Max and Lacey ate and drank and splashed around in the water as though they were forty years younger. Lacey watched Maximilian smoke marijuana for the first time with a man named Cedar. She studied all the young people as their lean bodies floated through the hot night, and she wished again for children. She decided to say something to Max walking home. It was almost midnight, Hot Saturday turning into Sultry Sunday. She said, “Maximilian do you ever wish we’d had children?”
Max didn’t answer. Maybe it was the marijuana getting to his brain, or maybe it was his same old stubbornness on the topic. His determination never to admit he might have been wrong.
This August was the worst heat of all. In the sun it was broiling, in the shade it was difficult to breathe. The flag out in front of the Beach Club drooped like an old nylon stocking. The first hot night, Lacey tossed in bed, kicked off the sheets, flipped her pillow. Finally she struggled for the lamp and made her way over to the air-conditioner and turned it up as high as it would go. That sufficed for the night, but when morning came and Lacey ventured into the hallway, she nearly gagged. The air was thick, syrupy, a steaming Turkish bath. She opened all of her windows and switched on her two ancient fans. She kept her bedroom door closed and cranked the air-conditioning, thinking that if worse came to worst, she could lie in bed and read her mystery novel all day, refusing to step out.
Mack appeared as usual. Instead of coffee, he brought her an icy Coca-Cola.
“Bless you, Mack Petersen,” she said. It was eight-thirty, and already Mack’s sandy hair was wet around his ears and he had the smell of a man who’d worked all day.
“It’s eighty-two degrees right now,” he said. “Radio said it would top ninety by ten o’clock.”
Lacey took a sip of her cola. It was so cold and crisp, it stung the back of her throat and her eyes watered. She coughed.
“Be careful in this heat,” Mack said. “I want you to promise me you won’t exert yourself.”
“Because this kind of weather kills old ladies, is that what you mean?” Lacey said. “Well, it won’t kill me. I’ve lived through worse than this. But just to be safe, I’m going back to the bedroom where it’s cool. Knock at the end of the day to see if I’m okay, would you, dear? But just knock. I have half a mind to sit in there naked.”
Mack laughed. “You got it, Lacey.”
He left with a wave, and Lacey took another swallow of cola and let out a healthy belch.
“What am I going to do when you’re gone?” she said out loud. “Who will take care of me?” She sounded more plaintive than she meant to, but it was a fair question. What would she do when the handsome messenger that Maximilian sent, left her? She guessed either another boy would come, or her time with substitutes would finally be over, and she would join Maximilian in whatever came next. Dying wasn’t quite as scary when she thought of it this way-as the place where Maximilian was waiting.
It was so hot that Mack and Maribel slept nude under one thin sheet. Maribel made cool things for dinner-chilled cucumber soup, Caesar salad, melon balls. She recited cool words: silver, glass, mint, shade, green, blue, drink, flute, ice, a bed of ice, a world of ice. She pulled F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “The Ice Palace” off the shelf at the library, and then “The Snows of Kilimanjaro,” Ann Beattie’s Chilly Scenes of Winter, David Guterson’s Snow Falling on Cedars, and even Richard Russo’s The Risk Pool. She stacked the books on her desk, looking at them every so often to repeat their cool titles in her head.
Maribel and Mack fought almost every night. Because of the heat, and the crazy things it did to the hotel staff and guests, Mack shut down. He came home, took off his clothes, ate what Maribel put in front of him, and sat in a sweaty heap in front of the TV until bedtime. If he and Maribel talked at all, they snapped at one another.
Mack never mentioned getting married anymore. They didn’t talk about a wedding, they made no plans. Now Maribel feared she might end up one of these women who were engaged for fifteen years. One night, she asked Mack about it.
“Are we going to get married on the island this fall? Because if we are, we need to make plans.”
“I don’t know,” he said, his eyes glued to the baseball scores. “I can’t think.”
“You can’t think?” she said. “I’m asking you about our wedding and you can’t think?”
“It’s hot, Maribel,” he said. “All day at work I have people complaining. The beach is hot, the sand is hot, the water is too warm. We had a beach boy get sunstroke today and off he goes to the hospital. I check on Lacey every two hours because I’m afraid she’s going to wilt. I caught Jem with his ass in the ice machine. He was sitting in the ice machine. I don’t have time to think about a wedding.”
“Fine,” Maribel said. “Maybe we won’t get married then.”
“Don’t play games with me, Maribel,” Mack said. “Because right now nothing is funny. Including that comment.”
Maribel felt tears rising and she went into the bedroom where at least the fan was on. She lay across the bed and swept every strand of hair from her neck, tucked them into a bun. She moved so that the air from the fan hit her bare neck. She had never been able to enjoy happiness because she always wondered, When will it end? When will something bad happen? She wanted to call her mother, but the phone was in the other room. Besides, what would she tell Tina? That right now she hated Mack? That right now the thought of a whole life with him was dreary and depressing? That maybe, just maybe, she wanted to get married so badly that she made certain compromises. Compromises like the fact that she agreed to marry Mack when only weeks before he confessed he loved another woman. Maribel tried to forget about that, she decided to believe that when Andrea Krane left the island, Mack’s feelings for her vanished as well. And since Mack planned on leaving his job at the hotel there was no danger of him seeing Andrea again. But did he still have feelings for her? Maribel was so thrilled, first with the proposal and then with the ring, that she hadn’t allowed this question into her thoughts. But now, Maribel realized that of course Mack loved Andrea. You didn’t stop loving someone in a matter of weeks. Mack had probably proposed to Andrea first, and when she said no, he came to Maribel. She was his second choice. No wonder Mack couldn’t think about the wedding. He didn’t want to marry her at all. That scene a few weeks ago with him all sincerity and sweet promises had been a lie.
Maribel marched out to the living room. Moths threw themselves against the screen door with reckless abandon.
“Do you still love Andrea?” Maribel asked.
“What?” Mack said. He wore only his boxer shorts. Twelve years ago he had left Iowa, but he still looked like a farmer: tan neck and arms, pasty white torso. “What did you just ask me?”