“Do you still love Andrea Krane? I want to know.”
“You’re ridiculous,” Mack said. “I just spent a small fortune putting a diamond on your finger and you have the nerve to ask me that. What’s gotten into you?”
“You’re not answering my question,” Maribel said.
“Your question is obnoxious,” Mack said. “I asked you to marry me and you said yes. I gave you a ring. Now, why would I do that if I still loved Andrea?”
Maribel winced at the word “Still” because it admitted one fact: he had loved her. “That sounds like an answer to my question, but it’s not. You’re not telling me you don’t love her.”
“What’s wrong with you?” Mack was yelling now, standing up. Sweat dripped down his face. The temperature in the room rose; the room was boiling over. Maribel took a deep breath, trying to remember the stack of books on her desk, the chilly titles. What were they? All she could think of was The Risk Pool. A pool of risk, that’s where she was right now, swimming in it. The moths batted themselves against the screen. If it weren’t so abusively hot Maribel would have shut the door, to block out the horrible sound.
“Do you want to marry Andrea?” Maribel asked.
Mack’s blue eyes were on fire. “I don’t want to marry anybody,” he said.
There was a split second of silence, enough time for only a single thought. Oh, God.
Mack said, “But you.”
Except by then it was too late because in that speck of silence, Mack had told the truth. A silence so short, so small, an infinitesimal silence, exposed him. I don’t want to marry anybody.
He came toward Maribel, cooling off, ticking like a car engine, and he put his arms around her gently so as not to smother her. “I don’t want to marry anybody but you.”
He could say whatever he wanted now, she supposed, because he’d told her the truth. For one glimmering instant, the truth was free, and Maribel recognized it. She had known it all along: Mack didn’t want to marry anybody.
She bent her chin to her chest, and Mack kissed her forehead.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
She pulled away. “I’m just hot,” she said. “I’m sorry.”
She retreated into the bedroom, threw herself on the bed face down and cried. She didn’t have the genius for love-if that was what love required-genius, like one had for painting, or the piano. Genius for love didn’t run in her family. And so Maribel had relied on persistence, she gritted her teeth and dug in her heels and butted her head against the brick wall until it surrendered. Her tears cooled on her cheeks. Sore head, she thought, sore heart.
Cecily was in the office with her father when he discovered his big mistake. It was too hot for her to be out on the beach; walking on the sand would have blistered the soles of her feet. The heat freed her from chatting and schmoozing, thank God, but her father insisted she join him in the office so she could better understand how he ran the hotel. Because he wouldn’t live forever, he said, and she might be in charge sooner than she thought.
Bill swiveled in his chair. “I can’t believe it,” he said. He shuffled some papers, ran his fingertips over one page, then another. He wiped his forehead with a handkerchief. “It must be this heat,” he said. “In twenty years, I have never done this. Never!”
“Done what?” Cecily said. The mercury routinely rose to ninety-seven degrees in Rio. Soon, Cecily would be sweating next to Gabriel in bed. She only needed five hundred more dollars before she could escape. Her father had called UVA trying to reverse her deferral, but ha!-it was too late. Now her parents wanted her to come to Aspen, where they would ski with her, and teach her about the hotel. It was as if they were blind, deaf, stupid. “What’d you do?” she asked.
“I can’t believe it,” Bill repeated. He flipped through his book of Robert Frost poems. He did it again and again until Cecily realized he was having some kind of panic attack.
She sat up straight in her chair; in this heat, even that took effort. “Dad, what’d you do?”
“I double-booked a room,” he said. “I have a confirmation letter here for a family of four, the Reeses, for room fourteen, August twenty-four through August twenty-seven. And I have a confirmation letter for a Mrs. Jane Hassiter for that same room for the same dates.”
Cecily fell back in her chair. “Move somebody.”
He opened the reservation book and Cecily peered at it. The whole month was highlighted in fluorescent green.
“We’re full,” he said.
That was how Mrs. Jane Hassiter ended up staying in Cecily’s house during the heat wave. First, though, Cecily and her father called every guest house and B and B in the phone book. No vacancy. There wasn’t room on the island for even one more person, a lonely widow. That’s how Cecily’s mother described Mrs. Hassiter, a lonely widow. Cecily’s father prayed for a cancellation, but none came. Her mother tried to calm him.
“Mrs. Hassiter can stay in our house,” she said. “We have the extra room, don’t forget.”
“The extra room” was on the first floor in the front of the house, with a window looking over the parking lot at the beach. It even had its own bathroom. But in Cecily’s eighteen years, no one had ever stayed in that room. It was meant to be the bedroom for Cecily’s dead brother, W.T., but he’d never slept in it. W.T. didn’t make it home from the hospital; he was born dead. Cecily’s parents preserved the room, though, for the ghost baby, their dead son.
“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Bill said.
Cecily rolled her eyes. Her parents were outrageously predictable.
“You double-booked the room, Bill,” Therese said. “Mrs. Hassiter is on her way. There isn’t any space on the island. We don’t have a choice. We made a mistake, we have to pay up.”
“It’ll be fine, Dad,” Cecily said. Both her parents looked at her as if she’d spoken Portuguese. Those were the nicest words she’d said since the Fourth of July.
Bill exhaled; his shoulders loosened. “I hope you’re right,” he said.
Cecily was standing at the front desk talking to Love when Jane Hassiter walked in. Hotel guests were a mixed bag, but they had one thing in common-they all looked rich. Their watches gave them away, their Italian shoes, their haircuts. Rarely did someone step into the lobby looking like Jane Hassiter.
It was terrible to say-horrendous, awful-but Mrs. Hassiter immediately reminded Cecily of the woman who cleaned her dormitory at Middlesex. Mrs. Hassiter walked into the lobby in the same way that woman skulked around the students’ rooms-as though she didn’t belong in a place so fancy and nice. And then, as Mrs. Hassiter got closer, Cecily zeroed in on her tight, steel gray pin curls, her watery blue eyes, and she filled with warm dread. Mrs. Hassiter was the woman who cleaned at Middlesex; she was the housekeeper, the custodian, right here in the lobby of the hotel. Jane-yes, her name was Jane. Cecily had said, “Good morning, Jane,” when she swept the halls with her wide broom, and “Thank you, Jane,” when she cleaned the bathroom and emptied the trash. The girls on Cecily’s hall bought Jane a Christmas present every year-a silk flower wreath, a subscription to Reader’s Digest.
Cecily shivered despite the heat. The last week of school, Jane unlocked the door to Cecily’s room with her giant ring of keys, and walked in on Cecily and Gabriel making love. Cecily was sitting in Gabriel’s lap, facing him, her legs wrapped around his back as he lifted her up and down on his beautiful penis. They were supposed to be at breakfast, but they had skipped so that they could make love yet again. Cecily heard the jangle of Jane’s keys, and before she could move, Jane stepped in, ogled them. Cecily pulled Gabriel’s face into her chest as though he were a child that needed protecting and she shrieked, “Get out! Get out of here, Jane!”