“Three stayed back home,” Mario said. “My brother Mikey is a lawyer. And Hector’s twin brothers, Phil and Petey, didn’t want to leave Chicago. They work together at the hottest sushi place in the city and have season tickets to the Bulls. So.”
“So,” Adrienne said. “What will you do next year, when the restaurant is closed?”
“Cry my eyes out,” Mario said. “But it’s far from over. We have a long summer ahead.”
“Yeah,” Adrienne said. It was going to be a very long summer if she didn’t get any sleep. Her head felt like it was filled with dried beans. But then she saw headlights, actual true headlights and even better, the bright top hat of a taxi. The cab stopped in front of the house and the door popped open.
“Hey, everybody!” a voice called out. It was Delilah. She was, inexplicably, wearing a belly dancer costume-a red satin bra and transparent harem pants. She ran up the steps, dinging finger cymbals. Adrienne hurried past her, before the cab drove off. As she pulled away, Adrienne gazed back at the house in time to see Mario, ever the gentleman, leading Delilah inside.
TO: DrDon@toothache.com
FROM: Ade12177@hotmail.com
DATE: June 7, 2005, 8:37 A.M.
SUBJECT: See and be scene
At first I thought the Bistro was all about the food but after a week of work I can tell you, it’s all about the drinks. It’s a huge scene. Some nights it’s like a fraternity party and some nights it’s something else entirely (think of a dozen women in for a fiftieth birthday party belting out “New York, New York” while doing chorus line kicks). Last night, I let a man into the bar and he tipped me five hundred dollars. I told him I couldn’t possibly accept it and he said, ‘You want me to give it to the bartender instead?’ So I put it in an envelope and mailed it off to you this morning. Only five hundred to go!
I never considered myself a night owl but since I started work I haven’t gotten to bed before two. I sleep until at least eight then take a nap on the beach. I haven’t gone jogging even once! But I am brushing and flossing and doing my best to stay away from the candy plate. How are the smiles in Maryland? Love.
TO: Ade12177@hotmail.com
FROM: DrDon@toothache.com
DATE: June 7, 2005, 8:45 A.M.
SUBJECT: Nobody knows the troubles I’ve scene
I’m not sure how I’m supposed to handle being the father of the doyenne of Nantucket nightlife. Should I be worried or proud? Or both? Mavis says she wants to visit Nantucket-I know I always promise and never come, but this time I think we might. Can you research some B & Bs? And book us a night at your restaurant, of course. I’d love to see my little girl in action. Love, love.
TO: DrDon@toothache.com
FROM: Ade12177@hotmail.com
DATE: June 7 2005, 8:52 A.M.
SUBJECT: Don’t book ’em yet, Don-o
Let me get my sea legs before you show up, okay? Promise me you won’t book anything without double-triple-checking with me first?
TO: Ade12177@hotmail.com
FROM: DrDon@toothache.com
DATE: June 7, 2005, 8:59 A.M.
SUBJECT: I promise
Love, love, love.
TO: kyracrenshaw@mindspring.com
FROM: Ade12177@hotmail.com
DATE: June 7, 2005, 9:04 A.M.
SUBJECT: sex, drugs, and lobster roll
Duncan has spent every night here for the past nine nights. They always look so tuckered out in the morning-thank God the walls are thick! Caren thinks it’s this big secret, but one of the other waiters at work said he was pretty sure the only reason Duncan shacked up here was because he doesn’t want to sleep in the same apartment with his sister. I, of course, pretended like I didn’t know what he was talking about.
Aspen seems like a million years ago. I haven’t thought about Doug in weeks. I miss you, though. How’s Carmel? Seen Clint Eastwood?
4
Reservations
Adrienne wasn’t sure how long her father’s affair with Mavis had been going on. When he set up his dental practice in 1984, the office had three employees: Adrienne’s father, whom everyone called Dr. Don, Adrienne’s mother, Rosalie, who worked the reception desk, booked appointments, and did all the billing, and Mavis, the hygienist. Five years later, when Adrienne’s mother got sick, Adrienne was old enough to fill in for her mother after school and on Saturdays-and to work during the week they had hired a retired woman named Mrs. Leech.
But there had always been Mavis with her blond Dorothy Hamill haircut, her smell of antiseptic soap, and the Juicy Fruit gum that she chewed to freshen her breath after lunch (despite Dr. Don’s fatwa on chewing gum of any kind). When she was first hired, Mavis was a single mother with three-year-old twin boys named Coleman and Graham, who was deaf. Mavis’s husband had left her, and Mavis’s family lived in the French part of Louisiana, which she described as a “stinking swamp.” She had no desire to return. Adrienne’s parents took pity on Mavis, especially Adrienne’s mother, who was prone to fits of do-gooding. As a happy coincidence, it turned out that Mavis was a talented hygienist. She had a light touch, a Southern accent, and because she dealt on a daily basis with her deaf son, she took great pains to make her communications with children gentle and clear. How many times had Adrienne heard her go through the brushing spiel? Now I’m just gonna put a little bit of paste on the brush-see, it tastes like bubble gum. Don’t tell the doctor! The brush is gonna move in really fast circles so it might tickle a bit. You’re laughing already, I can’t bee-leeve it!
It was impossible to think of Mavis without thinking of Rosalie, not only because Rosalie and Mavis were best friends, but also because as Rosalie’s presence in Adrienne’s life waned, Mavis’s increased. Rosalie’s illness came on very strong and suddenly. There might have been a clue in the fact that Rosalie had lost her first child in a hard labor, and after Adrienne, Dr. Don and Rosalie had not been able to conceive another child. But Rosalie’s outlook was that some people were blessed with many children and some with only one, and she reveled in the fact that her one child was as well-adjusted and delightful as Adrienne. Then when Adrienne was eleven going on twelve (and was, at that age, neither well-adjusted nor delightful) Rosalie started having pains. She went to her gynecologist and came home looking like she had seen a ghost. A biopsy a week later at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania had diagnosed her with inoperable ovarian cancer and four to six months to live.
Adrienne knew these details now, as an adult, but at the time she had not been well-informed. Her father, a graduate of the dental school at Penn, was friends with the head of internal medicine at HUP and Adrienne was aware of her father’s conversations with him and other doctors at the hospital. Initially, she thought it was Dr. Don who was sick because it was he who looked like he might die. Eventually both her parents sat her down and told her that Rosalie had cancer.
It was Mavis’s idea to send Adrienne to Camp Hideaway in the Pocono Mountains. Adrienne didn’t want to go. She claimed she wanted to help take care of her mother, but really she didn’t want to leave her friends and she was addicted to General Hospital and she knew from reading the brochure that Camp Hideaway didn’t have a single TV. She begged her father to let her stay home and when begging didn’t work, she threatened him. She would run away. She would hitchhike. She would accept a ride with any stranger, even if it was a man with yellow teeth. Finally, Adrienne appealed to her mother. Adrienne knew her mother loved her to the point of distraction. Once she had snooped through Rosalie’s desk, where she found a tablet on which Rosalie had written Adrienne’s name a hundred times, and in the middle of the page, it said, “Unconditional love.” When Adrienne spoke to Rosalie about camp, Rosalie said, “Please do as your father says. He and Mavis think it’s for the best.” Rosalie’s tone of voice was distant; it was as if she were already gone.