Summer Accommodations: A Novel (25 page)

“No,” I said, but that was not what I thought. For the first time that day I had the feeling that asking me to believe this story was asking too much. There were too many fantastic acts and incidents cobbled together for me to believe they all were true. “For twenty-five years that ring has lain somewhere out there in the grass waiting for me to come here and reclaim it. And for twenty-five years my father has been without his heritage, his patrimony. When I go out early in the morning before shaving and showering for the breakfast meal, that gimmal ring is what I've been searching for. I owe you some thanks. You showed me where the well for the old roadhouse is. The ring is somewhere in the field between that old well and the handymen's shack. Will you help me to look for it?”

“Help you how? You mean get up early in the morning and go out looking for the ring in the weeds?”

“If you imagine you can do it any other time of day that you like and still be discreet, that would be all right with me too.” He sounded sarcastic.

“You're really serious, aren't you. You're really expecting me to look for this ring.” Surprise and annoyance outweighed what flattery I might have attributed to Harlan's request. He was asking for a lot and taking it for granted that I'd comply.

“Why do you think I came to Braverman's, Jack, to wait tables? You have been asking me that question one way or another all summer long and when I finally put the truth out on the table in front of you, you balk. Look,” his voice was suddenly both soothing and contrite, “I did not intend for one minute that you feel taken for granted. I hoped that you, being my friend, would want to help. I came here to find the gimmal ring. It means everything to my father and, as you saw today, he's a very sick man, maybe a dying man, and this ring is all that he talks about to my mother. ‘Do you think Harlan can find that ring Helene? Does Harlan know where to look Helene?' It's an obsession.” Despite my doubts I still found myself eager to please Harlan. Raised with Ripley's “Believe it or Not,” stranger things than his story had proved to be true and my disbelief began to evaporate as soon as we drove through the iron gate of the hotel entrance. “What do you want me to do?”

“I'd like you to accept the role of decoy. If we both go scratching around in the field before dawn someone will see us and his suspicions might be aroused. Then, even if they don't know why they're doing it, dishwashers and handymen will start searching the ground for an imagined treasure. I would hate it if one of them actually finds the ring before I do.” He lit another Lucky when we pulled up in his parking place. “If you were to poke around elsewhere, say near the main building, no, that would be too conspicuous. Back near the Braverman's residence, yeah, that's far enough away and out of the sight of everyone,” He paused, and with the fingers of his right hand gesticulating in the air, his eyes squinting, his lips moving around unvoiced words, he calculated the consequences of this proposal before turning to me and speaking. “Yes, that'll do it. You'll go foraging around the Braverman's house. I'll tell Heidi that you and I are out looking for my lost ID bracelet so if she or anyone else in her family spots you there she'll know that you are helping me and will explain it to her family.”

“But you won't be there with me,” I argued.

“Of course not. Heidi and I have been all over the grounds here so there are lots of places to be looking for the bracelet. It would be foolish for us both to be searching in the same place.” There was a compelling logic to his argument.

“Okay, I'll help.”

“Good. We'll get started with this in the morning,” he said crushing his butt in the ashtray. “Want another Lucky, Jack?”

“Sure,” I said, feeling conspiratorial.

“Keep the pack,” he said, winking and dropping it in my lap.

We returned to our room separately with Harlan going first and I following him a few minutes later. I knew if Ron were to see me with a pack of Lucky's he'd accuse me of trying to copy Harlan so I put them back into Harlan's car and went to the snack bar to buy a pack of Chesterfield's, the third brand of short, unfiltered cigarettes. Regardless of the brand I showed up with rising early and disappearing from the room would be a sure sign that Harlan and I were up to something and Ron would never let that pass unremarked. And how would we explain it to him if it went on for too many mornings, we hadn't considered that. And with summer waning sunrise was later every morning sending us out in a dim light. I would have to bring all of this up with Harlan before we enacted his plan. Ron's suspiciousness had become worse since his money was stolen and he rarely spoke directly to Harlan; he communicated with him by thinking out loud for my benefit.

“I wonder how a guy can live with himself knowing that he's taken something valuable that doesn't belong to him, something that another person has earned and sweated for. What do you think, Mel, could there be such a person who could feel no guilt or shame in the presence of his victim? Who, besides a Nazi, who would be capable of such behavior, I ask you?” There was nothing I could say to answer him in Harlan's presence and when we were alone he would sneer at me for suggesting that he stop asking me his hypothetical questions. Sneaking out in the morning would be the only way to get out of the room without arousing Ron's suspicion. Still, it would be risky. Ron would think it had something to do with judge Crater, but he wouldn't have the remotest idea how close to the truth he was. I'd have to trust my ability to be stealthy, something I developed to sabotage my older, stronger brothers. Fortunately, Ron snored like a sawmill so a little bit of noise would probably never wake him.

2.

While Elvis Presley's popularity continued to grow that summer with each new song he recorded, Sarah and I remained true to the more conventional romantic music of the time like film scores, and songs with Frank Sinatra, and Sammy Davis Junior. Radio stations were playing Tennessee Ernie Ford, Johnny Cash, The Platters and, of course Elvis, as much if not more than they played “Moonglow,” “Around the World in Eighty Days,” “The Poor People of Paris,” “Lisbon Antigua” and “Que Sera Sera.” We listened to them all unaware of the change that was about to erupt through the calm surface of the mid-1950's.

The political conventions of August 1956 would be a reprise of 1952 with Adlai Stevenson and Dwight Eisenhower once again facing off, the only change being that the Democratic vice-presidential nominee would be Estes Kefauver in place of John Sparkman. The controversial Republican veep would survive efforts to dump him, go on in later years to lose one and then win two presidential elections, and ultimately be the first sitting president to resign his office in the midst of scandal; Richard Milhaus Nixon of course. But a more immediate scandal was brewing at Braverman's that summer.

“Can you keep a secret?” Sarah asked as we walked down to the old shed at the lake. We had been seeing each other on a regular basis for several weeks. We had developed a pattern of going down to the storage shed, spreading a blanket and making out after our first week together. The one thing I knew with certainty was that I was in love.

“Of course,” I answered, not remarking upon the several other secrets I had yet to confide to her.

“I really shouldn't be telling you this but, well … I know that you're not a thief. Heidi told me that someone is robbing people at the hotel, has been all summer long.”

“Yeah, I know, Sammy told us weeks ago. You know I was in the main lobby once and a woman was really giving it to Belle about a missing bracelet, but I never heard anything more about it. Mrs. Braverman took her into the office and that seemed to be the end of it.”

“Not at all. Heidi says the Bravermans ended up giving her a free vacation just to keep her from making another scene, but the bracelet was never found. And they don't think it was a chambermaid who took it.”

“Who do they think did?”

“This is very secret, you have to promise me …”

“I promised already, didn't I?” I was hurt that she challenged my sincerity: it was my long suit.

“Well, they believe that it might be Harlan.”

“Jesus Christ! Not them too. Is this about somebody stealing jewelry or about him stealing their precious jewel Heidi?” I reached for her hand but she pulled it away.

“This is why I was reluctant to tell you. Harlan is perfect in your eyes. Don't you ever get the sense that he's just too perfect, too charming, too … too nice?”

“Oh, those are really deadly characteristics aren't they? Of course, who would trust a person who is charming and too nice, what a fool I've been.”

“I'm not saying it right,” she said, shaking her head, “it's not that he's too nice, it's that there's something just a little unbelievable in the niceness—I mean have you ever seen him get angry or upset?”

“Yes!” We had reached the waterfront but our quarrel had made me feel remote from her and our mood was less than amorous.

“I'm sorry I shouldn't have said anything, Mel. Wait, there's another example of what's wrong with him, didn't he tell you to call yourself Jack? Didn't that strike you as strange?” I'd felt odd when Harlan renamed me but I'd grown used to the change with time and I really had liked being called Jack.

“I hate the name Melvin, I wanted to change it. He didn't change my name I did.”

“Yes, but you could have done that anytime and you didn't, you didn't until Harlan told you to do it.”

“He didn't tell me. I asked him. He was just supporting what I intended to do anyway. And if you hadn't made such a fuss about it I'd still be calling myself Jack.” Hearing the petulance in my voice I curled my lower lip, snuffled, and added, “so there” in the hope that lightening the mood might rescue the evening and allow for more tenderness and sensuality.

“I'm not kidding around Mel, this isn't a joke. I don't know, it's hard to find the words, there's something that's just not right, about him. I don't trust him.”

“Does Heidi trust him? Who knows him better than she does?”

“Oh Mel, she's in love with him, how else could she feel?”

“So love really is blind?” I said in an acerbic tone.

“I'm afraid so,” she said walking away, “and right now it looks to me like there's an epidemic of blindness.”

“Come back here,” I said walking briskly after her, “don't run away from me.” But she continued to walk back towards the hotel. “Sarah please, please stop and talk to me.”

“Talking means listening to the other person too. You get so defensive about Harlan that you start defending him before you've even heard the whole story. Doesn't that tell you something?” There was no question but that she was right. I was wrong.

“I'm sorry. I want you to like him as much as I do, I want the two of you to be friends too. It upsets me when you have negative things to say about him that's all. It's like when you've read a book or seen a movie that you really like a lot and want a friend to like it just as much as you do. You take that friend to the movie and sit watching him instead of the movie and if he doesn't laugh at the things you thought were funny, or get excited about the part that excited you, well, you feel like you've lost the thing that you had been so excited about and also that you've lost a bit of that friendship.” Sarah came up to me and took my hand.

“Let's take a walk.” She led me back to the lakefront and sat down on the bank. “I know that you want me to like him as much as you do but I can't. I've never told Heidi this,” she said, pursing her lips and looking over the lake, “but I don't think he's loyal to her; no, I know he's not loyal to her.” She closed her eyes and when she opened them again she was looking at me. “One of my kids hurt himself in camp one day and I had to take him back to his mother. I went to the pool because she was the kind of woman who was always sunbathing, but she wasn't there and no one had seen her that day. I asked the boy where he was staying and he pointed to the main building. At the front desk Belle called up to his room and Mrs. Cohen took a long time to answer. She said she wasn't feeling well and could I please just send him upstairs. He was still upset and I couldn't make him go alone so I walked him to his room. When we got there I knocked on the door and Mrs. Cohen opened it only a crack. She was wearing a thin robe, her hair was mussed and her face was all flushed and perspired. ‘You must have the flu' I said sympathetically, but she just nodded at me. She reached out to David who started to cry and when she spread her arms to embrace him her robe fell open and I saw that she was completely naked. The door had come ajar behind her and I peeked over her shoulder and looked inside. There was a man's shirt draped over the back of a chair and it was a shirt I had seen Harlan wear, a brown cotton plaid that I'd seen before but only on him.” Sarah looked back at me and then out over the dark waters of the lake. “I knew that Harlan was in that room, I just knew it. When David came hack to camp the next day I asked him how he was feeling. He said that he was fine and that his mommy had made his boo-boo all better with a special medicine that a man had given to her just for him, but that was all he'd say. I didn't press him. Mel I know it was Harlan in her room, I just know it. I can't say anything to Heidi but I don't know what I'd do if we were to be together all four of us.”

“I can see why you'd think it was Harlan but there never was a one of a kind shirt in the history of shirt manufacturing. I mean somebody else could have worn a shirt like that. Ron could have worn Harlan's shirt. I could have worn Harlan's shirt.” I was becoming extravagant in my defense of Harlan.

“You mean it was you in Mrs. Cohen ‘s room?”

“I mean that Harlan gets accused of all kinds of things but I trust him anyway. Women flirt, with him and he flirts with them but nothing ever comes of it.”