The Sense of Reckoning (10 page)

Chapter 14

1936

Chip lay in bed, thinking over the day, savoring his triumph with the tea tray. That the hotel would be his someday—he had never thought about that before. It had always been his playground, the hotel itself with its odd nooks and crannies to hide in, the grounds with the pine woods to explore, Lynam Narrows with its trove of interesting pebbles. But if he had to take care of it himself—it might be possible, with his mother’s help.

He tossed restlessly as a new thought struck him. If the hotel was his, that would mean it would no longer be his father’s. Chip turned that thought over in his mind.
 

He could just barely remember a time—before all his parents’ talk was about where they would find the money to pay for this or that—when his father would laugh and smile. He could remember days when his father would take him—Chip had been just a baby then—down to the water to watch the boats, or throw him in the air so that he would shriek with delight.

Then things had gotten bad—Chip knew from listening to his parents talk when they thought he wasn’t around. They talked about the Crash of ’29—it was after that that the rooms started to go empty, even in high season. (Chip wondered what could have crashed that would have kept people away from his parents’ hotel—maybe a train crash that frightened people traveling from faraway places like New York City and Philadelphia? He figured if it had involved a boat, it would have been called the Wreck of ’29.) At first, a few locals
had occasionally stopped by to eat in the practically empty dining room, but then his parents had had to close the dining room when they couldn’t afford to pay the cook. One season they hadn’t opened at all—Chip had been too little to remember it himself, but he had once or twice heard his father refer to it in the same strained tones he used to discuss “bank balance” or “room occupancy.”

Just the year before, Chip had more than once woken up in the middle of the night in his bedroom on the top floor of the hotel and, unable to go back to sleep, had gone to his parents’ room across the hall to find it empty. He knew that if he went looking for them he would find them, as he had one night, huddled over the ledger books at the big worktable in the hotel’s kitchen. The first time he had gone looking for them and peeked through the swinging kitchen door, his father had had his head in his hands and his mother had been distractedly smoking a cigarette, something she never did during the day. He had snuck back to his room hoping they hadn’t known he was there—there was something embarrassing about having observed his parents so unguarded and demoralized. A few days later, a truck had come and his father had helped a man load the piano from the now-empty dining room into the back; a few days after that the same happened with the old grandfather clock that his father had taken such pride in winding each Sunday.

But this year business was better. The people his parents referred to as “the regulars”—some from so long ago he hadn’t even been born yet—were back. His father’s shoulders weren’t quite so stooped these days, and he moved with more purpose, although with an underlying wariness that reminded Chip of a squirrel eating at the bird feeder while keeping an eye out for the neighborhood cat. Even now, with his mother saying things were looking up, it was as if his father believed that only frantic activity would keep bad luck at bay. His only leisure was working in the wood shop in a shed behind the hotel, but even then his projects were almost always for the hotel: repairing a dining room chair or mending balusters broken by guests as they hauled their luggage up the steps to the guest rooms on the second and third floors.

In fact, the only event that had elicited some enthusiasm from his father was the installation of the new elevator—he liked to brag that not even some of the fancy hotels in Portland had elevators yet. Chip longed to operate the sliding door and metal grate, to move the handle that sent the elevator up or down, but his father had made it very clear that the elevator was not a toy and implied that there would be dire consequences if he found Chip using it as such.

His father had said “toy” with such disdain that Chip had begun to fear for his actual toys, and he had fashioned a hiding place for them—a wooden box he kept under his bed. It was possible to see under his bed from the hallway, so he had gotten a board from the workshop of the same color as the floorboards and had propped it up in front of the box. It wouldn’t withstand close scrutiny, but it provided effective camouflage from a casual glance.
 

He would feel better if he had his bear, Timothy—he could put him away before his father came to wake him up in the morning. He climbed out of bed, slid aside the board, pulled out the toy box, and removed Timothy.

But even holding Timothy didn’t soothe him. His brain flickered from thought to thought, he couldn’t get his legs in a comfortable position, a seam of his pajama bottoms was digging into his hip. He looked at the clock on his bedside table—the big hand was on the two. He squeezed his eyes shut and counted to one hundred several times then opened them again—the big hand was still on the two.

He decided to go downstairs and get a glass of milk. His mother sometimes warmed milk for him when he couldn’t sleep, but she wouldn’t be up anymore and, since he couldn’t use the stove, he hoped cold milk would work just as well as warm.
 

Even though it was highly unlikely that he would encounter any guests, he pulled on his robe and slipped his feet into his slippers as his father had instructed him to do if he had to leave the top floor at night. He made his way as quietly as he could down the stairs to the first floor and through the hallway that led to the kitchen.

He was just about to push the door open when he heard voices inside, low but strained. It was his mother, his father, and ...Uncle Edward? It sounded like they were arguing and Chip, who avoided arguments whenever possible, had turned to go when he heard his father’s angry whisper.

“You whore!”

Chip froze. He heard a murmur from his mother and then the third person—he was pretty sure it was Uncle Edward—and then his father cutting through both their voices.

“Don’t you defend her. I can’t believe you’re even still standing in my kitchen. You traitor.” His father’s voice was getting louder, violating his own rule that any personal conversations must be whispered so as not to disturb the guests.

Now he could hear Uncle Edward’s words as well. “Listen here, Lorry—”

“Don’t you call me by my first name—you are the help, you will call me Mr. Lynam,” his father hissed.

Then he heard his mother: “Stay out of this, Edward, this is between me and him.”

“Ha!” spat his father. “That’s rich—if it was between you and me, and he had stayed out of it, we wouldn’t be having this conversation, would we?”

“Perhaps not this exact conversation,” said his mother, her voice cold. “But it’s high time we had some kind of conversation, although I wish it wasn’t in these circumstances.” There was a pause, and when she spoke again Chip could tell she had moved closer to his father. “Perhaps I should call you Mr. Lynam as well? Am I the help too? Because that’s how I feel sometimes. Like the hired girl.”

“You’re being ridiculous.”

“Am I? I remember the look in your eyes when you courted me, like I was something special and precious. You won me with that look. But once we were married, you know what I realized? That I was only as special and precious as your elevator or your ridiculous croquet court.”

“I did not ... I ...” his father spluttered. After a pause he said, “You, get out.”

“I’m not leaving,” said Uncle Edward.

“I need to speak to her.”

“You can speak to her with me in the room.”

There was a long pause. Chip inched forward and pressed his ear to the door.

Finally he heard his father speak, a strangled sound. “I never thought of you like an elevator or a croquet court, for God’s sake. You were ... you are ...”

There was another long pause, and then his mother. “I am what?”

Then Chip heard the scrape of wood on wood. What was happening in there? Before he had a chance to think, he pushed open the door and stepped into the kitchen.

His mother and Uncle Edward stood next to each other, dressed in their day clothes but looking rumpled, like they had slept in them. His mother’s hair was down—he thought of how she had looked earlier that day, when she had stood in front of the window and undone her hair from the clip that held it, but only to fasten it more neatly into its restraint. She never kept her hair down except when she was in their quarters on the top floor, when she would sometimes let Chip brush it. Chip was suddenly jealous that Uncle Edward was getting to see her in this private state.

They faced his father, who was wearing his pajamas and a robe and slippers—an adult version of Chip’s own clothes. The scraping sound he had heard was his father pulling out a chair, the back of which he was leaning on, his knuckles white, his face a frightening shade of gray. The three of them turned to Chip.
 

Uncle Edward said, “Damn,” and looked down at his feet.

“Darling—” said his mother. She started toward Chip, but his father stopped her with his words.

“Don’t even think about it. You’re no mother to him. Stay away from him.”

“But—”

“No. Go. Now.”

His mother looked from Chip to her husband, and then to Uncle Edward, whose eyes were still on the floor. “But I can’t just—”

“I mean it. Go now. When you and”—his father gestured to Uncle Edward with his chin—“get wherever you’re going, you let me know and I’ll send your things. I want you out of here.”

His mother looked back at Chip. Her eyes were weary and disillusioned—as if she expected life to be difficult and people to be cruel, and life and people had lived down to her expectations.

Chip’s heart was thudding in his throat. “I can ...” he began, then realized he couldn’t, whatever it was. He was too young. He was too small.

“Oh, sweetheart,” said his mother. His father began to speak again, but she silenced him with a gesture, without even glancing in his direction. “Chip, I need to leave for a while, but when things settle down we’ll work things out. You’ll be a good boy for your father, yes?”

Chip tried to say “Yes,” but the word caught in his throat.

His mother got her hat from the shelf by the back door and her purse and a sweater from the closet and, with a quick backward glance at Chip, stepped out the door, followed by Uncle Edward.

“And don’t you take my truck!” his father called after them in a choked voice.

Chip stared wide-eyed after them, and then turned to his father, who still held onto the back of the chair. His father’s face was pasty and his breath whistled in his throat.

“Go upstairs. Go to bed,” he said thickly.

Chip backed out of the kitchen, through the swinging door, then turned and ran to the lobby and stood at the window until he saw Uncle Edward’s truck go by, his mother a dark silhouette in the passenger seat. As the taillights receded down the drive, he heard his father’s steps behind him and he turned, tears of confusion and fear in his eyes.

But his father looked less furious than defeated, and his voice was weak. “Go to bed. We’ll talk in the morning.” He turned back to the kitchen and in a minute Chip heard the faint sounds that meant he was making coffee.

Chip crept up the three flights of steps to the top floor, glancing into his parents’ room as he passed. He noticed that only one side of the bedclothes was rumpled. He went to his own room and closed the door, then huddled under the covers with Timothy, wondering miserably how his life had become so bad so quickly.

In the morning, Chip’s father didn’t talk about what had happened. The days went by, and still he didn’t talk about it. Chip heard some of the guests asking his father where his mother was, and his father telling them that she had had to leave unexpectedly to take care of a sick relative.

A week or so later, a policeman showed up at the hotel carrying an envelope. He and Chip’s father went into the office behind the registration desk and stayed in there with the door closed for some time. Chip positioned himself in a corner of the lobby where he could watch the door, and when they emerged his father held the envelope. Even from across the lobby, Chip could see his hands trembling. His face was ashen. The policemen touched the brim of his hat to his father and his father turned back into the office and shut the door again.

Late that night, when Chip heard his father go to bed, he went downstairs and searched the office but found no envelope. He eventually discovered it, several days later, in the Bible in his parents’ room. It contained a clipping from the Portland newspaper of a traffic fatality—a car had hit a tree when, according to witnesses, the driver swerved to avoid a wounded moose that had staggered into the road from behind a granite outcropping. The truck was owned by Edward Blaine; the driver was Evangeline Lynam. According to Mr. Blaine, Mrs. Lynam was headed to Mount Desert Island at the time of the accident.
 

After that, Chip’s father hired a woman from Bar Harbor to manage the staff. Chip came in from playing one day to find his bed had been moved to his father’s room to make room for the new manager. His box of toys, with Timothy in it, was gone. Chip’s father never talked about that, either.