“It’s not that easy,” Mack said. “I didn’t leave Maribel, she kicked me out. I’m not sure she wants me back.”
“Of course she wants you back,” Andrea said. “You’re Mack Petersen. Everybody wants a piece of you.”
“Red and blue and white. Red, white, and blue, Mom!” James exclaimed.
“Everybody wants a piece of me except for you.”
“Now you sound pitiful,” Andrea said.
“When you leave, will that be the last time I ever see you?” Mack said. “Are you coming back next year?”
“I don’t know,” Andrea said. The fireworks lit up her face, and then it darkened again. “Are you?”
At seven-thirty the next morning, Mack knocked on the Elliotts’ front door, something he’d never done before. If he had business at Bill and Therese’s house, which was rare, he always just let himself in. But today, he knocked.
Therese opened the door. Her eyes were puffy. “Mack,” she said. “What’s wrong? I can’t hear about a hotel emergency today. I just can’t. I want to pretend the hotel doesn’t exist. I was going to have Elizabeth check the rooms.”
“Yeah?” Mack said. Something was wrong, but Therese was funny about telling other people her problems. “I came to talk to Bill.”
Therese swung the door open. “He’s upstairs. Go on up. He needs cheering.”
“Okay,” Mack said. His hands were numb. I should leave, he thought. Now isn’t the right time. But Maribel would never take him back if he didn’t at least ask. This is going to go well, he thought. This is going to be the answer to the chaos in my head.
He climbed the stairs and saw Bill sitting at the kitchen table with his book of Frost poems open in front of him. “Hey, boss,” Mack said.
Bill looked up. “Mack,” he said. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing’s wrong. I need to talk to you about something. But if now’s a bad time…”
“No, no, it’s fine,” Bill said. His face was pale and the translucent skin under his eyes was mapped with tiny red and blue lines. “Do you want coffee?”
“Maybe, yeah,” Mack said. He took a mug of coffee from Bill and sat down at the table. He looked at the upside-down book of poems, and wondered if there were any clues in that book about how to live.
“What is it?” Bill said. “Is it about Maribel?”
“No,” Mack said. “I want to explore a possibility with you.”
Bill was quiet.
“You know, I’ve worked here twelve seasons, and I’d like to…well, I’d like to stay.” Mack blew on his coffee but when he tasted it, it was lukewarm. “I was wondering if you’d be open to profit-sharing with me.”
“Profit-sharing?”
Therese came into the kitchen. “You want what?”
Mack spun in his chair. “It was just an idea I had.”
“What was?” Bill asked.
“Profit-sharing. You know, me getting paid based on how well the hotel does. Taking thirty percent or whatever.”
“Thirty percent.” Bill’s face was expressionless.
“Does that sound outrageous?” Mack asked. “Maybe it is, but I do a fair amount of work around here. And you see, what’s happened is my parents’ lawyer has called and I have to make up my mind about the farm, do I want to live there, or do I want to sell it.”
“So you’re telling me you’re leaving?” Bill said.
“No,” Mack said. “I’m just exploring my options. It seems like this is a good time to discuss my future. And I’d like to profit-share.”
Therese laughed, not happily. “Are we wearing bull’s-eyes painted over our hearts, Bill? Is that what’s happening? Everyone we love feels free to take a shot at us?”
“I’m not taking a shot at you,” Mack said. “I just need to think about my future. You guys are like my…my family. You know Maribel and I are having problems. I need to do something to make her happy.” He could feel Therese’s instant disapproval. Why had he brought up Maribel? Was it easier to make it sound like this was her idea? “But it’s for me, too. I have to decide about my family’s farm. Either I sell it, which I don’t want to do, or I go out there and run it, which I don’t want to do. It’s an impossible decision.”
“Are you telling us that if we don’t agree to profit-share, you’ll leave?” Bill asked.
“I don’t know,” Mack said. “If you agree to profit-share, it’ll be easier to decide.”
Bill looked at his open book. “I see the difficulty of your position,” he said. He traced his finger along the lines of the page, as though he were reading aloud. “You’re a young man who has to make a choice. I can remember myself at your age. Should I take a risk and build the hotel rooms? But I was lucky. I had a wife who supported me.”
“We can’t profit-share,” Therese said. She sat down at the table. Her orange hair hung in strings around her face and her white streak was tinged with gray, like dirty snow. “We can’t profit-share, because of Cecily.”
“I’m not asking to own a part of the hotel, Therese. I’m only asking for part of the profits.”
Therese lowered her voice. “Cecily has threatened to leave,” she said. “She informed us last night that she wants to travel through South America with the boyfriend.”
Mack remembered Cecily on the phone in the middle of the night. “I’m dying of love for you.” “Really?” he said.
“She wants us to give you the hotel,” Therese said. “She said it herself. If we profit-share, she’ll be relieved. She’ll think, ‘Okay, I’m free to go. Mack’s in charge.’ She’ll think we’ve given up.” Therese tapped the counter with her fingernail. “I’m not giving up. I already lost one child. I’m not about to lose number two. She might not go if she thinks we need her. I stayed up all night thinking it through. Cecily’s weak spot is that she loves us. But if she knows we have some new, official arrangement with you, she’ll leave.”
“You don’t know that,” Mack said.
“Therese is right,” Bill said. “I’m sorry, Mack. Under other circumstances I would consider it…but no, I’m sorry.”
I’m sorry: Maribel was sorry but she had to kick him out; Andrea was sorry but she didn’t love him; Bill and Therese were sorry but they wouldn’t profit-share. Sorry, Mack, but there’s no room for you. The summer was turning into a big cauldron of sorry stew.
Therese said, “You could always marry Cecily.”
Mack was too angry and hurt for any words except the most mundane. “I have to get the doughnuts.”
Bill dropped his elbows onto the table, folded his hands, and bowed his head. “Does this mean you’re going to leave us, Mack?”
Mack shrugged. “We’ll have to see.”
6 The Boys of Summer
July 10
Dear S.B.T.,
If we are to continue in this strange correspondence, I want some answers. Who are you? What do you do for a living? Why do you want this hotel? What could it possibly mean to you? And, most crucially, what right do you have telling me what my own daughter wants or doesn’t want? What do you know about me, really? You know only what I’ve told you in letters and what you might observe from the street. Isn’t that right?
Or are you someone on the inside? Are you a Beach Club member, a hotel guest, someone who walks the property every day? Answer me!
Bill Elliott
Mack spent the days following the Fourth of July questioning his future. His sweat equity had turned out to be nothing but sweat-salty water-and at the Beach Club, there was more than enough of that to go around. He’d been threatened with a gun by one of his employees, his girlfriend had kicked him out, and the woman he loved didn’t love him back. Running the farm in Iowa was looking better and better. It might not be so bad-climbing up into a combine again and knowing that as far as his eyes could see, the land belonged to him. He had half a mind to call David Pringle and tell him to hire a cleaning lady because Mack Petersen was moving back. He heard the eerie, haunting voice of Nantucket calling out Home, but Mack didn’t know what that meant anymore. He always assumed it meant Nantucket was his home, but the other night it seemed just as feasible that the voice was telling him to go home to Iowa. It might feel good to return, Mack thought. It might feel as good as it had felt to leave.