“Oh, do call me Phyllis,” she boomed in a voice so robust that I thought it’d be accompanied by a vigorous whump on my back.
“And I’d be pleased if you’d call me Hannah, Phyllis.”
“My pleasure, Hannah. And these must the grandchildren.”
Jake chose that moment to go down on all fours on the inlaid marble, while Chloe cowered behind me, grasping my leg, as if not sure what to make of this other grandmother-type who loomed over her.
“Come on, children,” Emily chirped. “Let’s go look at the big house!” With the ease of experience, she grabbed each child’s hand, swung Jake into her arms, and marched off in the direction Phyllis had just come from, with Chloe skipping happily by her side.
The four of us followed at a more leisurely pace. I listened while Guy Winebarger droned on about title abstracts, conveyances, escrow and points, but tuned out sometime during the discussion of how the seller proposed to prorate the property taxes and utility bill. Instead, I concentrated on what might soon be the place where my daughter and her family would be spending most of their time.
Although the floor where we stood had been covered with alternating squares of black and white marble, and several of the rooms that led off the lobby had been carpeted, there was not a speck of furniture anywhere. As we walked and talked, our voices and footsteps echoed hollowly off tile floors and ricocheted off the empty walls.
Dante turned to me and said, “You see what I mean, Hannah? The place has real possibilities.”
My son-in-law was right. But as far as I could figure out, those possibilities all depended upon the largesse of a certain Phyllis Strother of Charlottesville, Virginia. After listening to her for a while, I hoped her pocketbook was as grand as her ideas. “The lobby, of course, will be the central reception area. The receptionists will sign you in, discuss treatments, arrange for payment, and so on, then escort you to the appropriate dressing room.”
“There’ll be a men’s wing and a women’s wing,” Dante explained as we moved down the hallway of what would become the women’s wing.
“The locker rooms already exist,” Guy Winebarger informed me. “They were intended for the golfers, of course. Perfect, huh?”
In each wing, I learned, there’d be a hot tub to accommodate ten, each with its own lounge chairs, fresh towel cabinets, and refreshment centers. A sauna room and a steam room would be adjoining.
As we stood in the future hot tub area for women, Phyllis waxed almost poetic about it. “You’ll wait here,” she mused, “tubbing, reading, sipping a fruit smoothie, whatever, and when it’s time for your appointment, a uniformed attendant will appear to fetch you and take you to a private cubicle-I see walnut paneling, don’t you, Dante?-and you’ll have your massage, or facial.”
“Botox, too?” I asked as we passed through a set of double doors and stepped into the dining room. I had noticed Phyllis’s smooth, seamless forehead and was feeling frisky.
“Botox, too,” she said, not skipping a beat. “And when you’re ready to face the world again, you can take a plunge in the indoor/outdoor pool.” She waved an arm, indicating an expanse of glass that had been intended, I felt sure, to give the dining room a panoramic view of the Potomac River. “The pool will have to be built, of course,” she hastened to add, “but I see it starting here and ending…” She waved a hand toward the river. “… there.”
“With a vanishing edge, right?” I asked. If money were to be no object, might as well go for broke.
“Of course.”
The former club room and its thirty-foot bar, I soon learned, would become the spa’s dining room, where nutritious, low-carb lunches would be served, prepared by a master chef-Dante already had somebody in mind. “We won’t serve alcohol, of course, only a full range of designer waters and approved fruit juices.”
“If you want a blended drink,” Phyllis chortled, “it had better be a smoothie!”
At the end of the men’s wing, in a large room Winebarger said had been intended for a pro shop, we caught up with Emily and the children. When we pushed through the double doors, Emily spread her arms and spun around like Julie Andrews on the mountaintop in Sound of Music. She wound to a stop and grinned. “And this is going to be the day care center. I’m going to run it! Won’t it be wonderful?”
Chloe, who had been imitating her mother, kept spinning around the room like a dervish until she collided with a pillar and fell over. Jake pounced on his sister, and in a tangle of arms and legs, the two children giggled until they got hiccups. Just watching them made me laugh, too.
“But you’ll have to have a gift shop, right?” I pictured ball caps and bathrobes and T-shirts emblazoned with the spa’s logo; gift baskets of health care products; designer sunglasses; self-help books.
“That will be off the main entrance, where the developer’s office used to be,” Dante said.
They seemed to have it all worked out. And if Phyllis Strother’s check had cleared, there didn’t seem to be any financial impediments, either.
“Do you think Dad will approve?” Emily wanted to know.
“I don’t know why not.” I smiled, thinking of Paul’s measly five percent share. Looking around the building now, I figured we might end up owning the coat check room, or perhaps a restroom or two.
“Aunt Ruth is going to help with the decor.”
Why was I not surprised? Emily and my sister Ruth were soulmates. I could see it all now: banzai, meditation gardens, fountains, and wind chimes all over the place. With Ruth involved, everything would be perfectly feng shuied.
While Dante huddled with Phyllis and Guy, discussing what offer they were prepared to make on the property, I, “Hannah Alexander,” wandered the facility with Emily and the children. Outside the dining room windows, snow began to fall, dusting the tufts of brown winter grass with white.
“Emily, what are you going to name the spa?”
“‘Paradiso,’” she told me. “Dante’s Paradiso. Do you like it?”
“Yes,” I said truthfully. “I really do.”
Leaving Emily to play tag with the kids, I opened the door and stepped out on the patio. The future spa was set high on the riverbank, with no trees to break the wind that came roaring across the creek, tossing my hair about my ears. I pulled my coat more tightly around me. In addition to the renovations, the place would need serious landscaping.
I circled the building, making a mental list of all the work that needed to be done before the golf club became a spa. I grew discouraged, and more and more concerned that Emily and Dante might be overextending themselves, both physically and financially.
I’d forgotten about the Crown Vic until I heard its engine rev. I turned in the direction of the noise just in time to catch sight of the vehicle as it roared down the road, spewing slush and gravel in its wake, emergency lights flashing.
What’s that all about? Had the FBI lost interest in me?
“Paradiso.” I closed my eyes and lifted my face to the sky. Plump snowflakes fell on my cheeks, lingered there for a brief second before melting away. Paradiso.
O Lord, I prayed. Let it be so.
Paradise, after all, sometimes had a way of turning into hell.
After dinner at the Golden Star, where Chloe pronounced the shrimp with snow peas “yummy” and Jake worked the fried rice thoroughly into his hair, we returned to the Super 8 for baths and bed. With the children asleep in the queen-size bed next to me, I nestled under the covers and had just turned the channel to HBO when my cell phone rang.