"Get in the car," Mom said again. "Right now. Get the hell out, I mean it!"
I could have fought her. I could have taken what I knew about what he felt and thrown it at her, proved I was an adult now, just like her. But feeling grown up? I discovered something right then: It comes and it goes. I was still afraid of my mom.
I walked past her. I left her there with Peter.
I walked to the car. It was parked snugly next to Peter's, underneath the tree. I started toward the passenger door and stopped as a sudden strong breeze shook the tree and orange petals showered down. They fell softly on the hood like a blanket.
I scooped up some petals and crushed them in my fist. What was I going to do?
Mom had been paying attention all along. She knew how I felt about Peter. She knew exactly where to find me tonight. And now she'd tell Joe. I would never see Peter again if they had anything to say about it. They'd keep me a little girl in my pink dress forever if they could. They'd refuse to see what Peter had seen in me tonight.
But how grown-up could I be if I couldn't defy her? Why couldn't I run back and stand up to her?
I leaned against the car. I could just see my face in the reflection of the windshield. I could see it like a smudge on the window. I wanted to smash the scared little girl I saw there. Who was I more angry at, Mom or myself?
She ran up to the car, wrenched the door open, and I got in. I slid over to the passenger side, all the way up against the window, and she followed. She took off, tires spinning in the shells, reversing back down the driveway, and then heading for the hotel.
She drove fast with all the windows open. My cut stung and I felt blood running down the side of my face. I tasted it.
"Oh, Evie," she said. "Don't be a fool like me."
She pulled into the hotel parking lot and set the brake. She rested her head on the steering wheel. Then she straightened and tilted the mirror toward her. She slowly put on lipstick, making her shaking fingers cooperate.
Then she got out and slammed the car door. She smoothed her hair and her skirt, waiting for me before we went into the hotel.
"I'm not going to tell Joe," she said.
I looked at her, surprised.
"This will have to be our secret. And it can't happen again. It's already gone too far."
I wanted to tell her there was no going back. But what was the use?
"Never again," she said. "Promise me."
There was only the sharp sound of our heels on the pavement, filling up the silence between us. She had asked for my promise, and I hadn't given it. But she didn't ask for it again.
Chapter 21
Someone had left a raft floating in the pool. It kept bumping up against the rail near the steps. I thought maybe I could sleep on it. I took off my sandals and bunched up my skirt in one hand and went in and grabbed it, hoisted myself up. Water sloshed over the side and got my skirt wet. I pushed off from the side.
I wanted to stain this place, leave my mark after this night. I hoped my blood would fill up the pool, but it drifted away, a skinny ribbon of pink.
I floated for a long time. I found out that without sun, you don't get sleepy on a raft. You just get wet.
Then over my head I saw Mrs. Grayson looking down at me. She was dressed in a skirt and flat shoes, a handbag over her arm.
"What are you doing out here?" she asked.
"I couldn't sleep."
"So what are you doing in the pool, counting sheep?"
I raised myself up and started to paddle toward her. "Tom's packing the car."
"I thought you were staying until morning." I climbed out, dripping.
"The bed's not as comfortable as I thought." She stubbed out her cigarette and regarded it for a minute. Then she flicked it into the pool.
We were quiet for a minute, just watching the cigarette stub float. She had a sweater around her shoulders and she hugged herself and shivered, even though it was warm. I'd never seen her without lipstick on before. Ladies' mouths look so pale and small without lipstick.
"There's a storm coming. We heard it on the radio." Mrs. Grayson said this absently, looking off toward the ocean we couldn't see, a block away. "A hurricane. Supposed to hit south of us, near Miami."
"We didn't know the hotel was restricted," I said.
"Every Jew knows about Palm Beach. It's on the deeds to the houses, you know. No Negroes, no Jews."
"I don't understand. Why did you come?"
"Well, I guess the best way to say it is, Tom wanted to get away from everything he was, and this is as far as you can get."
I was suddenly so tired. I wanted to sit down, but I didn't want her to think that I didn't want to talk to her. "I thought you might be spies," I said.
She grunted a laugh. "Maybe we were."
"Why does he want to get away?" I asked.
She didn't say anything for a minute. She noticed the cut on my forehead. "What happened to you?"
"I ran into something tonight," I said.
"Do you know what Yom Kippur is?" she asked, and after I shook my head, she said, "It's a holy day for us, the Day of Atonement. Tom was 4-F, but the war left its mark on him, too. On Yom Kippur last year, he just... went to the movies. He wouldn't stay with us. He said it standing in his mother's living room. Atone?' he said. Tor what he did, God should atone to me! You should have seen his mother's face. Poor Elsa."
"What did God do to him?"
"Killed his cousins," she said. "Samuel was like a brother to him. Sam's wife, Nadia. And Irene, their daughter. She was just your age. She had your same birthday, October thirty-first."
"What happened to them? To Irene?" I pronounced it like she had — Ee-wren. So much prettier that way. And I could see her, this girl I didn't know. Not her face, but her. I could see her lying on a bed on her stomach, her ankles crossed, listening to the radio. Just a girl like me.
"We tried to get them out, all of them. We didn't know what happened to them until after the war. A family friend contacted us, someone who made it through the camps, who knew what happened."
A girl with my birthday died in the camps. A girl I didn't know. I could see her on the bed, swinging her feet to a tune on the radio. I couldn't see her taken away. I couldn't see what happened after that. I knew about the camps, but I hadn't really thought about them. I'd seen the articles, but we'd had so much of war. I hadn't wanted to think about it after it was over, after all the men were coming home. I hadn't wanted to listen to the whispers about Ruthie Kalman's cousins. I didn't want any more of the war. I was sick of the war. I had wanted to listen to Joe saying, It's over, over there, and here is where it's happening now.
"So where will you go?" I asked.
"Home. We're going to drive home."
"I don't understand any of it," I said. "Why they won't let you stay. Why any of this can happen. I mean, we just fought a whole war."
"It wasn't about the Jews, kiddo," Arlene said softly.
"Joe is so angry. He says he's going to talk to the manager in the morning —"
"Sure. That's swell. But he's staying, right? He's not checking out."
I was quiet. The idea of checking out hadn't occurred to him. Or Mom. Or me.
"I'm glad you saw it, Evie," she said. "It's a good thing for someone like you to see."
"Why? I hated seeing it! It made me sick!"
"That's exactly why. Do me a favor?" She gave me a piece of paper, folded twice. It was a letter written on the back of a page torn from a calendar. Because I bet they wouldn't even use the hotel stationery now. "Give this to Joe. It's from Tom."
"What does it say?"
"What Joe already knows. Tom's pulling out of the deal. We have to go home now." She smiled and leaned over to kiss me. "It was nice getting to know you a little bit, Evie Spooner."