Grandma’s Fiancé Requires Our Full Adversarial Response
No Picnic by Caroline Beimford
Each afternoon at five minutes to four, Gigi emerged, descended from the mezzanine, and filled three glasses with ice, Tanqueray, and a pimento olive. A freezer beneath the wet bar produced small, gem-like cubes of unusual translucence and the sound they made, ringing into lowballs, was more powerful and prompt than any salvo.
I brushed my hair and set it, then donned a bra with actual underwire. In solidarity, my mother had left curlers, and my sister and aunt Ellen had abandoned appropriate lipsticks behind the triple-pane mirror. The four of us agreed on very little, but we shared a porous, frizz-prone hair texture and freckly complexion with cool undertones.
It was time. The mirror revealed a winking corridor in each periphery, flanked by peach hand towels that had hung in the guest bath for as long as I could remember. As a child, I used to peer into the mirror, trying to see around myself and into the future, but today there was only my obsequious hair in endless replica.
“Why Nina,” my grandmother cooed from below. “How nice you look.” It was hard not to make an entrance on the spiral stair. A nightmare, my sister had called it, after visiting with her newly mobile twins. Alison took after our mother and Aunt Ellen, girlish women who needed husbands and things. Gigi and I were different.
“Your shoes are sparkling,” I observed.
“I stole them from Maeve,” she said, glancing down.
“Dead Maeve?” For the last quarter-century, Buck and his wife Maeve had traversed The Sorrento each day at four o’clock, from their pool-side one-bedroom to Gigi’s coveted two-story unit with Gulf views. Maeve died of a stroke three months ago, and Buck moved in with Gigi shortly after.
“Let’s not call her that.” Gigi returned to the drinks. “What’s going on with work?” Her gaze met mine in the mirrored bar.
“I’m taking a break.” I didn’t wish to speak about my job or private life. There wasn’t much to say. At thirty-five, this left me in an awkward position. Failure in career could be blamed on love. Failure in love could be blamed on career. Failure in both suggested some personal shortcoming. But I was here to save Gigi, and at that, I would not fail.
I tried to tell if she looked older. Ninety-four now, but with two new hips and a cooler shade of gray. She’d accepted my compliment factually: “I was so attached to the champagne blonde, but silver suits me. I admit it.” The shoes clicked and glittered through the condo. Maeve had dressed like a card shark but Gigi kept herself classic. Linen and a splurgy handbag. Pink lipstick. Her secret to a youthful complexion was not to get too thin. “You’ve got to hit it just right though—type 2 is no picnic.”
“I want to hear about you.” We settled in the lounge. “You’re the one suddenly getting married.”
“Would you like to be a bridesmaid?”
Gigi and Buck had announced their engagement a week ago, leaving us little time for shock. They were holding a simple ceremony in the chapel of St. Ann’s on the first of the month.
I wasn’t going to let her flirt her way out of this. “You’ve known Buck forever,” I said. “Why marry him?”
Her gaze flicked to the clock. A minute to four. “If he’s late, maybe I won’t.” She shrugged like a glamorous starlet, evasive and smooth.
“Have you been lonely?”
The door crashed open. In the time it took Buck to enter and close it behind him, the condo was invaded by the violent white noise of The Sorrento’s atrium waterfall.
“May,” Buck nodded at Gigi.
I didn’t like that my grandmother’s first name was so similar to his recently deceased wife’s.
“Nina.” His greeting was a guttural grunt. Did she expect us to believe she was in love with him? My mother said dementia could manifest through unusual attachments.
For eighty-one, Buck was not unattractive. Dapper, still erect, and with hair that held a wave. Ellen speculated about a long-standing affair, but Gigi was neither a hypocrite nor a tragic figure. If she had wanted Buck before, she’d have had him, free and clear.
I knew Buck would ask about the pool and his cabana key. It was all he could ever think to ask about. I invented an excuse about work.
“For whom?” asked Gigi. “I thought you were taking a break.”
“I am,” I said. “I’m here!”
Gigi’s look conveyed concern and a little pity. “Do you want me to call Bernard?”
“No,” I said, perhaps too quickly. Gigi’s old friend in the DNC had procured me half the campaign jobs I’d ever had. I didn’t want another one.
“Your mother says you’re in a funk.”
“She always says that after we lose.”
“You do look run down.”
“Only because I’m not tan.” I dearly hoped my mother had not mentioned the breakup. “Floridians forget what it’s like up there.”
Gigi sighed. “I suppose it’s all become a little sordid and pointless, hasn’t it?” I usually found comfort in Gigi plucking out my feelings and speaking them aloud. Today her insight hurt. My face must have betrayed me. She turned to Buck. “Nina’s going to be my maid of honor!” she announced.
“Good get.” Buck nodded. “No easy task in matron-city.”
I felt disoriented. “What about Shireen?” Gigi’s withdrawal from her social circles was another item of recent alarm. As a hostess and booster for the scattered liberals of the southern Gulf, Gigi was integral to the state machine. Shireen, a major bundler, was her oldest friend.
“Shireen has become somewhat unbearable in her old age,” said Gigi.
“She says you’ve entirely disappeared.”
“All anyone talks about is who died and what’s happening with the estate. I’m tired of it.”
Buck grunted approvingly.
“Are you sure I can’t call Bernard? I don’t like to think of you idle and wallowing over some man.”
So my mother had mentioned him. “No thanks,” I said. Surely she had excluded his marital status, given Gigi’s strong moral opinions. “There’s no rush.” I knew better than to joke about how I didn’t need the money.
“So, your guy lost?” Buck interjected.
“I generally work with women.”
He rolled his eyes. “So your gal lost?”
“A win was only one of several acceptable outcomes.”
Buck shrugged. “Winners win.”
I maintained my bright, informative tone. “She still managed to pull the incumbent left.”
“Left.” He made it sound like a slur.
“Yes,” I couldn’t help responding. “Toward sanity.”
“Women,” Buck gurgled, “talking about sanity.”
“I beg your pardon?” It was my standard response to hostile men, but I knew I sounded shrill.
“Nina,” Gigi said sharply. I looked down at Buck’s puckered pectorals to deescalate. At his high white socks and Keds. Practically a child again. “I need to ask a favor while you’re here.” Gigi’s hostess’ instincts finally rose to the trick of redirection. “I’ve been having a problem with intruders—” The grunt sounded. “Buck—let me finish. I know what I saw, and what I saw were knees.”
“Knees?”
“Men’s knees. Up there.” Gigi pointed towards the mezzanine. Her condo had an exit on the second floor, though it was rarely used. From my seat, I could see a sliver of the landing through the floating staircase. “Twice I was sitting here and saw knees on the mezzanine.”
“Was it Al? Handymen?”
“This isn’t a hotel. I screamed! I completely screamed, both times, and the knees fled.” Gigi was indignant. “Does that sound like a handyman?”
“So they’re using the door up there.”
“I keep that door locked.”
Buck had spent his endurance for silence. “Seeing things,” he spouted.
“Was it you?” I accused.
“I’m worried,” Gigi insisted. “I may have a stalker.”
“She’s told me about her sister.” Buck said.
“Sister-in-law,” corrected Gigi. “Poor Elyse. She called the police nearly every day.”
“Why?” I’d heard of a batty great aunt, but never met her.
Gigi sighed. “She swore men from the CIA broke into her house at night to paint the ceilings.”
I couldn’t help but laugh.
“You need to help me catch him.”
“The man with the knees,” I said gravely. I refused to align with Buck by not taking her suspicions seriously. “I’ll look into it,” I pledged.
After dinner I checked my phone, forgetting about The Sorrento’s dead zone. I’d been told the lobby was newly wired, but my feed only refreshed inside the elevator, of all places. No news, but plenty of updates. Nothing from Mateo, the man for whom I would not wallow. The campaign was over. I wouldn’t even see him at work now.
I hadn’t told my friends about him, so they weren’t calling. In my twenties I would have, before anyone had husbands or children. Now, I knew their allegiances would be torn between me and his poor imagined wife, their three young sons. My mother only knew because I’d run into her at a fundraiser after too many champagnes.
The doors opened on the lobby, where the din of the waterfall was worst. Welcome to Niagara Falls, was how Gigi greeted guests now. The remodel had failed to account for the acoustics of all that marble. I missed the jungle-print rug and player piano. The basin for the cascade gaped wide and shallow, chlorinated teal. No Wading, a sign read. No Coins.
I explored the spaces for holding meetings and getting fit. In a tiny powder room, I found a spot they’d missed. The jungle-print rug survived! Acid-trip ruffles of pink and green fronds that now felt like treading on a Keith Haring. I looked at myself in the vanity. Was this the face of a woman who had lost her way? Introspection became tedious quickly.
In the office, I found Al reading Tiger in the Smoke. He read with such intensity that interrupting him felt like a small violence. “Nina!” he called. “What can I do for you?”
I broached the subject of the knees. No evidence, he swore, had appeared on the lobby footage of any intruder. “No one’s reported similar issues?”
“No,” fretted Al, “though I’ve insisted she call immediately if anything seems amiss.”
This was charming but not very useful. Al was a professional in the register of chivalric doorman, but his heart was in a cozy mystery. When I asked who had access to master keys, he stiffened. Al’s brother Cecco worked mornings, and Facilities consisted of Al’s two nephews. The whole clan came from “the original Naples.”
I backtracked. “Think she’s losing it?” It seemed wiser to besmirch my own family’s honor than risk any slight to his, but I only perturbed Al further.
“Your grandmother is sharp as a tack,” he repeated. “A tack.”
Six days until the wedding.
Five.
Gigi’s schedule felt mysterious and fixed, and did not include me, or even Buck, except at cocktail hour. Mostly, she stayed in her bedroom with the news at high volume. I sat in the kitchen and checked the extension, but on the occasions it rang, Gigi seemed only to be eliciting grim medical updates from one small and taffyish voice. Every few hours, I pressed my ear to her door, but didn’t knock.
As a teen, I’d felt no such reservations. I barged in at all hours to lie on her bed and argue with the television. Confide or confess as needed. In college, frustrated that no one wanted to talk about Cheney or Iraq or stagflation, I’d call Gigi, who could be relied upon to be appalled and entirely up to date. Gigi, I’d say, can you believe it? and she’d say: I cannot. Or: This is just insane. Then she’d call back after talking to Bernard to explain what was really going on.
I called less now. Perhaps much less, lately. Didn’t everyone? I wondered if Gigi was punishing me.
At noon, Buck left for golf, and she emerged. As a child, I’d dreaded Gigi’s lunches, each mayonnaise mélange she called salad a fresh horror. Now I loved them. Together we ate tuna, noodles, grapes off little saucers. I’d shimmied us into a conversation about cooking for one, and finally on to Buck. “A catch” she kept calling him. “Most of the men are dead.”
“Why not live with women?” I asked her. “We’re all much pleasanter and know how to do things.”
“What can I say,” she said. “It’s nice to have a man around. I know it’s not new-fangled.”
“You used to say you’d never trade your freedom after getting it back.” It sounded like an accusation, but when I was in high school, it had made a profound impression.
“I’m sure I did,” said Gigi.
“So what are you doing with Buck?”
“Whatever I want!” She ignored me, tidying.
“What about your freedom?”
“You try growing old alone.”
I am, I wanted to say, but knew it would not be well received. I followed her out of the kitchen and towards the stairs. I invited her to the pool. “You can’t stop exercising,” I scolded her departing back. “It’s important for longevity.”
“I’m ninety-four,” she called over her shoulder. “I’ve won.”
The pool was thick with women bobbing in unison. I sat in the sun with one of Mateo’s novels. We had pillaged one another’s pantheons as a form of foreplay, but now five pages felt like holding my breath underwater. All around me people sunbathed with intensity, or strolled between the cabanas and ice machine. All were equipped with a Tervis tumbler, clinking and redolent. I had an epiphany about the cabanas. They were full of booze.
The sun moved, and I retreated to the elevator. Nothing from Mateo, nor anyone looking to hire me in the shuffle of post-midterm turnover.
Messages from my mother.
Ellen had a good forensic accountant from her last divorce, she texted. SHOULD WE SIC HIM ON BUCK?
I couldn’t help but feel Buck was not worthy of our full adversarial response.
I couldn’t help but feel Buck was not worthy of our full adversarial response.
WHAT THEN? read the texts.
I’M WORKING ON IT.
I had succumbed to sitting on the floor to type and scroll when the doors reopened on a pair of knees. “Is this the seated car?” a boy—man?—asked, grinning down. The boy’s skin said he was five to ten years younger than me.
“The lobby wifi’s awful.”
“Good to know.” He twirled his racket with a flick of the wrist. “You play?”
“Not really.”
His chin tilted in a light scold. “I’ll see you by the pool, then.”
He had that god’s gift energy I hated, but I smiled.
“Al says you’ve been spending time in the elevator,” Gigi said at cocktail hour.
“It’s the only place I can work.”
Buck: “There’s a business center.”
“The internet is best in the elevator.”
Gigi hummed and sipped. “I’m sure it’s fine if you aren’t bothering anyone.”
“I like it,” I replied lamely. “It hasn’t been remodeled.”
Gigi rolled her eyes. “They tried.”
“We got our very own Jewish cabal on the twelfth floor,” barked Buck.
“I beg your pardon?”
He became animated. “They wanted their special elevator.”
“A Shabbat elevator,” Gigi clarified. “It was hardly a calamity.”
“Why’d they buy on the twelfth floor if they can’t use the elevator?”
Gigi addressed me calmly, as though I was the one complaining. “It was one elevator, one day a week. But no one could agree.”
“I see,” I said. My most diplomatic line.
Gigi visited the bar. “Is your mother still having those Holocaust dreams?”
I didn’t wish to speak about my mother’s strange, private dreamlife in front of Buck. Mercifully, he’d become disinterested. “She’s into lucid dreaming now.”
“She was always hiding in haystacks,” Gigi mused. My mother never recounted the dreams to me in detail. “She and the children she was rescuing. She’d hold her breath as Nazis speared the hay. I’d barge into her bedroom, worried she was choking, but she’d be dead asleep.”
“Did they spear the children?” I asked.
Gigi shrugged. “I always said it was all those Leon Uris books they assigned in school.”
Buck nodded off, whinnying faintly.
“I guess that explains the lucid dreaming.”
She squinted. “What’s that?”
I described how my mother envisioned what she wished to dream, then trained her subconscious to follow the plot. “Like a sitcom.”
“That works?”
“She’s developed a whole storyline involving Jude Law.”
Gigi raised her drink. “Better than haystacks.”
We watched Buck shift in his chair, still making animal sounds.
“Your grandfather could’ve used that trick.” Gigi exhaled as Buck settled. “He had them too,” she said. “Not quite nightmares . . . They started after that kerfuffle with 60 Minutes.” I had heard of no kerfuffle. Gigi sighed. “They brought him on to discuss Chlorofluorocarbons and Industry.” All I knew about my grandfather’s company was that they’d jarred peanut butter and filled aerosol cans with hairspray. “He tried to explain that they changed their process as soon as the science was clear—but when it aired, they only showed him talking about the car wax nozzle and how the EPA made them a superfund site.” Gigi rose for another drink. “That’s when the dreams started,” Gigi called, waking Buck. “Ozone guilt. He never trusted the media after that.”
“Smart man,” said Buck.
I’d been screening my mother’s calls but accepted the conference with Ellen as a compromise.
“Where have you been?” my mother demanded.
“Service is horrible here.”
“Are they still engaged?”
“For now,” I growled. “Did you know about the knees?”
“Knees?”
“She’s been seeing knees.”
“Oh, the stalker,” said Ellen. “I assumed it was Buck.”
“I taped a piece of my hair across the second-floor door. So far, no one’s come in or out.”
“Paranoia’s on the rise in the elderly,” said Ellen.
“This is what I’m talking about.” There was an eager sheen in my mother’s voice, like oil on water. “Paranoid behavior could be useful.”
“I’d hardly call it paranoid,” I said.
My mother: “Has she gone out at all?”
Ellen: “In August, it was just cable news and gin.”
My mother: “And Buck.”
Ellen: “Shireen says he convinced her to stop contributing.”
I felt the familiar fatigue of being right about all my worst suspicions. “And now I’m here. We look party sponsored.”
My mother scolded me. “Don’t be nasty. Shireen is one her oldest friends.”
Ellen: “She can’t believe Gigi’s marrying him either.”
My mother pounced. “Do you think she’d be willing to file a complaint?”
I made an incredulous sound.
“The lawyers say that in the event of a worst-case scenario, Florida’s deathbed marriage statues could help us invalidate his claims after the fact. But our case would be stronger if there were reports already on file that suggested fear of fraud or elder abuse.”
“Shireen’s the one who will look guilty of fraud if she files that complaint,” I said.
“You should file one with Adult Protective Services while you’re there,” my mother continued. “As insurance for her own protection.”
“You’re serious,” I said. “Gigi is saner than you are.”
“It isn’t about sanity,” said my mother. “It’s about influence and manipulation. Frankly, I’m concerned you don’t see the logic here.”
“Nina, it’s a failsafe!” I could almost see Ellen waving her bangled wrists around. “She would never even know about it!”
“I would know,” I said.
“Don’t be naïve,” my mother hissed. She’d never been able to manage me, but she knew how to deploy my least favorite accusations. I felt a powerful and refreshing lividness. Why? Because it was Gigi? I suppose if anything was sacred, it was her.
“She claims she’s seen an intruder twice,” I said, returning to the facts.
“A stalker?” Ellen scoffed. “In The Sorrento?”
“Al is hardly a paragon of vigilance.”
“Open your eyes,” my mother snapped. “This is your inheritance, too. At the rate you’re going, you’ll need it more than any of us.”
“What is that supposed to mean?” Though I knew perfectly well. Each of them with their stately husbands.
“Stop it,” said Ellen. “Can we not all agree that Buck must go?”
I kept silent.
“Good,” said Ellen.
My mother: “You’ll file the report?”
The elevator opened to admit a woman I recognized as Buck’s daughter. She had two first names I could never recall and seemed impossibly pleasant.
I hung up and greeted her. Had she heard about the stalker? It took only a moment to match her voice to the sticky-sweet tone from the landline. “An intruder?” She frowned over the news, contemplative with true concern. Teens had been breaking and entering for opioids downtown, but nothing this far up the boulevard. “I doubt they’d pick a building with security!” I was struck by her credulous expression and bad skin. Her air of exhausted good nature. She had the perfect face for a campaign ad.
During cocktail hour, I told Gigi I was installing a chain-lock on the mezzanine. Since scotch-taping my hair there, I’d found no empirical evidence of any intruder.
Gigi frowned. “It will look like a motel.” Then she stood, alarmed by a sudden thought. “Did you see him?”
“See who?”
“My stalker!”
“No.”
“Oh.” She sat back down. “They were very hairy,” she mused.
We’d returned to the knees. “What color?”
“White.”
I glanced at Buck with renewed suspicion. “He must be older.”
“White skin,” Gigi corrected. “Fair hair.”
At The Sorrento, this hardly narrowed things. “Do you have any valuables here?” I asked her.
“I keep everything important in the building safe.”
Buck joined us. “Smart woman.”
“Not much there,” Gigi went on. “But you should know where to check if I die.”
“Gigi.”
“Papers, mostly. I donated the jewelry.” Gigi drank deeply. “Don’t tell Ellen. She’s sentimental about that sort of thing.”
“What was the cause?” I asked innocently.
“One of Shireen’s auctions. Those pieces were the belle of the ball.”
After my grandfather died, Gigi went from quietly neutralizing his vote at the polls to donating large chunks of his estate to his age-old enemy, the Democratic party. There had been a fair measure of glee in it for her, but she couldn’t seem to beckon it now.
Buck grunted his disapproval. “You want to end up on a fixed income?”
I wondered if Buck was attempting a joke. Gigi waved him off. “The auction was years ago.”
I persisted. “I’ve always admired your purge, Gigi. I tell that story to women all the time, and it really moves them. You’ve inspired a lot of giving.”
Buck grew irritable. “Fools.” He gripped his armrests as though experiencing turbulence. Gigi looked irked by my antics, wise to what I was doing. He muttered louder. “A man works his whole life for his family, and how is he thanked?”
“Fix me a drink, Buck.” Gigi held her glass in the air. “My hips ache.” He twitched some more but did as she asked. Gigi turned to me. “Mind your manners.”
“Buck seems awfully concerned about the state of the family coffers,” I said.
“Then you have that in common!”
“I’m concerned about you,” I hissed.
“And I’m concerned about Buck.”
“Why?”
“He’s right you know,” she snapped. “A fixed income is no picnic.”
Buck returned with her drink.
“What’s wrong?” he asked, looking between us. It seemed he was not entirely oblivious.
“Nina was bullying me,” Gigi said, with a mean look. “She thinks I should wear white to the wedding.”
I excused myself from dinner. The beach was pretty but too calm. I walked until a canal of mangroves bisected the sand and I had to turn back. I sensed it was a character flaw that beaches made me nervous. Too much openness. Sky. Water. Reflect! the beach entreated. People always said I took after her, even if they never meant it entirely as a compliment. The comparison pleased me. Gigi was sharp. I did not understand her withdrawal and disinterest. Her snappish defense of Buck, of all people.
Back in the elevator, I searched the address and phone number for Adult Protective Services. I couldn’t bring myself to call, but I sent an email.
Outside the elevator, the waterfall crashed and echoed. In the condo, I listened at Gigi’s door. The television roared. Her rest had always been fitful, and the sound of the television bore no relation to whether she watched or slept. Buck was in there now. How could he stand it? I lifted a box of Cocoa Puffs from the pantry and ate them in defiance on the tasseled cream sofa. I had four days. I was her favorite. That was plenty.
At lunch, over a salad of minced ham on English muffins, Gigi encouraged me to get out more.
“Gigi,” I said, placing my muffin on the corner of the sink. “I’m here for you.”
“Honey,” she said, with a trace of her old tone, “you’re here because your mother thinks you can change my mind about the wedding. You can’t, so you may as well take it easy. Go to the Beach Club.”
I decided to admit nothing. “Will you go with me?”
“Sure,” said Gigi. “That sounds nice.”
“Today?”
She frowned. “Buck will be back by four.”
“Tell him we’re having a girl’s night.”
Gigi was firm. “If I don’t feed him, he just drinks and eats a can of bar nuts.”
“He’s a grown man.”
Gigi looked at me blankly.
“What about his daughter?”
“Darryl Ann has enough on her plate.” Gigi sealed the tub of ham and ran the water.
I flailed for a strategy. “I miss when it was just us.”
Gigi cocked her head. “How old are you?”
“Thirty-five.”
“And isn’t that old enough to think about other people?”
“You are my other person.”
“Nina,” she set her dish in the sink. “You’ve been here a few days—”
“Nearly a week—”
“—and it’s been lovely.” She looked at me pointedly. “But you’ll be off again before you know it.”
I knew the punch line. She didn’t have to say it. I grabbed for the dishrag, but Gigi boxed me from the sink. I hovered beside her, pathetically empty-handed. “We’re just worried about you,” I said, retreating into the cowardly “we.”
She set down the rag. “How do I look?” She faced me, almost posing. She held out her arms and swiveled her hips. “Well?” she demanded. “How do I look?”
“You look great,” I said, defeated. She did. Plump, tan, bare-footed, hair bobbed, fresh hips to steer her whole torso. Attempting to wield power over Gigi was a farce. She was the source.
“Good enough,” she said, turning back to the sink.
“Too good for Buck,” I mumbled. I couldn’t help it. “Will you at least be protecting yourself?”
“You make it sound like I need body armor.” She was taunting me.
“Confirm or deny.”
She paused. “I haven’t decided.” She held out a soapy hand to prevent my retort. “Do not for one more minute try to pretend this is for my own good.” The dish clattered lightly onto the porcelain. “I’ve asked for help with one thing.” She was shaking her head into the basin. “For someone to catch my stalker.”
“Alleged stalker,” I snapped. My comment managed to actually deflate her.
“I’m surprised at you,” she murmured, and left. Gigi, in retreat! Talking with her had become like walking through a familiar room in the dark, after someone has rearranged the furniture. I finished the dishes, went upstairs. Her door was shut. Downstairs, I paced around, but was sick of seeing myself in every surface. I grabbed my suit and the cabana key.
The cabana smelled of mildew and Coppertone. Beside a rack of faded beach chairs, a storage shelf held a handle of Svedka, a case of Tropicana, and a selection of insulated tumblers bearing the logos of golf invitationals. The tepid overhead fixture flickered then snuffed itself, but the sun through the slats was enough to see by.
The cup of vodka and juice tasted hot and disgusting until I recalled the ice machine. The pulp barnacled the cubes and the whole thing looked radioactive. I drank it quickly and felt better.
The clamor by the pool was too much, so I opted for a lounger set apart by fan palms and a low concave wall painted silver. I knew this wall had a function, but I liked it mainly for the privacy it afforded. I lay there, letting the sun bake my thoughts into little crisps, and fell asleep.
“Sorry to disturb,” said the boy from the elevator. “But I think you’re burning.”
I looked down, feeling the truth of his statement in the tight, hot skin on the tops of my thighs, arms, and chest. “Shit,” I said, sitting up.
“The reflectors’ll get you.”
“What’s your name again?”
“Drew,” he smiled, offering his shirt. “Want to share my umbrella?”
In truth, I wanted to keep his shirt and dispense with his company, but flirting with a ruddy-cheeked catalogue specimen was the least I could do while Mateo was out there, still married and not calling.
In truth, I wanted to keep his shirt and dispense with his company, but flirting with a ruddy-cheeked catalogue specimen was the least I could do while Mateo was out there, still married and not calling.
I followed Drew to the shaded loungers as he spoke of his own grandmother’s struggle with retirement. “I’m the cheer package.”
“Lucky her,” I played along.
“And you?” Drew asked.
“I’m here to break up my grandmother’s wedding.”
“No shit.” He grinned. “For real?”
My skin, beneath his shirt, began to pulse. “Younger man,” I added. “Republican.”
Drew’s enthusiasm dimmed, but after another of his full-body surveys, I saw he wasn’t going to let my politics bother him.
I adjusted to stay in the shade. “I wish there were more umbrellas.”
“My Gran loves complaining about the condo fees.”
I snorted. “The waterfall?”
“They truck in the beach sand, too.” He stretched his shoulders showily. “She’s thinking of suing. She doesn’t believe sand could possibly cost what the Condo Association says it does.” Drew had muscles that could be identified in tidy, hairless groups and I found this sweet and obnoxious.
“We should hang out,” Drew said when I stood.
“Hang out,” I repeated.
“Yeah.” He found nothing overfamiliar about jabbing two fingers into my waist. “Hang out.”
Was he leering? Or simply squinting into high sun?
Cocktail hour was quiet. I didn’t bother with my hair and could tell it was an effort for Gigi to withhold comment. By five, my skin began to emit a thrumming heat. Gigi gave me two aspirin and a gin and tonic, her version of babying. Her look said I’d done this to myself.
I went to bed early but woke from a fever dream in which I was falling. I landed with a thud on the Resolute Desk. Mateo and Drew had merged as President, and when they stood, they were wearing Keds. It was an obscene time to be awake, but when I stumbled into the kitchen, I found Gigi there with a bowl of cereal. She was reading the paper.
“Are those Cocoa Puffs?”
Gigi squinted. “So?”
“I thought they were for the twins.”
“You think Alison bought these?” It was true, my sister was not a laissez-faire parent. “What can I say,” Gigi went on. “I just—love them.” She threw up her hands as though she spoke about physical attraction or where we go after death. “You look awful.”
“I fell asleep by the reflector wall.”
Gigi nodded. “Stay inside today.” She looked down at her paper. “Have you read this?” She tilted the page. Seeing the headline in print made the news itself seem quaint.
“Obscene.”
Gigi shook her head. “They’re not even trying to hide it.”
I considered insinuating all the obvious similarities between the men in question and her very own fiancée, but I was too tired to summon my rutted schtick. My skin felt like a tomato’s in a pan. I shook my head. “It never ends.” I ate my own bowl of Cocoa Puffs in silence, cherishing it, afraid to disburse the density of this old, familiar atmosphere.
By midday, I had accrued several messages. UPDATES PLEASE NINA, read my mother’s latest. From my sister: I THOUGHT YOU WERE SUPPOSED TO BE A STRATEGIC OPERATIONS SPECIALIST. The wedding was in two days.
Darryl Ann boarded the elevator on Gigi’s floor. “Your grandmother is such a blessing,” she gushed as we descended. “My dad was so depressed before. Now look at him.”
I found myself incapable of assessing her sincerity. How did she truly feel about her father moving on so quickly? “I imagine it was a real shock to lose a partner of fifty years,” I said instead.
“My mother, their home—it would be too much for me, that’s for sure.”
“Their home?” I inquired politely.
“The Sorrento was always a bit rich for their pension,” Darryl Ann confided. “But lately? With all the fees? No way. We’ve been trying to convert our garage, but it’s impossible to get a contractor between hurricanes. When he moved in with May, it was a lifesaver, let me tell you.”
She chatted on, but I was ill-equipped to do anything but nod. I suppose I had stopped expecting an explanation, but here it was. My dismay surprised me. Was Gigi on a guilt trip? Or had she been fully conned?
Daryll Ann squeezed my hand before bustling into the lobby. “Love is a beautiful thing!”
I wore a red dress for cocktail hour. Unflattering, but it was the garment that touched my skin in the fewest possible places.
I was at the bar when Gigi started screaming. “It’s him! Hey you—it’s him! Hey, I see you. Hey you!” Buck twisted in his chair but did not rise. Gigi was pointing at the mezzanine, yelling and spilling her drink. I darted around but saw nothing. I listened for the door, but was distracted by the scream of my skin where Gigi had grabbed me. I would comfort her. I would go after him. I couldn’t organize my thoughts. “It’s him!” she kept repeating.
“Should I make chase?” The phrase came straight from a cozy mystery.
“White shorts!” she called, as I jogged up the stairs and out the second-floor door, realizing too late I’d ruined my own trap. White shorts. White knees. There was no one in the hall. I scanned the empty atrium from above. The waterfall obliterated all sound. The stairwell was silent. I ducked into the office, but Al had seen nothing.
At the pool, the usual scene. A hand on my waist made me jump.
“Hey,” said Drew. “You okay?” His breath smelled of rum and Coke. I headed for the beach and Drew followed. “How’s the burn?” he asked. “I’ve got aloe in my bag.”
“Did you see a man in white shorts come through here?”
“What sort of man?”
In this case, I couldn’t blame Drew for being useless. From the boardwalk, I surveyed the sand. “Can you see?”
“See what?”
“Help me! Is there a man in white shorts running in either direction?”
Drew peered around dutifully but shook his head. “Want to tell me what this is about?”
“Someone’s been breaking into my grandmother’s condo,” I said, leaning back against the railing, disappointed beyond all logic.
“Can I fix you a drink?” Drew touched my waist again. “Looks like you could use one.”
I brandished my key to Buck’s cabana.
“I’ve always wanted one of these,” Drew said, looking around the dank closet. “It’s like a hideout.” He shut the slatted door to make his point.
“For an alcoholic.” I grasped for a tumbler in the dim.
“Or other things.” Drew was suddenly close, pressing my body into the shelving unit. His mouth latched onto my neck and his pelvis ground my hip bones into the rough edge of plywood. I grunted with pain and knocked over the vodka.
“Whoa.” I righted the bottle, which had already glugged over my dress and onto the floor. This was not my first groping, but it had been years since I’d encountered this brand of it, suffused in the smell of sunscreen, vodka and orange juice. “Stop,” I said. “Stop now.” He slid his hands from my waist to my arms. My burned skin seared as he squeezed and I screamed. The sound sent him backwards, though he looked disgruntled more than guilty. I fled the cabana to poolside looks, and marched back into the building.
In the forgotten powder room, the rug soothed me. I blotted the dress. My skin was so angry, so red and tender and betrayed. It throbbed, and my heart hammered, a strange racket that would not slow. I didn’t know why I felt so upset. I had endured worse.
The man with the knees could have hidden in the trash room or ducked inside a condo. Hardly anyone locked their doors here. Did Gigi know Buck had nowhere else to go? Did she accept his proposal under duress? The vodka fumes thickened but I refused to wretch. The roar of the lobby smacked me.
In the office, Gigi and Buck were speaking to Al. When she spotted me through the glass, Gigi rushed out. “Did you find him?”
“Of course she didn’t find him,” Buck bellowed, wheezing behind her. “There’s nothing to find!”
I shook my head at Gigi, who looked defeated or, perhaps, frightened. Of the man? Or the chance that there had never been a man at all?
Buck cackled in her face.
“Go away,” I told Buck.
He drew himself up. “I live here.”
My skin throbbed. My heart continued to beat with unusual fervor.
“Nina—” Gigi’s voice was sharp again. I looked at her, in her linen shift and sparkling shoes. All I remembered of Maeve was that she had terrible posture and smoked over the pool. “He’s taking advantage of you,” I said.
“May,” Buck barked with his schoolboy’s bluster, “I’ve had about enough of this.”
“May. Maeve. You barely had to change a syllable!” I sneered. “Though you certainly upgraded otherwise.”
I suppose I was the one to approach Buck, to bring myself in range of him. There was a choreography to baiting someone that came naturally. He looked down at me with offense and hatred, his powdery gingivitis smell all at once too pungent and everywhere. With no warning, he reared back and spit.
The gob sprayed my neck and cheek. I felt powerfully that I must keep the spit from entering my body through my eyes or mouth. My breathing quickened, had never slowed, and I could no longer hear Gigi, who was using a tone of voice I had always dreaded. I’d never had a panic attack, but my short, fast breaths suggested some onrushing rupture. I climbed into the basin and stepped under the waterfall.
The force was pummeling and I struggled to breathe, but in a new way. I’d once watched my sister look down at her thrashing newborns after trying every trick she had to soothe them. She wailed right into their faces. Stunned and befuddled, they quieted.
Then, abruptly, the water was gone. Its source, two stories up, had been cut. I looked out at Buck and Gigi, fuming beside the basin. Inside the office, Al was on the telephone.
“Get out of there,” Gigi snapped at me. “Buck?” He turned to her. “You should go.”
“I live here,” he said again, though this time with less certainty.
“You spit on my granddaughter,” Gigi stated.
Buck whirled toward the basin and back, as though conflicted over where to direct his ire. His body jerked with age and discombobulation.
“The wedding’s off,” Gigi informed him. Her voice had become soft and rueful. “Al will call Darryl Ann.”
Even Buck knew not to argue. He looked stunned. When his gaze swiveled back to me, his nostrils flared, but he said nothing.
Gigi turned and walked carefully toward the elevators.
I began to shiver. Was this triumph?
Inside her bedroom, I could hear the television. When Gigi didn’t answer, I entered anyway.
She was slumped against the pillows. “I wanted to help him,” Gigi announced, glaring stubbornly at the screen.
“He was using you,” I said. I didn’t like seeing her neck that way.
“You think I didn’t know?” Gigi made a sad, tired sound. “He’s lived down the hall for twenty-five years. Daryll Ann has three kids and a sick husband. What’s the harm in having Buck in the guest room if it helps them?”
“He was sleeping in here!”
Gigi straightened and it was a relief to see her neck correct itself. “He was sleeping in here because you arrived and took the guest room! It was very inconvenient.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. So she pitied him. Fine. “But why marriage?”
Gigi closed her eyes. “Buck is a proud man.”
I couldn’t bear how forlorn she looked. Weary and, with every moment, less angry and more defeated. “So take him back,” I said. A flail.
“He spit on you,” said Gigi. “I can’t forgive that.” Her tone had turned hard and aloof.
My dress had become a cold wet skin. “It’s my fault, really. I baited him.”
“Your judgement,” Gigi stated. “I’m worried about it.”
“I’m sorry,” I repeated.
Gigi closed her eyes. “I’m tired now.”
I hesitated. “What about Buck?”
Gigi opened her eyes but wouldn’t look at me. “He’ll have to find another way.”
I couldn’t help it. I continued. “Would you really have left them everything?”
Gigi looked at her hands. “I was considering it.”
“Why?”
“It’s done none of you any favors.”
“Even me?”
She frowned at the hem of my unflattering dress. “You’re dripping on the rug.”
In the guest bath, I stripped and swallowed some aspirin, but as I drank from the faucet, the old trick of the triple mirror took hold. The worlds opened up on either side. Me, again, forever until death. Red, lonely, compromised. It took three tries to free myself. The water gushed. I had to close my eyes to lean in again to shut it off.
The robe was cool against my skin as I crept back beneath the cover of the television. Gigi did not stir. Her eyes were closed, her neck lolled back.
I sat, hoping she’d wake like she used to, at any true noise or movement. Immune to the raving television yet attuned to the living world. But my presence didn’t register, even when I reclined on the far side of the bed and felt the dip of it, her divot so much deeper in the soft mattress. “I’ve had twenty more years to dig it,” was her line.
“It’s good you’re spending time with her,” Al had said when I arrived. “Though if anyone could live forever, it’s your grandmother.”
The man on the television was yelling. The woman on the television was yelling. I shut off the television, which expired in its old-fashioned way, with an audible hiss. Beside me, Gigi stirred. She groped for the remote. I grasped her hand and held it.
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