"I'll never be like that, Jimmy."
"Yeah, you promise now," Jimmy said, "but I can see in just the short time I've been here watching you around the hotel—signing this, talking to some department head about that, listening to this one complain and that one—that you like it already."
"I'm just trying to learn everything as quickly as I can, Jimmy. You saw Randolph and how terribly distracted he is.
He doesn't do anything to help run the hotel, not really. It's fallen on Mr. Dorfman, Mr. Updike and me," I explained. "But I'll always have time for you."
"Don't make promises you can't keep," he admonished. "I won't. Jimmy, you're scaring me. Now stop it," I said. He laughed and kissed the tip of my nose.
"All right. We'll take it as it comes, Mrs. Longchamp," he said. I smiled at the sound of that, and we talked about our wedding and about our honeymoon. Jimmy wanted us to go to Cape Cod.
"It will be nice at that time of the year, spring, and I remember how Daddy used to talk about going up there all the time," Jimmy said.
"He talked about going to a lot of places, Jimmy," I reminded him. Daddy Longchamp was full of dreams in those days, dreams and hopes.
"I know, but this one was kind of like the magical place for him. Well, he and Momma never got there, but we will. Okay?"
"Yes, Jimmy. I can't wait."
And I couldn't, but I buried myself in work, and time did pass more quickly. That summer both Philip and Clara Sue went abroad on student programs. I was glad Clara Sue wasn't around; I could never forgive her for what she had done with Christie. I let it be known that I thought it had been cruel and sick. Of course, she continued to deny she had done it. Whenever she did return to the hotel for a weekend the following fall, she didn't miss an opportunity to mock my upcoming marriage to Jimmy.
"Is he going to get married in his uniform?" she taunted one day, "and say 'Yes, sir' instead of 'I do'?"
One of her favorite things was to belittle my engagement ring. "It looks like a piece of glass," she would say, "but I'm sure Jimbo thought he was buying a diamond."
"Don't you dare call him Jimbo," I flared, my eyes full of fury. She would just throw her hair over her shoulders, laugh and saunter away, satisfied she had gotten a rise out of me.
I thought she grew meaner and meaner with each passing day, and I found it hard to accept that we shared any blood at all. True, we had similar hair color and eyes, and there were characteristics in both our faces that resembled Mother's facial features, but our personalities were like night and day. And Clara Sue continued battling her weight. Though her figure was fuller and more voluptuous than mine, if she wasn't careful, she put on extra pounds. She had no self-control when it came to sweets and was constantly on a diet. She never lacked interest from the opposite sex, and because of her increasingly promiscuous behavior—so I heard—she had a following of boys at school.
Philip rarely came home. He was doing exceedingly well at college, making the dean's list, becoming president of his fraternity and captain of his rowing team. Occasionally, when Mother decided to act like a mother, she would show me and Mrs. Boston some of the clippings about him in the college newspaper.
Neither Philip nor Clara Sue seemed concerned or interested in their father's increasingly bizarre behavior and physical degeneration. I could tell that they both viewed him as an embarrassment. I tried bringing him out of his depression by asking him to do real work from time to time and bringing-him real problems, but he rarely completed any task, and eventually someone else had to do it.
The only time he seemed to snap out of the doldrums was when Sissy or I brought Christie around to see him. He would permit her to crawl around his cluttered office and touch everything. By the time she was fourteen months old she was picking things up and holding them out, saying, "Waa?" We all knew that meant she was asking, "What is this?" Randolph had great patience for her. I realized she was providing him the only respite in his otherwise dark and dreary day. He would answer every time. She could spend hours in his office questioning him about every single item, from a desk weight to a small baseball trophy he had won in high school. He would sit there and talk to her as if she were twenty years old, explaining the history behind everything, and Christie would stare at him, wide-eyed, her body still, listening as if she understood.
Mr. Dorfman had been right about the hotel running itself. It was as if Grandmother Cutler had tossed a ball into space and it continued to fly under that initial momentum. Of course, guest after guest pulled me aside to tell me how much he or she missed her. I would have to pretend I did, too. What did interest and fascinate me were some of the stories the old-timers told about her. Some of these guests went back thirty years or more at the hotel.
The woman they described was clearly a different person. Their descriptions were filled with adjectives like "warm" and "loving." Everyone talked about how she made that extra effort to make him or her feel at home. One elderly lady told me that coming to Cutler's Cove was like "visiting with my own family." How could she have put on one face with these people and another, drastically different face with me and with Mother? I wondered.
Despite my distaste for her, I couldn't help being intrigued, and I would often spend hours thumbing through papers in the file cabinets, reading letters from guests and copies of letters she had sent to guests, searching for clues, for an understanding of the woman who loomed so hatefully in my mind even now, nearly two years after her passing.
No one except Randolph—not even Mrs. Boston—had gone into Grandmother Cutler's room upstairs in the family section of the hotel after her death. Her things remained just as they had been the day she had died—her clothes still hung in the closets, her jewelry was still in the jewelry cases, her perfumes and powders were still on her vanity table. I never passed her closed doorway without getting a chilling feeling, and I couldn't help but want to go in and look at her possessions. It was like being fascinated with the devil. I resisted the temptation for as long as I could, and then one day I tried the door impulsively and was surprised to discover it was locked. When I asked Mrs. Boston about it, she told me it was what Randolph wanted.
"Only he has the key," she said, "which is fine with me. I don't fancy going in there," she added, and she shook her body as if just talking about Grandmother Cutler's old room filled her with bad feelings.
I left it at that. I had too many other concerns now that I was forced to take on more and more responsibility in the running of the hotel. The staff heads grew more confident in me, too, and came to me more often with their problems and questions. One day Mr. Dorfman came into my office purposely to compliment me for how well I had taken on my duties.
"I heard the guests talking about you," he said. "They said you were very warm, very personable, and very much like your grandmother."
I stared at him, not sure I was happy with the compliment.
"And all the older guests just love the way you bring Christie around to greet them. You make them feel as if they're all her grandparents. That's a very nice and a very smart thing to do," he added.
"Christie loves people," I said. "I'm not doing it for the sake of business."
"That's good. You're doing just what's natural. Mrs. Cutler was the same way—not afraid to share her personal world with her guests. It's a large part of what made this place so special to them and continues to make it so."
"How are we really doing now, Mr. Dorfman?" I asked.
"We're doing all right," he said. "Not breaking any records, but holding our own real well. Congratulations," he added. "You've almost earned your diploma at Cutler's Cove University."
I had to smile. For Mr. Dorfman to attempt a joke, it had to be something special. Despite myself, despite how I wanted things to be and what I wanted to become, the hotel had a way of taking over. Was that another part of Grandmother Cutler's legacy, or was it just the way things were destined to be?
I gazed up at my father's portrait and once again felt his ey
es on me, only now they seemed filled with glee, as if he knew the secret and enjoyed my longing to know and discover the answers, too.
As soon as Jimmy was given the date of his discharge I told Mother the date of our wedding. Once my mother understood that Jimmy and I were really going to marry, she took on the arrangements for our wedding eagerly and excitedly, seeing the preparations as a way to distract herself and everyone else from all the embarrassing revelations that had occurred. I marveled at how resilient she seemed to be. Even though she knew that by now most of the hotel staff and a number of people in Cutler's Cove had learned the secret revealed in the reading of the wills, she did not behave like a woman who had suffered any sort of disgrace.
On the contrary, Mother moved about the hotel like a restored princess, especially since Grandmother Cutler was no longer hovering over her, glaring at her and terrorizing her with her gaze and words. She was confident that none of the staff would dare laugh at her in her presence. She still believed she could become the new queen of Cutler's Cove.
But to me she had become someone to pity, even though she had never dressed more elegantly or looked more beautiful. Her blond hair had never looked as radiant and soft, or her cerulean eyes more crystalline. Rather than appearing pale and sallow, her cheeks were rosy, her complexion peaches and cream. Looking like an animated, hand-painted Dresden doll, she moved about the hotel bestowing smiles and small talk. It was as if she felt she could shield herself from the looks of derision and words of gossip by being more ebullient and sparkling. She would dazzle the world with her jewelry and fine dresses, her beautiful hair and her graceful manner.
And nothing fit into this new plan of hers better than her playing the role of the mother of the bride and staging what she was determined would be Cutler's Cove's most glamorous affair. She turned the sitting room of her suite into the headquarters for arranging, organizing and designing the wedding. Here she sat regally in her blue-patterned chintz chair with her small hands resting palms down on the heavy, dark mahogany frame, behaving very much like a queen, greeting the service people and tradespeople, photographers, printers and decorators. She summoned a number of them to present their ideas, products and prices, and then she made her choices like a monarch relegating those who were rejected to a beheading. Once she had made a decision to go with one or the other, the others no longer had access to her, even by phone.
"You know, Dawn," she said to me one day, "I still have my wedding dress, and with only the most minor alterations it would fit you like a glove. It would make me so happy if you would wear it. Will you? I assure you it's quite stylish, even by today's standards."
I was reluctant to do so, but in the end I agreed, knowing it would make her happy. Although I hadn't forgiven her for all her lies and weakness, I permitted her to plan the ceremony and reception. After all, I had to give the devil her due—she knew more about such things than I did. She had grown up in fine society. She knew what was considered elegant; she knew protocol. She knew how to plan an important social occasion, right down to how the napkins were to be folded.
I suppose it all didn't strike me as real until she called me into her suite to show me the proofs for our invitations. The card was designed in the shape of a cathedral with the figures of the bride and groom embossed. She had decided that wedding-dress white was an elegant color. I opened the invitation slowly and read:
Mr. and Mrs. Randolph Boyse Cutler
Cordially Invite You to the Wedding
of Their Daughter Dawn to James Gary Longchamp
on Saturday, October 26th at 11 A.M.
at the Cutler's Cove Hotel
Reception to Follow
Mother studied my face to see how I would react to her having used Randolph's name, implying he was my father. In his confused mind, poor Randolph probably still thought he was, I mused. And he and Mother were paying for the wedding.
Practically every day during the weeks preceding Jimmy's and my wedding Mother held a meeting with those people on the hotel staff who would be in charge of different aspects of the affair: Nussbaum, the chef, Norton Green, the headwaiter, Mr. Stanley, and others. I often heard them whining to one another about how many times she changed her mind about things like the hors d'oeuvres for the cocktail party or the main dishes for the dinner and then reverted back to the original ideas—in short, how much harder "Little Mrs. Cutler" was making things for everyone.
It amused me that even though Grandmother Cutler was gone, the staff still referred to Mother as "Little Mrs. Cutler." She would never overcome the lingering shadow and presence of Grandmother Cutler as far as the hotel staff was concerned, no matter how flamboyantly she conducted herself in the hotel.
Randolph was of little or no value during any of this. He had never really recovered from his deep melancholy over Grandmother Cutler's death. One night, as I was walking past Grandmother Cutler's old room, I thought I heard weeping from within and stopped to listen. I was sure it sounded like Randolph, and I knocked softly. The weeping stopped, but he never came to the door. Yet I hadn't realized how bad things were with him until he came to see me one day.
I was working in the office. I heard a gentle knock and looked up to see Randolph open the door tentatively to peer
"Oh, you're here. I thought you might be. Are you busy?" he asked.
"Busy? No," I said, smiling. "What is it?"
"Oh, it's nothing serious," he said, coming in quickly, clutching a paper bag to his chest, "but I've been going over and over this, and you were right," he said.
"I was right? Right about what?" I sat back, a smile of confusion on my face. Randolph had the excited look of a little boy who had discovered a cache of toy soldiers in the attic.
He turned the bag over and dumped a half dozen or so paper-clip boxes.
"What is this?" I asked when he had stepped back, smiling as if the mere emptying of the bag was a major achievement.
"Just what you said. You were right about these people. They cheat us in little ways. You see what I've discovered," he said, pointing to the paper-clip boxes. "Each one of these is supposed to contain one hundred clips, but every one I've counted out so far is five or six short. Five or six! And we order them by the case. Do you realize how many clips we are being shorted?"
"Randolph, I never—"
"After our discussion the other day, I knew you would be very happy to hear about this," he said.
"Discussion?" I said. "What discussion?" He didn't blink an eye. Instead he began to put the boxes back into the paper bag. Then he closed it and stepped back, looking like a grade-school child who had just spelled the hardest word in the spelling bee. I sensed he expected me to say something complimentary, but I didn't know what to say.
"Randolph, I'm sorry, but I really don't know what you're talking about."
"Oh, yes, that reminds me," he said, hearing different words. "I have started to look at the butcher's receipts, and I suspect you might be correct about that, too." He reached into his pocket and produced a small packet of bills so old their ends looked brown and crumbling. "The meat and poultry people have not given us the bulk discount we were promised. I don't know exactly how much we've been bilked, but I'm on it. I'll have the numbers for you by the end of the week. Then we'll have a session with them, huh? All right. I won't take up any more of your time, Mother," he said, pivoting to leave.
"Mother?"
He stopped at the door and turned back.
"I'll see you at dinner, Mother," he added, and he left.
I sat back in the chair, astounded, He wasn't simply refusing to accept Grandmother Cutler's death; he was imagining her still alive. But to look at me and think I were she! Was it simply because I was sitting in the chair in this office? It was eerie, as if Grandmother Cutler could reach out from the land of the dead and influence everything through her old possessions. I made up my mind that Mother had to understand how serious the problem with Randolph was.
I left the office and started thr
ough the lobby to go up to her suite to speak to her. Randolph was standing by the receptionist's desk talking to someone when he saw me crossing toward the old section of the hotel. He waved and started toward me. What would he do and say now? I wondered. And in front of everyone?
"Hi," he said, his voice lighter and much different from what it had been in the office. "Laura Sue tells me the wedding date has been set."
I stared at him. He saw me as I really was. But how could he make such a rapid and dramatic reversal? I looked back toward Grandmother Cutler's office. It gave me a sharp chill. Did her spirit truly still linger there?
"Aren't you excited?" Randolph asked when I didn't respond immediately to what he had said.
"Yes," I said softly, but I couldn't help but be frightened at how quickly he could change the expression in his eyes, turning off one emotion and turning on another as one would turn on and turn off a faucet.
"Good, good. Mother loves big family events. It will be a wedding like no other wedding you've seen before, that's for sure. Well, I'd better get back to work. I've made Mother promises," he said. "Promises . . ."
I watched him rush off toward his office. Then I went directly to my mother's suite and interrupted her meeting with a decorator. She wanted to do something special in our ballroom for the dance reception after the wedding ceremony.
"I must speak with you now," I said. "I'm sorry," I said to the decorator, "but this is a matter of some urgency."
"Of course." He gathered up his samples and left quickly.
"What is it, Dawn?" Mother demanded impatiently as soon as the man was gone. "I was right in the middle of something very important, and I'm on a very tight schedule today."
"I'm sure it can all wait. Mother, why haven't you done anything about Randolph and the way he behaves?" I demanded.
"Oh, that," she said with a wave of her hand. "What can I do? Anyway, why worry about it now, and especially in the middle of all this?" she said, making her eyes big.