The Inn at Lake Devine Part 23

Kris said, "He must be thrilled she's marrying a rabbi."

I said under my breath, "Even if he's Reform and penniless?"

Kris's eyes widened over the rim of his juice gla.s.s.

"Trust me: Her family paid for the ring. Rich people don't work as cabana boys. Anyone headed for Berkeley wouldn't support diamond mining in South Africa, and only a Reform rabbi would take a job as a chaplain there."

"How do you know all this?" he asked.

"I know these people." I poked around his breadbasket and came up with a prune m.u.f.fin, underbaked, all the while watching Linette. She was on the phone, fingering the ends of her frizzy hair. Clearly, she was giving someone orders, repeating two syllables that were undoubtedly "Berry."

"What's so interesting?" Kris asked.

"Linette. On the phone. It's about us."

She hung up, caught my eye, nodded sternly.

I pointed to my bulky sweater-me?

She nodded again.

"Clue me in," Kris said.

"It's all set, a second night in the honeymoon suite."

Kris asked, "Think Nelson will mind?"

"Mind what?"

"Sleeping alone, no roommate."

I touched his face and said, "Too bad."

TWENTY.

Linette sat beneath a blowup of a stony woman with sharp cheekbones who was ladling soup to boarders.

"Sad, isn't it?" she said, watching me study the grainy mural. "Just being in the mountains was considered vacation." She twisted around in her desk chair and looked at the wall above her. "Did you ever see a grimmer bunch?"

I asked when it was taken and whether they were relatives.

"We think nineteen fifteen." She stood up and pointed to a child seated on a man's lap. "That's my father, and we think he was two or three."

"Who's the cook?"

"His grandmother."

"What was it called?"

"Nothing formal-Tilly Feldman's place in the mountains, or however you say that in Yiddish."

"Is it still standing?" I asked.

Linette pointed out the window. "There, the white house by the first tee, improved and immortalized."

I asked what it was used for now.

"Us," she said. "Home of the famous Feldmans."

"When did it become the Halseeyon?"

She groaned and said, "I hate this part." She reached for an open pack of Virginia Slims and knocked one out. "The answer is: when Hal Feldman took over."

"Seriously? Hal?"

"It's true, my father"-she pointed above her head-"baby Heinick. He took over during the Depression and named it after himself." She lit the cigarette that had been bobbing between her lips. "And he's continuing the family tradition of not retiring until he's dead."

I said I a.s.sumed she would take over for her dad sooner rather than later, and that she had been sent to Cornell with that in mind.

"They all plan to retire. Estelle's allegedly retired. My dad will retire-let's see, he's sixty-two ..." She hit a few b.u.t.tons on her adding machine, then cranked its arm. "Roughly? In thirty years?" She laughed, and repositioned herself, one leg bent underneath her. "What about you? Someone said chef."

I said, "About to be."

"You are or you're not?"

"I have a job beginning May first."

"Where?"

"Outside Boston."

"At?"

I hesitated. "Chez Simone."

"And who's Simone?"

"Hilda Simone, restaurant dreamer."

"How so?"

"She thinks it'll be like having friends over for dinner every night."

She rolled her eyes. "Spare me."

I said, "Well, on the bright side, she recognizes that she knows nothing, so she's promised me a free hand."

Linette forced smoke out of one corner of her mouth. "Here, there is no free hand. We tell cooks when we hire them, 'People have been coming here since they were kids, and now they're coming back with their own kids. They expect pickled tomatoes on the table and sponge cake for dessert. If you need to make quiche, call it a cheese pie. And if you need to make Lobster Newburg, you'd better go somewhere else."

I said, smiling, "How would you know about Lobster Newburg?"

"I know," she said, kicking a second desk chair on wheels into position for me, "because I've read menus in the big wide world."

"But not tasted it."

"Lobster? Nooo."

"And that's fine?"

"I don't know what you mean," she said.

I said, "I guess I meant are you ever frustrated by the constraints of a kosher resort?"

"Kosher resort or kosher kitchen? Because the resort part isn't that different."

I said, "I'm sure you're right."

"What seems odd to you?"

I said quickly, "Nothing."

"Does it embarra.s.s you in front of Kris"-she picked up and waved the day's ditto master-"the kasha and the derma?"

I said, "Kris? He loves it!"

"You don't think he's uncomfortable being the only goy in the place?"

I said, thinking of Toni Falcone and Mad Mulligan the magician, "First of all, he's not. Second of all, he wouldn't notice if he were."

"That's because he's used to being in the majority," Linette said. "He doesn't know the meaning of fish out of water. Nelson was the same way."

I asked, "Was Nelson ever here?"

"Once. There were a bunch of us from Cornell, and we called it a field trip. My father put us all up in the barracks, gave tours of the kitchen, the butcher shop, the pantries. Fed us. Said things like, 'This round roll is what we call a bagel. We eat it with cream cheese and a delicacy we call lox.' 'These skullcaps? The things that look like beanies? Our people cover their heads in shul, which is our word for church.' " Linette smirked.

"When was this?"

"Fall of our senior year." Her phone rang. She signaled time-out and took the call: No, she didn't hire the summer counselors ... okay, she would talk to the mother of a summer counselor...."Yes, we certainly do have curfews and supervision ... certainly there are separate quarters for boys and girls ... absolutely, hot showers.... You're very welcome. Call me anytime during the summer if you're worried about your daughter, which you shouldn't be. We're one big family up here." She hung up and said for my amus.e.m.e.nt, "Oh, and one more thing, Mrs. Sussman: Be sure Heidi packs her birth control pills."

I laughed. "A lot of that going on?"

"What d'you think? Forty college kids, not to mention h.o.r.n.y waiters and lonely wives whose husbands stay in the city."

She scribbled a note on one of a half-dozen clipboards hanging on the wall behind her.

"You were telling me about Nelson's visit," I prompted.

"That was it," she said. "One three-day weekend in low season."

"Kris told me you once went to Lake Devine."

"Once. Also a field trip." She began pulling on the ends of her hair, sc.r.a.ping a few strands at a time between her fingernails.

I asked when that was.

"Summer of 'sixty-eight-which I know offhand because I remember watching the Chicago convention on their shleppy TV and feeling like I was the only Democrat in the rec room."

"You probably were."

"Didn't Kris fill you in? He was there and-what's her name?-s.h.i.+rley Temple."

"Gretel."

"Gretel." She shook her head. "That says it all, doesn't it?... What'd she turn out like?"

"Like her mother."

Linette shuddered, a theatrical tremor that made me laugh.

"What's Joel's mother like?" I asked.

"Cynthia? A hippie pediatrician-long gray braid, socks and sandals. Bakes her own bread."

I smiled. "And what's Joel like?"

She turned around a picture frame so it faced me. It was Linette and a young man, both laughing hard, their arms around each other's waist. He was wearing aviator gla.s.ses, a beige poplin suit, and a wide tie in a tropical-foliage print. Linette was wearing a garden-party frock of white eyelet over shocking-pink taffeta, sashed at the waist and puffed at the sleeves.

"Nice-looking," I said.

She took a deep drag on her Virginia Slim. "For a rabbi, you mean?"

I protested-no, by any standard.

She took the frame back and said, "This was us at his sister's wedding."

"Did Joel perform the ceremony?"

"He wasn't ordained yet. He did the blessings in Hebrew, which was nice, because otherwise it was a civil ceremony-they're practically Quakers; they can't believe they produced a rabbi. Also, he lectured on the historical significance of breaking the gla.s.s." She crossed and uncrossed her eyes. "His pedantic streak. They'll love him at Berkeley."

Knowing her high threshold for cross-examination, I asked, "So? Are you madly in love?"