The Inn at Lake Devine Part 4

Neither one of us took our eyes off Nelson and his straight-edged, rhythmic backstroke.

Robin said, "I never saw him have to jump off and save anyone's life."

"Not in all the time you've been coming here?"

Nelson executed a snap of a racing turn against the barrels of the raft and was doing a slow crawl back, face out of the water and eyes meticulously forward.

"I think everyone who goes out to the raft knows how to swim really good, and everyone who doesn't stays inside the buoys," said Robin.

I stood up, the red cord of his whistle wrapped twice around my fist for safekeeping against wind and water and Robin Fife. Nelson Berry, age sixteen, with the Red Cross badge sewn to his navy-blue trunks, knew my name and had used it in an unmistakably sympathetic manner. I slipped the whistle's cord around my neck. Any second now it would be around his.

Nelson, everyone said, took after their father, who seemed happiest playing handyman, crisscrossing the lawn with a wrench or a trowel in his hand. Where Mrs. Berry was superficially gracious but internally cranky or worse, her bashful husband blossomed into a low level of jolliness, especially around kids. He called me Nat almost immediately, in what sounded like election to his exclusive club of favorite guests.

He seemed to like me, even appreciate me. He flagged me down the first time I pa.s.sed him kneeling in a flower bed and asked if I was having a good time on my vacation.

I said I was. It was very nice here.

"The lake's not too cold for you?"

I said, "Well, sometimes, but I get used to it."

"Our little one's not bothering you?"

I said, well, that was okay.

He sighed. "She can be a pest, no matter how many times we tell her not to bother the guests."

I said I lived on a street in Newton, Ma.s.sachusetts, with all girls. Every single family on my street had girls, so I was used to dealing with pests ... in Newton. Newton, Ma.s.s.

"Is that right?" he asked happily. "I had an aunt and uncle in Newton and I used to love to visit them. They lived near a lake. Right in the middle of the town, it seemed like."

"Crystal Lake?"

"That was it. Their house backed right up to it." He chuckled. "Big stone house. They were the rich relations."

By midweek, he was my favorite company. I'd abandon Robin on the croquet court to stand by him and wait for his questions.

"What does your dad do?" he asked early in the week.

"He owns a fruit store."

Mr. Berry looked up and grinned. "Does he farm?"

I said no, he was strictly on the retail end.

"In Newton?" he asked.

I said, "Brookline, Ma.s.s. It started in Chelsea as my grandfather's truck."

He'd point to the burlap sack of bulbs or the potted seedlings, and I'd hand him one at a time. "You ever help him out there, Nat?" he asked amiably.

I said, "I sometimes help him with his fruit baskets."

"Oh yeah?"

I explained about this sideline: the special orders, the novelties.

"That sounds real nice," he said.

I listened carefully. There were no signs that Mrs. Berry had poisoned Mr. Berry. Sometimes, as she hurried past us to the dock or to a plumbing emergency, she'd say primly, "h.e.l.lo, Natalie."

I'd return a wan h.e.l.lo. She wouldn't stop, but might glance back, at which time I'd take care to have resumed conversation with the far superior Mr. Berry. After we'd had a few daily chats, he said, "You miss your folks a bit?"

I said, "Not really."

"I think my boys would miss us if they were away. And Gretel? We'd have to ship her home."

I told him, "Mr. Fife said I was supposed to think of him and Mrs. Fife as my folks while I'm here."

"Easier said than done, right? Only your parents are your parents, no matter how nice your hosts are. That's what I'd say. Family is family."

I handed him another cutting, and said after a pause, "They're really nice, but they're not like my parents."

With two hands, he flattened the soil around a new seedling. "I'm usually around-you know me, puttering in some flower bed or other."

I said, "I know."

"Always around," he said, "and usually hoping for a little company."

I nodded but couldn't speak. I knew he was looking at me when he said, "Good company and good conversation."

I loved Mr. Berry at that moment, a wave of grat.i.tude that left me mute.

"Any time, Nat," he repeated.

Robin had neglected to tell me that Gretel Berry was an annoyance factor to all girls vacationing at her parents' inn. She was only eight or nine that summer, and was like a yappy dog who wanted to play fetch with every pa.s.serby. "Want to see my room?" she asked the daughters of every guest, regardless of their age.

Mr. Berry had apologized for her, and it was for his sake that I said yes. The small two-story house was down a path, about fifty yards into the woods. As I followed the annoying Gretel, she chatted in a run-on fashion that didn't require answers. The back door was wide open, revealing one knotty-pine room bisected by a squat wood stove. I asked Gretel if they lived here year-round and she said they did. It wasn't the house of a very formidable enemy. The kitchen had open shelves with no cupboard doors and a narrow two-burner stove, which, if the box of wooden matches were an indicator, needed its pilot light ignited with each use. I could see stacks of milky green dishes and st.u.r.dy gla.s.sware, the same dime-store variety that came with the cabins we had rented over the years. The living room was shabby gold and brown. An orange cotton bedspread with pom-pom fringe covered the couch. Good, I thought; Ingrid Berry has dreadful taste.

Gretel said, "C'mon upstairs."

At the top, the knotty pine of the stairwell had given way to a dull lettuce-green woodwork. We pa.s.sed what had to be, thrillingly, the boys' room: bunk beds and plaid wallpaper extending to the eaves and ceiling. The parents' room had a high double bed covered with a yellowed chenille bedspread and decorated with a lone throw pillow of green polished cotton. Gretel's tiny room at the end of the hall had ballerina wallpaper. Her headboard was tufted with pink oilcloth, and a flat gold b.u.t.ton sat in the middle of each tuft. There was a doll bed with a flannel doll blanket in a pastel plaid. A baby doll in what I would soon learn was a christening gown was under the covers, the blanket tucked under her rubber armpits. "Her name's Annette," said Gretel.

I asked her if Annette was named after Annette the Mouseketeer, because I used to have a boy doll I called Cubby.

"No, she's not," said Gretel, an obvious lie, since there was only one Annette in the universe.

I said, "What did you want to show me?"

"Oh." She looked around and lunged for the closest object of possible interest: Annette's miniature baby bottle, which was attached with a pink rubber band to the doll's stiff wrist. "She drinks and then she wets down there," said Gretel.

I told her I knew. I used to have a Betsy Wetsy.

"What happened to her?"

I said she rotted. I used to shove food into the little hole between her lips, and it didn't come out the other end. Of course, I was only three or four then. She started to stink and my mother threw her out.

She asked if I wanted to play dolls. I said I hadn't brought any dolls with me, and, besides, when you're fourteen, you're not that interested anymore. She said, deaf to my answer, that I could use hers. She had a Ginny with four bought outfits and about ten more that her Aunt Ann had made, including a kilt with a gold safety pin and a knitted sweater with a G on the front for Gretel.

"Or Ginny."

"She said it was Gretel."

I asked if she was supposed to be playing in the house by herself when there were no adults here.

"They let me."

"No one's watching you?"

She said, "I'm in fourth grade and I get all A's."

I told her I'd better go find Robin, who was waiting for me to, um, play tennis.

"I play tennis," said Gretel.

"It has to be an even number of players. Two is even. Three is odd."

"We could take turns."

I said, well, she could watch.

She said, N-O. Did I know her parents owned this hotel?

I said, "The tennis courts aren't at your parents' hotel. They belong to the town, and this is a free country."

Gretel said, "I knew Robin before you did."

I said, "You're a baby-Baby Gretel. I'm not playing with any baby." When she screwed up her face, I made a big show of leaving, exactly the way my sister did when I pouted after an insult. The message in my feigned exit was: You're proving my point, aren't you? You're a crybaby. I'm going to play with girls who are older, who don't pick fights with the very people they want to make friends with.

Still, she was a pathetic little thing. And I had been the same pathetic little thing on Irving Circle when I stood on our front porch trying to snare my sister's friends' attention. From the narrow stairwell, I called back, "If you want to come and watch us play, you can. Maybe Mr. Fife will play with you."

She took her time. I made an audio display of pounding my feet on the steps to the bottom, then yelling, "You coming or not?"

Soundlessly, Mrs. Berry had approached on the path of dried pine needles and was opening the screen door. As accusingly as if she had interrupted a burglary, she said, "May I help you?"

I yelped at the sound of her, then said, "I told Gretel she can play tennis with me and Robin. I'm waiting to see if she's coming."

"Oh?" She glanced around the room, in a quick survey of valuables.

I said, hoping to sound indulgent and charitable, "She wanted to show me her room and Annette."

"Where's Robin?" she asked.

"In our room. Changing."

"Gretel!" she sang out, her eyes fixed on mine. "Are you playing tennis with Natalie?"

"I don't know how to," the brat yelled back.

"Well," Mrs. Berry said smugly to me, "I guess you're free to play tennis with someone your own age."

It was painful to see how pleased she looked, to see that an adult and mother could take satisfaction in humiliating me.

I said, "Gretel wanted me to play dolls with her, so I was just trying to be nice." I walked past her and out the screen door. I stopped on the small brick rectangle that served as the back stoop and said, "I didn't think someone nine years old should be alone all day."

Mrs. Berry reported me to Mrs. Fife. I had teased Gretel and I'd been fresh.

I said, "Mrs. Berry hates me."

"She said you were in the little house without an invitation."

"Gretel invited me to see her room. She invites everybody. I'm the only one who ever said yes."

She said, "There's an unwritten rule that hotel guests don't go in the owners' residence."

"Doesn't Gretel know that rule?"

"She's only six," said Mrs. Fife.

I said, "She's nine. She's going into fourth grade."

Mrs. Fife said, "Natalie, I know Mrs. Berry doesn't hate you. She's just looking out for her little girl, the same way your mother does and the same way I do for Robin. Gretel's her baby."

I repeated, "She's nine. And I was being nice to her because I felt sorry for her."

Mrs. Fife advised that in the two days we had left, I should be especially polite to Mrs. Berry. After all, we were guests at her hotel, and I might want to come back someday.

I said, "There's a lot of kids here who I wouldn't want at my hotel. All I did was let Gretel show me her dolls. I didn't touch anything and I didn't make a racket-"

She raised a finger to her lips. "Natalie, n.o.body likes a tattletale."

I considered the short time remaining, the claustrophobic ride home, and my parents waiting for the Fifes' report about what a pleasure I had been. So I didn't say, "n.o.body can stand being around your sons, but I don't hear Mrs. Berry complaining about them."

Because in three days I'd be home with people who appreciated and loved me, and I'd never have to endure another vacation with strangers, I told her she was right.