The Vacationers

S— Sorry to cancel our second to last session, but I won’t be able to come today. I will see you tomorrow at ten to say good-bye. Had fun at the beach.—J

He could easily have sent it in a text message, but if he’d texted, she would have seen it faster and responded. The e-mail was a time bomb, waiting for her to open her computer in order to detonate. Sylvia felt her cheeks go up in flame, but then she heard someone at the door and was instantly relieved. He’d been joking! Obviously, Joan wasn’t that much of an asshole—he was just playing with her. Sylvia scrambled to the door. She considered flashing him when she opened the door, but her breasts had never been particularly impressive, and decided against it. She was laughing as she pulled the knob.

A tall woman—taller than Sylvia by several inches, which meant she was close to six feet—was bent in half on the other side of the door, rooting around like an anteater in a gigantic leather purse.

“Can I help you?” Sylvia asked. She put her hands on her hips in hopes that her posture would communicate that she was not the slightest bit interested in doing anything of the sort.

The woman looked up startled. “Oh, Lord. You must be Fra

“Oh,” Sylvia said. “Then I guess you should come in.” She gestured toward the foyer, stepped inside, and screamed for her mother before retreating to her bedroom.

Fra

“It’s so exhausting,” Gemma said. “I really envy that you have this lifestyle. You can pack up the kids and just go somewhere for two weeks and no one will even bother you.” She widened her eyes at the word bother. “You can just get away. I would pay a million dollars for that. Even when I do go on vacation, the gallery is always calling me, or one of my artists, and then I have to get on a plane just to massage someone’s fragile ego, and I want to say, you know, I was just about to have a snorkel in the Maldives.” Gemma ruffled her hair with both hands, laying it over the back of the chaise longue. “It’s a nice house, isn’t it? Quaint.”

Fra

“Most Brits think Mallorca is for drunken teenagers,” she said. “It’s sort of like reverse psychology, buying a house here, up in the mountains. It really is the best place to get away. It’s like if you and Jim decided to buy a house on the Jersey Shore, everyone would think you’d gone mad, but then there you are at your lovely house, miles away from the puddles of sick and the beaches covered with pale skin and babies in dirty nappies. None of my British friends would ever come here.”

Fra

“Well, we’ve all had a wonderful time. Eating our way through, really.”

“Oh, I never eat anything. Just the ice cream. I come for a week, eat only ice cream, then go home feeling like I’ve been on a cleanse.” Gemma closed her eyes. The sun was beating straight down on them, and Fra

He hadn’t told her. Of course he hadn’t told her! If Charles hadn’t said a word to Fra

“Oh, you don’t know?” Fra

Gemma’s eyes flew open. She blinked several times in a row, giving the impression of a rodent emerging from months spent in a dark hole underground. The skin around her eyes had begun to crease, and maybe even sag. Fra

“They went home to get their baby,” Fra

“They left? To buy a baby?”

“They’re not buying a baby, they’re adopting a baby.”

Gemma let out a bark. “On purpose? I thought babies only happened to people by accident. I’ve had three husbands and have narrowly avoided them half a dozen times! What on earth is he thinking? Really. Oh, Charlie. Now his paintings will all be dewy little portraits of a half-naked Lawrence with a baby asleep on his chest.” She paused. “Now I’m doubly sorry to have missed him. The last hurrah!”

Fra

“Are you and Jim in the master, upstairs?” Gemma asked. She slipped her sunglasses out of her purse and put them on. “You wouldn’t mind moving to whichever room Charlie and Lawrence were staying in, would you? You know how it is to sleep in your own bed. All the other mattresses are too soft for my back, like sleeping on giant pillows. You’ll be fine for one night, I’m sure, won’t you? If it’s not too much trouble.” She stood up and dusted off her spotless blue jeans. “I’ll call Tiffany’s and send over a spoon.”

“How nice,” Fra

The two women walked toward the door side by side, each one trying to reach the handle first, as if to stake claim to the entire property. Fra

Bobby wanted to swim until he could no longer feel his arms or legs. His personal record in a pool was a mile, mostly because that was six laps at Total Body Power, and doing less than six laps seemed pathetic, but he didn’t much like swimming. No one in Florida did. Swimming was for the tourists, splashing around in a way that would never equal the calories in a single Cuban sandwich. Right now, being in the pool was the only way to make sure that no one would speak to him, and so that’s where Bobby wanted to be, exhausting his limbs and his lungs and avoiding his entire family.