“Maybe it’s not so terrible,” said Anna, who was trying to reconcile Stuart’s stories with her own, albeit brief, impressions of his father. “That he wants the best for himself. And you.”
“Maybe. If it didn’t extend to all areas of his life.” Stuart lifted his eyes to the sky, gesturing toward the top of The Covington’s south tower. “There’s a penthouse apartment up there, where he’s installed a prettier, younger version of my mother.”
Anna didn’t know what to say. She could scarcely believe she was having this conversation at all. “Does your mother know?”
“Everyone does. My mother hasn’t set foot inside the hotel in five years, maybe more. Can you imagine the two of them running into each other in the lobby? We’ve got a house in Ventnor but as soon as the weather warms up, Mother heads off to our summer cottage in Cape May.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Oh, don’t be,” said Stuart. “Every family has its issues. I offer my family’s up to you only as explanation for why I’m such a pain in the ass.”
Anna’s least favorite part of learning to swim was sneaking back into the Adlers’ apartment after Stuart dropped her off each evening. What she was doing wasn’t wrong but she also knew that there was something tactless about taking up the same pastime as a beloved daughter, so recently drowned. She tried to imagine explaining her motivations to Esther and cringed at the thought.
“Where did you get off to?” a voice called from the kitchen as Anna tiptoed down the apartment’s long hallway. Anna stopped in her tracks, squeezed her eyes shut for a long second, then allowed herself to move in the direction of Esther’s voice. She found her polishing silver at the kitchen table.
There was no getting around the fact that Anna’s hair was still wet. She tucked a loose strand behind her ear. “I was down at the beach for a little while.” Not a complete lie.
“You went swimming?” said Esther, not looking up from the tarnished serving spoon she worked between her hands with a rag.
“Just got my hair wet.”
Esther let out an audible humph and Anna wondered how much she suspected. By now, Anna had had four swimming lessons. Stuart had taught her how to breathe, inhaling big mouthfuls of air that she slowly exhaled, through her mouth, underwater. He’d insisted that she practice her breathing technique for an embarrassingly long time, first by dipping her face in the water and then by bobbing along the side of the pool. Anna cringed, imagining what the hotel’s paying guests must think of her—a grown woman who could spend a half hour bouncing in and out of the water like a metal spring. Eventually Stuart had taught her to push off from the side of the pool and glide along the top of the water with her arms positioned above her head, and most recently, he’d added a scissor kick to the enterprise. Anna was meant to push off the wall, glide until her body lost its momentum, and then continue to kick until she had to come up for air. She grew mildly annoyed when Stuart kept telling her the same thing—that she needed to kick her legs harder if she wanted to keep them anywhere near the surface of the water. But she forgave him because he also promised her that, with time and practice, she’d continue to improve.
“Do you need help?” Anna asked, with a nod toward the neat stacks of silverware Esther hadn’t yet gotten to. She prayed the answer was no, could think of nothing worse than having to pull out a chair, sit, and make polite conversation as Florence’s wet bathing suit soaked through her dress.
Esther shook her head, stared at the spoon in her hands forlornly, as if the reflection the shallow bowl of the spoon offered her were one she didn’t recognize. Anna felt an urge to rest a hand on Esther’s shoulder, to tell her the silver could wait, that maybe she was pushing herself too hard. But instead she said a quiet good night and slunk off to her bedroom, where she wasted no time removing her dress, peeling off the wet bathing suit underneath, and hanging it from the bleed valve on the backside of the radiator, where Esther was unlikely to find it if she went looking.
Just as Anna did not feel she had the right to be homesick, when her parents and Joseph had sacrificed so much for her to come to America, she also did not feel she had the right to mourn Florence’s death. She could help with Gussie, taking her on outings to Steel Pier or the Inlet. She could make simple meals on the afternoons when Esther looked too far away to slice a tomato, much less make sandwiches. She could run books and magazines over to the hospital for Fannie. In doing those things, she liked to believe that she was acknowledging that Florence’s death had meant something to her.
The truth was that Florence’s death had meant a great deal to Anna. More than anyone else in the Adler family, Florence had seemed attuned to Anna’s deep unhappiness. Immediately, she’d begun suggesting outings to Anna. The outings were never presented as options—more like commands. “Come with me to White Tower. I’m dying for a hamburger,” she’d said on the afternoon of her arrival, after she’d greeted her parents and put her things away. It was Florence who had given Anna her first proper tour of Absecon Island. She’d pointed out all of her favorite spots—Absecon Lighthouse, which sat at the northern tip of the island, and the Italianate mansion with the funny address—One Atlantic Ocean—that perched at the end of Million Dollar Pier. Both, Florence said, served as guideposts when she was out on the open water. Anna learned where to get the best
