Custody (20 page)

She laughed.

“So I think we should give one another names.”

“You mean tell our own names?”

“No, I mean I name you and you name me. Whatever seems right.”

She looked at him. “Okay.” She decided at once:
“Ernest.”

He groaned. “That’s awful. It sounds like a shy little boy who studies too hard.”

She laughed. “Not at all. It makes me think of Ernest Hemingway, who was big and bearlike, and full of sincerity and integrity, and genuineness.”

“You’re sure I couldn’t be a Fabio or Lance?”

“Quite sure. Now what would you call me?”

“I was thinking of Buffy.”

She stared at him, appalled.

Throwing back his head, he laughed. “Serves you right for Ernest. No, I’ve been calling you Morgan in my mind. After the enchantress Morgan le Fay.”

An enchantress! “Well. But wait a minute. Isn’t she evil?”

“I don’t remember, to be honest. I could look it up. It’s the only enchantress I can think of other than Samantha on
Bewitched
, and I thought Morgan would impress you more.”

“All right,” she agreed. “Morgan and Ernest.”

“An unlikely pair. Sure you wouldn’t go for Lancelot? Or even Arthur?”

She shook her head. I’m sitting in a cemetery, she thought, talking to a man I don’t know but have just named Ernest, and I don’t know that I’ve ever been happier in my life.

She asked, “How was your week?”

“Slow. I wanted it to be Sunday right away.”

His honesty made her hands tremble. She folded them together in her lap and looked down at them. The wind passed through, whispering the leaves against each other.

He continued: “I couldn’t wait to see you again. I kept talking to you in my mind. I want to tell you about myself. I want you to know me. Not the persona I’ve constructed so carefully over the years, but the real me.”

“Then tell me.”

“And you’ll tell me about you? In exchange? The real you?”

“All right.” She met his eyes. They were very blue, pure, clear blue like a bottle you’d set in a window to catch the sun. And he looked as if he’d spent time in the sun this week: his nose was peeling on the very tip, and his arms were dark brown, the hair on them bleached pale. His eyebrows were a shaggy mix of brown and blond and silver and gold.

He asked, “Could we walk?”

“Sure.”

They stood and headed down the hill toward the pond. The wind was rising, making the trees shiver around them. The water danced, tossing specks of light.

“I spent a lot of time with my father this week,” the man she called Ernest said. “Since my mother’s death, he’s deteriorated rapidly. He seems to wander through his life, as if he’s lost without my mother.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I am, too, and yet”—his voice deepened—“and yet, I’m jealous. To love someone so much, to be so much a part of someone’s life, to really be like
that
”—he gestured toward a statue of a tree cleaved asunder—“to be joined so completely with another person that you’re broken, mind and body, when they’ve gone—” He caught his breath. “I envy him.”

His intensity stirred her. “Do you have any brothers or sisters?”

“An older sister. Evangeline. She lives in the Northwest now. Growing up, she was a wild tomboy who thought I hung the moon.” He smiled down at Kelly. “I was a terribly spoiled little boy, I’m afraid. Perhaps nothing can be as good as the love you get when you’re a child.”

The wind lifted his tie, fluttering it against his shirt. Strands of Kelly’s hair tickled her neck.

“I can’t believe that,” she said. “I don’t want to believe it. Surely your father wouldn’t.”

He looked at her. “And what do you believe?”

A long roll of thunder broke through the sky, and lightning streaked downward, a shaft of brilliance piercing the dark air. Rain spilled down on them, a sudden torrent, the cool wetness
delicious on her warm skin.

She turned to face him. He was smiling, as she was, both of them smiling as the rain made coins of moisture blossom on their clothes. It was like being touched quickly, gently, all over.

She gave his question serious thought. “I’ve always believed in the power of the mind. Logic. I think that now—
now
—I believe in good luck.”

He reached out to brush a curl away from her forehead. She stood very still. He brought his hand down to cradle her chin; then he leaned forward and very slowly, very softly, kissed her mouth.

“You’re cold,” he said, because she was trembling. “We’re getting soaked. Let’s go get some coffee.”

“All right.”

“My car’s just over there.”

He took her hand, and they ran through the rain, down Magnolia Path, along Primrose Avenue. It felt good to run in the rain—peculiar, something her body seemed to remember. It was like being a child again, and like being an animal, freed of the constraints of rules and words, and also like being a spirit, part of the wind and rain.

He brought her to a huge black-green Jeep shining with rain. Opening the passenger door, he helped her step up and in. Then he hurried around to his side, slamming the door with an agreeable solid thud. She watched him as he slid the key into the ignition, making the big engine roar into life, and deftly turned all the dials so that soft warm air blew around them and the windshield wipers sprang to life, clicking back and forth. His hands were massive but oddly elegant, and smooth, unscarred.

“Have you had breakfast?”

“Just a cup of coffee.”

“There’s a small café not far from here. We’ll go there, and then I’ll bring you back to your car afterward.”

“Lovely.”

As he steered the Jeep through the high stone gates and out into the real world, Kelly dug around in her bag, found some tissue, and dried her hands and face, as careful as an adolescent not to touch her mouth, as if his kiss still lingered there.

“Are you a surgeon?” she asked.

He looked at her, surprised.

“Your license plate,” she explained.

“Of course. No, I’m not a surgeon.” The streets shone in the rain, and trees bowed and dipped in the wind. “I’m a geriatricist.”

“Why that specialty?”

He turned off onto Morton Street. “I don’t really know. I’ve always liked older people. I’ve always thought our society doesn’t pay enough respect to its elders. We put far too much value on looking young, being young. We let our children learn about the world from the television set rather than from talking to their aging relatives.”

He pulled the Jeep into the parking lot of Pearl and Joe’s Diner. The low aluminum-sided building was small and slightly shabby, but the parking lot was full. They hurried through the rain to the front door, which he pushed open—what a treat it was for Kelly to be with a man who could effortlessly reach past her—and entered the café. The air was warm and steamy, smelling of coffee and bacon, buzzing with conversation and the clink of forks against sturdy white plates.

Ernest led her to a booth at the far end, the only spot open except for one round stool at the counter. A young waitress with pink hair and black lipstick sauntered by with a platter of scrambled eggs and fried potatoes for the booth next to them.

With infinite boredom, she muttered, “Be right there.”

Kelly leaned back against the booth. At one corner its red vinyl was ripped and mended with electrician’s tape, but the back was high, giving them a sense of privacy.

“Now,” she said. “Go on. About geriatrics.”

He ran his hand through his hair, took some paper napkins from the aluminum holder, and dried his hands. “I’m afraid I was beginning to lecture. I’d rather talk about you.”

She smiled. “And I’d rather talk about you.”

“Our first argument.”

They sat grinning at one another, smug.

“Coffee?” Their waitress also had a nose stud. Her name tag said
STAR
.

“Please,” Ernest said.

“Pretty name,” Kelly told the young woman as she filled two thick white mugs.

Star shrugged. “It’s so seventies,” she sighed. She took their order and wobbled away on platform shoes with heels a good six inches high.

“I wouldn’t be her age again for anything,” Kelly said.

“Me, either. Although I wish I had her energy.”

They both watched Star clop lethargically down the aisle.

“Well,” Ernest corrected himself, “maybe not
her
energy.” He reached into his pocket and placed a quarter on the table. “Here’s what we’ll do. Flip a coin. The loser has to talk first.”

“Okay.” Kelly sipped her coffee, which was fresh, strong, and fragrant. “Heads.”

She watched his dexterous, elegant hands as they deftly flipped the coin.

“Heads, it is. Okay, what do you want to know?”

Kelly thought. She knew so much already—that he was separated, had one daughter, was a physician. That he seemed kind. “Last week you said you feel beset by devils. Tell me about that.”

He stirred sugar and milk into his coffee. “Ah. Very well. Where do I begin?” His forehead wrinkled, and he nodded to himself, as if deciding upon something. “I’m concerned about my daughter. Let’s call her—let’s call her Grace. My wife—I’ll call her Joan—is a nurse. Very involved in good works—schools, free clinics, AIDS research. She’s driven, intelligent, ambitious.”

In spite of herself, Kelly realized she and Joan shared similar traits. “She sounds admirable.”

“She
is
admirable. And she lives her life according to certain puritanical principles, but like all things, once they get carried past the point of moderation, they become, well, not
vices
exactly, but no longer virtues. She’s developed certain eccentricities that might harm Grace.”

Kelly sat very still.

He registered this reaction. “Please, I don’t mean anything evil, or sexual, or perverse. Not at all. But serious, I think. Quite serious. She, Joan, has a real phobia about weight gain, for one thing. I’m afraid she’s turning Grace into a borderline anorectic.”

“All women and girls worry about their weight,” Kelly pointed out.

“True, but this is extreme. Also there’s the matter of the whole sexuality business.” He paused to consider his words. “Over the years, perhaps because she’s seen what the worst of sex can do to the body—AIDS, babies born deformed because of drugs, that sort of thing—Joan has come to see all sex as something defiling. Degrading.” His face filled with shadows. “This is what I’m afraid she’s passing on to our daughter, and it makes me very sad and worried for her.”

“A difficult situation.”

“Yes. Joan would counter, to be completely frank, that I’ve erred at the opposite extreme. I mean”—he looked steadily at Kelly—“over the past few years, I’ve had quite a few affairs. I’m not proud of it, but it always seemed the best thing to do, to keep myself from going quite demented from frustration while at the same time not imposing my needs on my wife.”

His words created the oddest sensation in Kelly’s stomach, a mixture of jealousy and desire. “Your wife knew about these affairs?”

He nodded. “Most of them. The first time she was very angry. She felt betrayed, understandably. But when I pointed out to her how little interest she had in sex, when I said that I’d be willing to go to counseling, or take a vacation in Hawaii, or anything, whatever would help—she shuddered. She was repulsed.” He looked as if he were going to weep.

Kelly was silent, unsure what to say.

He put his fingertips on her wrist. “Listen. When I decided to divorce Joan, I stopped sleeping around. I haven’t been with anyone for a year. I want you to know that.”

“Oh.” She cleared her throat. “Good.”

He smiled crookedly. “It hasn’t been out of some kind of spiritual decision. It’s because of the damn lawyers. They can twist anything, find a way to make anything dirty, and I don’t want it to hurt my chances of getting custody.”

Star strolled back with their breakfasts, setting Ernest’s order, an enormous mound of eggs, bacon, fries, sausage, and biscuits in front of Kelly, and giving Kelly’s order of a small stack of blueberry pancakes to him.

“Thank you,” he said to Star, and when she’d gone away, he traded plates with Kelly.

For a while they ate—or Ernest did. Kelly’s stomach was too full of butterflies. She busied herself buttering her pancakes and cutting them into little bits.

“How’s your breakfast?” he asked.

“Delicious,” she replied, and ate several bites to prove it.

He spread a triangle of toast with jam. “I’ve decided in my long life that we’re each of us given certain gifts, and certain faults.”

“By our genes?”

He shrugged. “Perhaps. Perhaps by fate. The point is that no one is perfect, and sometimes it seems that the more extreme a person’s goodness is, the more extreme her weaknesses. I’ve thought about this a lot, trying to find a way to talk to our daughter about the divorce.”

Star strolled by to refill their coffee cups.

“Is Grace living with her mother?”

“Yes. For now. We agreed to separate this spring. Grace was still in school, so I took an apartment near my hospital. It’s cramped and sterile, but I had to find something fast once Joan and I separated. Then my mother had her stroke, and was in the hospital, and then died, and
everything became complicated. I’m only now sorting it out.”

“Tell me about your mother.”

“Gladly.” He wiped his mouth, shoved his empty plate to the side, and set his elbows on the table. “She was an artist, a good one. She and my father had a kind of gentleman’s farm—my father still lives there. My father’s a physician. I love and admire him greatly, but my mother had a rare talent for enjoying each day. She loved everything: cooking, painting, she even loved cleaning the house. I know that sounds odd, but she was just that way, she’d put an opera on the stereo and storm around the house singing at the top of her lungs, scrubbing at the bathtub, sweeping the floors.” His face softened at the memory.

“I can see why you miss her.”

“Yes, selfishly for myself, but more than that, for Grace. As long as my mother was alive, she provided a kind of antidote to Joan.”

Star lounged up to them. “More coffee?”