Daddy (19 page)

Chapter 16

The romance blazed on through the hottest month of the year. The weather was torrid in August, and so was their passion. They alternated between his apartment and hers, and one night, even spent the night making love on the terrace. But fortunately, they were higher than the other buildings around them.

He hardly ever had time to see Daphne anymore, but she knew what was going on, and she was happy for him. He had a perennially glazed look in his eyes, and he was constantly vague and absentminded, and she hoped, for his sake, that he was screwing his brains out.

They had driven out to Purchase one day, so he could see Benjamin and his father, and he had dropped Megan off at her father's, and then picked her up to take her back to the city. But they didn't stop at the house. Somehow he didn't want to go there with her. It was still too full of memories of Sarah.

But he seldom thought of her now. He was obsessed with Megan, and their lovemaking, and her body. And on a blazing Sunday afternoon, they were walking around naked in his apartment, when the phone rang. He couldn't imagine who it was. Probably Daphne, checking up on him, although she seldom called him now. She didn't want to disturb him.

The crackle of long-distance wires met his ears when he picked it up, and then the phone went dead, and it rang again, and an overseas operator told him there was a collect call from San Remo. He could hardly hear anything, and he smiled, as Megan paraded before him. And for a moment, he felt sad, thinking of the adjustments they'd have to make. The children were due home the following weekend.

“Hello?” He could hear a sound in the distance. It sounded like crying, but he knew it was only static.

“Hello?” he shouted and then suddenly he heard Mel crying and saying over and over, “Daddy …”

“Melissa? Melissa! Talk to me!” The line faded on them, and then she came back, with an echo, but a little clearer. “What is it? What happened?”

“… an accident …” Oh God … no … Sam … not Sam … please … and not even Sarah …

“Baby, I can't hear you! Talk louder!” His eyes filled with tears as he waited, and Megan watched. He had totally forgotten her, in his desperation to understand his daughter.

“… an accident … killed … Mommy …” Oh Jesus. It was Sarah….

He stood up as though that would improve the connection and shouted into the phone as loud as he could. In Italy, it was midnight. “What happened to your mother?”

“… a car … driving … we're
in
San Remo … Jean-Pierre …”

“Melissa, is your mother hurt?” And Megan saw in his face then that he still loved her, but after twenty years, she didn't blame him. And she stood paralyzed with fear too. It reminded her of the call she'd gotten almost ten years before … from her mother … Darling … oh darling … it's Priscilla …

“Mom's all right. …” The tears spilled down his cheeks as he heard the words.

“Sam? What about Sam?”

“… Sam broke his arm … Daddy, it was so awful …” And then she began crying again, anci he could understand nothing. But if Sam was alive … he was alive, wasn't he? … and Sarah … and Melissa was on the phone … “A car hit us … full on … the driver was killed … and two kids … and Jean-Pierre … Jean-Pierre was killed instantly … oh Daddy … it was so awful …” Oh Jesus … poor man … but at least the children were alive. His children anyway, if not the others. It was a terrible, selfish way to look at it, but he was deeply grateful.

“Baby, are you all right? … are you hurt?”

“… I'm fine …”

“Where's Mom?”

“At the hospital … told me to call you … we have to go back to France for the funeral … We'll be home on Friday.”

“But you're all right? You're sure? Was Mommy hurt?”

“… black eye … all cut up … but she's okay. …” It was like playing telegraph, but they were alive, even if bruised and broken. And they had seen their mother's lover die, and another man, and two children. He shuddered at the thought of it.

“Do you want me to come over?”

“… don't think so … we're going to be staying … with Jean-Pierre's parents … going back tonight … Mom says you have the number.”

“I have it. I'll call you. And, baby …”he began to cry as he held the phone in a trembling hand, “… I love you … tell Sam I love him too … and tell Mommy I'm sorry.”

Mel was crying again, and eventually the connection got so bad, they had to hang up. Ollie looked badly shaken as he hung up the phone and stared up at Megan. He had totally forgotten her as he talked to his daughter.

“Are they all right?” She was standing naked, and lovely, before him, as she handed him a glass of brandy.

“I think so. We had a terrible connection. There's been an accident … several people were killed, from what I could understand. My wife's friend was killed instantly. He was driving. In San Remo.”

“Jesus. How awful.” She sat down next to him, and took a sip of the brandy he hadn't touched. “Were the kids hurt?”

“Sam broke his arm. I think Melissa's all right. Sarah got cut up, but I think they're all right. It must have been grim.” And then, still shaken, he looked at Megan. “When she started talking, I thought … I thought Sam … or maybe even Sarah … It's a terrible thing to say with other people getting killed, but I'm glad it wasn't.”

“I know.” She put an arm around him and held him close, and for a long time, they just sat there. They stayed at his place that night, in case the children called again, and for the first time in a month, they didn't make love at all. All he could think about were his children. And slowly, the shock of it brought them both back to their senses. Their wild idyll was going to change when the children came home. He couldn't stay out all night, and she couldn't stay at the apartment with him, and they would have to be far more circumspect around his children. In a way, it made them want to do as much as they could, while they were still alone, and in another way, the realization of what was coming so soon had already changed things.

And by Thursday night, they were both nervous and depressed. They lay awake all night, making love and talking, and wishing that things could be different.

“We could get married one day,” he said, only half jokingly, and she looked at him with mock horror.

“Don't be silly. That's a little extreme, isn't it?”

“Would it be?” He had never known anyone like her, and he was totally under her spell for the moment.

“For me, it would. Oliver, I can't marry anyone. I'm not the type, and you know it.”

“You heat up a great moussaka.”

“Then marry the guy at the deli where they made it.”

“He can't be as cute as you, although I've never met him.”

“Be serious. What would I do with a husband and three children?”

He pretended to think it over and she laughed. “I could think of a few things …”

“You don't need to be married for that, fortunately.” They had had a glorious month, but she was already acting as though it was over. “I just don't want more than this.”

“Maybe one day you will.”

“If I do, you'll be the first to know. I promise.”

“Seriously?”

“As serious as I can be about subjects like this. I told you before, marriage is not for me. And you don't need another wife to run shrieking out the door. You need some wonderful, smart, beautiful girl who's going to love you to pieces and take care of your kids, and give you fourteen more babies.”

“What a thought. I think you're confusing me with your father.”

“Not quite. But I am definitely not what the doctor ordered, Oliver. I know what I am, and some of it's all right, and some of it isn't. In my own way, I'm probably a lot like your wife, and that's exactly what you don't need. Be honest.”

He wondered if she was right, and if he had found himself a newer, somewhat racier edition of Sarah. He had never thought of that, but it was possible, although the idea depressed him. “What happens now?”

“We enjoy it for what it is, for as long as we can, and when it gets too complicated for either of us, we say good-bye, with a kiss and a hug and a thank-you.”

“Simple as that?”

“Simple as that.”

“I don't buy that. You grow attached to people in life. Don't you think after a month of being together all the time we've grown attached to each other now?”

“Sure. But don't confuse great sex with good loving. The two do not always go hand in hand. I like you, I care about you, maybe I even love you. But it's going to be different when the children come home. Maybe too different for both of us, and if it is, we just have to accept it and move on. You can't kill yourself over things like that in life. It's not worth it.” She was so damn casual, so nonchalant, just as she had been when she picked him up on the train, and called to invite him to dinner. As long as it was fun, it was fine, but when it wasn't fun anymore, just toss it. She was right. He had told himself he was falling in love with her. But maybe she was right there, too, maybe what he was really in love with was her body.

“Maybe you're right. I just don't know.” And they made love again that night, but this time it was different. And the next morning she went back to her own place, taking with her all traces of herself that for the past month she had left at his apartment. Her makeup, her deodorant, the pills she used in case she got a migraine, the perfume he had bought her, her hot rollers, her Tampax, and the few dresses she had left in his closet. It made him lonely just seeing the empty space, and he was reminded again of the pain of losing Sarah. Why did everything have to end? Why did it all change and move on? He wanted to hang on to all of it forever.

But the point was driven home with even greater force when he saw his children get off the plane, and Sarah behind them. She had a look of shock on her face he'd never seen there before, and grief and loneliness. It was worse than any pain she'd ever felt for him, and her eyes looked woefully out at him, surrounded by two vicious shiners, and a bandage on her chin that covered fourteen stitches. Sam looked frightened as well, and he was clinging to his mother's hand with his good arm, the other was in a cast from fingertip to shoulder. And Melissa started crying the moment she saw him. She flew into his arms, sobbing incoherently, and a moment later, Sam was there, too, the awkward arm in a sling, as he clung to his daddy.

And then Oliver looked up at the woman who had been his wife, and was no more, and he knew with full force how much she had loved the boy who had died
in
San Remo.

“I'm sorry, Sarrie … I'm so sorry …”It was like losing a part of himself, seeing her so broken. “Is there anything I can do?” They walked slowly to the baggage claim as she shook her head, and Melissa talked about the funeral. Jean-Pierre had been an only child and it had been awful.

Oliver nodded, and tried to comfort them, and then looked over Sam's head at Sarah. “Do you want to stay at the house in Purchase? We could stay in town, except for the Labor Day weekend.”

But she only shook her head and smiled. She seemed quieter, and not older, but wiser. “I start school on Monday. I want to go back. I have a lot to do.” And she didn't tell him that that summer she had finally started her novel. “But thank you anyway. The kids are going to come up in a few weeks, and I'll be all right.” But she dreaded going through his things when she got back to the apartment in Cambridge. It suddenly made her more aware of what Oliver had gone through when she had left. In a way, that had been a little bit like dying. She had loved Jean-Pierre like a son and a friend, a lover, and a father, and she had been able to give him everything she had denied Oliver in recent years, because he wanted nothing from her. He had taught her a lot about giving and loving … and dying …

Sarah flew straight on to Boston, once the children were in Oliver's hands, and they took a cab into the city. They were quiet and subdued and upset and Oliver asked Sam if his arm hurt, and told him he wanted to take him to an American doctor. He already had an appointment for later that afternoon, but when they went, the orthopedist assured him that the arm had been properly set in San Remo. And Mel had grown taller and blonder and lovelier over the summer, despite the trauma.

And it was so good being back with them again, it suddenly reminded him of how much he had missed them, without knowing it. And suddenly he wondered about the madness of his affair with Megan. They were going to the house in Purchase the next day, for the weekend, and he had invited Megan out for the day on Sunday, to meet his children. And Aggie was coming back on Monday. In the meantime, they were going to fend for themselves. And he cooked them scrambled eggs and toast when they got back to the apartment. And little by little, they told him everything they'd done that summer. They'd had a great time until the accident. And listening to them made him realize again how distant from his life Sarah was now. He wasn't even sure anymore if he still loved her.

The children went to bed right after they ate, and Sam even fell asleep at the kitchen table. The time difference had caught up with him, and they were both exhausted.

Oliver tucked Sam into bed, careful to prop the arm on a pillow as they'd been told to do by the doctor, and then he went to check on Melissa, who was wearing a puzzled frown as she held up a mysterious object in her bedroom. “What's that?” It was a woman's blouse, with a bra tangled in with it, and as she held it up, his face froze and he could smell Megan's perfume. He had forgotten the time he had chased her into Mel's room and almost torn her clothes off as they laughed, and then rushed back to his bedroom eventually to make love in the bathtub.

“I don't know …” He didn't know what to say to her. He couldn't begin to explain what had gone on in the past month, not to his sixteen-year-old daughter. “Is it yours?” He tried to look innocent, and she was almost young enough to believe him.

“No, it's not.” She sounded like an accusing wife. And then he slapped his head, feeling like a fool in a sitcom.

“I know what that is. I let Daphne stay here one weekend, when I was in Purchase. They were painting her apartment.” Melissa looked instantly relieved, and he kissed her good night, and retreated to his own room, feeling as though he had just escaped a life sentence.