My Father's Wives (11 page)

“Can we go up to the office and talk?” I scratched my head. “This is going to require a little explaining.”

MY SECOND VISIT TO
Cranston’s office felt markedly different from the first.

“Are we coming along on our other matter?” I asked as he executed a simple search at my behest.

“We are.”

“Anything I should know?”

“With your permission,” he replied, without removing his eyes from his computer screen, “I would prefer to complete the report before I present any portion of it. It has been my experience that partial information is the most dangerous kind.”

“That’s fine,” I said. I wasn’t sure I was ready to hear it anyway.

“It shouldn’t be much longer,” Cranston said. His fingers continued to fly across the keyboard; I’m not sure I’d ever seen anyone type so quickly. I smiled as I considered the difference between Cranston and Bruce. My CEO pounds a keyboard like it’s a basketball; you can hear him typing from outside his office door. Cranston hardly seemed to disturb the keys as his fingers danced among them.

There was a whirring sound across the desk. Green lights illuminated a printer directly before me, and as it began to spit out sheets of paper Cranston pointed toward it. “Hot off the presses,” he said.

I left the papers where they lay. It had taken Cranston all of ten minutes to find that from which I had spent my entire life hiding.

“Would you like me to put together a folder for you?” he asked. “You can go over these any time you want.”

“I just need a minute,” I said, my voice less sure than it had been.

He rose from his chair. “Take all the time you need,” he said, his shoes echoing on the hardwood floor. “I’ll be next door.”

Each piece of paper that streamed from Cranston’s printer had a name, a photo, and an address. He had asked if I needed more but I didn’t think I did. Whatever more I needed I would find out myself.

I arranged the pages in chronological order and laid them facedown. I could feel my fingers shaking on the desk. With a deep breath I turned over the first page. The face was one I vaguely recognized:
the secretary who had once told me I was a handsome young man. I had seen her one other time as well, on the last day of my father’s marriage to my mother. She looked older in this picture, but there wasn’t any question it was the same woman.

IN THE CAR EN ROUTE
to LaGuardia, as my driver cursed under his breath at a taxicab that nearly ran him off the Grand Central Parkway, I arranged a business dinner in Chicago. Then I texted Bruce.
Dinner in Chi with Deutsch and Kramer. Something about this deal doesn’t pass the smell test. Will update asap
.

Within a minute my phone rang. “You want to play ball in the morning?”

I was confused. “With you?”

“No, I’m on my way to see Helen’s family. But Friday mornings are special. I’m going to text you an address. Ask for Aaron when you get there. Michael usually arrives around nine.”

There was no need for a last name. “I’ll be there at quarter of,” I said.

“I’ll tell Aaron you’re coming. Have fun.”

I leaned back in my seat. With a tingle spreading slowly from my fingers, I texted Claire.
Dinner in Chicago tonight. Could get messy. Tell kids I may play basketball with Michael Jordan in the morning
.

Again, my phone rang within a minute. “Michael Jordan?”

I laughed. “Bruce knows a guy.”

“That’s very exciting,” Claire said, “but I’m worried about you. How are you feeling?”

“Much better,” I said. The lying made my pulse beat faster. “Good as new after a night’s sleep. You were right about the hotel.”

“Will you be home tomorrow?”

“Should be. By the way, I never got those pictures.”

There was a little pause. It sounded as though Claire was momentarily distracted. “Honey,” I said, “is everything all right?”

“Fine, just a little hectic, as usual.”

“Okay,” I said. “So, I didn’t get the pictures.”

“Well, I sent them,” she said, faintly, as though she had turned her face away from the phone. “There’s just a lot going on today. Call me later, miss and love.”

“Miss and love,” I said, as I heard her end of the phone go dead.

I TOUCHED DOWN IN
Chicago in time to check into a hotel and shower before dinner at Gibsons. The clients and I drank martinis and ate steaks, and we talked about basketball and money, not in that order. The clients were principals in a real estate firm, and they talked too openly about a transaction they wanted us to fund. By the end of the night I understood the deal better than they did.

Before shutting the lights in my hotel room I typed a note to Bruce.
Dinner with Deutsch and Kramer tonight. No way in hell we do this with them, I’ll explain later. Hoops tomorrow morning. I’ll tell MJ you said hello
.

I had barely closed my eyes when I heard the iPhone reverberate. I picked it up off the nightstand.
Get physical with him. He doesn’t like that, gets in his head
.

It was after midnight back home. “Less than a minute,” I said aloud, and smiled. “Typical Bruce.”

THERE IS A PARTICULAR
smell to a gym where basketball is being played that I love.

I’m not sure about other sports because I never played anything else, but I have played basketball all my life and always loved the smell. I don’t know if it’s the hardwood or whatever is used to clean it, or the way perspiration smells when it seeps into it, or if rubber soles on high-top sneakers emit a scent when they squeak, or if the ball gives off an aroma when it bounces, but whatever it is there is a smell in the gym that I have loved from my very first time.

I was a grade-schooler then. My parents had just split up. Mother moved me downtown, and what I missed most about the apartment we left behind was not my father, but rather the smell in the hallway. We lived on an upper floor; I don’t recall which, but I do vividly recall the aroma of fresh dill. It’s a very particular scent, and the moment the elevator doors opened you would smell it. When we moved away I always remembered it, and when I was lonely it was that smell that I missed.

Our apartment downtown had no such smell; the gym replaced the dill for me. My mother decided I should try a sport to alleviate my sadness and she chose basketball. I had never even seen a game, but the moment that scent reached my nostrils I knew I was home. I feel that way to this day, regardless of where in the world I am or what is happening around me. When I smell a basketball court I feel like I belong.

Hoops the Gym is a place where basketball legends are made. At any given time one might expect to find aspiring college players, current NBA stars, even the Great Jordan, whose name is spoken in the reverential tones Hemingway used to speak of bullfighters. It takes a lot of nerve for a forty-year-old banker to show up looking for a game, but I had the nerve.

I ate a hearty room service breakfast at six: eggs and bacon and two glasses of orange juice. Then I spent my usual hour responding to e-mails. I called home five minutes before the kids would leave for the bus.

Drew answered. “Did you play with Michael Jordan?”

“Not yet. Maybe this morning.”

“Tell him I think he’s cool.”

“I will.”

“Tell him about the poster in my room.”

“I will.”

“Okay. Phoebe doesn’t want to talk to you.”

He lives to irritate his sister. “Put her on the phone,” I said.

A little rustling, then her voice. “Hi.”

“Why didn’t you want to talk to me?”

“Who said I didn’t want to talk to you?”

“Your brother.”

“Andrew!”

I smiled. “It doesn’t matter. What’s going to be the best thing about school today?”

She paused a moment. That is one of the great things about my
daughter: there are no throwaway questions with her. If you ask, you get a thoughtful answer. “Probably lunch.”

“Okay, sweetheart, have a wonderful day,” I said, and she hung up.

Usually when I call home I speak to Claire as well, and it does my soul good to hear her voice, but at that moment I thought it might actually work in the reverse. A wave of sadness washed over me as I laid the phone down on the nightstand. The tray with empty dishes was on the foot of the bed, a bit of dried yolk streaking the plate beside a half-eaten piece of toast. The coffee had gone cold. I turned away from it all, looked out the window. A gray pall lay heavily upon the Chicago skyline, dreary and cold. April in Chicago often looks and feels like the dead of winter anywhere else. I closed the blinds and went to get dressed.

It was raining tiny, frozen drops when I got out of the cab and jogged into the gym, my heart pounding. There is a tiny bit of little kid in all of us, and Michael Jordan is the one who brings mine out. There isn’t anyone I admire more. To see him in person, in his prime, was like watching Picasso paint, or Mozart play, or Olivier play Hamlet. To actually play with him was enough to make me forget why I was in Chicago in the first place.

I pulled open the door of Hoops and bounded up the stairs into the waiting area, where I found a tall man with shocking red hair and poor skin. “I was told to ask for Aaron,” I said to him.

“I’m Aaron.”

“Bruce Sellers sent me.”

Aaron smiled, teeth a little too large for his mouth. “I’ll get you a locker.”

I hung my suit carefully, changed into workout gear, laced my high-tops tight enough that I felt my ankles throbbing. They were Air Jordans, of course. The only brand I’ve worn for twenty years.

Back out of the locker room, Aaron pointed the way to the gym.

“Let me ask,” I said, casual as I could. “MJ coming this morning?”

“Not in town.”

“I thought . . .” I didn’t finish the sentence.

I could hear the sounds of a game going on, the squeaking of sneakers, the unmistakable shouting of spirited competition. Aaron and I just stared at each other.

“You still want to play?” he asked.

I sighed deeply. “Not really,” I said. “I have important business today. I just thought it was a once-in-a-lifetime chance.”

“Suit yourself,” Aaron said, and started back toward the front desk. “Feel free to hang around as long as you want.”

I stood quietly and watched him walk away. Then I watched a few minutes of the game being played. Eventually I would put my suit back on and head to 100 East Bellevue. But there wasn’t any rush. I had waited thirty years for this. Ten more minutes wouldn’t make much difference.

EAST BELLEVUE IS A
quiet street in the heart of downtown Chicago, something of an oasis from the bustle of Rush Street. The steakhouse where I’d eaten the night before was on the corner. On a busy night that corner overflows with tourists and high-powered business diners, but late morning is vastly different; only a few window-shoppers were strolling about, most of the activity centered around a Starbucks. Farther up Bellevue were manicured gardens in front of small, elegant houses, mature trees lining the sidewalk. The whole street would have looked perfectly at home in suburban Connecticut.

A few steps from Lakeshore Drive I found the austere skyscraper, appropriately fashionable for its proximity to Michigan Avenue. There was a circular driveway in front of a glass revolving door, and a doorman behind a desk, thumbing through a newspaper.

I had envisioned standing outside, waiting however long it took, but now I saw a significant flaw in that strategy: it was unimaginably unpleasant outside. The freezing rain had ceased but the air was dank and cold and the wind coming off the lake tore through my suit. I loitered for as long as I could stand it, which was less than ten minutes, then I pushed through the revolving door into the lobby.

“Good afternoon,” the doorman said, looking up from his paper. “How may I be of service on this gloomy day?” There was a cheerfulness about him that infuriated me for absolutely no reason.

“I’m here to see Christine Sweetwater,” I said, my voice lifeless in my own ears.

“All right, sir,” he replied, lifting an old-fashioned telephone from its cradle. “Who may I tell her is here?”

I didn’t hesitate. “Her son, Jonathan.”

The doorman didn’t hesitate either. He opened a directory and scanned through with his forefinger, humming cheerily. “Just one moment, sir.”

Obviously, he was new on the job. If his disposition wasn’t enough to give that away, his search for her apartment surely did. In buildings such as these, veteran doormen knew the apartment numbers of their residents backward and forward. This fellow didn’t know Christine well enough to know which unit she lived in, nor that she didn’t have a son named Jonathan. But he was about to find out both.

“Yes, good afternoon,” he said into the phone. “Is this Mrs. Sweetwater?” Brief pause. “Yes, your son is down here to see you.” Longer pause. “Yes, I’m sure.” He looked up at me curiously. “Are you Jonathan Sweetwater?”

I nodded.

“Yes, he is.” Another pause, then the doorman hung up. He didn’t look as cheerful anymore. “She says she’ll be right down.” I smiled as he went back to looking at his newspaper. Something in the exchange had lightened my mood. When you are feeling low, there is a perverse, unproductive pleasure in dragging others down with you.

It wasn’t long before I heard an elevator door lurch open and I turned to find a face I had seen before, too long ago to remember. “Jonathan,” Christine said, extending both hands. “My, look at you.”

She was petite and pretty, in an overly made-up way. Her hair was cut medium length and straight, chestnut brown, parted on the side and spilling over the fur collar of her jacket. Her clothes were
expensive but overdone, fancier than you would need for a ride in an elevator.

I took both her hands and shook them. “It certainly has been a long time.”

I was a head taller than she, which only added to the awkwardness. We stood a moment holding hands, looking each other up and down as though we were preparing to try ourselves on. “What brings you to Chicago?” Christine asked at last.

“Business,” I said. “I work on Wall Street. I had a dinner here last night. I had some time free today and have always thought about looking you up, so I thought I’d take a chance.”