My Father's Wives (24 page)

I took a deep breath, let it out. Like on the beach in Nevis.

“First and foremost,” she said, “you are completely obsessed with your father. It’s not just the last two weeks that you have spent in search of Percy, but your whole life. I don’t know why you chose now to do something about it, but I am certain this dates back a good deal longer than twelve days. It probably began the last time you were in this apartment. So, not only isn’t it
creepy
that you are here, but it is perfect. You might say your whole life has been spent trying to get right where you are now.”

I opened my eyes and saw a mirror on the wall. In it, I saw my own reflection when I was eight years old. My father was behind me, teaching
me to tie a necktie, measuring the two sides, pulling it tight, right to my throat. His breath smelled of coffee. My mother said: “My, look how handsome my little boy looks!” Percy smiled behind me. I could see him in the mirror.

“Tell me why you went to see all of Percy’s wives,” Diane said.

“I wanted to know him,” I said, my voice thick. “I thought it was the best way.”

“It probably was. What did you find?”

I took a deep breath. “My father married my mother because he loved her. She was perfect for him. She was intellectual, spiritual, very political, and beautiful. She had only one flaw: she didn’t worship the ground he walked on. Christine did, and that drew him to her. She was attentive and sexy but ultimately shallow, so he grew tired of her and fell in love with Elizabeth, because she might have been as smart as he was, but she was ultimately cold, so he was completely swept away by the gracefulness and beauty of Anne on the stage. The trouble with her was she was too passive. So he found Ciara, who was even more beautiful and probably the strongest and most self-assured woman you could ever meet. But for some reason that didn’t work for him either. And then he married you.”

Diane took a sip of her tea and balanced the mug again on the armrest of the sofa. “Okay,” she said. “So that’s what you found. What did you learn?”

“What do you mean? I just told you everything.”

She shook her head. “Actually, Jonathan, you told me nothing. You could have read the books they wrote about your father and figured most of that out, would have saved you a lot of time. What matters is not what your father did, but what did it mean?”

I brought both hands to my face. “I don’t know,” I said. “How am I supposed to know?”

I felt her touch, very gently, on my knee. “I knew your father for most of his adult life. We met at a funeral. That’s not much of a setting for anyone, but it was especially tough for him. Your father did not handle
death well. I saw him once a week, without fail, the rest of his life. He kept his treatment a secret. He thought it would be perceived as weakness. I didn’t agree, but it wasn’t my decision to make. I treated him through all his marriages, all his battles, all his victories and defeats.”

“Including his son.”

“That was his greatest defeat and he knew it. I don’t know if that helps at all.”

“Should it?”

She smiled. “No one can decide that but you. You seem to want others to give you answers to questions only you understand. I’m telling you that your father died regretting the way he handled his relationship with you. Now, you tell me if that helps.”

I breathed in and out. “No,” I finally said. “It does not.”

She nodded. “Very good.”

There was something attractive about Diane the longer you looked at her. Her eyes were clear blue and the lines in her face added character. Say one thing for my father: he had good taste in women. “Can I ask you something?” I said.

“Of course.”

“How did you wind up married to my father?”

“Well, he and Ciara weren’t together often. He was here, she was there. And I knew it was trouble because he hardly mentioned her at all.”

“In therapy?”

“Correct. We had long, involved discussions about his feelings, and often an entire session—a full hour—would pass without her name coming up.”

“So he didn’t love her?”

Diane shrugged. “With Percy, it wasn’t always easy to tell.”

“So he left her for you?”

Diane dropped her head to one side. “I wouldn’t say that. I was having dinner at Jim McMullen’s one night with a friend. Do you remember that place?”

I did, on the East Side. My father loved that restaurant. Mother never went back after they split up.

“Percy came in alone,” Diane continued. “It was the first time we saw each other outside the office. He sent a bottle of wine to our table. The next day was our regular session, and he spent the entire hour asking about my life. He kept saying he never imagined me outside the office, but now he was consumed with me. Where did I go? What did I do? He was endlessly curious about the other six days and twenty-three hours of my week.”

“What did you think of that?”

“I thought he had decided he was in love with me. All his life, Percy always fell for the woman he thought could give him what he needed right then. I suppose, at the end of his life, that was me.”

“What could you give him?”

“Your father was more afraid to die than any person I’ve ever known. Growing old and infirm was a terrible experience for him. My office was the only place he talked about it. So what I gave him was a little bit of comfort.”

“A little bit of shelter from the storm,” I said.

Diane smiled. “He always told me Alice loved Bob Dylan.”

“She still does.”

Diane repositioned herself on the sofa, placed her feet on the floor, smoothed the wrinkles in her long skirt. “Okay,” she said. “Enough about me. Back to you. You told me what you found on this journey you’ve taken. Let’s see if we can figure out what it means.”

I leaned back in the chair, which seemed as though it should recline but did not. “I guess,” I said, “what I learned is that my father wasn’t perfect.”

“Far from it.”

“Does that count?”

“Of course it counts.”

“Is it enough?” I asked.

“Enough for what?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I feel like there was some answer I’ve been waiting all my life for, but when I finally tried to find it I realized I didn’t even know what the question was.”

Diane’s entire face changed; she looked ten years younger. “That is
brilliant
!” she said. “In that one sentence you have demonstrated greater self-awareness than I ever heard from Percy.”

I dropped my head into my hands. “What are you talking about? I just told you I didn’t learn anything.”

“Jonathan,” she said, “what did you expect to happen? To have a moment where suddenly everything in your life makes sense to you? That’s not how it works. You don’t get hit by lightning one day and suddenly achieve higher understanding. We are all walking around uncertain and confused.”

My head was still in my hands. The image of my father was fading in my mind. I was thinking of Claire.

“Listen,” Diane continued, “your father was afraid to die, and if your goal is to live forever you will never be happy. You, meanwhile, seem to be scared to be too much like your father
and
scared that you’re not like him enough. So you don’t have any chance either.”

“So, what do I do?”

“What your father never did. Change the goal.”

I lifted my head, looked Diane in the eye. “Change it to what?” I asked.

“Only you can decide that.”

From another room, a clock struck three. The chime was achingly familiar, like a musical note. I recognized it immediately as coming from the grandfather clock that still stood in the hallway. The clock was taller than my father. I could recall the joy I took in watching him steer the hands with one finger twice each year, spring and fall. Now, all these years later, I thought if there was one thing of my father’s I wouldn’t mind keeping it would be that clock. Perhaps I would ask Diane if I might have it someday. Didn’t have to be now.

She was looking at her watch. “I don’t mean to rush you but I have someone coming shortly. You’re welcome to come back anytime if you want to talk some more.”

“You still see patients?” I asked.

“I do.”

I shuffled my fingers on the edge of the chair. “Can I ask one more question?”

“Of course.”

“Do you date anyone?”

“I do not currently,” she said in a hopeful tone. “But you never know what the rest of the day may bring.”

SONNY WAS WAITING DOWNSTAIRS,
just as I instructed. He was standing beside the car, smoking a cigarette, chatting with the doorman as the afternoon traffic roared past. It was starting to rain lightly, ominous clouds rolling in.

“Just sit a minute,” I said as I slid into the backseat. “I need to do something.”

The rain fell gently on the roof, like the distant beating of tiny drums. I looked up to find the drops had covered the window, streaking my view of the busy street. I put the window down, let the rain fall on my face, took a long, last look at the building.

“All right,” I said after a moment. “It’s time to go home.”

I continued to stare out the window as he pulled away from the curb. The drizzle settled on my cheeks and chin but I didn’t put the window back up until we reached the West Side Highway. Then I dried my face with my sleeve, combed my windblown hair with my fingers, and picked my phone up from my lap.

Mother answered quickly. “I’m thrilled you have taken to calling instead of showing up at my door,” she said. “While I miss seeing you, I don’t gain any weight this way.”

“I can have croissants delivered.”

“Do me a favor and don’t.”

“I have a question,” I said, “and I don’t want you to get aggravated.”

“Then don’t ask about your father.”

I smiled. “One last time. I promise.”

“Go ahead.”

“Am I like him?”

Mother sighed. “The truth is, Jonathan, you are a little like him and a little not. I know you want a better answer, but there really isn’t one.”

“No,” I said. “That’s a good answer.”

There was a brief, comfortable silence before she spoke again. I could hear the traffic, the light rain on the roof. “Don’t worry so much about your father,” Mother finally said. “Are you happy?”

“What?”

“Are you happy?”

I thought for a moment. “Yes, I am.”

“Good,” she said. “Then go live your life. There isn’t any more to it than that.”

I dropped the phone in my lap as we passed the George Washington Bridge. In the distance a siren sounded, maybe an ambulance. The traffic was picking up. It was going to take a long time to get home, especially with the rain.

WE WERE ALMOST THERE
when the other phone vibrated.

“Quick change of plan,” I said to Sonny. “Drive to the beach.”

The vibration lasted twenty seconds, then went dead. I didn’t take the phone from my pocket, just watched out the window as we made our way to the ocean. The rain had picked up and was coming down hard.

A few blocks from the beach the vibration began again. This time
I took the phone from my pocket and laid it on the seat beside me. Soon it would be summer and this neighborhood would be swollen with New Yorkers. Now it was quiet, not a soul around.

“Over to the dock,” I told Sonny, and he drove out past the beach entrance, basketball courts, playground, baseball diamond, skateboard park. At the end of the beach was the entrance to the marina, where Sonny stopped and turned to face me, leaving the engine idling. The windshield wipers were working hard.

The phone vibrated again, on the seat by my leg. I picked it up with the tips of my fingers. “Wait for me here, Sonny,” I said, and opened the car door. “I’ll be right back.”

It was raining pretty hard but it wasn’t cold. I glanced around in search of cover but found nothing, so I walked out into the marina. I answered the phone. “Hello.”

“Mr. Sweetwater?” There was no doubt of the voice.

“Yes?”

“Mr. Sweetwater, I hope you are having a pleasant day and have had some time to consider our discussion of yesterday. Are you prepared to meet so I can present to you what I have discovered in my investigation?”

The rain was dripping from my hair onto my hand. The clouds obscured the entirety of the horizon. I knew that in the distance the gray met the blue sea, but it wasn’t clear where.

“Mr. Sweetwater, are you there?”

The rain was soaking through my suit now. “I’m sorry,” I said. “Whom did you say was calling?”

There was a slight pause. “Jonathan, it’s Lowell Cranston.”

I took one last deep breath. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I don’t know anyone by that name. I’ll ask you to please never call this number again.”

The pause was longer this time. “I apologize,” he said at last. “I won’t disturb you again.” I couldn’t see him, of course, but his voice sounded like he was smiling.

I let the rain fall on me in silence for a moment. Then I steadied
my feet to be sure I wouldn’t slip, reached my arm back, and threw the phone as far as I could out into the ocean. I’ve never had much of an arm but it was a pretty good throw, if I do say so myself.

“When I woke up this morning,” I said aloud, “my life was perfect.”

I stood and watched the clouds swirl and the waves crash against the dock. I wasn’t in any hurry. The air was warm; it was actually rather nice out if you didn’t mind the rain. And I didn’t. I was so wet already. There comes a point when you just can’t get any wetter.

IT WAS FIVE O’CLOCK
when Sonny dropped me off at the house.

Claire was on the couch, child on each side of her, arms around them both, watching a television program whose name I don’t know. They all turned in unison when I entered.

“Daddy!” Both kids jumped from the couch, came running. They don’t always do that anymore. In fact, Phoebe seldom does. I know I need to enjoy it while it lasts.

“Home for dinner,” Claire said, walking toward me. “And soaking wet?”

“Got caught in the rain,” I said.

“Did something happen to the car?”

“No, it’s fine. Everything is fine.” I was on my knees, arms around the kids. They were trying to pull away from my watery embrace but I needed another moment.