“I’ll be there.”
“Fine. Would it be possible for you to join us here for breakfast at seven o’clock? There are a number of things we ought to discuss that I’d rather not mention on the phone.”
“Okay,” I said. “At seven for breakfast.”
There was a pause, then Mrs. Hayden came back on. It seemed to me the old lady was making an effort to be friendly. “I do so look forward to meeting your wife, Luke.”
“She’s not coming.”
I could hear the surprise in her voice. “Why not?”
“Because she’s having a baby,” I said. “Like any day now.”
After that we had nothing more to say, so we said goodbye. But no sooner had I put down the phone than it rang. It was Harris Gordon again.
“Just one thing more, Mr. Carey. Please don’t talk to any reporters. It’s important that you make no statement until after we’ve talked.”
“I understand, Mr. Gordon,” I said, and hung up.
Elizabeth started toward the bathroom. “I’ll get dressed and we’ll drive out to O’Hare.”
I looked at her questioningly. “Do you think you should? I can call a cab.”
“Don’t be silly.” She laughed. “No matter what you told the old lady, it’s still a good two weeks.”
I like driving at night. The world comes to a stop at the end of the beam of your headlights. You can’t see where you’re going, so you’re safe, at least as far as you can see, which is better than average for anything in life. I watched the speedometer hit fifty, then slow down to forty. There wasn’t any rush. It wasn’t even midnight yet.
But we didn’t feel like sitting around the house waiting. Out at the airport there would be movement, people. We would feel that we were doing something, even if there was nothing to do.
Out of the corner of my eye I saw the match flicker and cast a brief glow across Elizabeth’s face. Then she reached out and put a cigarette between my lips. I dragged deep.
“How’re you feeling?”
“Okay,” I said.
“Want to talk about it?”
“What’s there to talk about? Dani’s in trouble and I’m going out there.”
“You say that as if you had expected it,” she said.
I glanced at her with a kind of surprise. Sometimes she was too good. She dug right inside me and came up with thoughts I wouldn’t even admit to myself.
“I didn’t expect this,” I said flatly.
Her own cigarette glowed. “What did you expect?”
“I don’t know.”
But that wasn’t quite the truth either. I knew what I’d expected. That one day Danielle would call me on the phone and tell me she wanted to be with me. Not with her mother. But eleven years had worn that dream kind of thin.
“Do you think there was anything in what that policeman intimated?”
“I don’t think so,” I said. I thought for a moment. “In fact I’m pretty sure there wasn’t. If that had been the case, Nora would have killed him. Nora wouldn’t share anything she figured was hers.”
Elizabeth was silent and I went on with my thoughts. That was the way Nora was. The only thing important to her was keeping what she wanted. I remembered that last day in court.
Everything had been settled by then. She had the divorce. I was broke and beat and could hardly support myself, while she had everything in the world that she wanted. The only question left was Danielle’s custody.
We went into the judge’s chambers for that. It was supposed to be only a formality. We had already agreed that Dani would spend twelve weekends a year and half the summer with me on the boat at La Jolla.
I sat in the chair opposite the judge while my lawyer explained the agreement. The judge nodded and turned to Harris Gordon. “It seems an equitable arrangement to me, Mr. Gordon.”
I remembered that just then Danielle, who had been playing with a ball at the far end of the office, suddenly turned and yelled, “Catch, Daddy!”
The ball rolled across the floor and, as I knelt to pick it up, I heard Harris Gordon’s reply: “It definitely is not, Your Honor.”
I stared at him in disbelief, still holding the ball in my hand. This was something we had agreed on just yesterday. I looked at Nora. Her violet-blue eyes seemed to look right through me.
I rolled the ball back to Dani.
Harris Gordon went on, “It is the contention of my client that Colonel Cary has no parental rights.”
“What do you mean?” I yelled, straightening up. “I’m her father!”
Gordon’s dark eyes were inscrutable. “Didn’t you ever think it strange that the child was born only seven months after your return from Japan?”
I fought to keep my temper. “Mrs. Carey and her doctor both assured me that Dani was premature.”
“For a grown man you were rather naïve, Colonel Carey.”
Gordon turned back to the judge. “Mrs. Carey wishes to inform the court that the child Danielle was conceived some six to seven weeks prior to Colonel Carey’s return from service. In view of this, which she is sure that Colonel Carey has long admitted to himself, she asks for sole custody of her daughter.”
I spun toward my attorney. “Are you going to let them get away with this?”
My attorney leaned toward the judge. “I am terribly shocked by this action on the part of Mr. Gordon,” he said. “Your Honor must be aware that this is contrary to the agreement I reached with him yesterday.”
I could tell from the way the judge spoke that he too was shocked, though his language was studiedly impartial. “I am sorry, Counselor, but you must realize that the court cannot enforce any agreement that is not reached in the presence of this court.”
My temper finally blew. “The hell with the agreement then,” I shouted. “We’ll go back and fight the whole thing out again!”
My lawyer caught at my arm and looked at the judge. “May I have a moment to talk with my client, Your Honor?”
The judge nodded and we went over to the window. We stood there, our backs to the room, looking out.
“You know what that would mean?” he whispered. “You’ll be admitting publicly that your wife cuckolded you while you were still overseas!”
“So what? The whole town knows she’s screwed her way through San Francisco from Chinatown to the Presidio!”
“Stop thinking about yourself, Luke. Think about your daughter. What will this mean to her if it gets out? Her own mother labeling her a bastard?”
I stared at him. “She wouldn’t dare.”
“She already has.”
His reply was irrefutable. I didn’t speak. Then a small voice came from across the room: “Catch, Daddy!”
Almost automatically, I bent down again to pick up the ball. Danielle came hurtling across the room and flung herself into my arms. I lifted her up. She was laughing, her dark eyes sparkling.
Suddenly I wanted to squeeze her tight against my chest. Nora was lying. She had to be. Somehow I knew inside me that Dani was my daughter.
I looked across the room. At the judge, his secretary, at Harris Gordon, at Nora. They were all watching us. All except Nora. She was staring at some point over my head.
I studied the tiny smiling face opposite mine. I felt a sick, beaten feeling rise up inside me. My attorney was right. I couldn’t do it. I wouldn’t take the chance of hurting my own child.
“What can we do?” I whispered.
I could read the sympathy in my attorney’s eyes. “Let me talk to the judge.”
I stood there with Danielle in my arms while he went over to the desk. After a few minutes he came back.
“You can have four weekends a year. And two hours every Sunday afternoon if you come up to San Francisco. Is that agreeable to you?”
“Do I have any choice?” I asked bitterly.
He shook his head almost imperceptibly.
“Okay,” I said. “God, how she must hate me.”
With the unerring instinct o
f children, Danielle knew what I was talking about. “Oh no, she doesn’t, Daddy,” she said quickly. “Mommy loves you. She loves both of us. She told me.”
I looked down into her little face, so earnest, so wanting to be sure. I blinked my eyes to keep back the quick, salty tears. “Of course, darling,” I said reassuringly.
Nora came toward us. “Come with Mommy, darling,” she called. “It’s time to go home.”
Danielle glanced at her, then at me. I nodded as Nora held out her arms. For the first time Nora looked at me over Danielle’s head. There was a curious kind of triumph in her eyes.
The same kind of triumph I’d seen when she had completed a piece of sculpture that she’d been laboring over. Something she had struggled to give shape to. Suddenly I realized what Danielle meant to her. She wasn’t a child, she was just something Nora had made.
She put Danielle down, and hand in hand they started toward the door. As Nora opened it, Danielle looked back at me.
“You coming home too, Daddy?” she asked.
I shook my head. Tears had come into my eyes, partly blinding me, but I managed to say, “No darling. Daddy has to stay here and talk to the nice men. I’ll see you later.”
“Okay. ’Bye, Daddy.”
The door closed behind them. I stayed only long enough to sign the necessary papers, then took the train down to La Jolla and boarded the boat and got drunk.
It was a week before I was sober enough to accept a charter.
3
__________________________________________
I paid for my ticket and checked my bag through, then we went to the cocktail lounge. Despite the hour, the place was busy. We got a small table and I ordered two Manhattans.
I sipped at my drink. It was a good one. Cold and not too sweet. I looked over at Elizabeth. She was beginning to look tired.
“Are you all right?” I asked. “I shouldn’t have let you come all the way out here.”
She lifted her glass and swallowed some of the cocktail. “I’m okay,” she said, a little color coming back into her face. “Maybe a little nervous, but that’s all.”
“There’s nothing to be nervous about.”
“I’m not nervous about the plane,” she said. “Just about you.”
I laughed. “I’ll be all right.”
She didn’t smile. “You’ll have to see her again.”
Then I knew what she meant. Nora had a way of cutting me up, and it always took a while to get the pieces back together again. I’d been in that kind of state when Elizabeth and I first met six years ago. And that was five years after I had been divorced.
It was at the tail end of the summer. Danielle was eight and I was just back from San Francisco after delivering her to her mother after one of our infrequent weekends.
Dani had run into the house while I waited outside for the butler to come and get her bag. I never went into the house after the divorce.
The door opened but it wasn’t the butler It was Nora. We looked at each other for a moment. There was no expression in her cool eyes. “I want to talk to you.”
“About what?” I asked.
Nora was never one to waste time. “I’ve decided that Dani’s not going down to visit you anymore.”
I could feel the hackles rise. “Why?”
“She’s not a child anymore,” Nora said. “She sees things.”
“Like what?”
“Like the way you live on that filthy boat. The Mex women who come around, the drunken brawls. I don’t care to have her exposed to that side of life.”
“You’re a great one to talk. I suppose it’s better the way you do it? With clean sheets and martinis?”
“You ought to know. You seemed to like it pretty well.”
The crazy thoughts that jump into your mind. The fascination of what you know to be evil. She knew me all right. She knew what she was talking about. I fought the memory down.
“I’ll talk to my lawyer about that,” I said.
“Go ahead—if you can find a lawyer who will talk to you. You’re broke and dirty, and if you go into court, I’ve got a private detective’s statement about the way you live. You won’t get anywhere.”
She turned and closed the door in my face. I stared at it a moment, then walked down the patio steps to my beat-up old jalopy. I didn’t get home until late the next day and I got on the boat with half a case of whiskey.
Two days later I heard a knock on the cabin door. I pushed myself up from my bunk and staggered over to it. I threw open the door and for a moment I could feel the shock of pain travel from my eyeballs along the optic nerves to my brain. The harsh blue sky, the hot sun, the white dress and sun-blond hair of the girl who stood there. I blinked my eyes for a moment to cut out the light.
The girl spoke, her voice big and warm. “They told me at the bait store that you charter.”
I kept on blinking. The light was too much for the whiskey.
“Are you the captain?” she asked.
The pain was easing off now. I squinted at her. She was as good to look at as she sounded. Blue-eyed and tan, generous wide mouth, and a clean jaw.
“I’m the whole crew. Come on in and have a drink.”
The hand that gripped mine as she came down the narrow steps was strong and firm. She looked around the cabin curiously. It wasn’t much to look at. Empty whiskey bottles and disheveled bunks. She didn’t say anything.
“Excuse the mess,” I said. “But I drink between charters.”
A faint smile wrinkled her eyes. “So did my father.”
I looked at her. “Was he a charter man?”
She shook her head. “He was captain of a tug on the East River in New York. He hit the bottle hard between jobs.”
“I don’t drink when I’m working,” I said.
“Neither did he. He was the best tugboat captain in New York.”
I pushed some of the clutter off the table and took down a couple of clean glasses. I picked up the bottle of bourbon. “I got water. No ice.”
“That’s good whiskey,” she said. “Don’t weaken it.”
I hit the tumblers to the halfway mark. She drank the whiskey like it was water. A girl after my own heart.
“Now to business,” she said, putting down her glass.
“Fifty dollars a day. Out at five in the morning, back at four in the afternoon. No more than four passengers.”
“How much for a week? We want to go up to L.A., lay over for the weekend and come back.”
“We?” I asked. “How many?”
“Just two. My boss and myself.”
I looked at her. “This is the only cabin on the boat. Of course I can bunk down on the deck if I have to.”
She laughed. “You won’t have to.”
“I don’t get it,” I said. “Is there something wrong with the guy?”
She laughed again. “There’s nothing wrong with him. He’s seventy-one years old and treats me like his daughter.”
“Then why the charter?”
“He’s a builder from Phoenix. He had some business out here and up around L.A. Since he’s seen nothing but sand for a long time he thought it might be a good idea to get a little salt air, maybe do some fishing.”
“He won’t get much fishing done. It’s the wrong time of the year. The fish have all gone down Mexico way.”
“He won’t mind.”
“All meals on?” I asked.
“Except the weekend.”
“Would five hundred be too much?”
“Four hundred would be more like it.”
“You’re on,” I said. I got to my feet. “When do you want to leave?”
“Tomorrow morning. Eight o’clock all right? Do you want a deposit?”
I grinned at her. “You got an honest face, Miss …”
“Andersen,” she said. “Elizabeth Andersen.”
She got to her feet. The swell from a passing boat rocked the deck beneath us. She put out a hand to steady herself and sta
rted up the cabin steps.
I called after her. “By the way, Miss Andersen, what day is this?”
She laughed. A warm friendly kind of laugh. “Just like my father. That was always the first thing he asked after tying one on. It’s Wednesday.”
“Of course,” I said.
I watched her walk down the dock to where her car was parked. She turned and waved to me, then got in and drove off. I went back into the cabin and began to clean up.
That was the way I met her. We weren’t married until almost a year later.
“What are you smiling at?” Elizabeth asked.
I came back to the present with a start and reached across the table and put my hand over hers. “I was thinking about how you looked when we met,” I said. “A blond goddess cast in gold and ivory.”
She laughed and sipped at her Manhattan again. “I don’t look much like a blond goddess now.”
I signaled the waiter for two more drinks. “I’m still ahead.”
Her face was suddenly serious. “You’re not sorry you married me, are you?”
I shook my head. “Don’t be silly. Why should I be?”
“You’re not blaming me for what happened? To Dani, I mean.”
“I’m not blaming you,” I said. “There’s nothing I could have done to stop it. I know that now.”
“You used to think differently.”
“I was a fool,” I said. “I was using Dani as a crutch.”
The waiter came and put the drinks down. Time has a way of dragging when you’re waiting for a plane. Maybe it’s because you have a feeling that everything should move fast, like the six-hundred-mile-per-hour planes. But your feet are on the ground and nothing seems to move except the desire inside you to be off, to be somewhere else.
I hadn’t felt like that this morning—rather, yesterday morning. The wind was warm off the lake as I got out of my car at the construction site. The last house in this unit would be framed today and I was certain that we’d get the okay to start on the next group. With the kind of weather we’d be having, I was sure we could get the new bunch framed up before the bad weather set in. That way all the inside work could be completed during the winter.
Where Love Has Gone (1962) Page 2