I surely bought more than we needed. But I found I was enjoying this. I never really made these kinds of decisions before.Maureen and I shopped together when Tanya was younger, before she insisted on choosing her own clothing exclusively. But I was just along for the ride. Maureen knew what she wanted, she had great taste, and my opinion really wasn’t required or particularly well formed. But as much as I would never choose the circumstances, I liked the fact that these decisions were between Reese and me now. If I thought it would look good on him, then I would buy it. If he liked the color, the texture, or just wanted to grab something, we’d buy that as well. Within an hour and a half, we were finished and would have been done more quickly if the teenager handling the register at The Children’s Place didn’t slow us down. Thinking about this girl made me think about Tanya waiting tables and claiming to enjoy the work. Would she feel the same way if she kept at it for a couple of months? For that matter, did this cashier’s job once seem fascinating before boredom and complete lack of concern for the customer set in?
We still had most of the day in front of us so I decided to stay in the mall a bit longer. We went to a music store and I tried to get Reese to put on a pair of headphones to listen to a song from the new Ari Hest album. He pawed them off and looked back at me contemptuously. Instead, we looked through the CDs while I told him about the Beatles and the Stones and Led Zeppelin and REM, deciding we’d address the classics during this first seminar. He chuckled for some reason at the sight of Get Yer Ya-Yas Out! and thought Rubber Soul literally looked good enough to eat. Tanya and I spent a lot of time in music stores before she became a teenager. I loved walking around with her, trading impressions of bands and introducing her to new ones. Like so many things in the past few years, this became something we stopped doing, even though we continued to like much of the same music. In fact, by the time she left, my mentioning a new band to her – something I guess I wasn’t supposed to be alive enough to do – made her terse and dismissive.
Next, Reese and I went to a sports memorabilia store. I showed him a baseball autographed by Mickey Mantle and another signed by Don Mat-tingly, my favorite Yankee ever.We browsed through rare artifacts and cheesy tokens to New York’s various championship teams. I told him about Reggie Jackson’s three home runs, the Islanders’ four consecutive Stanley Cups, and Phil Simms’ nearly perfect Super Bowl. At one point, Reese decided to lick one of the display cases, but otherwise seemed unmoved by the experience. “I promise; you’re going to love this place in a couple of years.”
On the way out of the mall, I decided to get a cup of coffee and a donut. At Reese’s checkup the other day, the doctor told me it was okay to introduce the baby to certain solid foods (hence the rice cereal). She didn’t specifically name Krispy Kremes, but since I was buying one for myself, it seemed impolite to eat it without offering him a taste.
I wasn’t really a junk food eater and I kept absolutely none of it in the house, but I had a weakness for these donuts. Something about the way the Krispy Kreme people glazed them elevated them to some higher form of pastry. I took Reese out of the BabyBjörn and sat him on my lap. I put a little of the sugar on my pinky and then brought it up to his lips. He sucked my finger hungrily and, when I removed it, he continued to work his lips for another taste. I took a bite of the donut and then broke off the tiniest piece for him. He looked up at me approvingly as he moved it around in his mouth, and I knew this was something we would share regularly in the future. However, I wasn’t about to feed him any more of something so unhealthy right now. I guiltily finished the donut by myself, reading all kinds of recrimination from his gaze, and then gave him a bottle while I sipped my coffee.
“Reese, you’re an excellent shopping buddy,” I said to him as we drove home. I flicked on the iPod and sang along to the Jack’sMannequin song that played. We were a couple of boys out for a ride in our car and I felt better than I had in a while. It wasn’t until we got back to our neighborhood that I fell victim to another sneak attack, realizing how much Maureen would have enjoyed this trip and how, if fate had been kinder, we would have done it as a family.
I remembered the three of us going shopping when Tanya was six months old. The summer was imminent and the baby needed a new wardrobe. I’ll never forget Maureen’s giddiness over choosing shorts, sunhats, and bathing suits, holding them up to our young daughter’s body with exclamations of delight. Maureen was a dedicated student of everything related to child care, but this was a pure Barbie Doll episode for her, dressing up her little girl. I rarely saw her so uninhibitedly happy. Our budget was very tight in those days and this shopping spree was definitely straining it, but I refused to bring up our finances under the circumstances. We could always make more money. Who knew how many of these unalloyed moments anyone got?
What I remember most about that trip, though, was what happened when we got home. Tanya was asleep in the car and I told Maureen that I’d bring her to her crib.
“She’s going to wake up when you take her out of the car seat, you know,” Maureen said.
“Yeah, she always does. I can get the monitor and we could leave her in here if you want.”
“We could,” she said, arching her eyebrows.
“Or?”
She reached over and ran her fingernails along my leg. “It’s been a long time since we’ve made out in a car.”
“Have we ever made out in a car?”
“Northport Harbor . . .” she said running her fingers up my arm.
“Yes, absolutely.”
She leaned over and kissed me, then glanced toward the back seat. “You can do this quietly, can’t you?”
“I’m making no promises.”
“It would be best if you did. She wakes up easily, remember, and the timing could be unfortunate.”
The implications registered and, though it took every bit of my will, I stayed completely silent. We even nodded off together in the car, awakening only when Tanya got up from her nap. It had been one of the truly great days.
Now on this afternoon nearly seventeen years later, Reese and I pulled into the garage of a different house. He smiled when I looked back at him, which reminded me of our little shopping adventure and made me smile as well. But right then, my heart belonged to another place and time and I desperately wanted to see only one face.
• • •
While Reese napped, I got a call from Tate Stax. Tate and I had been friends since second grade and stayed in relatively close touch the entire time. He is taller and considerably more athletic than I am, and during our teenage years he concentrated on being a jock while I spent most of my time playing in rock bands. But even then, we hung together in the cafeteria, went out with friends on the weekends, and spent numerous summer days in each other’s company, especially after we both learned to drive. After college, our lives diverged somewhat. I moved back to Long Island with Maureen. He got an MBA from Wharton, did the big-fish-in-a-small-pond thing with a textile firm in Kentucky, then served as comptroller for a mid-size corporation in Columbus, Ohio, where he met Gail, who also grew up on Long Island. When it was time to settle down, they moved back east to live with their two kids, Zak and Sara, now seven and five, in the exclusive community of Head of the Harbor. That Tate made somewhere around three times as much money as I did was something both of us were fully aware of, but it had never gotten between us – though I was very willing to let him pick up the dinner check on occasion.
Since he’d been back, Tate and I saw each other at least once a week, either with our wives on the weekend or alone for a mid-week lunch. We even played tennis together every Tuesday night for a while, but I could barely give him a decent match and we agreed that it wasn’t as much fun as it should be. After Maureen died, Tate came around a little more often. He seemed miserable and often lapsed into silences, and I was sure it was because he considered my wife to be a dear friend and felt for my situation. I appreciated his empathy and found myself actually trying to cheer him up at t
hese junctures, which served as medicine for me in its own way.
When he asked if he could stop by this afternoon, though, I knew immediately that something was wrong. He didn’t even pretend that he was coming over to check in on me.
Reese and I were in the family room when he arrived. He grabbed a beer from the refrigerator, patted the baby on the head, and sat in a chair across from us.
“Gail and I are splitting up,” he said as he settled into his seat.
“You’re doing what?”
“We’re splitting.”
“Just like that?”
“It isn’t just like that. It’s been going on for a few months now. We even did three weeks of couples therapy.”
“Why didn’t you say something to me?”
He looked briefly at Reese then back up at me. “Tanya, the baby, Maureen – it wasn’t exactly the time to hassle you with my problems. But I’m moving out tomorrow and I figured you’d be pretty pissed if you learned about this from someone else.” This really shook me. Tate and Gail hardly had a dream marriage, but they seemed fine, and the notion that anyone would choose to deal with this kind of heartache was difficult for me to grasp.
“How are Zak and Sara dealing with it?”
Tate shook his head. “Hard to read ‘em. To tell you the truth, I’m a little more concerned with how I’m dealing with it at the moment.”
“Not your decision?”
“To put it mildly.”
I kissed Reese on the forehead and put him down on the playmat with some of his toys. Then I got myself a beer and settled back in.
“What happened?” I said.
Tate looked off into the distance. “I gotta tell you, after months of conversation when I didn’t think she was serious and then three weeks with this therapist, I still don’t have a freaking clue. I don’t spend enough time with the kids. I don’t spend enough time at home. I work too much.My eyes are the wrong color. Whatever it is, I can tell you that Gail is royally pissed.”
“Maybe she’s just trying to shake you up.”
“Mission accomplished.”
“Maybe she just wants you to make some course corrections and things will be fine in a little while.”
Tate took a long look at me and then an extended pull on his beer. “I’ve got an apartment. We’ve already told the kids. I’m moving out tomorrow. We have lawyers with huge retainers. This isn’t about course correction. This is about dividing up the assets.”
I was surprised that he brought up money. “You’re not really worried about that, are you?”
“I made the vast majority of the cash.”
“And you continue to make a massive amount of it. Panhandling probably isn’t in your future.”
Tate finished the beer and stood up. “The whole thing just sucks.”
I leaned forward on the couch. “Zak and Sara are going to need you to come up big for them.”
Tate shook his head. “Like I said, the whole thing sucks.”
I wasn’t sure what to say. It wasn’t clear to me whether Tate had come here for consolation or simply to deliver news. I felt for him and I was sure that he had only an inkling of what he was going to experience in the coming months. But I didn’t know if he wanted me to talk him through it or just let him stew.
“You okay?” I said.
“Compared to what?”
“Is there anything I can do?”
“Trust me; I wish there was.”
“Wanna stay for dinner?”
“I wanna drink myself into oblivion.” He turned and looked directly at me. “Mind if I do that?”
I shrugged. “It’s fine with me as long as you don’t keep Reese awake past his bedtime.”
Tate smiled and looked down at the baby. Reese was attempting to get to a yellow plastic ring just out of his grasp and I reached down and prodded him toward it. Of course, it went immediately into his mouth.
“Nah, I’m gonna go. Gail wants me back by six to take care of the kids. She’s going out.”
“Out? As in on a date?”
“I didn’t ask. She didn’t tell.”
I sighed. Tate and Gail were both important to me, but I knew they were going to divide me up along with the assets. “Call me tonight after the kids are asleep.We can bitch to each other for a while.”
“Sounds like a great time.” He walked past me, thumping me on the shoulder twice as he did. “I’ll see ya.”
I watched Tate leave and looked off in the direction of the door after he was gone. I was having a very difficult time comprehending that he and Gail were doing this. I went through divorces with friends before – there was a scary stretch when three of the couples we’d met though Tanya split in a six-month period – but to me there was something more dramatic about this one. Maybe it had something to do with being there from the beginning. I could still hear the way Tate lost his worldly-wise cool when he told me he’d met Gail, and the way he confessed how much he loved her when he asked me to be the best man at his wedding.
Or maybe it had to do with the fact that, like me but in an entirely different way, Tate was becoming a single father. He was in for all kinds of rough patches, especially if the proceedings got messy. I wished I had some good advice for him or that he could benefit from my experience. But the best I could offer was that we would go through it together. I settled down on the floor next to Reese. He’d given up on the yellow ring and had set his sights somewhere in the distance, trying in vain to move himself forward. I picked him up and his head instantly swiveled in another direction, the object of his interest immediately supplanted by another.
To him, as unreachable as most of it was, everything was an option. It was enough to make a guy jealous.
FIVE
Great Toys
I hadn’t seen Maureen’s sister Codie since the funeral. When she called a few days later, I eagerly invited her to take the trip in from the city that Friday to have dinner with us. Codie and Maureen had been very close and she was the only family I had for hundreds of miles. As an only child, I was accustomed to small families and it never particularly concerned me that ours was little and didn’t congregate all that often. But when I considered that my family now stood as Reese and me, I felt a little lost. It meant a lot to me that Codie was coming for a visit.
Five years younger than her sister, Codie was the Type A member of the clan. She started at Hubbard and May Advertising directly out of college and within eight years was creative director. Dozens of larger agencies targeted her over the years, but H&M fended off each approach by giving her more money and more responsibility. Her ever-increasing compensation package netted her a sensational apartment on the Upper West Side, which she saw on the days when she wasn’t sleeping on the couch in her office. A partnership was a realistic possibility within the next year.
She also bore a distinct resemblance to her mother – which meant she looked an awful lot like my wife. Codie went for darker colors in her eyeliner and lipstick, and she wore her hair more closely cropped, but her mannerisms were stunningly similar to Maureen’s and her smile was exactly the same. It was entertaining to watch the two of them mirror each other in conversation – sometimes making the same gesture simultaneously – and looking at her now was both mildly disturbing and a tiny bit comforting.
I half expected her to postpone our dinner or show up a couple of hours late, both of which she’d done in the past because of her job. But surprisingly, she arrived only a few minutes after I got back to the house myself; Lisa was in the middle of briefing me on her weekend plans when Codie got there. And more surprisingly, she immediately got down on the floor to play with Reese and the new plush airplane she’d brought for him.
Codie was a high school senior with a life quite independent from the family when Tanya was born, and she was away at college for most of my daughter’s toddler years. They connected strongly after that, though, and Tanya spent numerous weekends in the city with her. But I never saw Codie engaged wi
th a baby before. And whether it was because he was a living, breathing piece of her sister or because she found him inordinately captivating, Codie spent the entire time I prepared dinner in the family room with Reese.
“He’s so cute,” she said as she put him in the high chair he graduated to earlier in the week.
“You should get one of your own.”
“Yeah, that’s a good idea. I could tote him around to client meetings.Or maybe he could hang out in his playpen in my office while I pull an all-nighter.”
“People do make adjustments when they have children.”
“People in other professions.”
“Right, I forgot. No one in advertising has kids.Do you really think that H&Mwould demote you if you dialed it back a little? You threaten to go to the bathroom and they give you a raise. I think they understand your value.”
Codie let Reese grab her finger and she waved it back and forth. He smiled and then put the finger in his mouth.
“Doesn’t matter,” she said. “Last I heard you needed a father to have one of these.”
I tried to remember the name of the guy she was dating when Reese was born. “Jake didn’t pan out?”
She threw me a confused expression. “Jake? Nah, that’s been over for months.”
“It’s hard to keep up with you on this stuff.”
“I don’t know why it’s hard to keep up.When I tell you I’m dating someone, just count forward fourteen days. By then you can be certain he’ll be out of the picture.”
When You Went Away Page 5