“I meant Zak.”
Tate chuckled. “Yeah, he’s a good guy. I wish he wasn’t so needy sometimes, you know?”
“I have a feeling he’s going to be a lot needier until he figures out how to deal with this situation you’re all in.”
Tate walked over to the refrigerator and pulled out a beer. “I guess I’m not entirely convinced that it’s that much of a situation for them. I mean it’s not like I ever saw them very often during the week anyway. I was always working late.”
“Trust me; it’s a situation. I’m sure they’re picking a lot of things up from their mother.”
“You mean like the touchdown dances she’s doing all around the house now that I’m gone?”
“That wasn’t exactly what I was thinking of.” I studied him drinking his beer. “What the hell happened between the two of you?”
Tate cast his eyes downward. “I don’t know. Different agendas, I guess. But all along, I thought we had the same agenda, you know? I had no idea what was going on in her head.”
“I certainly never saw it coming and I know Maureen didn’t either. She would have said something to me. Gail must have done a hell of a job of keeping everything inside.”
“Yeah, I guess. There’s a valuable trait. You know, I think she really hates me. I mean, I think she’s thrilled that I’m gone.”
“That stinks. I really feel sorry for you.”
Tate shrugged. “Yeah, we’ll you’re the last person I should be complaining to.”
“Give me a break,” I said, a little miffed. “You think I can’t handle it?”
Just then, I heard Reese wail and went into the family room to see what was going on. He was wedged against one of the armchairs and he couldn’t figure out how to roll back in the other direction.
“I think he’s stuck,” Zak said.
“Yeah, we’ll have to unstick him.” I picked up the baby and held him for a moment until he stopped crying. Then I put him back on his playmat. Reese immediately looked up – his anguish long since forgotten – and rolled over again. If he found rolling this interesting, he was going to have a ball crawling. Zak and Sara seemed a little concerned that they’d done something wrong. “Reese isn’t very good at steering yet. You think you guys could give him a little nudge if he gets stuck again?”
“I can do that,” Zak said manfully. Sara simply nodded. I don’t think she’d said a thing since she walked into the house, though she seemed content holding a ring over Reese’s head and watching him reach for it.
I went back to the kitchen. Tate was munching on a bag of pretzels he found. “Kids, huh?” he said. “Always need your attention.”
“No big deal. I just had to move him back to the middle of the rug.”
I started pulling things out of the refrigerator. “I’m making chicken fra diavolo for dinner. I assume your kids don’t eat that.What should I make for them?” “I don’t know; anything is fine. They love ice
cream, I know that much. They could probably make a whole meal out of that.”
“Maybe after dinner. Pasta with butter?”
“Whatever.”
I looked at him crossly.
“Gail took care of this stuff,” he said, throwing his hands up.
“And you take care of it now when they’re with you. Are you planning to eat every meal out?”
“Why not? I do it when I’m alone.”
I dropped the subject, assuming this was something that would come to him in time.
The pasta with butter turned out to be fine with the kids and Sara had three helpings. Zak tried a piece of chicken and said he liked it. He declined a second, but I congratulated him on his willingness to expand his horizons. Both kids found the pureed peaches I gave Reese appealing and happily accepted some of their own. They still had room for ice cream afterward, though.
We watched a movie after dinner and they left when it was time for Reese to go to bed.
“When do you have to bring them back to Gail?” “Two o’clock tomorrow,” Tate said, throwing me a sidelong look. “I think I might make it one-thirty.”
I kissed the kids on the foreheads and patted Tate on the shoulder. I couldn’t tell which of them looked more beleaguered as they made their way to the car.
• • •
I just got Reese into his crib when Codie called.
“It’s a Saturday night,” I said. “Shouldn’t you be out surveying the social scene or breaking someone’ sheart or something?”
“I have a cold. I always get colds at the beginning of the spring. I think I’m countercyclical. How are you doing?”
“I don’t have a cold. I just finished a relatively upsetting dinner with my friend Tate and his kids, though. He’s fumbling around with the early stages of a divorce. How was your day?”
We’d been talking like this regularly since her visit. Most of what we talked about was surface level stuff. She’d tell me about a campaign she was working on, then I would tell her how things were going with the catalog and how Reese had made it abundantly clear that he had no interest in pureed string beans. The mention of string beans would remind her of a restaurant she’d eaten in recently where the menu was built around Chinese long beans. Although, while she didn’t say it, I assumed that she didn’t at any point in the meal stick her tongue out and let the beans drop onto the table as Reese had done. Her talking about Chinese food would make me think of the surprisingly good pan-Asian place that just opened near work and the conversation would continue in this fashion.
Of course, it was impossible to talk to Codie without thinking of Maureen and Tanya. Therefore, it was only a matter of time before I got to something that was eating at me.
“Do you think she’s having sex with him?”
“Do you want me to answer that? Do you need me to answer that?”
“You know, I was actually primed for a good lie right there.”
“Sorry. Do you know what the statistics are regarding 17-year-olds and sexual activity? Do you know what the statistics are regarding 14-year olds and sexual activity?”
“Are you trying to tell me something?”
“No, I’m not. Other than what you already know.” “He’s twenty. That’s a huge three years when it comes to this kind of thing.”
“You’re right; it is. You’re just going to have to hope that Tanya is capable of handling it. At least most of it. And I’m sure Maureen taught her some tricks for keeping boys under control.”
I smirked. “Maureen didn’t do tricks.”
Codie hesitated and I wondered if she was trying to decide whether to revise history for me.
“You’re right,” she said. “Maureen didn’t do tricks with you. That’s one of the ways I knew the two of you were going to work, even though I was still a kid. You got all of her. But I’m telling you, she knew plenty of tricks. Older sisters share these things with their younger sisters.”
“Care to elaborate?”
“Not really.”
We both fell silent for a moment.
“There are so many things I miss about her,” Codie said. “But you know what I miss the most? This.We used to talk on the phone almost every day. About stupid stuff a lot. I mean, what percentage of your conversations can be profound when you talk all the time? But the lines were always open. I think I miss that more than anything.”
“I know what you mean.”
“It’s gotta be exponentially harder for you.”
“I don’t think exponents apply in this case.” I got quiet again. “My lines are open too,” I said finally. “I mean, I know I’m no substitute – certainly I don’t know Maureen’s tricks – but we’re family and if you want to talk about stupid stuff with me, I’d welcome it.”
“You too,” she said softly.
“Do you like baseball?”
“No, not at all.”
“Neither did Maureen.We won’t talk about that.” “We can. I’ll just make sure I’m doing my expense report or so
mething while we are.”
I laughed. “That’s very generous of you.”
“Hey, you know, if the lines of communication are going to be open, we can’t let anything be off limits.” “Yeah, I’ll keep that in mind. So when are you coming out for dinner again? Reese hasn’t been spoiled enough lately.”
“Why don’t you come into the City? It’s time for that boy of yours to learn what real living is about.” “You’d allow him to roll all over your Persian carpets?” “My nephew? He can roll anywhere he wants.”
We made a date for brunch the following Sunday and we talked for another fifteen minutes about little things. I envisioned her having these same conversations with Maureen, had actually witnessed them from Maureen’s perspective on numerous occasions. I never had anyone I could talk with on the phone like that, and it was a curiosity to me.
“Call me tomorrow, okay?” I said when she told me she was going to go.
“Yeah, I will. Give the baby a kiss for me.”
I always felt at least somewhat better after talking to Codie. It dawned on me that we never would have developed the relationship we were developing if Maureen was still alive. She’d call, we’d exchange a few sentences, and then I’d hand the phone over to my wife. There was no way in the world I’d trade that for what I had now, but as consolation prizes went, what was developing here was far better than most.
On my way downstairs, I peeked in on Reese. He stirred, stuck his head up, looked through me, and fell back asleep. He was lucky to have an aunt like Codie, someone who would always dote on him and bring him toys and take him shopping to buy whatever he wanted and stop for ice cream and donuts and maybe a side order of french fries on the way home.
She was yet another invaluable present he’d received from his mother.
EIGHT
Oars
There were intermittent stretches when I didn’t notice howmuch Imissed Maureen and Tanya. Times when Reese did something especially entertaining – he recently developed a fascination with his hands that I could watch indefinitely – were chief among them. Unfortunately, they were usually followed by an especially vulnerable instant when the reality of my situation rushed back to the forefront of my thoughts and hit me with a force that was as surprising as it was devastating. And with these attacks came the attendant guilt where I scolded myself for feeling good about taking a break from feeling miserable.
Still, it was part of the process, and these easeful stretches grew as the days beyond Maureen and Tanya passed.Work became more and more involving again. And while social relationships with my colleagues had all but ceased (mostly by my own choice – I wasn’t in any frame of mind to be an appropriate companion outside of the office), I found the personal interaction during business hours to be stimulating and even occasionally diverting.
Of all of these, the one that was most refreshing, and in fact the most unexpected, was the office friendship I developed with Ally Ritten. After our conversation about personalized cookie jars, she started visiting my office regularly. We’d bat ideas around, make sarcastic comments about each other’s perceptions of the marketplace, and discuss projects already in the works.
“We have to introduce new ornaments every Christmas,” she said one day in the middle of another impromptu pitch meeting. “It’s expected of us. Isn’t it some kind of FTC requirement? So why can’t they be ornaments of polar bears in swimsuits?”
“Explain this to me again.”
“They make people think of winter and summer at the same time.”
“This is a test of some sort, isn’t it? You’re wondering just how ridiculous an idea has to be before I tell you to scrap it. Am I right?”
Her eyes drifted down a bit. “You think it’s a ridiculous idea?”
“You think an ornament of a polar bear in a swim suit is a good idea?”
“It came to me in a dream last night.”
“See, that’s another one of my rules that I forgot to mention – never pay attention to ideas that come to you in dreams. Dreams impair judgment.”
She doodled aimlessly on her pad for a moment. “I’ll bet Reese would like a polar bear in a swimsuit.”
“If it was soft plastic and could fit in his mouth, he’d like it. If it tasted like apricots, he’d love it. He’s also not our target demo.”
“So you’re thinking I should blow this idea off, huh?”
“That was essentially what I was thinking, yes.”
She smiled at me. “I kinda knew that. Sometimes when something comes to me in a flash, I can’t tell whether it’s awful or brilliant. Guess this was the former, huh?”
“Hey, it beats the hell out of Lynch’s eighteenth variation on the same damn tote bag.”
“Gee, thanks for the compliment.” She rested her pen on her pad. “So Reese likes apricots?”
“He bows at the altar of apricots. I introduced him to them last week and now nothing else will do. He has subtle ways of indicating his preferences. Like spitting his peas into my face.”
She laughed. “I’m sure you look very distinguished with a little mashed pea on your cheek.”
“Not really my color. Carrots are much more flattering.”
She picked up the pen and doodled again. “Do you know that your face changes when you talk about Reese?”
That felt like an unusually intimate observation, though I couldn’t tell from her expression whether she meant it to be. “It does?”
“Yeah, it does. Your eyes open wider and it really changes the way you look.”
“Wow. I’m going to be totally self-conscious about this now.”
“Don’t be. At least don’t be uncomfortable about it. You look great when you talk about him. It’s really pretty inspiring.”
I wasn’t sure what to do with this level of attention. “Thanks. Hey, you know, when you get a really off-the- wall idea you get this sort of glow.”
She threw her pen at me. “No mocking allowed.” I handed her pen back. “Sorry.”
“I’ll let you get away with it this one time.” She looked down at her notes and then moved to get up to leave.
“I’m glad my face lights up when I talk about Reese,” I said.
“Yeah, me too. You should do it more often.”
• • •
The phone rang while I was putting the baby to bed and I let the answering machine pick it up. The message was from Codie and all she said was, “Hi, it’s me. Call as soon as you can.”
“What’s with the sense of urgency?” I said when I returned the call a few minutes later. “Land another multimillion dollar account?”
“I’ve gotten a new message from Tanya. What do you know about the rock group River?”
“Jam band. Huge concert following. That’s about it.”
“Have you ever heard of the Riverriders?”
“They’re the people who hang outside before their shows, right?”
“It’s much bigger than that. There are these roving communities of Riverriders who actually follow the band around while they’re on tour. They have all of these ceremonies before each show and even on days between concerts. It’s very ’60s.”
“Why are we talking about this?”
“Because River has just started a six-month North American tour and Tanya mentioned in her message that she’s hooked up with a band of Riverriders.”
I sprung forward from the couch. “Oh my God, that means we know where she is. Let me get online.”
“Pittsburgh on Sunday, Rochester on Wednesday.” It was Thursday. “I can leave Saturday morning.” “Want me to go with you?”
“I’d love to have you along, but I really think I need to do this myself. I can’t take Reese with me either. I’ve gotta call Lisa. I have no idea if she can cover me this weekend.”
“I can cover you this weekend. I’ll come out tomorrow night so you can leave as soon as you want on Saturday.”
With every conversation, I grew more and more thankful that Codie
was alive. “That would be great. I guess this means our brunch date is off, huh?”
“This is just slightly more important.”
My head was spinning. “She’s gonna be in Pittsburgh on Sunday. I wonder where she is now.”
“That doesn’t matter anymore. You know where she’s going to be.”
I closed my eyes and Tanya’s face filled my vision. “What do I say to her when I see her?”
“You have a lot to say to her, Gerry. Try not to say it all at once.”
I fast-forwarded through a dozen conversations. “My God, I’ve gotta tell her about Maureen.”
“Yeah, you do,” Codie said with an unmistakable catch in her throat. “I’ll be there tomorrow night, okay?”
“Yeah, thanks. And thanks for letting me know about this. I know Tanya probably told you in confidence.”
“There is no way I’d keep something like this a secret from you. If she hates me for it, I’ll just have to deal with that.”
A short while later, I got off the phone with Codie and sat with it next tome for several minutes. Iwas excited and nervous and fearful all at the same time, and the combined gravity of these emotions kept me locked in place. For months, I wished for this opportunity, the chance to retrieve my daughter, to bring her back into our lives. Now I was finally getting it.
Sunday couldn’t come soon enough.
• • •
The house was quiet when Maureen and I came home from dinner with Tate and Gail that night last October. This wasn’t a surprise. Tanya would be out with Mick. She always was these days.
Maureen saw the note first. She went into the kitchen and sat down heavily. She was seven months pregnant and sitting down heavily wasn’t unusual, so I didn’t pay it much mind. Until I saw the expression on her face.
“Tanya’s gone,” she said, handing me the letter.
M&D,
Mick and I are heading off on our own.
Because of him, I can finally see how pointless and empty my ordered life is. I don’t need my average friends, I don’t need lovely little Port Jefferson, and I certainly don’t need a house where a bratty little kid will constantly remind his parents what a disappointment his big sister turned out to be.
When You Went Away Page 8