Claire blew her nose, still terrified about the whole scenario, but willing herself toward cautious agreement with her mother. “Yes, but I’m worried about how Nicky will take this. If I’m in the house, it will be awful, and if I’m not, it could be just as bad for him.” She watched Cora shift into strategy mode, index and middle fingers tapping her lips, her eyes focused on the future.
“You’ll be taking Nicky to his outpatient classes and appointments—it’s not as if you won’t be there with him all the time. Breakfasts, activities, dinners. He’ll hardly have a chance to notice your absence. And as for your husband, a man can’t easily walk away from the comfort and habits of eighteen years, dear. This is only a temporary move. I give it a month at the outside. You’ll see. You just need patience and perseverance.” Cora was smiling now, clearly pleased with her strategy. “I’ll speak to Jackie and ask her to find something for you near the house. There’s that lovely building by the country club. We don’t need Michael’s assistance for that.”
“BUT THE MAN CAN BARELY FUCKING LOOK AT ME.”
Cora sucked in a wide mouthful of air. “Language, dear.”
“The only language I’m interested in now is how to make this manageable for Nicky.”
CHAPTER 22
As the preparations for Nicholas’s departure were winding down, Claire found herself increasingly wound up. The prospect of explaining the new living arrangements to him had filled her with a creeping sense of dread. And while the staff psychologist reassured her that the nuances of the circumstances were less important than preparing him with the general facts, she found it difficult to rally the courage and the explanation.
But amid her apprehension and the chaos of getting Nicholas ready for the transition, there was one bright light: the party. The day arrived with a flourish of window-framed sunshine and a small mountain of parting gifts. Nick had grinned for the entire hour of his cake and high five–filled farewell with his favorite staff members. “I can totally . . . handle this,” he kept telling each of them. “I’ll handle it by . . . myself now,” he’d said, hugging them all tightly, both grateful for and tired of the numerous hands invading his life. There would be more hands at home, more strange adjustments, but for that happy hour at least, there was no need to talk about it. And so Claire celebrated the moment, too, putting off for another day the conversation she dreaded.
Until time caught up with them, and she could no longer wait.
“Nicky, your father and I both love you very much,” Claire began over lunch in his room two days before she was to leave for Denver.
Nicholas raised his sandwich from the plate, ready to take a bite. “I just want to get out here—get out of here,” he said, shoving the sandwich into the corner of his mouth. “I’m over this.”
“I know, honey. And we’re so excited you’re coming home. But I need to talk to you about how things are going to be back in Denver.”
“Amy said I’ll do some outpatient classes at a . . . place near the house. Craig.”
“That’s right. Sometimes I’ll take you there, and some therapists will come to the house too.” She took inventory of the surroundings that had once seemed so frightening and impersonal, and the thought of adjusting to a new equilibrium accelerated her anxiety. “You’ll be back in your old room at home, but”—she wiped the jelly from his chin with a napkin—“but I’m not going to be staying at the house. I’ll be visiting you every day, like I do here.”
“What?” Dark circles underlined the one weepy and one dry eye staring up at her.
“I’ll be very close by.”
“Why?”
Why. “Well, your dad, um . . . your dad and I think this is best for now. It’s just something we need to work out for a little bit,” she said robotically.
He nodded, to Claire’s surprise, almost as if he had been expecting this announcement. “Because of what . . . happened to me?”
“No, Nicky, no. This has nothing to do with you, honey. We just need some time to, uh, settle some things, and then we’ll—”
“Because of something that . . . that happened before?” His eyes started blinking rapidly, his facial muscles tensed, the shift in his demeanor like quicksilver. “What did you do?” he suddenly shouted, mashing his sandwich into his tray. “What did Dad do?” Nicholas grabbed the tray and flung it like a Frisbee. “What . . . did . . . HE . . . do?”
Claire dodged the tray, but tripped over her chair and cut her leg. As the nurse rushed in, Claire pushed down on the bleeding flap of skin at her ankle until the gash merely stung. One hour later, after a trip to the art studio with Amy, Nicholas seemed to have no recollection of his outburst.
“Richard, I can’t leave him like this,” Claire said as she crumbled crackers into the bowl of soup she had no intention of eating. The cafeteria had emptied out over the course of the hour they’d been sitting together.
“Shouldn’t you be home finishing that packing you’ve been complaining about? You’re getting the hell out of this joint. This is good news.”
“I’m afraid Nick might think I’m abandoning him instead of just flying out early. The short-term stuff doesn’t seem to stick, but I think he’s starting to remember things from . . . before.” She couldn’t stop replaying the questions he’d bellowed at her—so similar in their confused, beseeching quality to his questions about Taylor—and yet so much more fraught and unnerving.
“Look, yesterday was one blowup, Claire. But you just had a productive session with his social worker, and he seems much better with everything, right?”
“I suppose.”
“He knows you would never abandon him. You should be used to all the unpredictability by now.” Richard took her wrist. “The anger evaporates just as quickly as it rears up. Nicholas will adjust, and then there will be questions and confusion and all manner of volatility and things that don’t make any sense. That’s the only thing we can count on in TBI world. But we all have to adjust in life, don’t we? Take things day by day.”
Claire set down her spoon but let her hand remain in Richard’s grip. Her thoughts flashed to Nicholas that night in the library assaying the scene with Andrew, his discomfort apparent but controlled. And she began to well up, feeling the nauseating certainty that there might never be enough flying trays or effective therapy sessions to make all these new adjustments manageable for him. “How do you deal with the guilt?” she asked in a flimsy voice. “How do you talk to Sandy about what happened?”
“Ah. That.” Richard paused for a moment, looking out the window. “Maybe if I’d stopped sooner, that car would have missed Sandy and me. And maybe not. The point is, Claire, accidents happen in life. You made choices, and Nicholas made choices.” Richard pulled his chair around to face her. “Believe me, I know what you’re feeling. But the sooner you get past your guilt, the easier it’ll be for you to deal with the situation if Nick really does start to remember details of that night. But, like they always tell us, he may not.”
“And that terrifies me, too. I struggle with what’s best for him to know.” Claire wished the getting past part were as easy for all of them as Richard made it seem. She crinkled the plastic cracker wrapper in her palm. “Then there’s Michael. He just can’t seem to get past his anger and move forward. I’m hoping that with some more time he will, but . . .” Her voice trailed off.
“Well,” he paused, pondering Claire, “life does march on. Even if it’s not according to plan.”
“You don’t wrestle with your ghosts?”
Richard tilted his chair back onto two legs. “You’ve been married eighteen years?”
“Why are you changing the subject?”
“Tell me about the happiest time in your marriage.”
“What?”
“Just humor me.”
“Why?”
“Curious minds want to know.”
Claire tried to pull up memories, but everything seemed slightly out of focus and distorted, like the pressed-flowe
r center of a glycerin soap bar. She mentally scrolled backward, until gradually some images grew sharper. There was the King Cole room at the St. Regis in New York, and the afternoon she and Michael had gone for Bloody Marys, and left at midnight with a pair of art deco–style table lamps under their coats—a wink and a nod gift from the waiter they’d befriended. They’d been dating for three months, Michael flying in on business from the Bay Area every other week or so. Life was beautiful then; both of their careers were on the upswing, their love was blossoming. Each date, she recounted, was a three-day affair of important cocktail parties, runs in the park, romantic dinners, closing the Rainbow Room after a night of dancing. On that particular day Claire had taken Michael to the MoMA for an Andy Warhol retrospective. And then on to the St. Regis, where they’d sat in the banquette under the Maxfield Parrish mural of Old King Cole and drank and conspired for seven hours, giddily mapping out their future together. They barely made it to her apartment with their clothes intact, stopping under streetlights to kiss, and groping in shadowed corners. Claire got pregnant that night, she explained, and miscarried two months later just after Michael had proposed. But still, it was a magical time. She told Richard about extraordinary trips they had taken, about the beautiful home and family they had created.
“You know, Smitty, we guys are simple creatures—far less complicated than you of the fairer sex. We get clubbed over the head, we get pissed, we stew for a while. And then sometimes we go have a beer at the game with our clubber and talk about fastballs again.”
She smiled a little. “I don’t know. Those memories seem like a hundred years ago now. I hadn’t realized how much we drifted apart until I—” She looked away. “What if I can’t make him see the value of . . . going back to the game with me? He’s different somehow. Darker. I just can’t figure out what’s going on inside his head.”
“What about marriage counseling?”
“He has an issue with shrinks. It’s not how his family operates, letting outsiders into private matters. Besides, all of his decisions are like business decisions, and why would some interloper know better about his marriage than he would?” Claire recited Michael’s words with weary resignation.
“That’s not a totally unusual male perspective, Smitty. But look, I made some bad choices in my marriage, too. And I had to deal with the fallout—”
“I’ll do whatever it takes,” Claire said. “I have to.”
“What I’m trying to say is that I wasn’t prepared to be punished forever. Would you want to stay with someone who can’t forgive you?”
“I don’t know how not to stay with him. We’ve been together practically my whole adult life.”
Richard reached out for both of her hands this time, and held them firmly like a parent explaining the importance of looking both ways to a young child. “Is that guilt and habit talking, or love?”
“We made a commitment to each other, in spite of my lapse of reason. And I need to make this right.”
“Sometimes, Claire, there are truths we try hard not to see.”
She grimaced, recalling her sister’s analogous observation.
“Just some food for thought, Smitty,” he said, shrugging his shoulders. “And I’m sorry if I’m overstepping here. It’s a tough thing, this separating business. But sometimes good can come of it. Happiness even.”
They sky was darkening to a grapey twilight outside the window, and the garden below had emptied of its last visitors. They pushed their chairs back into place under the table that had, over the week, become their usual spot, and headed toward the cafeteria exit.
“Wait,” Richard said, making a sudden detour to the cash register. A moment later he returned with a large cellophane-wrapped cookie.
“Peanut butter?” Claire asked.
“Specialty of the house.”
Inside the parking garage Richard handed her his business card. “It’s got my cell and e-mail on it. I want updates on Nicky’s progress.”
“Thank you.” She gave him hers, sincerely hoping their paths would cross again. “For everything.”
“I want updates on you, too, Smitty. And I’m great with all crises of the newly separated. Home Depot trips, insomnia, cable issues—although I’m a bit weak in the cuisine for one department, and generally defer to the deli Gods. But I am a good listener.”
“Yes, Mr. Elliot, you are.”
“Occasionally I even give decent advice.” They hugged each other like college pals on graduation day, warmly and poignantly, sharers of a unique history. “You’re going to be okay.”
PART THREE
CHAPTER 23
Claire sidled into her cramped window seat and took a parting glance at exile city. Smog hung low on the runway. The hint of a golden red ball hovered to the west, and beyond the wingtip stood the restaurant tower, a groovy homage to the Space Age where tourists sipped their Electric Barbarellas and watched 747s disappear into the LA smog.
She remembered visiting the restaurant as a child with her parents and Jackie, on one of her first visits to Los Angeles. A “cultural foray,” Mother had called the trip. Cora had laid out their traveling ensembles the night before in preparation for the trip: their best dresses, matching pea coats, and patent leather Mary Janes. She remembered Shirley Temples at the restaurant bar as the platform on which they sat rotated slowly around, and the thrill of the grand panorama beyond the windows. Although other details had faded with time, she did recall being happy then, a happy, wide-eyed girl poised on the edge of promise.
Across the aisle Claire heard a mother arguing with her teenage son in shrill whispers, but couldn’t bring herself to look at the boy’s face. Instead she thumbed through the latest Vanity Fair, trying to ignore the boarding chaos around her. As the engines screamed shrill during takeoff, she grasped the armrests at her sides and clicked her heels together. She propped her head against the window with a pillow, and wondered what it would be like for Nicholas boarding the plane with Michael for home.
As they reached cruising altitude, Claire closed her eyes and thought of grandparents’ weekend at Andover the previous year. Nick emerging from the hooting, stick-waving throng on the lacrosse field, his jersey grass stained and dotted with sweat. She, watching from the bleachers with Cora amid a sea of blue-sweatered spectators, her voice hoarse from cheering, and the smell of popcorn and freshly cut grass filling the spring air along with the electric rush of victory. The players pulling off their helmets and saluting grandparents, parents, and alumni; and there against the waning afternoon sun, her father’s lazy grin and Michael’s patrician nose in beautiful concert on her son’s face. Nicholas waves her down to the field. He has filled out since the start of the term and stands nearly a head taller than her. She wraps her arm around his waist and kisses his cheek. They high-five and whoop. She has never seen his eyes brighter or more fully alive, and her body warms with a sense of peace and gratitude.
Claire retrieved her baggage and drove into town in a rented Hertz Jeep. The lease on the Mercedes had expired while she’d been gone, and replacing it had clearly not been high on Michael’s to-do list. A few lenticular clouds punctuated the crisp sky as she headed west toward the downtown skyline, the brown landscape along I-70 sparkling with ice, and the expansive plains rolling into the distance. As she exited the freeway, a school bus pulled into the lane beside her. The children waved and pressed their noses into the windows, fogging the glass as they made faces at Claire. She smiled and waved back. At the first traffic light she checked her cell phone for missed calls, but there were none. She imagined calling Michael at work. I’m in, the flight was fine. How about a leg of lamb tonight? I’ll roast a leg of lamb and we’ll celebrate.
Weaving from boulevard to parkway to side streets, Claire took a circuitous route to the apartment Jackie had arranged. In her long absence she had missed autumn, and the holidays, too, in their red and gold flourishes, and she focused on the canvas in front of her—bare tree branches, the breath of joggers fl
oating white in the air. She opened the window and let the wind blow cold onto her cheeks.
As she made her way through the old-guard enclave of the Country Club neighborhood, the homes grew in size and luster. She surveyed the colorful mosaic of architectural styles from an outsider’s perspective, as if recounting the neighborhood of her past to the specter of her future. Stuccoed Spanish Colonials with wrought iron balconettes rubbed hedgerows with gable-roofed Tudors and red brick Georgians. She missed the charm of this little world where the neighborhood children decorated bicycles and wagons with pinwheels each Fourth of July and paraded through the streets behind an antique fire truck; where block parties and Halloween haunted mansions were still traditions.
She rolled on, approaching a gated drive guarded by two enormous reclining lion statues with security cameras perched behind their haunches. Slowing the Jeep again, she gazed through the vine-covered gates, unable to avoid looking. Her smile collapsed. Only two summers before, the Wrightsmans had set tongues abuzz like swarming hornets. When everyone thought Nicola Wrightsman would retreat in humiliation over catching her husband and her sister screwing in the bathroom at Campo de’ Fiori in Aspen, Nicola appeared the next day at the club in a thong bikini and ordered a bottle of Cristal. Cell phones burned and men left the driving range for a quick drink by the pool to glimpse her unblushing fuck-you to Roger Wrightsman and the joyful gossipers. Claire and Michael had been there together, watching the spectacle.
She maneuvered past Lionsgate and thought surely Le Scandal Wrightsman’s expiration date had passed. Good news for Roger. But had theirs become the story that eclipsed it, she wondered? It was hard to know what people might be saying now, hard to know what Michael wouldn’t discuss. Claire readjusted her posture and placed both hands on the steering wheel, hating the idea of people talking about her family when they drove by their home. She didn’t wish ill upon anyone else, but still, a little something to focus the spotlight elsewhere wouldn’t be so horrible either. A renovation disaster in the neighborhood, or maybe a minor “nan-nygate” of some sort. For a moment she wondered if it would be easier for Michael—the whole getting-over-the-past part—if they’d still been in New York, where yesterday’s humiliations tended to go on to ballsy, even happy second acts.
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