“That’s fine,” he said, turning back to her and nodding up and down. “In fact, that’s great.”
“So, you want to be my daughter’s father?”
“Yes.”
“And you want me to introduce you as her father?”
“Yes.”
“I have to think about it,” she told him, feeling suddenly proprietary of Lola.
“Why?” he said. “Did you already tell her that her father was someone else?”
“I told her she had no father. And to be honest, she was fine with that answer. She’s a really happy kid—”
Just then Olympia heard the key turning in the lock, and Gus and Lola reappeared. By Olympia’s calculations, it had not been twenty minutes. But whatever. Lola’s face was smeared with chocolate. “I guess I’ll be going now,” said Gus, ducking out again.
“Thanks—bye,” Olympia said distractedly. Then she turned to her daughter. “Lola, come meet Mommy’s friend.”
Lola approached the sofa, where she curled up next to Olympia, her thumb in her mouth, and stared at Patrick in the open-ended way that adults are permitted only in theaters.
Patrick took a deep breath. Then he said, “Hi, Lola.”
“Who are you?” she asked, her thumb still in her mouth.
“I’m—Patrick,” he answered. “Does that thumb taste good?”
Lola didn’t answer, kept staring.
Figuring she’d find out eventually—so why not now?—Olympia announced, “This is your daddy, Lola.”
“I thought I don’t have a daddy,” she said, scowling.
“Yes, you do,” said Patrick. “I’m him.”
Lola squinted at him. “Where do you live?” she asked.
“In Manhattan, in the city,” he said. “But hopefully one day I’ll get to live even closer to you.”
Olympia’s stomach convulsed. She still loved Patrick, she realized—always would. But even with this shocking development, they’d never be a normal family. Too much poison had already been released into the ecosystem. “Not all kids live with their daddies,” Olympia told Lola gently.
“I was actually thinking of moving to Brooklyn,” offered Patrick.
“And why is that?” asked Olympia.
“I might be leaving my job,” he went on. “Or, rather, my job might be leaving me. Budget cuts. Unfortunately, in the new economy, youth centers are considered dispensable.”
“I’m sorry,” she said. “So, what neighborhood were you thinking of?” As if she were just asking, just curious.
Patrick paused, shrugged. “Well, I guess I was thinking of somewhere around here.”
“Here?!” cried Olympia.
“Well, not right here—I mean, not to this actual apartment”—Patrick laughed quickly—“unless of course you wanted me here.” He looked into her eyes, then straight through her, it seemed to Olympia. (She thought she’d pass out.)
“Where will he sleep?” said Lola, turning to Olympia.
“I’m not sure yet,” said Olympia, wondering if, after all the terrible things she’d done, she even deserved this outcome.
“I don’t mind crashing on the sofa for a night or two,” offered Patrick. “That is, if I’m invited.”
“I guess he could sleep on our sofa this weekend and see how it goes,” said Olympia.
“That sounds like a great plan,” said Patrick. “And maybe Lola”—he gave a quick stroke to her blankie, Dinky-Do—“would let me take her out for an ice cream or to the playground or something.”
“Mommy, can I get an ice cream?” asked Lola.
“Of course,” said Olympia.
“Let me get my coat again,” said Lola, standing up.
“Sweetie! Wait!” Olympia laughed as she lightly pushed her daughter back down. “He means this coming weekend. It’s bedtime now.”
“I hate sleeping! It’s boring.”
“I know what you mean,” said Patrick. “I hate sleeping, too. But the fun part about going to bed is that you get to dream about anything you want to dream about. Let’s say you always wanted to be a lion tamer. Well, in your dream, you can be one.”
“I want to be the tooth fairy.”
“Well, you can be,” said Patrick. “Do you want me to show you how?”
“Okay.”
“You have to get in bed first.”
How Patrick managed to coax her daughter to sleep at eight fifteen that night, Olympia never found out. But twenty minutes later, she and he were back on the sofa, talking about the past and the future—and Lola.
“I can’t believe she’s my daughter,” said Patrick, beaming. “I only wish I’d known sooner. I feel like I’ve missed so much already.”
“Well, you would have missed even more if it hadn’t been for my sister Gus,” said Olympia, beaming back.
“I’ll say this—you have one scary lawyer sister.” Patrick laughed. “And I guess I owe my refrigerator, as well, for breaking down. I might not have gone to the supermarket that afternoon.” He paused, pressed his lips together, looked deep into Olympia’s eyes. “I owe you, as well.”
“You don’t have to say that,” said Olympia.
“She’s so beautiful,” he said. “Just like her mother.”
“Well, she looks just like you!—not me,” said Olympia, pretending she didn’t still love the occasional compliment with regard to her looks. “I don’t know how I never saw that until now.”
“You really never considered the possibility that she was mine? Not even for a second?” Patrick asked, squinting.
“No,” said Olympia. And she thought she was telling the truth. Though it was hard now to say for sure. Maybe there had been moments when she’d allowed herself to imagine that Lola was the product of passion, not science. But if and when those thoughts had popped into her head, she’d quickly banished them. Apparently, that action was no longer necessary.
It was only a few moments later that Olympia’s and Patrick’s lips found each other. Lips, of course, led elsewhere. Soon they were pulling each other’s clothes off and pressing their bodies together. Nearly five years of frustration lifted in fifteen minutes. At least, that was how it felt to Olympia—like elation and exhaustion all rolled into one.
Olympia woke the next morning to find Patrick in the kitchen making pancakes and eggs. Lola was already at the table, making primitive conversation with this stranger who claimed to be her father. Except, to an about-to-be four-year-old, maybe that was no odder than the appearance of a full moon. Lola was still in her elephant pajamas, Patrick in his cargo pants with bare feet. It was the most beautiful picture that Olympia had ever seen—more beautiful than anything she’d ever seen at the Met, the Prado, or the Hermitage. Not to mention Kunsthaus New York. “Good morning, Daddy-o,” she murmured to herself.
“What was that, Mommy?” he asked.
Olympia’s heart jumped. “Oh, nothing… Hello, precious.” She leaned over and kissed Lola on the cheek. (It was warm and rosy.) “How did you sleep?”
“I dreamed about being a lion tamer!” she exclaimed.
“Wow, really?!” she said.
“Would you like some pancakes?” asked Patrick.
“Thank you. I’d love some.”
“Daddy Patrick is taking me to the playground.”
“How nice. And will Daddy Patrick be spending the whole day in Brooklyn?”
“If you don’t mind.”
“I don’t mind at all.”
There were no happy endings in life, Olympia thought. But even if everything went to hell from here, she’d remember that morning with the buttery smells and a hazy sun peeking through the old wooden windows of her Brooklyn floor-through as the happiest in her entire life.
postscript
CAN WE EVER truly forgive? Maybe not, but we can try—and keep trying until, over time, things get blurry enough that we’re no longer even sure what it was that we were so worked up about.
After ten weeks of counseling, and countless hashin
g-outs that never seemed to lead anywhere, Perri had grown, if not bored, then at least weary of trying to figure out what exactly had happened in the kids’ bathroom between her husband and her middle sister after she fled to Florida. Besides, her middle sister and her “baby daddy” were suddenly in love and engaged.
Perri suspected that Olympia had known all along that Patrick was Lola’s father and had simply been trying to create additional drama. Apparently, he was no longer married to the paraplegic? In classic Olympia fashion, she was incredibly secretive about how their reunion had even come about. And if Gus knew anything, she was keeping quiet, determined as she now was to dispel her reputation as the family gossip. In any case, it began to seem petty to be dwelling on what, in the bigger picture, turned out to be a nonevent.
As for Mike, from what Perri could tell, he too had grown weary of trying to figure out what exactly had happened—in her South Beach hotel room with Rasta Roy. Also, the new job kept him crazy-busy—so busy that, just as Perri had foreseen, she actually began to miss the months during which he’d been lying around, failing to buy milk, and turning his kids into screen-time zombies.
Bob and Carol were a different story. Carol vowed never to forgive her husband for his postengagement (if premarital) sin of fathering a child with Shirley Yu. But she also had a singular talent for blocking out any kind of negative news. After her cast came off, she never mentioned the streetlamp accident again. As for the matter of her newly discovered stepdaughter, the tacit agreement was as follows: Bob wasn’t allowed to publicly acknowledge that Jennifer Yu was his daughter. In return, Carol was happy to host Jennifer and her daughter at all family functions—so long as she could pretend the woman was an old family friend. It was ridiculous, of course. But somehow, it worked.
Debbie, on the other hand, had proven far less willing to absolve. After learning that Gus had had an affair with Mike’s brother, she’d gone ballistic. Never mind that it had been Debbie who had left Gus for Maggie. Somehow, she didn’t see the crimes as equivalent. To Debbie, sleeping with a man was a special kind of betrayal. From what Perri could tell, Debbie and Gus were arguing all the time now, just like they had been the previous year. Another breakup seemed imminent. However, Perri was working behind the scenes to try to prevent that outcome. It wasn’t just the thought of Gus seeking Jeff out again that gave Perri conniptions. Over the past few months, Perri had grown strangely fond of Debbie, who she’d gotten to know over dinners at the apartment in Washington Heights. (As part of her campaign to win back the love and trust of her sisters, Gus had been taking cooking classes and hosting family dinner parties.) What’s more, Debbie, despite being the far superior player, had agreed to become Perri’s regular hitting partner. Twice a week now, Debbie trekked out to Larchmont to play tennis at Perri’s country club.
In other news, much to Perri’s horror, Olympia and Patrick were thinking of moving to Westchester. Somebody had given Patrick seed money to open a new center for at-risk youth in Mount Vernon, while Olympia had gotten a job in the education department of a small museum up the Hudson. (Viveka had apparently written her a glowing recommendation.) Moreover, to Perri’s amazement (and Olympia’s delight), one of her middle sister’s bunny paintings had been included in a group show at a highly respectable nonprofit space in Chelsea. And since then, several private dealers had approached her about representation.
Even more amazingly, Olympia claimed to be trying to get pregnant again. Although she was coming up on forty herself, she was hoping her eggs were still viable. She desperately wanted Lola to have a sibling—preferably a sister, she’d said. If worse came to worst, Olympia had told Perri, she’d defrost one of the embryos she’d had frozen years earlier at her sperm bank. But she was really hoping to conceive naturally. Olympia had also told Perri that, in her quest to get pregnant, she and Patrick were having an “unbelievable amount of sex.”
Well, lucky her, Perri thought. In truth, while things were better with Mike, that had been hard for Perri to hear.
acknowledgments
Special thanks to my brilliant readers and editors: Judy Clain, Maria Massie, Cressida Leyshon, and Ginia Bellafante; and also Sally Singer, Ann Shin, Nick Varchaver, Sarah Wadelton, Liberty Aldrich, Rosie Dastgir, Steven Cassidy, and Jan Dekker; and finally, my family—especially John, but also my daughters, Bebe and Tiki, my mother, Lucy, and my sister, Sophie—for their love and support.
about the author
LUCINDA ROSENFELD is the author of four novels, including What She Saw… and I’m So Happy for You. Her writing has appeared in the New York Times, The New Yorker, Slate, and many other publications. She lives in Brooklyn, New York, with her husband and two daughters—and is the youngest of three sisters.
Also by Lucinda Rosenfeld
WHAT SHE SAW…
WHY SHE WENT HOME
I’M SO HAPPY FOR YOU
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Contents
Welcome
Dedication
Epigraph
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Postscript
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Also by Lucinda Rosenfeld
Newsletters
Copyright
Copyright
The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
Copyright © 2013 by Lucinda Rosenfeld
Cover photograph by Cig Harvey
Cover © 2013 Hachette Book Group, Inc.
All rights reserved. In accordance with the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, the scanning, uploading, and electronic sharing of any part of this book without the permission of the publisher constitute unlawful piracy and theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), prior written permission must be obtained by contacting the publisher at [email protected]. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.
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First e-book edition: February 2013
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