The Best Man

by Dianne Blacklock

  Madeleine could tell him a thing or two about cycles, patterns of behaviour and alcohol. But not just yet. ‘Can I ask you something?’ she said.

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘I don’t mean to pry –’

  ‘Madeleine, you can’t possibly pry, you’re my family.’

  She wished he hadn’t said that. She took a breath. ‘Okay, was there any . . . was your father ever . . . aggressive, or violent?’

  He shook his head. ‘I can’t say for sure what he put my mother through before I was born, but I didn’t see any evidence of it. Sure, he could be aggressive, surly, but there was never any physical violence. As for our relationship, we barely spoke, he had very little to do with me. I was fine with that. The best times were when he stayed out drinking and didn’t come home until late, after I’d gone to bed. Those nights we’d watch television, me and my mom, have dinner on a tray in the living room, as a treat. We always watched sitcoms – I loved more than anything seeing my mother laugh. They’re my happiest memories.’

  He became wistful for a moment before continuing. ‘But when I was a senior at high school, I was aware that something wasn’t quite right with my mother. Sometimes when I came down into the kitchen in the morning she would hurry to close the lid on a canister, then tuck it high up in a cabinet, out of sight. I suspected she might be hiding money from my father, which I could understand, but one day curiosity got the better of me. She was out grocery shopping, so I decided to look in the canister for myself. It was filled with bottles of pills – amphetamines and sleeping tablets mainly. I asked her about them, but she just brushed it off, said they were for her nerves, that a doctor had prescribed them, so it was nothing for me to worry about. But after that I started to notice her hands were often shaky. I didn’t know if they always had been, or if I was just becoming hyper-vigilant. When I asked her about it, she just said, “See, that’s why I have to take those pills, it’s my nerves.”

  ‘Anyway, then I was accepted into college, halfway across the country. I was thrilled to be getting away from my father, but loath to be leaving my mother. But she was so happy for me, so proud, I went for her sake as much as anything.’ He stared down at the table, a deep frown creasing his forehead. It was a moment before he could speak. ‘My father didn’t even call to tell me she’d been taken to hospital. It took weeks for her to die, apparently, and I would have had time to see her, to say goodbye. More than anything, I’ll never be able to forgive him for that.’ He took a breath. ‘My grandmother came down for the funeral. It was the first time she’d ever visited, though she wouldn’t come to the house. She told me she’d never wanted her daughter to marry “that man”, that he’d finally destroyed her. I was inclined to agree.’

  ‘What happened to your father after that?’ Madeleine asked carefully. She felt a little underhanded, like some kind of investigative reporter asking leading questions to get him to incriminate himself.

  ‘I told you we lost contact,’ said Henry, ‘but it was a little more deliberate than that. He sold the house and moved away without telling me. He didn’t leave a forwarding address, he just disappeared.’

  Hearing Henry say it brought tears to her eyes. ‘I’m so sorry.’ He clearly didn’t want to recount the shock of going to the house, and Madeleine certainly wasn’t going to push it. But there was one thing she’d wondered about ever since Aiden had told her the story. ‘Can I ask you something?’

  ‘Madeleine, you can ask me anything,’ Henry said with an indulgent smile. ‘You just don’t have to keep asking me that.’

  ‘Okay, well, I guess I was wondering, if your father just disappeared like that, wouldn’t you . . . I mean, I know you had no relationship . . .’ What was she saying? This wasn’t going to come out right. ‘I don’t know what I was thinking, it doesn’t matter.’

  ‘Madeleine, what is it? Just say it.’

  She looked awkwardly at him.

  ‘Go on,’ he urged.

  ‘I wondered why you wouldn’t call the police, the way he just went missing like that. Anything could have happened.’

  ‘I did go to the police,’ said Henry. ‘I was actually worried that he’d gone and done away with himself. The police thought that idea was valid under the circumstances, and so they started with a simple records search. According to his driver’s licence, he was living in a small town in Minnesota. They weren’t permitted to give me his address; they told me they shouldn’t have mentioned that much. But they had police up there visit his house to make sure he was all right, and to get his permission to pass on his contact details to me.’ Henry took a breath. ‘He was there, he was fine, but he wouldn’t give his permission. He said he wanted his privacy. So that was that.’ He sat back, apparently spent.

  Madeleine tried to imagine what that would feel like, but she had absolutely no frame of reference. She could relate to the grief of losing a father, but she had always felt loved and important and special. She was amazed that Henry had managed to become the man he was; she supposed his mother had had a large part to do with that. No wonder he was such a gentle soul.

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me any of this before?’ she asked after a while.

  He shrugged. ‘I think I was ashamed, to be honest. You have such a loving family, your father was your hero. I didn’t know what you’d make of me if I told you about my family.’

  ‘Henry . . .’ She reached her hand across the table and he took hold of it. She probably shouldn’t have done that, but she couldn’t help herself. ‘You have nothing to be ashamed of.’

  ‘Thanks for saying that.’ He squeezed her hand. ‘But it wasn’t the only reason. I just didn’t want to be that person any more. I had a chance to start over – my history could be just a short blurb, like the one on the sleeve of my books.’ He paused. ‘But now I know you can’t escape who you are.’

  He didn’t have to tell her that. ‘Is that why you went to therapy?’

  ‘Eventually,’ he said. ‘I had a few good years, productive years, when my books first took off. Gene was very good to me – he was my mentor, and probably the closest thing I ever had to a father.’

  Madeleine’s stomach lurched. She knew Gene was no longer Henry’s agent, but she’d thought that was because he’d retired. ‘Gene, he’s all right isn’t he?’

  ‘Sorry, I shouldn’t have spoken in the past tense,’ said Henry. ‘He’s alive, and mostly well. He had some minor health issues, which is why he retired and moved to Florida. I would have asked him to the wedding, but I know he wouldn’t be up to the trip, and I didn’t want him to attempt it.’

  That was a relief. Madeleine couldn’t bear to think of any more sadness in Henry’s life. And she was about to rain still more down on him. But she had to let him finish.

  ‘Sorry, I interrupted you,’ she said. ‘You were saying your books were doing well?’

  He nodded. ‘With the first substantial money I made, I bought the house up in the Hamptons, long before I bought the apartment in New York. I loved it, I loved being on my own to work. I didn’t think that was strange; writers, artists, our work is solitary, that’s the nature of it. But after a while, Gene started to voice some concern. I kept pulling out of appearances, making excuses, cancelling on him. It was really unprofessional, and just plain wrong, considering everything he’d done for me. Finally, he sat me down and gave me some ultimatums. One of them was that I had to talk to a therapist.’

  ‘How did you feel about that?’

  ‘I was belligerent about it,’ said Henry, ‘but I owed Gene that much. So I made a promise to stick it out for three months. Roland, that’s my therapist, he got through to me in less time than that. He made me realise that I was in danger of turning into my father. That scared the hell out of me. I wanted to do something about it, I wanted to change before it was too late. And I didn’t want to do it with drugs; after what happened to my mother, the idea freaked me out. But Roland didn’t believe I needed medication anyway, he was certain I’d respond to c
ognitive behavioural therapy.’

  ‘Change in thinking leads to change in behaviour,’ she murmured, recalling a snippet from the back of some book.

  ‘You know about CBT?’ Henry asked.

  ‘I’ve read a little.’

  He nodded. ‘So, we developed a kind of contract. The main thing was that I wasn’t allowed to say no to invitations. If I was tempted to say no, I had to come to him and talk it through. That’s why I agreed to the trip to Australia.’

  Madeleine’s eyes widened, but all she could say was, ‘Oh.’

  ‘Best thing I ever did.’

  She couldn’t not respond to that. ‘I think so too.’ But he wasn’t going to think so any more.

  ‘I wasn’t sure at first – you were so frustrated with me at the beginning. I should have been saying yes to everything you suggested, but there was only so much I could handle. I didn’t want to go to big parties, or “network”.’

  ‘I remember,’ said Madeleine.

  ‘But then you came to pick me up that day,’ he said, smiling at the thought of it, ‘all ready to take me out hiking. And I think that’s when I started to fall in love with you.’

  ‘Me too,’ she blurted; she couldn’t help herself.

  He looked at her. ‘Really?’

  She nodded. She wanted to let him know how much he meant to her. Maybe he would remember after she dropped her bombshell. ‘There was something about you that day . . . I’ve told you before, you reminded me of my father in a lot of ways. You seemed so calm and self-contained. You didn’t need to talk all the time.’

  ‘I was probably just terrified of saying the wrong thing.’

  Madeleine smiled then. ‘Well, it worked. I didn’t want to let you go.’ The words almost stuck in her throat. She still didn’t want to let him go.

  ‘I felt there was something between us,’ said Henry, ‘but I didn’t know what I could do about it. And then I got home and your email was waiting for me. That’s where my therapy came in: I never said no to you again.’

  ‘But you did more than that,’ Madeleine reminded him. ‘You asked me to New York.’

  ‘I did, with the help of Roland. I thought he was the crazy one when he suggested it. I kept talking about how I wanted to find a way to see you again, so he said to me, “What if you met a beautiful woman here, in New York, what would you do?” I told him I supposed I’d ask for her number. “Well, you already have her number,” he said. “What then?” I said I’d ask her out on a date. He said, “So, what’s stopping you?” I reminded him that there was the small issue of you living on the other side of the world. And he said, “Are you going to let a little thing like that stop you?”’ Henry smiled. ‘He took me through every conceivable outcome – what if you said no; what if you came, but you thought we were just friends . . . He showed me that nothing was as bad as not risking it in the first place. Turns out he was right.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said faintly.

  ‘So here’s to Dr Roland,’ said Henry, raising his glass. ‘Perhaps we should name our first-born after him?’

  She looked at him, horrified, but not for the reason he was thinking.

  ‘Hey, I was only kidding,’ he reassured her.

  ‘I know.’

  ‘The thing is,’ Henry resumed, becoming serious. ‘Ever since then you’ve made everything easy for me, Madeleine. And because I had you, I really didn’t need anything or anyone else. So I started slipping back into old ways. The house was the first mistake, and the biggest. And then I started to get irritated by your family. That was really unfair – it wasn’t them, it was me. I found myself dreaming about the day you’d give up work, have a baby, and we could just exist up here, together. We wouldn’t need anyone else, we wouldn’t have to go anywhere. So I started to get grumpy about the apartment. I could feel it coming on, but I convinced myself it was reasonable.’ He paused. ‘I suppose Aiden being here brought it all to a head.’

  He didn’t know the half of it.

  ‘That fight we had the other night,’ said Henry. ‘Have we ever fought like that before?’

  Madeleine shook her head.

  ‘And then when you said you wanted to have a few days away . . . I was a little terrified. I thought I was going to lose you, that you’d had enough. I knew I had to do something about it. So after you left, I called Roland in the States.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘I knew what I had to do, I just needed to talk it through with someone. So while you were away, we had a session over Skype, in the middle of the night. I was the one who suggested selling the house; he just validated my decision.’

  Madeleine sat, barely breathing, racked with guilt. Henry had worked so hard to make everything right, while she had got drunk and slept with his best man.

  He was watching her. ‘I don’t want you to worry, Madeleine, it’s not like I’m going to have to keep my therapist on speed-dial.’

  ‘It’s okay. After my father died we saw a counsellor a couple of times, all of us. Then I just wanted to get on with my life. But I think I could have used more . . . Therapy, that is. Instead I used alcohol to numb the pain. When I met you, I started to get my life together . . .’ And then it all fell apart again.

  ‘I know, you told me all that, you’ve always told me everything,’ said Henry. ‘And I should have told you everything. Now I have. There shouldn’t be any secrets between us, Madeleine. I want to have everything out in the open from now on.’

  Oh shit. This was it. She had to tell him, she had to tell him right now. She’d put it off long enough. Her heart was hammering painfully against her ribs. ‘Henry, I have to tell you something.’

  ‘I know, you keep saying that, and I realise I’ve hogged all the time. But please, if you don’t mind indulging me for one last thing, and then you can have the floor. I promise. There’s just something I want to show you.’

  ‘Okay,’ she said, wondering what on earth this was going to be.

  He got up and went over to the kitchen, where he opened a drawer in the island bench. When he came back, he was holding a wad of brochures. He moved the bowls and bread aside, and spread the brochures out on the table in front of her. ‘I wanted to show you where we’re going on our honeymoon,’ he said. ‘Why I’ve been working so hard . . .’

  This really wasn’t a good idea right now. ‘I thought you wanted to keep it a surprise?’ she said, trying to think of some way to stop him.

  ‘I’ve had second thoughts,’ he said. ‘Let me show you . . .’ He opened the first brochure and slid it closer to her, pointing out pictures as he gave a running commentary: from the luxury elevated tent at Uluru, to the breathtaking 5-star treehouse in an eco-lodge up in the Daintree, and finally, a few nights on a yacht sailing the Barrier Reef. Henry had booked the most romantic accommodation possible, in some of the most beautiful locations in Australia. He had outdone himself, totally surpassing her mean-spirited expectations.

  When she looked up, her eyes glassy, he was watching her intently. ‘I want you to know, this didn’t happen since I talked to Roland,’ he said. ‘I’ve been planning it all along, it’s already booked. I had wanted to surprise you, but I realised it wasn’t any good if you were only feeling apprehensive. I wanted you to be excited leading up to the wedding. You see, it doesn’t work to keep things from each other, no matter how good the intentions might be.’

  She couldn’t speak. It felt like her throat had seized on her.

  ‘Madeleine, what do you think?’ he prompted after a while. ‘Say something.’

  Her face crumpled. ‘I can’t take this any more, Henry.’ She burst into tears, sobbing convulsively.

  He was suddenly at her side, crouched beside her chair, gathering her into his arms. ‘Madeleine, what’s the matter? Don’t cry . . . What is it? Is it something I said?’

  ‘No . . . and yes.’ She pulled back from him, her face streaked with tears. ‘You just have to stop. You have to listen to me.’

  ‘Okay, okay. It’s going t
o be all right,’ he said gently, brushing her hair from her face. ‘Just don’t cry.’

  ‘I can’t help it.’

  He stood up, reached for a napkin on the table and pressed it into her hands. Then he dragged a chair over to sit at her side, facing her. ‘Go ahead, say what you have to say.’

  She wiped her eyes with the napkin. ‘This is just . . . it’s hard,’ she said, her voice barely more than a squeak.

  ‘You don’t think what I just told you was hard?’ he said. ‘It’s okay, you can tell me anything. That’s how it’s going to be from now on.’ He took her hands in his. ‘Go on, it’s going to be all right.’

  Madeleine lifted her face to look into his eyes. ‘But it’s not, Henry. After what I have to tell you, nothing’s going to be all right, and I’m sorry. I’m saying that up front, because you’re not going to listen later, but I want you to know how desperately sorry I am, and that I would do anything if I could change this. If I could undo what I’ve done.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’ Henry was starting to look uncertain, and his hands went slack around hers.

  Madeleine felt sick, but she had to get the words out. ‘The thing is . . . I have seen Aiden . . .’

  He dropped her hands. ‘And?’ he said, his voice low.

  ‘Oh Henry, I’m so sorry.’

  She heard the sharp intake of breath. ‘Say it, Madeleine.’

  ‘I can’t.’

  He stood up so abruptly that the chair toppled over. ‘Say it!’ He was almost shouting.

  ‘Henry, don’t.’ The picture he must be forming in his head, she didn’t want to fill in the details.

  ‘Fuck.’ He turned away, dragging a hand through his hair as he strode across the room. ‘When did it happen?’