by Amanda Cross
They sat for a time in silence, glancing at one another and smiling, as though admitting their curiosity and recognition of this strange meeting. Kate perceived, as she assumed Jay did, that there was a quality of flirtation about their reunion; he was an attractive man, clearly vigorous over the verge of seventy, and she, well, it hardly took much imagination to envision the whole business as a popular drama, a combination of drawing-room comedy and Eugene O’Neill, or as a soap opera.
Jay chuckled; he seemed to have followed her thought. “You mentioned soap operas a while back,” he said. “That’s not so far afield from where I began this attempt to find you and meet you. It was all the talk about DNA on police dramas, like Law and Order. I had thought often of looking you up, trying to get acquainted with you, but why should you believe that I was your father? Then the idea of DNA suddenly hit me: I can prove I’m her father, I suddenly realized. Why not do it then? DNA has released criminals from wrong convictions and imprisonment, why shouldn’t it provide me with a daughter?”
“Why not, I guess,” Kate said.
“You don’t mind then?”
“I don’t mind now. How could one mind such a luscious piece of drama entering one’s life? If I had been asked did I want to find my ‘real’ father, would I have leapt eagerly to welcome the possibility? I’m not so sure.”
“Well, here we are.”
“Indeed. Are there questions you wish to ask me?” Kate said. “I have been doing all the quizzing.”
“I know a good deal about you, as far as the facts go. Your career isn’t hard to trace. You haven’t any children?”
“No. Have you other children?”
“No. I married a woman with two sons; she was a widow, and I have been a father to them, as I think they would acknowledge. I adopted them. But they do not have my DNA.”
“And how much does that matter?” Kate said. “I’ve been asking myself that ever since the news of you was delivered by poor, shocked, but fascinated Laurence. What made you go to him as your first move?”
“I thought it all out. It seemed the best way. You could always just refuse to see me without actually having to reject me personally.”
“Most considerate. But you guessed that one can never keep from investigating a mystery about oneself.”
“Hoped, rather. You are hardly the woman to act as expected. I’m glad you agreed to meet me.”
“Any other questions for me now?” Kate asked.
“Only to ask if we might meet again. It’s only logical that you would have more questions for me.”
Kate nodded in agreement. “The matter of money, for instance. You told Laurence you wanted to find me in order to leave me money. I take it that wasn’t the whole reason.”
“It wasn’t even part of the reason. That was an untruth, I’m afraid. Oh, I have some money to leave, but I’ll probably will it to the boys, unless you have any thoughts on the subject. I . . . well, you see, I did rather know the Fansler outlook on life. I thought if I said I had money to leave, Laurence wouldn’t think I was after your money or his. Sorry to have been deceptive, but it wasn’t hard to figure out that you didn’t need my money, so it wasn’t likely you’d be disappointed not to get it.”
“You don’t hold a very high opinion of the Fanslers, do you?” Kate asked.
“Do you?”
“Not really. We don’t agree on anything much, politics mainly, but almost everything else as well. Still, they are one’s family. Or were. You make me wonder if my mother was ever really a Fansler.”
“She chose to be one. She chose them over me.”
“Do you think it was that she wanted to be well-off?”
“In part. She didn’t have illusions about love keeping one warm, as the song went. But there was more to it than that; much more. There were her three sons, and your future, which was certainly better assured under Fansler auspices. And I think she felt she owed some loyalty to your father. Finally—and I spent a long time puzzling this out, as you can imagine—I think she felt herself suited to the Fansler life. I helped her to see that; there’s the ironic part. Instead of feeling there would never be passion in her life, now there had been passion in her life. That had happened. She could go on as before, but having experienced something important.”
“You make it sound rather cold-blooded, hard-hearted, logical.”
“It was. I don’t think that she was a romantic any more than you are. I’ve often wondered why she became pregnant; she had been in charge of the birth control. This is all the outcome of years of thought, but I decided that she had decided to give fate a chance. If there was a child, then what? If her husband would accept the child, that would be one way fate might go; if he didn’t, that would be another. I don’t think she was so much logical as indulging in a form of Russian roulette. And having gone for the gamble, she stuck by the odds; she accepted the outcome.”
“Shall we walk?” Kate asked. They rose and retraced their steps toward the lake, to Banny’s evident relief; they had sat a good while.
“I think it’s the whole question of DNA that keeps troubling me,” Kate said. “Why should it make such a difference to us, discovering our relationship this late in both our lives. The truth is Reed has probably had more effect on me than your DNA has had; don’t you think that’s likely?”
“Yes, I do. And I hope to meet Reed one day soon, if you’ll allow it. DNA was just the means of finding you, and of proving to you that I was your father. It wasn’t a reason for anything. On the other hand, I may have wanted to find you because you’re my only biological child. And—don’t underestimate this—my only daughter.”
There were swans on the lake. Central Park swans did not migrate to the south in the winter, apparently having, like Canadian geese, discovered ample supplies of food year-round in New York City. Soon the swans would be building a nest, as they did each year, on an island in the lake. Swans married for life, but went through the same courting rituals each year before mating. Kate had read up on swans since she had begun watching them on the Central Park lake, which was ever since she had had Banny to walk with.
She mentioned this casually to Jay, wanting to turn the conversation away from their quizzing of one another. And yet, she felt impelled to return to her questioning.
“I keep wondering about my mother,” she said. “How it happened. It’s always hard, I guess, to imagine one’s mother in the throes of passion.”
“As I told you at Laurence’s club, my mother drank. My parents started out with promise, but there was the Depression, my father lost his job soon after I was born, it all went downhill. I think now, looking back, that my mother would have liked to have had a professional life, but that wasn’t widely thought of for women in those years. She was depressed, she drank, my father lapsed into silence.”
“Did your mother and father both like Dickens?”
“Ah, the Ebenezer connection. Yes indeed. They read to each other when they were first married; my mother told me that. And I was born on Christmas.”
“That was Reed’s guess,” Kate said.
“When I met your mother, she was almost twenty years older than I. That doesn’t seem much to me now, but it was that difference that made her so appealing to me. She seemed a finished woman, a complete woman, and a desirable one, the sort of woman I had never known. There was an immediate, powerful attraction between us. The truth is that at first she would have—what is the phrase?—thrown her hat over the windmill. She wanted to be outrageous, to risk being caught, to take awful chances. I was the sober one. Yet, in the end, it was she who made the sober decision. I guess I’ve always been a little bitter about it, though less so as the years went on.”
“And meeting me has allowed for a measure of revenge.” Kate smiled, but they both knew there was truth in her words.
“I hope it allows for much more than that,” Jay said.
“Time will tell,” Kate said. “Reed and I will invite you to dinner—in a restaur
ant, we don’t cook or entertain much—and we’ll go on from there. One never knows what tomorrow will hold. As you can see, I conclude with clichés; it seems the soundest way to part this first time. I’ve just forgotten to ask one thing, which was how you met?”
“At a wedding, properly enough. I was the best man of the groom; we’d been at college together. There was dancing, of course. We danced. I saw her across the crowded room, just as the song says.”
“As I said, we must part now in the midst of clichés.”
And so, with plans to meet soon again, they went their separate ways.
CHAPTER FIVE
The wide and universal theatre
Presents more woeful pageants than the scene
Wherein we play in.
A few days later, Kate and Reed had dinner with Jay. As though by mutual agreement, although Kate and Reed had made no plans about their dinner conversation, they spoke of general matters—politics, food, architecture, the academic life, the law. The whole encounter went very pleasantly. Kate enjoyed leaving most of the conversation to the two men; it suited her, upon occasion, to play the quiet, unassertive woman, pleased to be in the company of two such intelligent and attractive men. She glanced from one to the other, smiling and nodding as, in courtesy, they turned to her. Toward the end of the meal, as they lingered over coffee, Kate was surprised by the fleeting impression that Reed was asking more, probing for more than the answers to the subjects under discussion. She knew him well enough to sense this, but then dismissed it as a fancy; it was certainly far from obvious. After all, one did not expect to meet one’s father for the first time in one’s fifties; it was only natural that everything should appear slightly askew. As they prepared to go their separate ways, they agreed to meet again shortly, and their parting was gracious, with Reed quite his usual self, courteous as ever. Kate decided she had been imagining things.
The next evening, however, she was forced to revert to her original impression. She and Reed were in their living room, having their usual predinner drink, when Reed, at a pause in the conversation about the the events of the day in politics and in their own lives, suddenly said:
“I love you, Kate.”
The statement seemed unconnected with anything that had preceded it, and odd besides; Reed was not given to declarations of devotion. Kate stared at him.
“What?” she said.
“I love you. I just thought I would mention it.”
“Reed, are you having an affair?”
“It’s a great world we live in,” Reed said, “where if a man tells his wife he loves her, she immediately assumes he’s having an affair.”
“He usually is. Though more usually, he tells her that on the telephone on his way to visit the other woman.”
“I never knew you were so cheaply cynical, Kate.”
“I never knew you went in for sudden assurances of marital love. One does rather take these things for granted, which is perhaps regrettable, but I can’t help feeling there was a purpose in those words. All three of them.”
“Clever you. There was a purpose, but you mistake its origins. I meant to speak of your father, and I wanted you to know I did so out of my love for you. I’m sure I could have put it better.”
“What about my father? Since we now know him, might we call him Jay? It seems more suitable.”
“Jay then.”
“What about him?”
“You do realize, dear Kate, that we know nothing whatever about him, except that DNA has proved him to be your father. We were so intrigued with the demonstration of that fact, that we neglected to ask any other questions.”
“I asked quite a few during our walk in the park, and very pointed ones at that.”
“Yes, I know. But they were, were they not, questions about your mother, how they met, why they parted, that sort of thing? I don’t doubt that he loved your mother, or at least fathered a child with her. What else do we know for certain?”
“He’s an architect; he plans the restoration of old buildings; he’s been married and has two adopted sons. He hasn’t a lot of money though he claimed to have, to persuade Laurence that money wasn’t his motive in wanting to meet me. I’m sure there’s more, but that’s quite a lot, isn’t it?”
“What was his motive in wanting to meet you?”
“You don’t consider finding a long-lost daughter sufficient motive?”
“It may be sufficient, or it may not. Why wait all this time?”
“He’s past seventy. People do look back and try to tie up loose ends at that age, surely. Why does anyone do what they do when they do it and not at another time? What are you getting at, Reed?”
“That I’d like your permission to investigate him further. You may be right about him; he may be exactly who he says he is. But I’d like to have a look, all the same. I don’t want to do it unless you agree it’s sensible, and understand that love for you is my chief motive.”
Kate laughed. “I think you’re jealous of a man who’s turned up as my father, and whatever you doubt you don’t doubt that. Reed, I’m really moved to know that you feel that way. I used to have no relation in the world but you; I can hardly count the Fansler brothers, as you know. Now I have a father as well as a husband, and you seem to mind.”
“Perhaps I do. Perhaps this is all the most errant nonsense, and cover for my nose being out of joint. But will you humor me all the same?”
“It does seem a bit like going behind his back, sneaking—not quite above board or honest.”
“True, but I shall be discreet. And if he gets word of my inquiries, I’ll simply say that as your husband I felt the need to protect you. Of course, I wouldn’t say or do any of this if you object.”
“My impulse is not to object, but to insist that I know nothing about it.”
“That doesn’t sound like you.”
“Oh, dear. Being discovered by one’s father seems exciting at first, but perhaps it’s more burdensome than I realized. All right; but don’t go too far. If your first investigations pan out, just let it go, will you?”
“Let’s put it this way. I’ll let you know whatever I discover, and we can decide what I do next.”
“Or what we do next.”
“You’re the detective, Kate, deny it as you will. By now I think you can claim the title, even if you’re never paid for your work. You may want to take over at any moment.”
“Or not.”
“Or not.”
And they dropped that subject; Reed fixed them another drink before they moved to the kitchen and the preparations for dinner. But Kate had great difficulty getting Reed’s suspicions out of her mind; she had to admit, in honesty, that she rather wished he hadn’t had them. On the other hand, would they not, in time, have occurred to her?
Still brooding on this, she finally decided, later that night, to return to the subject of possible detective work about Jay, his past and, if it came to that, his present. She walked from her study to Reed’s and stood in the doorway, waiting for him to look up.
“Come in,” he said. “Don’t lurk there as though you were plotting a quick escape.”
Kate walked into the room and plopped down in Reed’s large leather chair. He swirled toward her from his desk.
“I was plotting a quick escape,” Kate said. “I just wanted to offer a suggestion.”
“Suggest away.”
“About Jay, you know.”
“I had guessed.”
“Yes. Well, instead of donning your detective cloak and galloping off down various investigative trails, why don’t you just have lunch with him?”
Reed smiled. “Tell me about your life, I’ll say. Start at the beginning and go on till you get to the end—which is this very moment. Is that what you had in mind?”
“More or less. Either he’ll give you the truth, or most of it, or he’ll refuse, or what he gives you won’t be the truth. It seems to me that puts you further ahead in your search than you might be without the lu
nch.”
“Right you are,” Reed said. “Why didn’t I think of that?”
“Meaning you had thought of it, I suppose.”
“Only just, I admit. And I wasn’t sure you’d like me playing the detective at lunch on your behalf. So I’m glad you mentioned it.”
“I rather like the reversal,” Kate said. “The husband asking the father what his intentions are.”
“I was worried you might look at it in that light. Why don’t you have the lunch?”
“I’d rather you would, Reed. Don’t ask me why; I seem to want you to get some facts about the man in order before I continue the relationship. Besides, you’re a lawyer, an ex-D.A., you’re used to asking sharp questions. I dislike personal questions, at least direct ones. Oh, hell, I’m just putting it off on to you. Should I be the one?”
“No; I’ll be glad to cross-examine the guy. Perhaps I’ll feel better about this whole thing.”
“I didn’t know it bothered you.”
“I didn’t either. When it began to bother me, I told you about it right away.”
“That’s settled then,” Kate said. “Give the man a call and set up a leisurely lunch.”
Reed and Jay met the next day in the Oak Room of the Plaza for lunch. Reed was following Kate’s rather joking proposal that they meet in the Oak Room since that was where she had wanted to meet Jay in the first place. She had, on that occasion, been denied the Oak Room, given Laurence’s insistence that they meet at his club. Reed now saw no reason not to follow Kate’s suggestion, and therefore found himself in the Oak Room, across from Jay, studying the menu, with less idea of what he was going to say than of what he wanted to eat.
“Whatever you have on draft,” he said. “Or, if you have nothing on draft, anything at all.”