Indiscretion

by Charles Dubow

  Maddy says nothing but glares at me. Grayhair jumps in with “Oh, we met at a party in Southampton the other week.”

  “Southampton. Is that right? Nice part of the world. Lived out there long?”

  “About ten years. I bought an old farmhouse and replaced it with something more modern. You know there was only one bathroom in the whole house? Realtor told me a family of seven used to live there. Imagine the line in the morning,” he says with a practiced laugh.

  I hate him, of course, but I also see his charm. I have sat across the table from many like him, grinding them down, taking my pound of flesh. I could do this all day—or night. It’s like shagging flies.

  I smile blandly at Grayhair and turn to Maddy, leaving him hanging. “How’s Johnny? I haven’t seen him in weeks.”

  “No, you haven’t,” she replies with the same kind of smile. Oh, I know her so well. “He’s fine.”

  “Maybe I could pop over one night and see him, assuming you’re ever around anymore?” I say to her. Then, back to Grayhair, “He’s my godson. He’s nine. Lovely boy.” Before he can jump in with some trite observation about the virtues of nine-year-old boys, I turn back to Maddy. “So, I’ve discovered we have some mutual friends.”

  “We always have had, darling,” she ripostes.

  “Yes, well, these are new friends.”

  “Are they now? I am so happy to see you making new friends. You really do need to broaden your circle of acquaintances.”

  “Well, clearly I don’t need to tell you that. You’ve been making lots of new friends too.”

  “I like people.”

  “Naturally, and from what I hear you’ve been enormously popular. That must make you feel so good. Being so popular with so many people. From what I hear you make a new friend almost every night.”

  “Fuck you, Walter,” she says. Apparently playtime is over.

  “Hey now, what’s going on?” asks Grayhair, looking confused.

  “Nothing, Rich,” I reply. “Just a little light banter.”

  “It was so nice of you stop by, Walter,” says Maddy. “What an amazing coincidence to run into you.”

  “I know? Wasn’t it?” I say brightly, glancing at my phone. “Oops. Looks like my friend needs me to meet him at a different restaurant. Guess I must be going.” I stand. “Thanks for the drink, Rich.”

  I lean over Maddy and whisper, “Are you crazy?” in her ear while kissing her good night. Then in a louder voice, “Let’s talk soon.”

  Sitting stiffly in her seat, she says nothing. She is furious at me. Good. That’s the reaction I’d hoped to elicit. One of them at any rate. “Well, so long. Hope you kids have a fun night,” I say.

  I walk casually through the restaurant to the exit. At the door I turn and wave. Grayhair, who has been staring at me the whole way, waves back, glad to be rid of me. Maddy just sits there. Outside, in the anonymity of the street, I breathe a sigh of relief. I realize I am sweating and feel the perspiration chill against my body in the cool of the night air. I look around for my car and walk over to it.

  “Thanks for waiting,” I say as I climb in. The driver, a Sikh, looks up from his cell phone. “No problem, sir. Where to?”

  No problem. That awful phrase. I groan inwardly and say, “Nowhere just yet. Let’s sit here for a while.”

  From the backseat, I have a good view of the restaurant’s entrance. To my delight, not ten minutes later, I see Maddy and Grayhair emerge. I can’t hear what they are saying, but Grayhair’s body language suggests surprise, disappointment, and obsequiousness. He is trying to figure out what the hell is going on and how he can still salvage the evening. Maddy, tall and erect, her arm outstretched for a taxi, strides purposefully, disdainfully, like the prow of a ship. Getting a taxi in this neighborhood appears easy. There seem to be a dozen or so cruising around looking for fares. One pulls up in front of Maddy. She gives Grayhair a perfunctory kiss and jumps in, leaving him standing on the sidewalk bewildered and horny.

  I watch Maddy’s face in the back of the cab as she drives by. “Okay, we can go now,” I tell the driver. “Please take me home.”

  3

  I remember when Johnny was born. Maddy had been in labor for forty hours. Then she dilated around six in the evening and pushed for the next three hours, Harry on one side, a nurse on the other, urging her to breathe, to push and push again. Johnny had been crowning almost the whole time. She pushed so hard she burst the capillaries under her eyes. Finally the doctor had to rush her in for an emergency episiotomy. A large male nurse had to keep a frantic Harry from following. Finally, Johnny was delivered, covered in his mother’s blood, and she was able to hold him only for a moment because both of them required medical attention. Johnny was taken immediately to the neonatal intensive care unit.

  The doctor, a little man with a German accent, told them about their son’s heart. There was a congenital defect, something that had not been picked up in the prenatal examinations. They were keeping him under observation, and a pediatric cardiologist had been called in. There was the possibility of surgery. Harry was furious the doctor had let the baby crown for so long, making unnecessary physical demands on both mother and child, but Maddy calmed him with a touch of her hand. It’s all right, she told him. And looking down at her, knowing what she had just gone through, he couldn’t say anything more but just took her hand and kissed it and looked at her with love, amazed by her courage and strength.

  The whole time I had been waiting anxiously in the lounge, chewing my head off, sick of CNN and as nervous as any expectant father. I have always hated hospitals, the stench, the sickness, the posturing of the doctors. It was torture, but for Maddy I was willing to endure it. When I first saw Harry’s grim face afterward, I was relieved to learn that my worst fears had not been realized, even if the news wasn’t what any of us wanted to hear.

  “There’s something wrong with his heart,” he told me. “They have to keep him in the NICU. Maddy’s in rough shape, but she’ll be okay. They’ve given her a sedative to help her sleep.”

  We kept a vigil all night, alternating between Maddy’s room and the NICU. I even suggested suing the doctor and offered to bring the suit myself. But Harry waved me down, concerned only about his newborn son, who was not yet named, who was lying there in his bubble-like bed, a little mask over his tiny face, electrodes attached to his chest, monitors beeping, a striped cloth cap covering his head, his eyes swollen with abrupt new life. I wasn’t clear which of them appeared the more helpless, the father or the son. Harry looked exhausted too, having slept the previous night on a chair in Maddy’s room while she had contractions. He would sleep at the hospital again tonight, if he was able to sleep at all.

  The next day they wheeled Johnny into Maddy’s room and let her hold him. It was a different room now, higher up and larger. Already there were several bouquets of flowers. The largest from me, plus a giant teddy bear. With her baby in her arms, Maddy looked beatific but half-dead. I had never seen her so drained. Her skin pale, her eyes blackened.

  “He’s so beautiful.” She sighed.

  “He’ll be all right,” I said. “The doctors here are the best. Plus I have a friend who’s on the board. Don’t worry. They’re doing everything they can.”

  “Thank you, Walter.”

  The nurse returned and told us she had to take Johnny back. The look on Maddy’s face was heartbreaking.

  I also made a move to leave. “Before you go, Walt,” said Harry. “There’s something Maddy and I would like to ask you.”

  They looked at each other, holding hands, and then back to me. “Walter,” said Harry, “I hope this won’t come as too much of a shock, but we’d like you to be the godfather.”

  “I’d be honored.” I looked at Maddy. I hoped my glance expressed the extent of my gratitude.

  “If anyone can help get Satan behind him, it’s you,” said Harry with a smile, shaking my hand. Maddy held out her arms, and I leaned over to kiss her. “Thank you,”
she whispered.

  “Do you have a name for him yet?”

  “Yes,” said Harry. “We’ve been talking about it for some time, but we only just decided it this morning.”

  “We’re naming him John Walter Winslow.”

  I blushed. It’s not every day your best friend names her child after you or asks you, in a small but real way, to become a de facto member of the family. I was very touched. From then on, Johnny became almost as important to me as his mother. I even set up a trust fund for him and named him my sole heir. One day he would be quite rich.

  That night to celebrate I ordered in dinner from one of the city’s best restaurants. It was July, and they sent over lobster and cold Pouilly-Fumé in ice buckets. They provided a table, linen, silverware, and even a waiter to serve us. It was very civilized. Maddy was hungry but exhausted. She ate a few forkfuls and had a sip of the wine but soon excused herself and said she had to sleep. I had tried to lure Harry away for a drink, but he declined, saying he wanted to stay with Maddy and Johnny.

  The next several years were very hard. Johnny was in and out of the hospital, requiring a number of operations. The scariest time was once when he was three; he collapsed in the backyard of their house in New York, and Harry had to run him the whole way to the emergency room.

  There was a further complication, but with Maddy, not Johnny. The doctor had taken Harry aside the day after the birth. The labor had been traumatic for Maddy. She had pushed for too long, and having another baby might be dangerous. I am sorry, he said. Harry did not tell me this. Maddy did, years later. I have often wondered what would have happened if there had been another child.

  But I knew having a sick child had taken a toll on Maddy. Being a mother changed her. It made her more protective, less adventurous. Johnny became the center of her universe, and she refused to move herself out of orbit around him. But it also made her more determined and selfless than ever. And Harry was there every step of the way. He was working on his book then, the one that would make his name, and they shut themselves away for weeks at a time, living happily with only each other. I was always welcome, like the captain of the mail boat to a lighthouse keeper and his family, a source of diversion and news from the outside world, but I could tell they were never sad to see me chug away back to shore.

  As Johnny’s health stabilized, they became less reclusive. Then the success of Harry’s book came, and, once again, he allowed himself to give in to his more social nature. He was always good in crowds, confident, amusing, attentive when he had to be. He liked parties, going to them or giving them. Maddy liked them less and rarely wanted to leave Johnny, so, more often than not, they invited people to their home. It was something she did for Harry and for herself too. And, of course, it didn’t hurt that she was a good cook and beautiful and smart, and people always came.

  But keeping Harry close, as she did Johnny, made her happiest. Maybe somewhere in her heart she feared that, if she didn’t, she might lose them both. And that would have destroyed her.

  That’s why I was so disturbed to see her abandon Johnny the way she had. That was not the Maddy I knew. None of this was. Johnny needed her back, and so did I.

  I call her the day after the scene in the restaurant. This time she picks up.

  “That was a rotten trick,” she says.

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “Oh, come off it. You know exactly what I mean.”

  “I’m sorry if I broke up your little date. He seemed like such a nice fellow too.”

  “You’re an asshole.”

  “Am I?”

  “Yes, you are. I don’t know how you found me, but I don’t believe that story about you meeting a client for one minute. You’d no more meet a client at a place like that than you’d vote for a Democrat.”

  It’s true. I wouldn’t. But I am not about to confess.

  “Well, I guess we’re all capable of doing new things. It’s not exactly your sort of place either.”

  There is silence on the other end. Then, “My life is very different now than it used to be.”

  “If yours is, then so is mine.”

  “I didn’t want it to be,” she says quietly.

  “I didn’t either.”

  “What’s wrong with my dating?” She is angry now. “I’m separated. And Harry’s fucking Claire. Why do I have to stay cooped up? Shouldn’t I be allowed to have some fun too?”

  “Of course you should have fun. I just know you’ve been going out a lot. Isn’t that rather hard on Johnny? He’s going through a lot too. He needs you more than ever.”

  So far there has been no mention of our night together. I’m not about to bring it up, and neither, it seems, is she. I just want things to go back to the way they had been.

  She sighs. “I’m thinking of going away for a little while.”

  “With Johnny?”

  “No. He has school. He can stay with Harry. It’ll be good for both of them.”

  “Are you sure that’s the best idea?”

  “No, I’m not sure about anything. I just know if I stay in New York right now I’ll go out of my mind.”

  “Would you be going away by yourself?”

  “Very funny. Yes. I don’t want to be around anyone, see anyone. I just want to be alone. Go somewhere, sit on a beach, and think about what the hell I’m supposed to do next. Mexico, somewhere like that. I want green salt water. Green salt water so pure and clear it’s the only thing between sand and sky.”

  I’m relieved. “That sounds like a good plan.”

  “I’m not asking for your approval, dammit.”

  “Can I help?”

  “As a matter of fact, you can. Please check on Johnny from time to time. I know Harry will take good care of him. I just want Johnny to know that the other people in his life love him too.”

  “Of course. It’d be a pleasure. How long will you be gone for?”

  “I don’t know. A few weeks. I’d like to disappear for a year, but I know I can’t do that.”

  “When are you thinking of leaving?”

  “If I can, I was thinking next week. The sooner the better. When I come back, we can open up the house. I know how much Johnny loves being there. I can’t believe it’s almost the summer again. God, what a year,” she says with a laugh.

  On the night before Maddy’s flight, Harry comes to the brownstone to pick up Johnny. Naturally I had asked if she wanted me to be there. To my surprise, she said it wasn’t necessary, but she tells me about it the next morning when she calls from the airport to say good-bye. I had already asked her to give me her contact information. I don’t like the idea of not knowing where she is.

  “It was nice to see him. I was surprised,” she says.

  I am equally surprised to hear her say so. It’s the first time she has talked civilly about Harry since the whole episode came to light. Until now, she hasn’t expressed anything other than contempt.

  “What do you mean?”

  “He was being so sweet. And he gave me his old Saint Christopher medal. The one he always wears when he flies. He told me he wanted me to have it.”

  “Did you take it?”

  “Of course. He knows how much I hate flying.”

  “What else did you talk about?”

  “Johnny. I told him I didn’t want Johnny to be around Claire.”

  “How did he react?”

  “He agreed. Said he understood. Then he tried to apologize again.”

  “What did you say?”

  “I said I didn’t want to talk about it.”

  “Did you talk about anything else?”

  “Not much. You know, chitchat. Mexico. You know, it’s one of the few places we’ve never been together. Maybe that’s why I wanted to go there. Anyway, we had a drink. Sat in the living room. It was strangely cozy, you know? He said his book was coming along. The funny thing is that he even made me laugh. You know how he is when he gets going. No one can tell a joke like Harry, and, even though I ha
d promised myself I’d be immune to his charms, he had me roaring. I had been so angry with him that I couldn’t believe he could still do that, but he could. For a moment I almost forgot about what he did and how angry I am with him, and it was almost like none of this had ever happened. And Johnny looked so happy too. I could tell what he was thinking.”

  I let this sink in. “Are you having second thoughts?”

  “What?”

  “Second thoughts. About the divorce.”

  “Oh, I don’t know. Isn’t that normal? I was reading that happens a lot. Halfway through you get cold feet and wonder if it’s really the right thing to do. We’re so quick to chuck our whole lives overboard. I mean, my father tried to fuck anything in a skirt whether he was married or not. But that wasn’t why his wives left him. Life can be so lonely, you know?”

  I knew that better than most. “Do you still love him?”

  “I don’t know. I spent the last twenty years of my life with him. It’s odd not having him around. I miss him sometimes. I really do. And of course Johnny does. He’s been so excited about spending time with Harry that I almost resent it. I asked him if he was going to miss me, and he said sure, but I could tell he almost couldn’t wait to leave with his father.” She laughs.

  “So what are you going to do?”

  “Nothing for the time being. Go to Mexico. I can think about things while I’m down there, and hopefully I’ll be able to get some perspective. I’ll be back in a couple of weeks. Then, if I change my mind, I can deal with it. Or not.”

  “Okay, well, good luck and vaya con Dios.”

  “Thanks, Walter. Thanks for everything. You’ve put up with so much from me. I really don’t think I could have made it without you. You know I love you. You’re the one man who’s never let me down.”

  “I love you too,” I answer, but I don’t mean it the same way she does.

  I can imagine Claire’s face as she absorbs the news. He has taken her out to dinner to the little bistro near her apartment. They must have had a few martinis, and then the frisée salad sprinkled with lardons followed by a steak frites dripping butter. A bottle of red wine. She would be happy, enjoying an increasingly rare night out. She had even made him meet her at the restaurant so she could go home and change out of her work clothes.