What was so momentous about this was not that someone asked Maddy out—although it happened less often than people thought—but that she actually accepted. I had been with her on many occasions—on Long Island, in Manhattan and New Haven—when men approached her. They were usually older, more confident. She was never rude. She never told anyone to buzz off or flipped them the bird, or anything so vulgar. She just politely said “No, thank you.” Sometimes the more persistent ones, if we were in a bar or restaurant, sent her a drink; others even sent flowers if they knew where she lived. If they were too pushy, we just left. But in almost every case, she demurred.
With Harry, not only did she say yes but clearly she had thought about it and, having done so, liked the idea. It is possible she even expected it, from that first moment at the spring party. She was not a spontaneous sort of person. We shared so much, but we had not shared this. This was hers. It was a part of her life that was shut off to me. I resented this concealment, of course, and was jealous of it, but I also knew there was little that could be done about it. If she wanted it, I wanted it too. She was the shark, and I merely the pilot fish.
Their first date was at an Italian restaurant, an old-fashioned red-sauce place near Wooster Square that closed years ago. Harry didn’t have a car, so Maddy drove with him squeezed into the passenger seat of her red MG. After dinner, they went to a bar and then back to Maddy’s room. There, as she told me later, they stayed up all night talking and looking at her photo albums. Old Kodaks, the edges serrated, their colors muted. Pictures of her childhood, when she was raised by her grandmother, as an infant, later skinny in a one-piece on the beach. Birthday parties, swim meets. Photos of her father, young and muscular with his shirt off, his hair still full and blond, at a friend’s wedding, playing golf, at Christmas. Her brother, Johnny. A succession of stepmothers. A yellow Mercedes convertible that later wound up wrapped around a tree. Men in turtlenecks with sideburns, women in Lilly Pulitzer and bouffant hair. Everyone smoked. I know these images well. They were my life too.
It was a month before they slept together, she said. During that month, I barely saw her. Suddenly, the two of them had become inseparable. They met after class, dined together at Mory’s or in her apartment, where funnily enough Harry did most of the cooking because Maddy, being a child of privilege, had never learned how to navigate a kitchen. Instead of driving down to New York with me, she went with Harry now. The city was still new to him, and she delighted in showing it to him. She took him to all our favorite places, Bemelmans, the White Horse, Vazac’s, the Oak Bar. They spent hours at the Frick and the Met, drove out to Luger’s in Brooklyn, danced at Xenon. She took him to “21” for the first time and charged the meal to her father’s account.
After that first month, there was another and then another, until it blurred into a year. It was clear to me, and to them, that they were in love. I had never seen Maddy so happy. She glowed. And I knew the only course of action available to me was complete and utter acceptance. I could not have her to myself anymore, and, if I fought it, I would risk losing her entirely. Instead I became an acolyte, lighting the candles, carrying the cross, swinging the thurible. Initially, I hesitated, wondering if it would last, waiting for the relationship to break off under its own weight. But it never did.
In the summer after sophomore year, they traveled to Europe together, staying with friends in England, hiking in the rain through the Lake District, traveling down to the Côte d’Azur, stopping at vineyards along the way, visiting old friends of her grandmother’s. Then they went to Santorini, where they slept on the beach and got brown as nuts, swinging back through Marrakech and then Barcelona before coming home.
I did not join them but every few days got enthusiastic postcards from Maddy. I was wildly jealous, but what could I do? I had another internship, my sights already fixed on law school. When in our senior year Maddy told me they were going to be married after graduation, I was genuinely happy. I could see that Harry loved her. Not for her beauty but for herself. He had penetrated beneath the armor to see the soul inside and knew that what he found was gold. I had been aware of it all along, of course, and it gave me a certain satisfaction to know I had been there first, that, in this one thing, he would always follow me.
Harry’s plane touches down at Nantucket Memorial Airport. It’s still low season, and the airport is relatively empty. It’s a little after eleven. Johnny has to use the bathroom, and they have a late breakfast at the little restaurant in the terminal. Johnny has pancakes and bacon. Harry, coffee and scrambled eggs. The restaurant is full of pilots, a few in uniform, but most of them recreational fliers like Harry. They fly over for the day, have lunch, and fly back. They are doctors, small business owners, retirees. It is a small confederation. They like nothing better than sitting around talking about flying. Normally Harry would join them, but not today. Today he has Johnny. He wants the day to be about his son.
“How did your mother seem before she left, pal?” he asks.
“Okay, I guess,” Johnny says, swinging his legs distractedly. “She was a little sad sometimes.”
Harry nods his head. He can barely bring himself to look into his son’s eyes. They are Maddy’s eyes. Her sadness is his fault. It is all his fault.
“How are you, Daddy?”
Harry is surprised by the question. It might be the first time Johnny has ever asked anything like that, revealing a maturity, a growing awareness of others that is so often among the last traits to develop in children, if it does at all.
“Well, I guess I’m a little sad too.”
“Why?”
“Because I miss your mommy, and I miss you.”
“Maybe if you came back home, then both you and Mommy would be happy again.”
Harry looks away and pats his son’s hand. “I’d like that very much. Come on, pal. It’s wheels-up time.”
7
They are back together and once again in the house on Long Island, the sound of laughter and music and voices emanating from the house. It is summer. Outside the sun is shining, the sky is blue. There they are on the lawn, planning a beach excursion or a dinner party or just sitting in chairs reading. Sailing on the pond, where on Sunday afternoons there are regattas. Maddy cooking or in the garden. Johnny playing with a friend. He is older now. Taller, slender like his mother. He has her beauty.
His heart condition has gone away. It’s as though it never happened. He plays tennis now. I let him use my court. There are even a few girls around, an inkling of what it will be like in a few years. He will be devastating. Women will fall at his feet. Harry comes out of the house, looking well. He completed his novel. It was another bestseller. His last book is being turned into a movie. Who else is there? Well, I am, of course—happy to have my proxy family united again, warm in their shared love, contented as a favorite uncle. Ned and Cissy are there too. She is carrying her first baby in her arms.
How did it all happen? How does anything happen? They realized they loved each other too much. And, like all truly happy couples, they were complete only when they were together. Pain is transient but love eternal. Harry and Johnny landed, and Maddy returned from Mexico. When Harry brought Johnny back home, Maddy invited him in. Inspired by her trip, she had just been to the store and was roasting a pork shank. Making chile ancho relleno. Would he like to stay for dinner? There was cold beer in the refrigerator. They sat around the table as they had so many times before, wearing the comfort of being together like an old coat. There was laughter. Maddy told them about Mexico. About the color the sea turned at sunset, about the parrots in the jungle. She brought back Indian blankets, a sombrero for Johnny. They told her about their flight. Johnny showed off his knowledge of English kings. It was King George the First, he said. He came after Queen Anne. He was German. They clapped, and he smiled, appreciative of the applause but happier still that his mother and father were together again.
After dinner, they put Johnny to bed the way they always had, with storie
s and a kiss on the forehead. Then they talked deep into the night, soaking up each other’s thoughts, laughing from sheer joy in each other’s presence. There were tears but no recriminations, no anger, no fear. There was no need. It was as though their lives had never been altered. When it was time for bed, there was no question whether Harry would stay. He simply followed her upstairs, and she expected nothing less. They then made love, slowly, securely, happily, the way they once had, the only way two people who are truly in love can.
And Harry never left. Love endured. They grew older. They got dogs. Johnny went to Harry’s old school, then Yale. He never played hockey, but that mattered to no one, least of all Harry. Instead he had a flair for languages and spent a term abroad in Paris, staying with friends of the family. We all came over and visited once and took a cycling trip through the Loire Valley. Johnny knew Italian, Spanish, and French, and was learning Mandarin. He was interested in foreign relations. Maybe even law.
He and I had lunch a few times a year. I drove up to New Haven, and we ate at Mory’s, or, when he was down in the city, we met at one of my clubs for lunch. Every year during the Christmas holidays, we went to a Broadway play or musical, just like when he was a boy. I loved hearing about his life, about his interests. In addition to his mother’s looks, he has her passions and sensitive nature, and his father’s sense of humor and knack for making everything look easy. He is such a perfect combination of the two. I couldn’t be more proud of him.
In the spring we would all go skiing in Breckenridge for a week. Summers were spent on Long Island, and Johnny came out as often as he could, usually bringing with him one in a succession of beautiful, tan girls with white teeth and honey-colored hair. They would join us in trips to the beach, their firm breasts barely concealed by their bikinis. Johnny, lithe and tightly muscled, the scar on his chest just visible when he had his shirt off, paddling one of the canoes. There were still swimming races. Maddy still won most of the time, but one time I saw Johnny hold back and knew he was letting her win. He was now much taller than both of them. Maddy still had her figure, but Harry had put on weight. Both of them had gray hair.
After graduation, Johnny didn’t join the Marines, as his father had, but he did spend a year in Cambodia teaching in a remote village. He wrote me e-mails from there, describing the people, their customs, their gentleness. He also sent photographs of him helping build a well, leading a water buffalo, astride a motorcycle. Then he returned and entered law school. He joined my firm, at my encouragement, of course. He was well-liked and was soon on the fast track for partner. But I knew he was too spirited to remain for long. Guided by nobler instincts, he moved to Washington, where he went to work for the Department of Justice. It was there that he met Caroline, who would become his wife. She was English and worked at the British embassy.
Her parents flew over to meet Maddy and Harry, and spent a weekend on Long Island. Everyone got along famously. Her father, Gerald, was in the City. Caro’s mother, Jilly, was a homemaker and somehow related to E. M. Forster and had literary interests. She had read Harry’s books—there were four now—and was very excited to meet him. Caro had two brothers, one an officer in the Blues and Royals, the other still at Cambridge. Their flat was near Eaton Square. They had a weekend place in Gloucestershire. It was a typical Cotswolds house, the golden limestone, with views sweeping down a green valley. Every August they went to Tuscany for their summer holiday. In the winter, they rode to hounds.
Johnny and Caro were married in the Cotswolds. Several hundred guests came. Many of Johnny’s friends flew over. So did some of Maddy and Harry’s friends. Ned and Cissy. Me. There was a big marquee on the lawn. Champagne flowed. The men wore morning coats, the women wore hats. Maddy looked beautiful in a soft green dress that brought out the blue in her eyes. It was a charming village. The reception was only a short walk from the church, which predated the Norman Conquest. There were swans in the river. Harry was best man.
We saw less of Johnny, but that was to be expected. In their second year of marriage, Caro announced at Thanksgiving that she was pregnant. Harry, grinning enormously, patted his son on the back. Maddy kissed Caro. The baby was born in May. He was christened Walter Wakefield Winslow. There followed two more soon after, Madeleine and Gerry. I gave them all gold spoons with their names on them. They were all beautiful and healthy children.
One year Johnny and Caro lived in Shanghai, another year in London. He had left Justice and rejoined the firm (where, by now, I was of counsel) as a partner. They returned to New York. I bought them a town house. I know, it was absurdly lavish, but what else am I going to do with my money? Besides, as I pointed out to Johnny, it was all going to him one day anyway. The children entered school. I dutifully attended school plays, concerts, and games, just as I had done with him.
Maddy and Harry were always there as well. They still moved like lovers, hardly ever standing out of reach of each other. Harry’s hair, still thick, was white, and he still carried himself with the slight, shifting gait of an aging athlete. He had an operation to repair one of his knees. Maddy’s hair was white too. She had cut it shorter, so it no longer ran down her back, but her eyes were just as bright. She had that delicate, parchment-like beauty that only a few older women possess. She and Harry traveled from time to time. Harry was asked to teach a seminar at Yale, to be a fellow in Rotterdam. He gave graduation speeches. They never spent a night apart.
For the first few years, Johnny and Caro would come out on the weekends and would stay in Maddy and Harry’s house, but as they had more children and the children got bigger, it was plain that they had outgrown the house. I should have thought of this sooner, but, after talking it over with Harry and Maddy, I told Johnny and Caro I was giving them my house too, along with a small trust to be used for its upkeep. Once again, they protested, but I pointed out the fruitlessness of any argument and that it made no sense for one man to ramble around in a big old house by himself when what it really needed was a family with children to live in it.
So I went to live with Maddy and Harry, using Johnny’s old room as my own. I was very comfortable and, frankly, felt safer. If I had fallen down the stairs in my house, it might have been a day or so before anyone found me.
I am old now. Nearly bald. I need to keep wiping my shoulders to brush away dandruff. I don’t hear as well as I once did, nor do many other things work as well as they once did. I have become one of those elderly men who fill their days with trips to the doctor. I stop in at my office every morning, but there is less and less for me to do. I mainly act in an advisory capacity. I still sit on a few boards. I am on the library committee at one of my clubs. I still have one martini every night, even though I have been told it is bad for me. Maddy and I go for long walks. Not as long as we once did, but it is enough. She uses a cane now, an elegant gold-handled one that belonged to her great-grandfather, the land baron. Whether in the country or the city, at night I go to sleep in my bed with a light heart. I have no regrets. I have known love, it has blessed me nearly every day of my life. I couldn’t be happier.
Except none of this is true.
8
They find the plane’s wreckage late that afternoon. Only the mangled landing gear is visible above the waterline. It is a clear day, wind blowing from the southwest. Almost no turbulence. The tower had received a distress call from Harry around two o’clock, reporting that he was losing altitude and asking for clearance. That was followed by some static that the air traffic controller couldn’t make out, and then silence.
An eyewitness who had been surf casting on the beach says he saw a single-engine plane come in low and attempt a water landing. On contact with the surface, it flipped over several times and broke apart. Divers locate the body of a young boy first. He had been decapitated. The water is cold, the current strong, and visibility is limited. The divers can only stay down for fifteen minutes at a time. They don’t find Harry’s body until the next morning.
I learn of the crash the
way most people do. I read about it online. It is a Saturday, and I am spending a quiet afternoon at home in New York. AUTHOR AND SON FEARED DEAD IN CRASH runs one of the headlines. I did not know that Harry and Johnny had flown that day. I click on the headline absentmindedly, and, with mounting horror, I read the story, stunned and disbelieving until the phone calls start. Friends, acquaintances want to know if it is true. I don’t know, but I fear the worst.
Then I receive an official call from the local chief of police, a man I have known for many years. His father had been our butcher. I remember the son working in the shop when he was a teenager, a few years younger than I, his apron smeared with dried blood. His thick hands, short blond hair. I had been listed as an emergency contact.
“Mister Gervais, I’m sorry to tell you this . . .”
It is all I need to hear. Maddy is still away, her flight due in the next day. I have to notify her. I try information to get the number for her hotel and finally find it online. There is no answer. I call the Mexican consulate in Manhattan but am told by the answering service to call back Monday morning. I don’t even know what flight she will be on. I then place a call to the home of the man who heads up our firm’s Mexico City office and tell him what happened. I tell him Maddy is staying in a hotel in the Yucatán, and, after much grumbling, he eventually arranges to have the police locate and inform her.
It is the only way. I can’t risk her arriving at the airport and finding out what happened by glancing through the newsstand. That would be too cruel.
Late that night Maddy calls from Mexico. I have been expecting it, dreading it. I pick up the phone before the end of the first ring. She is hysterical.
“What the hell is going on, Walter? Is this some kind of crazy joke? I just had two Mexican policemen wake me up and tell me to call you.”
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