“Does your sister have an eating disorder?” Brooke asked.
“My sister has a mental disorder, I think. She thinks food is out to get her.”
I would have laughed, but Brooke said seriously, “How sad. Has she gotten any help?”
“She saw a shrink years ago—we all did, actually, when my parents got divorced—but if it did any good, it was never obvious to me. Anyway, Dad’s sort of scared of her now. Plus, he admires her for it, in a way. He says she has very exacting standards.”
Brooke snorted. “Your father seems to go for people who have exacting standards,” she said.
Uh-oh. Their voices lowered conspiratorially. Oh, well, I suppose it was a bonding of sorts. I waited a decent interval before I stepped inside. “I’m back,” I said cheerily. “Croissants and coffee all around.”
After he left, Brooke said to me, “You were right about Patrick. He’s very smart and very perceptive, don’t you think?”
“Very,” I said gravely.
Her eyes had a faraway look. “I think all he needs is just the tiniest little push.”
31
In addition to its toll on my peace of mind, my conscience, my sleep, and even my appetite, my secret life was starting to affect my friendships as well. I’d never realized how important sharing confidences was as a cornerstone to female relationships until I started withholding information.
“So how are you getting along with Jack?” Kay asked me over coffee. One advantage of my diminished client base was that I could take time off from the office, even during the week.
“Okay, I guess.” Even to my own ears, I sounded as spiritless as Patrick. I stirred my coffee with a spoon, wondering how little I could get away with saying. I probably should have avoided getting together at all, but I’d already turned her down twice.
“How lovely and passionate,” Kay murmured, watching me over the lip of her cup.
I laughed. “Sorry,” I said. “I guess I don’t feel much like talking about it.”
“Well, okay,” Kay said doubtfully. “It’s just that I’m a little concerned about you, because last time you mentioned that you were thinking of … you know.”
Leaving him. The words hung there unspoken.
“You seemed so disappointed,” she added.
Disappointed, yes. “I was—I am—pretty tired,” I said. “That’s a big part of it. There’s a lot going on.” I wondered if I should tell her how much effort it was taking to try to fix everything in my life that had gone wrong.
“What are you thinking about?” Kay asked me. “You looked a million miles away.”
About three thousand, to be exact, in some future New York City with Alexei. I shook my head.
“Christ, Lynn, I hate to see you like this,” Kay said. “I can tell you don’t want to talk about it, but maybe you should see someone. It’s not good to keep things bottled up.”
I smiled. “I wonder why people always say that,” I said. “Sometimes not telling is the most generous thing you can do.”
“For the other person maybe, but not for yourself,” she insisted. “Anyway, do you think it would help you to come to the group again?”
“Not just now, thanks. Maybe later.”
“Okay,” she said, giving up. “I’ll drop it for the moment.” She took a sip of her coffee. “So how are the wedding plans coming, if that’s not too touchy a subject?”
I grimaced involuntarily.
“That bad?” she asked happily.
“They’ve booked the Moulin Winery for the reception,” I said.
She whistled. “My God! That costs a fortune!” she said authoritatively. Kay knew how much everything cost.
“Tell me about it,” I said. The Napa Valley was world famous, but in truth the Bay Area was dotted with wineries. There were wineries in the coastal hills, in the valleys, and on the flat. There probably would have been wineries in the marshes if someone could have figured out how to make grapes grow among the reeds. Wine was everywhere, and wineries ranged from the funky “fill your own bottle” type en route to Half Moon Bay to the charming “bring your picnic lunch” Mirassou Vineyards in San Jose. Meredith had eschewed funky and gone beyond charm in favor of a French-style château in the Napa-Sonoma area that represented the pinnacle of style, exclusivity, and expense. I’d seen tackier places in the Loire Valley.
“I thought she didn’t drink,” Kay said. I’d confided a lot of details about Meredith’s food aversions in the early days of my marriage, when each revelation was a fresh source of amazement.
“She doesn’t,” I said.
“Then isn’t a winery an odd sort of choice for the reception?”
I smiled grimly. “Janet drinks,” I said. “And Janet wants a very big show.”
“Well, she’ll certainly get it at Moulin.” Kay shook her head. “It’s beautiful, though. They have lots of society weddings there.”
“Yes, society. That’s the trouble.”
She laughed. “You say the word as if it were ‘smallpox.’ It’s not that bad.”
“It’s not bad at all,” I said. “It’s just not me.”
“Is it Jack?” she asked slyly.
Once I would have answered, Of course not, and been certain I was right. “I don’t think so,” I said, less certainly. “But who ever really knows anyone else?” Marriage was full of contradictions, I thought. On the one hand, you end up knowing more than you should about the other person, and on the other there were things that could surprise you after fifty years. I had to take the fifty-year part on faith, though. I wasn’t likely to find out firsthand.
“Well, that’s for sure,” Kay said vehemently. “I—”
My cell phone rang.
Kay, ever the real-estate agent, gestured magnanimously with her hand. “Go ahead. Take it.”
“Hello?” I said. I kept my face impassive, in case it was Alexei.
“Lynn? It’s me. Patrick.”
“What’s wrong?” I asked, knowing he wouldn’t have called me otherwise. “Is it your dad?”
“No. Not Dad,” he said. “It’s your cat. You’d better come to the vet’s.”
“I’M REALLY SORRY, LYNN,” Patrick said when I walked into the veterinary emergency clinic. “He was behind the wheel of the car when I backed out. I just didn’t see him. I’m really sorry.”
He looked so distraught that I swallowed hard and said, “I know you didn’t mean it, Patrick. Is he dead?”
He touched my shoulder. “No, but he got hit in the head. I told them to do whatever they could to save him. I hope that’s okay.”
“Sure,” I said, hoping it was. “Thank you for bringing him here.”
He looked down. “I know you love him,” he said, surprisingly. “And I know I wasn’t always cool about him when I moved in, but I didn’t want him to get hurt.”
“I know that,” I said.
“He used to sleep on my bed sometimes,” he said, like a little boy.
I forbore asking what had happened to his allergy to cats. “They get to you,” I said.
“Yeah,” he agreed.
DR. STEELE, the proverbial woman in white, introduced herself as a specialist in veterinary ophthalmology. “There’s good news and bad news,” she said. “The good news is, I think he’s going to be okay.”
I let out my breath. “And the bad news?”
“We had to remove one of his eyes. I’m sorry—it was too badly damaged.”
Patrick’s eyes filled with tears. He turned away.
“Cats do very well with one eye,” Dr. Steele said. “They’re amazing animals. We’ve stitched the socket shut, and the hair will grow over it. After a while he won’t even notice it’s not there.”
Ha, but at least he was alive. Although she was a very attractive young blonde, Dr. Steele had a no-nonsense style that was highly reassuring, at least while delivering news like that. I tried not to shudder.
“How should we take care of him?” I asked.
“Just keep him quiet for a few days. I’ll give you some antibiotic pills. He’s got a collar on to keep him from scratching at the stitches.”
Eeuuw. “Thank you, Doctor,” I said, getting a grip.
“Oh, and he might bleed from his nose a little bit,” she said. “But don’t worry. Unless there’s lots of blood, it doesn’t mean a thing.”
“Right,” I said hoarsely.
“Carrie will bring him out in a few minutes,” she said. “She’ll get you his antibiotic and check you out.”
Carrie was adding up numbers on the bill with the zeal of an Enron accountant, but she stopped and smiled warmly. “I’ve got seven cats,” she said. “He’ll be okay.”
I smiled back. “Thank you,” I said.
She handed me the bill.
I stopped smiling. “Seven hundred dollars?” I said, my voice squeaking a little. Maybe those flying fingers had punched in a few wrong keys.
“As operations go, it’s not that expensive,” she said kindly. “I gave you a discount.”
Patrick made a strangled sound. “I’ll help pay for it,” he said. “Out of my first paycheck.”
“Don’t be silly,” I said.
“What will Dad say?”
“Not a thing,” I told him, getting out my checkbook.
BREWER EMERGED looking like a cross between Little Bo Peep and Freddy Krueger. The plastic collar encircled his head like an oversize bonnet, and the hairless skin surrounding the puckered, sewn-up socket was raw and pink against his black fur. The stitches stuck out from his eyelids in stiff little spikes. The sight might have given Stephen King nightmares.
Patrick and I looked at each other in dismay.
“It’ll get better soon,” Carrie said encouragingly. “You’ll see. The hair grows in really fast.”
“Maybe we should get him an eye patch, so he could be the Hathaway Cat,” I said, attempting a feeble joke.
Very feeble. They both looked at me blankly. I hate it when some cultural reference reminds you how far you’ve descended into geezerdom.
“Never mind,” I said.
“I think he’s peed in his carrier,” Patrick observed.
PATRICK VOLUNTEERED TO RIDE HOME with me to keep an eye on the cat, just in case. I assured him it wouldn’t be necessary. “He’s fallen asleep again,” I said. “Take a look.”
“I’d just feel better about it,” he insisted. “Please let me.”
“Of course, if you want.”
“I feel so bad about this,” he said.
“Shit happens,” I told him. “And anyway, you saved his life. Thank you for that.”
His look lightened a bit. “I’m glad you can still thank me after you saw the bill,” he said.
“Not to mention his face,” I said.
He laughed, a little. “I was afraid to say that,” he said. “But it is pretty awful, isn’t it?”
“Ghastly,” I agreed.
“I guess love really is blind,” he said.
“Not blind,” I told him. “Just sort of selective about the focus.”
We drove along in silence for a minute or two. “As long as you’re here…,” I said.
“Yes, what? Anything,” he said.
“I’m wondering if I could stop in at the office and pick up a file on the way home. I don’t think the cat will wake up and start yowling, but in any case it will just take a minute. I was having coffee with a friend when you called, so I haven’t been back all afternoon.”
“Sure, I’ll stay in the car with him,” Patrick said bravely.
“I’ll be right back,” I said.
THE LIGHT WAS OFF IN THE OFFICE, so at first I didn’t see Brooke sitting at the desk in the dark. I threw the switch, and she put a hand to her face, blinking. I wondered if she’d been dozing.
“Sorry,” I said. “I didn’t know you’d still be here.”
She looked at me. “He’s dead,” she said tonelessly.
I am ashamed to remember that when she said that, I assumed she’d somehow heard about Brewer’s accident from Patrick. No other explanation occurred to me. “No he isn’t,” I said. “He’s fine. Well, not fine, but not dead. He’s out in the car.”
Her eyes widened. “Who is?” she whispered.
“Brewer.”
She looked blank.
“My cat,” I said, feeling my face start to flush. “Isn’t that what you meant?”
She shook her head. “I didn’t know about your cat,” she said, speaking in the careful voice people use to address the patently addled. “It’s Harrison.”
“Harrison?” I parroted, my mind rebelling at the obvious implication.
She nodded. “It’s Harrison who’s dead.”
32
Jennifer Grady, Harrison’s daughter, wanted the services to be strictly private. “Just family,” she said, in response to my inquiries. “I don’t want any incidents.”
“Incidents?”
“I’m sure I don’t have to remind you,” she said, a touch waspishly, “that he was in trouble with the law.” I hoped she was just distraught and therefore more than usually abrupt.
“No, you don’t have to remind me,” I said, holding on to my temper. “But I don’t think you have to worry about anyone trashing his funeral. Besides, how many family members are there?”
She cleared her throat. “Just me, for the moment. I’m trying to convince my aunt and some of the others.”
“How sad,” I gasped involuntarily.
“I don’t really want to get into it, but my father didn’t exactly endear himself to the rest of the family when he left my mother,” she said.
I’d always thought Harrison’s wife had left him, but naturally I didn’t say so. “And where are you going to have the service?” I asked.
“Mem Chu,” she said, without a trace of embarrassment. Mem Chu, or Memorial Church, was the gilded, neo-Byzantine chapel on the Stanford campus. Like all the other memorials to Leland Junior erected by his parents, modesty and restraint were very little in evidence. (Campus folklore held that the grieving parents had preserved little Leland’s last breakfast in the Stanford Museum, but no one I knew had ever actually seen it. Still, you had to believe that “nothing in his life became him like the leaving it” definitely applied to Junior. How many other fifteen-year-olds were responsible for the founding of a major university?)
“Well, surely that’s big enough to hold a few more people,” I said. In fact, it was big enough to gratify the most ambitious mourner, which had, after all, been the founders’ intention. “Some of the people who used to work in your father’s office would really like to come to the service, and I’m sure there must be others.”
“How very odd,” she said, “after what he did.”
“I guess we made our peace with that,” I said. Professional peccadilloes were obviously easier to forgive than personal slights. “More or less anyway. And he is, not to put too fine a point upon it, dead.”
“That he is,” she agreed. “I’ll think about it and let you know.”
“I’m so sorry for your loss,” I told her.
BROOKE EXERCISED MASTERFUL SELF-RESTRAINT and didn’t upbraid me for failing to believe that Harrison was really dying. His death reminded me of one of those macabre cemetery jokes where the tombstone reads “I told you I was sick.” Actually, he’d told me he wasn’t, but maybe that was just to ward off pity. In his place I would have done the same. On the other hand, maybe he’d deliberately misled me because he knew how bad I’d feel when I found out the truth, paying me back for not believing him in the first place. Who knows? But why had Brooke spotted the truth when I hadn’t?
Maybe I’d have to admit that I’d been the teeniest bit wrong about her after all.
HARRISON’S MEMORIAL SERVICE, when it did take place, was a sad tribute to a life gone wrong only at its end. Despite the years he had lived in the area, none of the expected attendees—the business and professional associates and community leaders—showed up.
The splendid setting notwithstanding, there were only a handful of mourners outside the family, including a few clients from better days, Jack (reluctantly) and me, Ronnie Sanchez, Harrison’s longtime secretary (now retired), Brooke, and (surprise!) Patrick.
“They’re friends,” I whispered, in response to Jack’s startled query. “I introduced them, remember?”
“She looks … formidable,” Jack whispered back. “Do you think he can handle it?”
“I think she wants to shape him up,” I said. “If I were you, I’d let her. Look at Patrick. Does he look like he minds?”
“Actually, no,” Jack said, with a smile. He touched my hand briefly. “The Hughes men can always use a good woman to help shape them up.”
My eyes welled, and he squeezed my wrist. “We’ll talk later,” he said.
Harrison’s chief apologist was a man from AA, who attested to the encouragement and kindness he’d shown at meetings. “Even though he was”—he cleared his throat in anticipation of a touchy subject—“forced to come, at least initially. Even when he knew he was dying,” he said.
The head of the admissions office at Stanford related how Harrison had served as a community adviser to the admissions committee, a “tireless advocate on behalf of poor students, the sort of student he said he had once been himself.”
Harrison’s daughter, who bore him little resemblance in any respect, looked somewhat startled at this, the only emotion I saw her display. I wondered what was going through her mind. I suspected that Jennifer was one of those people who bury their feelings under a superefficient exterior. I wondered what Harrison had done to hurt her so much, to make her afraid of her emotions even at her father’s funeral. What I was thinking was how little you really ever knew about anyone else. If Harrison had been there, I would have liked to ask him why he took me on, whether he’d seen in me a means of rescue instead of just a way to shift his problems onto somebody else. I’d have liked to ask him if he thought I’d repaid his initial leap of faith. On the whole I thought he would. I hadn’t saved Grady & Bartlett, but I’d cleaned up the problems he’d left behind and served the clients well. Not a bad legacy, that.
Secret Lives of Second Wives Page 21