Blood Ties (4 page)

“I know. But he seems truly determined to make a go of this.”

There was to be a silent partner, Catherine Adams, another transplanted Chicagoan.

“Just a friend?” Amos asked.

“With Maurice, it seldom goes beyond that.”

So the deal went through. Maurice took up residence in California. Just having him out of the city was a relief, but the apparent success of the driving range was the first good news Maurice had given them. Now their attention could be concentrated on Sheila and her little family. Then, within a year, the problem with Martha had arisen.

*   *   *

Amos's oral dossier on Maurice Dolan being ended, Father Dowling asked the lawyer if he remembered when the Lynches adopted a daughter.

“Of course I remember, Father. I took care of it for them, the legal side.”

“So it must be a matter of record.”

Amos tapped the end of his nose with an index finger. “I made an effort to keep the Lynches out of the record. The main concern was the mother's consent. Unless someone knew who the mother was, they would find it very difficult to learn who had adopted the baby. Don't get me wrong. Everything was absolutely
comme il faut.
”

“So Martha Lynch's curiosity will be thwarted.”

Amos was silent for a long minute. “Things are more complicated, Father. A week ago the birth mother, in the phrase, came to see me.”

6

In her senior year, Madeline took a course in philosophy, imagining that it would address large questions, but it turned out to be a semester devoted to the problem of universals. Is there some man apart from individual men? If not, how does the term keep the same meaning when all the individuals have been replaced by others? At first Madeline was disappointed, but then it became a strange kind of fun, like working crossword puzzles. Besides, her instructor, Mark Lorenzo, was fascinating, shortish, bearded, forever raking his right hand through his beard while he made wild gestures with the other, as if trying to pluck a universal from the air. Students called him Professor As It Were, his favorite phrase, as if he were determined to avoid black and white. He was the youngest instructor in the department. And he was impressed by her midterm.

“What is your major?”

“Computing science.”

“Ye gods.”

“You don't approve?”

“Have you ever heard of Ramon Lull?”

“No.”

“Of course not.”

“Who was Ramon Lull?”

“One of the first to go nuts about computing.”

“How did you become a philosopher?”

“I didn't. I teach philosophy. As it were. There's a difference.”

“Is there?”

“Of course, I could take the Pythagorean dodge.”

“It sounds like a dance.”

He ignored her. “The philosopher isn't wise, just someone who loves wisdom. The unattainable ideal.”

He was even more interesting in his office than in class, and she got into the habit of dropping by. There were no photographs of a wife or children. Just an observation; the events of the year before had turned Madeline into a vestal virgin. She would never marry.

The first time she visited the Women's Care Center, Mrs. Lonum had told her that women who had abortions often observed the date of the deed as if it were a birthday. “It helps to think of the child in heaven.” Madeline had no doubt she was pregnant, but it was very early and it still seemed an abstract problem. She had talked to a counselor on campus, putting her problem as a roommate's, and been urged to persuade her to take care of the problem as soon as possible. It seemed odd to hear pregnancy discussed as a disease.

Well, she had her baby and she would always remember its birthday, even though she did not even know if it was a boy or a girl. Whichever it was, her baby was in good hands with the lovely woman she had met before giving birth. When Madeline returned to campus she tried to imagine that it hadn't happened, but she would never be able to do that. She didn't want to.

Catherine Adams, her roommate, opened the door and looked her over from head to foot. Then she opened her arms and Madeline stepped into them. A silent embrace, that was all, and it was everything. It was Catherine who had helped her keep it all a secret from her parents, Catherine who had thought she was crazy to have the baby. She didn't have to say it; Madeline knew. But she knew as well that Catherine would accept her decision, just as she accepted her back without comment and with that one wonderful embrace that said all that needed to be said.

“Be careful,” Catherine had said when Nathaniel first became a presence.

“I'll do even better. I'll be good.” How ironic to remember that now.

“But will he?”

It wasn't jealousy, as it would have been with just about every other girl. Catherine really didn't like Nate.

“What is it, his sloping forehead, his close-set eyes?”

Nate's forehead was noble, and his gray eyes seemed to mirror her soul.

“No, something about the mouth.” And Catherine had laughed, and that was that.

Madeline did not comment on Catherine's taste in men. The first time Maurice Dolan came calling for Catherine, Madeline had understood the attraction. Maurice was tan and athletic; he had met Catherine on the golf course.

“What does he do?”

“Oh, the life he has led.” Catherine laughed.

“How old is he?”

“I'll cut off his arm and count the rings.”

“He doesn't seem a sturdy oak, Catherine.”

Madeline had become all too conscious of the unreliability of charming men. When it happened, when she found she was pregnant, after the initial shock, after the greater shock of Nate's reaction, she found she could tell Catherine of her condition in a matter-of-fact way that made her wonder if she had ever really known herself before.

“And?”

“I'm going to have my baby.”

“Oh, Madeline, think.”

“I've done little else for days.”

“But how?”

“I've been to a place that will take me in. The Women's Care Center.”

“I keep forgetting you're Catholic. So is Maurice. In a way.”

Catherine was angular of body, but like a model, and her hair was long and straight, always damp in the morning from her shower, drying into the auburn sheen that explained why she wore it so long.

“I forgot, too.”

“Oh, how I hate that man.”

Madeline thought about it. “Don't, he's not worth it.”

“You're right.”

When Madeline came back, no worse for wear, her soul marked for life, Catherine made her reentry into student life almost too easy.

“Didn't anyone wonder where I was?”

“You were on leave of absence. You took two courses anyway.”

Madeline found that she had gotten a B in programming and an A- in Latin.

“Latin?”

“I figured we could talk religion when you came back.”

“I did take Latin in high school.”

“Maybe that's why you did so well.”

“Catherine, you're marvelous.”

“I know.”

The funny thing was that Catherine, who had proven immune to Nathaniel's charms, was almost jealous about Mark Lorenzo.

“Don't worry, Catherine, if that's what you're thinking.”

“What am I thinking?”

“All right, you're not.”

“I took epistemology from him. He seemed to doubt the walls of the room were there until he proved it.”

“Philosophy is a game.”

“Not for him.”

“You're right. Catherine, what would you say if…”

Catherine was silent for a moment. “I'd say, ‘Go, girl.' I know I would.”

“Say it?”

“No. Go.”

“You mean it?”

“I'm jealous. Okay?”

“Catherine, everything you do is okay.” Maurice seemed to have disappeared, but Catherine still had a weakness for older men. It seemed that Madeline now did, too.

When they didn't drink the coffee he always had simmering in his office, Madeline and Dr. Lorenzo would go up the street and drink beer in a student haunt. Afterward, they would visit used-book stores, where he seemed more interested in fiction than philosophy. Two weeks before her graduation, he sat across from her, making wet rings on the table with his glass.

“I'm twenty-seven years old.”

“I'm twenty-one.”

“Do you have a boyfriend?”

“Just you.”

He blinked. How she longed to take his glasses and clean the lenses.

“I never thought I'd want to marry.”

“Why not?”

“It doesn't mean what it used to.”

“I'm Catholic.”

“So were all my ancestors.”

It went on like that, weird. Afterward, they seemed to be engaged. Madeline had had all she wanted of romantic men. Mark Lorenzo, whose head was in the clouds, had his feet on the ground.

“You have all the luck,” Catherine said. “First bad, now good.”

They married in the chapel of the Newman Club. Her parents came from California; the rest of the pews were filled with Lorenzos from New Jersey and colleagues and some students, Catherine among them, the reappeared Maurice Dolan at her side. Two years later, Mark published his first book, a reassessment of Ramon Lull, and Stephen, their first son, was born. Birthdays and publication dates were both commemorated in the Lorenzo home. Mark got tenure. They had four sons, and his fifth book was scheduled for publication. After graduation, she saw Catherine infrequently. Catherine was working as a broker in the Loop.

“And Maurice?”

“He's one of my clients. He has brought me lots of business.”

“Lucky you.”

Catherine grew serious. “Up to a point.”

“Maurice is just a client?”

“Nosey.”

Catherine had remained unmarried and took vicarious delight in Madeline's fecundity. “You Catholics are terrible.” But she smiled when she said it. Mark was nice to Catherine, but little more. Well, Madeline didn't want him smitten by the successful broker Catherine had become.

So the years passed, and then the Monster reappeared.

That is how she thought of him, when she thought of him at all, the Monster. Nathaniel Fleck, the boy who had made her pregnant and then fled in terror when she told him. It had been their last conversation. He did offer to pay for an abortion. It was painful to think that she had been flattered when he took her out. He was a big man on campus, wrote a column for the daily, was on the tennis team, could have his pick of coeds, and he had chosen her. He had everything but character. He didn't want to grow up. “We're too young,” was the way he put it. Listening to his self-centered agonizing and his not very subtle suggestion that it was really her fault, she knew she had never loved him. She had liked him because others did; she had enjoyed the suppressed sighs of other girls when they looked at him. But she was only an episode, and when she told him she was pregnant, the episode was over. That was one of the few good results of her trouble.

“Madeline?”

She was in a bookstore looking for early editions of Henry James for Mark's birthday. Was it only imaginary that she recognized his voice after so many years? The man she faced was the boy that was, changed but not altered, still handsome in a world-weary way. He saw that she knew who he was.

“Can we talk?”

“No.”

“Please.”

She left the store, felt like running up the street, disappearing. How horrible to run into him like that. What in God's name was he doing in Evanston? It wasn't fair.

He caught up with her. She stopped, turning toward a store window where she could see their reflections, watch herself listen to him, see the body language with which he spoke. There was something like real contrition in his voice. They went to Baskin-Robbins, where she bought a cone, paying for it herself, then sat as if she were a mother confessor and Nate her penitent. Admit it, there was a sense of belated triumph.

“What happened?” he said.

“I married and lived happily ever after.”

“You know what I mean.”

“Do I?”

“The last time we talked…” His smile was wistful. There were streaks of gray in his hair, very distinguished. She said nothing. He leaned toward her. “Did you?”

“Yes.”

“Which? I have to know.”

“Do you?”

“I don't blame you for hating me.”

“Don't flatter yourself. I haven't thought of you for years.” It even sounded like a lie. “Look, I am not going to tell you anything. Understand? You made your choice way back then and that's that.”

He sat back. “You had the baby, didn't you?”

She scrambled to her feet and rushed out of the store. A bus pulled up, and she got aboard and turned to watch the door shut on him. She never rode the bus and had no idea what the fare was. The driver was a boor, but she could have kissed him. As she looked for a seat she could see the Monster standing on the curb, disappearing into the past from which he had come.

Three days later, she got a letter from him, typed. She opened it, unsuspecting, and when she saw “Nate” scrawled at the bottom of the page, she folded it and put it in the pocket of her housecoat. Mark was at the head of the table, their sons like olive plants on either side.

“Who's it from?” Mark asked.

“An old classmate.”

“Catherine Adams?”

“Why on earth did you think of her?” It had been a long time since they had seen Catherine. Her Christmas cards now came from California.

“It is funny. I don't remember most of the students I had last semester.”

“But you remember Catherine.”

“She was nuts about me.”

“You know, she was. But you liked me.”

“It was your mind.”

“Uh-huh.”

“What there was of it.” But he kissed her when he said it.