Riggs Park (20 page)

Three hours later, Jon showed up with coffee and found me in the kitchen, making a pumpkin roll to serve. “I’ll go with you.”

I whirled around, flailing floured hands. “You knew!”

“I remembered when I saw you baking.”

“Jon, this makes no sense. You moved out, but you’re here every day. We’re trying to resolve things, but nothing is resolved.”

He handed me a roll of paper towels. “For me it is,” he said softly. “For me, everything was resolved the day I got off the plane in Wilmington.”

“Jon, don’t.” I couldn’t stand another dose of his charm. “Exactly what is this going to accomplish—your going to temple with me? Are you trying to keep up appearances?”

“No, I enjoy it.” How could I argue? He
did
enjoy it. His one marriage, five years in his early thirties to a woman named Denise, had broken up after a long haggling about whether they would go to church or synagogue with the children they ultimately never had.

Driving into town that night, Jon sat at the wheel looking upbeat and sporty in a tweedy gray jacket and bright tie, and I sat beside him with the pumpkin roll on my lap, too unsettled even to make small talk.

During the service there was, finally, no need for us to look at each other, talk, pretend. The familiar prayers still calmed me, soothed me the way the tunes from
Peter and the Wolf
had once soothed me when my mother tested her reeds at bedtime. Not a very religious notion, I supposed, but for me prayers and music had always been, equally, lullabies for the soul.

Then the service was over and I was downstairs in the social hall, setting out pumpkin roll, cookies, foam cups for coffee. As other congregants began to drift in from the sanctuary, I found myself greeting people, socializing, behaving as if the evening were perfectly normal. As I watched Jon talking to friends across the room, tears stung my eyes at the idea that our breakup would force us to leave behind not just each other, but also the braid of life we had begun to plait together, almost unaware.

I hurried to the kitchen on the pretext of getting more coffee creamer and stood clutching the cabinet door, trying to compose myself. Maybe this was why, for a whole month, I had done nothing. Marilyn was right. I was no spring chicken. Why would I leave Jon to face the coming darkness alone? But how could we live breathing the tainted air that now hung over our every common action—even this lively social hour with people we liked? Setting a jar of creamer on the counter, I thought bitterly of the false calm that had infused me just a few minutes ago during the service: all that illusive sense of peace. Did it solve anything? Not at all. We were still in limbo.

And then, the next day, in a white FedEx envelope bearing Marilyn’s return address and marked for Saturday delivery, came the tape.

I
held the package in my hand for a long minute before ripping it open. If Marilyn hadn’t mentioned it beforehand, and then spent the money to have it delivered on the weekend, I probably had every right to be scared. Inside, a note read, Don’t call me. Watch this first. It was a gift from Essie. With shaking fingers, I closed the drapes and slid the tape into the VCR.

It was a short clip, less than a minute, meticulously edited so as not to give too much away. In the weight room of a high-school gym filled with bench presses and free weights, a female reporter was interviewing a boy who’d been named High School Athlete of the Week. The camera moved in close, no wide angle that might reveal a banner with the name of the school, an emblem, anything to suggest their whereabouts. Even the mikes were attached to their collars, not the handheld kind imprinted with the station’s call letters. The boy was shy, the reporter poised as she presented him with his plaque. There was more to the segment, but the film editor had cut it short, let the tape revert to static and snow.

I pushed the rewind button, played it again. By the third viewing, my heart had stopped slamming against my chest and my breathing was less ragged, but my mouth had turned to sandpaper. The reporter, of course, was Vera.

For the past few weeks, I’d been certain that, if I ever got a glimpse of Jon and Penny’s child, even from a distance on an unfamiliar street, I would know her instantly. It wasn’t so. The reporter was a mature woman rather than the girl I’d pictured, and not a clone of either parent. The high cheekbones might have come from anywhere; the bouncy hair, reddish but darker than her mother’s, was closer to mahogany than auburn. Though Vera’s complexion was fair, it was not as fair as Penny’s, and there was no sign of Penny’s trademark freckles. More telling, the crinkly lines around Vera’s eyes were deep enough that even makeup didn’t hide them, when Penny hadn’t lived long enough for crows’ feet. Older than her mother had ever been, Vera was a woman past thirty-five, probably a mother herself. And a sports reporter like her father.

Was her choice of a profession coincidence? Irony? Or somehow programmed into her genes?

I ran the tape a fourth time, a fifth. In Vera’s short-cropped, carefully cut hair, I began to notice the suggestion of Penny’s unruly mane; in her thick, dark eyebrows an echo of Jon’s. The hints of her breeding were like occasional whiffs of familiar perfume: Penny’s slightly backward thrust of shoulders, Jon’s inflection of voice. Who would have thought a child would inherit that?

By the time I turned off the VCR and slipped the tape back into its jacket, my right leg was numb from sitting on it.

A sharp flame of anger leaped into the hollow of my gut. What was the point of this? If Essie had this tape, why give it to Marilyn rather than Jon or me? And what was Marilyn up to, sending it to me like this? I had had enough drama lately. When I called her, she answered on the first ring.

“I know. You’re mad at me. I’m sorry. I just didn’t know what else to do.”

“You could have told me this was coming, for starters,” I said.

“Oh, Barbara, I wanted to bring it to you in person. But Bernie and Steve said you’d need to show it to Jon and I’d just be in the way.”

“If the point was to show it to Jon, why all the middlemen?”

“You know how high-handed Essie can be. I never even talked to her in person. She sent the tape to me via her personal messenger, Taneka. And then your friend Marcellus called to give me Essie’s instructions.”

“Instructions!”

“A whole list of them. She thinks it’s time Jon met his daughter. She’s arranging a meeting. She says Jon didn’t know Penny very well, so it’s up to you and me to fill Vera in about her mother. Steve should stay out of it since he isn’t the father. And by the way, in case I die from cancer before all this comes to pass, it’s mainly up to you.”

This was exactly the sort of thing Essie would be brazen enough to say.

“She says she knows we cared about Penny,” Marilyn said. “She knows we’ll put her in the best possible light.”

“The nerve! Never mind that Vera was conceived during an act of betrayal that changed my life!”

“Essie was always pretty shameless.”

“But I, on the other hand, should be big enough to tutor Jon’s child about Penny’s merits?”

“Essentially, yes.” Then Marilyn whispered, “But first you have to show Jon the tape.”

“Like hell I do.”

“I’m sure Essie knew that was exactly what you’d say. I’m sure that’s why she made me the intermediary.”

“Well, Jon’s in Charlotte, so forget it.” He was more meticulous about giving me his schedule now than he’d been when he lived with me. Before dropping me off after temple, while I was debating how to make a clean break from him, he’d told me he was leaving this morning to do an interview, and gave me all the numbers where I could reach him before he came back tomorrow.

“He won’t be in Charlotte forever,” Marilyn said. “Show it to him when he gets back.”

I saw there was no getting out of this. “So when is this meeting?” I asked.

“Taneka says Essie will let us know. I think they’re planning some kind of big party. Taneka made it clear we’re supposed to be patient and not ask.”

“Lovely.”

“Listen, I thought it was as hokey as you do. I tried to call Essie and talk to her myself, but Taneka wouldn’t let me through. First Essie was asleep. Then she was out. I said, for an old woman who can hardly walk, it’s amazing how much she goes out. Taneka said, she goes out more than you expect. Finally I thought, well, I’ll just go over there. Then Steve said don’t, it’ll just make her mad. I spent two days thinking about nothing else. Finally I just gave up.”

“And took the tape over to FedEx,” I said.

“Listen, I know it was crappy to send it to you with no warning. I just couldn’t see what good warning you would do. And I wanted to give you—I don’t know. Maybe some time alone to take this in.”

“This is why you changed your tune the other day about Jon being the rat that he is, isn’t it? You didn’t just ‘give up,’ you switched sides on me, didn’t you? You and Essie. Let’s help the little man meet his daughter, let’s help the little man tell the girl about her mother, since the only time the father was ever alone with her was the half hour they were screwing.”

“Don’t,” Marilyn whispered.

“You know what? I think I’ll take that time alone now. I think I’ll go for a walk.”

“Yes. But Barbara, call me later. Promise.”

I hung up. After flinging the tape onto the coffee table, I stomped the pins and needles out of my sleeping legs, and ran down to the beach.

The glorious weather mocked me: warm breeze, blue sky. I took off my shoes and walked the length of Wrightsville Beach, more than three miles, all the way to the southern end. By the time I reached the bottom tip of the island, my head was clear. I turned and started back, the whoosh of rolling surf and the strain of exercise momentarily wiping my mind free of Jon’s infidelity, Essie’s dramatics, Marilyn’s complicity. When another subject entirely popped into my head—the subject of Barry Levin—it seemed so unrelated that I didn’t make the connection, until it was too late.

Even after Jon and I had become an official couple our freshman year in college, Barry and I had stayed friends. We could talk on the phone as easily as Marilyn and I did, and sometimes we’d go to movies that Jon didn’t want to see, often with some of Barry’s new friends from American University. It was after one of those films, while driving a boy named Neil home to the other side of town, that Barry had to stop to fix a flat tire on a winding road in Rock Creek Park. As he bent over the trunk trying to retrieve the jack, another car came around the bend and, before the sleepy driver thought to swerve away, rear-ended Barry’s car. The impact shoved Barry into the open trunk and nearly severed both his legs. He bled to death in the ambulance on his way to the hospital, surrounded by medics, with Neil holding his shattered, bloodied body in his arms.

At the funeral, even Neil’s inconsolable grief did not give Barry away. Anyone who’d lived through such a night with a friend would react like this. Nobody suspected love between the two boys, and certainly not sex. On the way home, Penny smoothed the lap of her black dress and said, “It’s better Barry died this way. It would have been worse if he’d lived for people to find out. You should never tell anyone, Barbara. I won’t, either. Some people, you have to protect them even after they’re gone.”

And except for confiding to Marilyn, I had heeded this advice. In a cruel, ironic way, Barry had been spared what to him would have been the supreme disgrace of revelation. Even now, when coming out of the closet was perfectly acceptable, I wouldn’t have told. And as I paced the beach I’d hoped would offer me comfort, Penny’s words seemed especially loaded:
Some people, you have to protect them even after they’re gone.

As now, it seemed, Essie was asking me to do for Penny.

Without realizing it, I had reached the other end of the beach again. The sun had disappeared into a cloud bank beyond the marsh; the air was chilly. I knew now what I would do. Tomorrow when Jon returned, I would take the tape to him. This was Jon’s business, not mine. Let him deal with it. Let it be over. Anything was better than this.

I limped toward the house, so distracted that at first I didn’t notice the car in my driveway—and then didn’t register that it was a car I’d never seen before. Upstairs, the drapes I had drawn were open, and in the living room someone had turned on a light. What the hell—?

A fair-haired woman appeared on the porch and waved to me.

“Mom!”

“Robin!” I took the steps two at a time. I hugged my daughter as if clinging to a life raft.

“Mom, are you all right? Aunt Marilyn said I needed to come—this wasn’t optional. You won’t believe how I got here. Uncle Steve rented a
private jet.
What’s going on?”

I didn’t mean to, but I laughed. “Marilyn arranged this? Steve rented you a plane?”

Robin flung an arm around my waist as we walked into the house. “They told me you weren’t sick, but I didn’t believe it.”

“Heartsick is all.”

She looked around. “Where’s Jon? Is this about Jon?”

“As you film people well know,” I said, “a picture is worth a thousand words.” I put the tape back in the VCR.

Robin watched attentively, polite but puzzled. “I expected something more shocking,” she said when it was over. “The woman looks a little like Jon. One of his relatives?”

“His daughter.”

“He has a daughter?”

“I found this out a month ago. He had a baby with a woman who was my best friend except for Marilyn.”

Her mouth actually dropped open.

“Maybe you better sit in a more comfortable chair,” I said. I explained everything but the part about Murray Wishner, which I couldn’t bring myself to repeat.

“You mean all these years and you didn’t know?”

I shook my head.

“What are you going to do?”

“I feel like such a fool. Buying this house with him. Making it all so complicated. He’s been staying in a motel. Giving me ‘time to think.’ Making me feel—Anyway, when the tape got here this morning, I guess that clinched it.”

“Clinched it how?”

“Essie thinks I can just forgive everything. Just like that!” I snapped my fingers. “And Jon! He’s been so nice about everything. Making all the right gestures. Being so
understanding.
”

“Is it really that bad?”

“What am I supposed to do, Robin? Condone this—this pattern of deception? Just because he turns on the charm?”

“You know what you should do when something like this happens?” Robin said. “Get drunk. Then you’ll feel better. I know.”

“The only person I get drunk with is Marilyn. Now that I’m older, I don’t even enjoy that. I have two drinks and suffer for it all the next day.”

“Then at least let’s go out to dinner. I’ll treat.”

We ate at The Oceanic, on the windowed second floor that overlooked Crystal Pier and the beach. For all my distress, I was famished. I’d eaten nothing since morning and had done more exercise than I usually did in a month. After growing tipsy from my first glass of wine, I switched from alcohol to bread as Robin sipped her second Cosmopolitan.

“So Vera’s a sports reporter,” Robin mused. “Seems kind of eerie, doesn’t it? Like father, like daughter.”

“When I was young we all wanted to be doctors and lawyers and professors. In your generation everyone wants to be in the entertainment business.”

“Thanks, Mom.”

“I didn’t mean it as an insult.”

“None taken.” Robin reached across and squeezed my hand. “Let me tell you a happier story. Even if I weren’t in Wilmington now, I’d be coming in a couple of weeks. I’m coming back for this independent feature a bunch of us have been developing for two years.”

“Two years?”

“I didn’t want to say anything because it was so iffy. Getting financing for something like this—Usually it just doesn’t happen.”

The arrival of our meal gave me time to tame my dueling emotions: pleasure at seeing Robin so happy, irritation that nobody ever told me anything until after the fact—not Jon, not Essie, not even my own daughter.

“We’ve even got a distribution deal,” Robin said as she lobbed butter on a baked potato. “Distribution is so critical.”

“And you sound like your old self again.”

“Oh, I am.” Robin winked. “If this thing goes, I’ll be financially independent. Well, not exactly. But I’ll be in a position to get money for other projects.”

“Good. Put on your list of projects supporting your mother in her old age.” I lifted a forkful of grouper to my mouth. I was amazed at my own appetite.

All through dinner, Robin chattered about her movie—a coming-of-age story for the twenty-first century, she called it. She sounded so carefree that her divorce might never have happened. She even looked different. Her hair had been layered into a short, geometric cut—a shelf of hair above her ears, a triangle of sideburns. Robin’s hair was too wiry to lie flat, so it puffed up all around her face, creating an unintentional and original effect that made Robin look exactly as she should.