Riverside Park (32 page)

“
MOM, MOM, WHERE
are you?” Celia Cavanaugh shouted into her cell phone as she skipped up Fifth Avenue. All the tourists were staring at her while all the New Yorkers ignored her. “I have news!”

She stuck her phone back in her bag and smiled at herself in the reflection of a store window. Her cell phone rang. It was her mother. “Mom, guess what? Remember how I told you my neighbors the Stewarts asked me to research that weird painting for them?”

“Yes.”

“Christie's is going to handle it!” She smiled at a German family of tourists. “Yes, Christie's, the famous auction house!” she told them.

They had not a clue what she was talking about but smiled politely nonetheless before moving on.

“You must be joking!” her mother cried.

“Nope,” she declared, continuing uptown. “On first exam
ination they think it might be worth between seven and ten thousand dollars!”

“You're joking!”

“They're putting it in a May auction.”

To heck with walking home for exercise, Celia thought after hanging up with her mother, and she jumped into a cab. “Is Mrs. Stewart here, do you know?” Celia asked the concierge when she reached their building.

“I'm not sure.”

“Could you call up, please?”

The concierge did as requested while Celia paced the lobby. It was the coolest thing. She had been shown into an appraisal room where the guy put the Stewarts' painting on a large counter and closely examined it with different magnifiers and under different lights. When the appraiser called in a colleague Celia sensed that she had been right, the painting really was worth something.

“She's here,” the concierge reported, pressing the phone to the shoulder of his uniform.

“Ask her if I can come up.”

“She says of course,” the concierge reported a few seconds later. “Eleven-B.”

“Celia,” Amanda said, opening the door, “how are you?”

“Christie's says it's worth between seven and ten thousand dollars and they're putting it in one of their auctions in May!” she said breathlessly.

Amanda squinted slightly. “You cannot be speaking of—”

“The Arab, the camel and the vulture!” Celia cried. “Christie's! So who knows how much it will go for?”

Amanda beamed, shaking her head and opening the door wider. “Well, I must say, this is welcomed news. Come in, come in, I was just making a cup of tea.”

“I gotta go to work soon,” Celia said, her heart still racing as she followed Amanda into her kitchen. “But I wanted to tell you the good news. They're going to be—” Celia stopped when she saw Jason's mother sitting at the kitchen table.

There was an awkward moment when Amanda started to introduce them but Rosanne said they already knew each other, didn't Amanda remember how Celia had helped the day Samantha Wyatt had her accident. “So how are you doing?” Mrs. DiSantos asked Celia while Amanda was busy at the stove.

“I'm really sorry about Jason's grandmother.”

“We got your card,” she said. “Thank you.”

Celia shrugged, wanting to bolt. At least she was dressed nicely in a skirt today because she had been to Christie's. She didn't look like a slut or anything.

“Jason got into Penn,” Mrs. DiSantos said then.

“I heard. That's really great,” Celia replied.

Amanda made Celia tell Jason's mother about the painting.

“I remember that thing,” Mrs. DiSantos said with distaste. “The camel jockey shootin' buzzards.” She kicked her head toward Amanda. “She used to have it up in the living room, if you can believe. Scared the heck out of the kids. Scared the heck out of
me
,” she laughed.

Celia tentatively smiled. When Amanda asked her some questions, Celia answered them, and then started over from the beginning to explain how the process worked. By the time she had described the kind of glossy, full-color catalog that would be produced, with Amanda's painting in it, she had forgotten to be uncomfortable.

“
YOU DIDN'T REALLY
have to come out on business, did you, Mom?” Henry said.

They were eating lunch near Henry's office. Cassy had flown in yesterday, stopped in at the DBS San Francisco affiliate and then driven out with Henry to Palo Alto to stay overnight. “I wanted to talk to you about something,” she admitted.

“Are you terribly sad about Mrs. Goldblum?”

“I'll miss her terribly, of course, but she was ready and she wanted to go. And she got to do it the way she wanted. At home.” She took a sip from her water glass. “Henry, about our old apartment.”

“What about it?”

“Well, it doesn't seem likely you and Maria will ever want to live in New York.” Henry didn't say anything but his eyes told Cassy this was correct. “And that's the only reason why I hung on to it. In case you wanted it.”

“I don't think so, Mom. I don't think I'll ever get Maria to
leave California again. Not with her family here and everything.” He looked at her. “Oh, no, if you sell it does that mean the next time we visit we'll have to stay with all the kooky Darenbrooks? I suppose we could stay in a hotel, though,” he added to himself. “Maria would love the room service, though she'd probably want to stick the kids with you so we could enjoy room service in peace.”

Cassy smiled. “I don't think that would be a hardship for me.”

“And Jackson's good with kids.”

“Yes, he is.” Cassy's smile dissipated as she watched Henry bite into his sandwich. “Henry, I wanted to talk to you about some changes I want to make. In my life.”

He swallowed. “What kind of changes?” He must have sensed it was serious because he put his sandwich down and wiped his mouth with his napkin. And waited for her to speak.

It had been Henry's habit ever since Cassy and Michael divorced not to ask probing questions, but to patiently wait for either one of them to volunteer information. That way he never appeared to be taking sides.

“I'm not sure where to begin,” she confessed.

He offered an encouraging smile. “The beginning, maybe?”

The waiter came over and asked if they were finished eating. Henry said no but Cassy said yes, though she had scarcely touched her fish. “Mom, you want coffee?”

“Please. And also another glass of water, if you would be so kind.”

“And bring me a coffee, too, please, with a piece of that Mississippi Mud Cake. I'll be done with my sandwich by the time you bring it.”

Cassy found it amazing how grown-up Henry was now. It
wasn't so much that he was married and had children, or even that he supported them all (with a little help). The fact that her shy, sweet little boy had become this tall man who needed to shave sometimes twice a day still amazed her.

Her little boy wore a wedding band. She remembered Henry's wedding but she couldn't remember when he had grown up.

Their coffees arrived, their luncheon plates were taken away and Cassy had a taste of Henry's dessert. “Would you like me to guess what this is about, Mom?” Henry said after she put her dessert fork down.

“You don't have to guess,” she said, sipping her coffee.

“You and Jackson are splitting up, aren't you?”

It took a moment for Cassy to completely swallow her coffee. He had caught her totally unawares. “I—” She watched him cut into his dessert. When she didn't continue, Henry looked up.

“I'm right, aren't I?”

She nodded. “Yes.”

Henry lowered his eyes to his dessert, evidently thinking, and after a moment finished cutting the piece and put it into his mouth. Cassy knew he was trying very hard to carry on and appear unfazed by the news but she knew that was not the case. Henry had been in college when she remarried and Jack had spent a lot of time with Henry over the summers and on vacations. They got on very well and genuinely cared about each other.

“Charming Lydia—” Henry began. Henry had always called her that because Lydia's behavior had been so outrageous. “—has made a lot of claims about Jackson over the years.” Henry met her eyes directly. “I always wondered if any of them had any validity.”

“Such as?”

“Other women.”

Cassy nodded, feeling her face starting to burn. “Yes. But the early years of our marriage were very good, Henry.”

“You seemed really happy after you guys got married.”

“I was.” She looked down at the single flower that served as a centerpiece. “I was also very grateful to find someone who had so many of the traits I had loved in your father.” She brought her eyes up. “But who didn't have a drinking problem. And Jack was a widower, he hadn't been divorced. And frankly, Henry, I was so deeply flattered that a man of Jackson's stature seemed to love me that I—” she offered a small shrug “—I wanted very much to marry him.”

“But you loved him, too,” Henry said, pushing his dessert plate away, most of the cake uneaten.

“Yes.” She paused. “But never in the same way after—I haven't for a long time.” Her eyes fell back to the flower. “I'll always be grateful to him. I felt so desperately humiliated about how my marriage to your father ended.” She brought her eyes up. “Regardless of everything that happened between us, Henry, I hope you know how very much your father and I loved each other when we had you.”

He smiled. “You always say that, Mom.”

“But this is not what I wanted to talk about,” she said, bowing her head.

“Then tell me what you want to talk about.”

Cassy vowed not to cry but she felt choked by all the anger and shame and frustration over her failed marriages. Did she need to tell Henry about Sheila confessing her affair with Jackson? Or had she explained enough? She wanted him to understand how hard she had tried. “I was very happy with Jackson until a woman came to see me. She
had been Jackson's mistress—and had been since before we were married.”

She saw a flicker of anger in Henry's eyes. “He was seeing her the whole time?”

After a moment, she nodded.

“I know when it happened, when you found out,” Henry said, “because you guys were never the same.”

“You could tell?”

“In retrospect I can.” He swallowed. “But you stayed, Mom.”

She nodded. “I did. At first to see if things might change. I wanted him to get help, Henry. Because it wasn't just an occasional affair. It was constant.”

Henry shifted in his chair. “It's like booze is to Dad, isn't it?”

“I'm afraid so.”

“There're even rehabs for it now, you know, Mom. At Maria's old company they sent this corporate guy to one after a bunch of sexual harassment suits.”

“I know. But Jack wouldn't go.”

Henry hesitated. “And he won't even go to one now?”

“To be honest, it wouldn't matter to me if he did,” Cassy said carefully. “Not in terms of our marriage. I'm only telling you this, Henry, because I want you to understand why, and how, it came to be that I went outside our marriage for a relationship.”

Henry was kind enough not to gasp, but he was obviously shocked.

“It's taken me a very long time to come to terms with this relationship. I'm not getting a divorce because of this relationship, but getting a divorce is the first step I need to take in order to give this relationship my all. To see if it can work.”

Henry fell back in his chair, blinking rapidly. “Wow,” he finally said.

“I know,” Cassy said.

The waiter came over to warm their coffees. Cassy hadn't even touched hers so he brought her an altogether new cup. Henry poured some cream into his. “I'm just glad you have someone, Mom. It would kill me to think of you being alone.” He sipped his coffee and then set the cup down in the saucer. “The Darenbrooks are all going to go nuts, Mom. They're going to want to disown him to keep you. What are you going to tell them?”

Cassy shook her head. “I don't know.”

“He'll probably tell them you met this other guy and blame it all on you.”

She took a sip of her coffee, trying to think how next to proceed.

“He must be a great guy,” Henry said loyally. “I look forward to meeting him.”

She took a breath, returning her cup to its saucer. When Cassy looked up she found Henry was waiting for a response from her. She knew he was trying hard for her sake to keep up a cheerful facade but she also knew he was scared for her and scared for himself. Just how many failed relationships was his mother going to demand he and his family invest in?

“I don't know exactly how to tell you this, Henry, other than simply to say it. The relationship is with a woman.”

He did a fairly good job of covering his surprise. He nodded, squinting slightly. “Wow,” he finally said, trying to smile.

“Yes, wow is right,” Cassy said, scanning the restaurant for lack of knowing what else to do.

“Maybe I shouldn't go out on a limb and say this, Mom,” Henry said, waiting for her to look at him again, “but I sure as heck hope it's Alexandra.”

Cassy nearly fell into her coffee cup.

Henry ducked his head a little to the right, looking to see her expression. “Is it?” he said hopefully.

Cassy still couldn't speak. Finally she sat back. “How did you know?”

“I didn't, not until you said it was a woman. And then everything started to make sense, Mom.”

Cassy took a deep breath and sat forward in her chair. “What started to make sense, Henry?”

“I think she's been in love with you for a very long time, Mom. I mean, she's always been—” He shrugged. “I don't know, she's just always been—Well, you know.”

“No, I don't know. Tell me.”

“I don't know,” he said, throwing his hands up. “I just know, okay? Even when she was with that actress, she used to look at you sometimes—Stop looking at me like that, Mom, I'm not making this up.”

Cassy picked up her water glass. “Okay,” she said before taking a sip.

“Just ask Rosanne, she saw it, too,” Henry said, nearly making her spit out water.