The Darlings (17 page)

“It's possible they'll pursue criminal charges, too. They want to.”

Her face crinkled up like a used tissue. “For
what
?” she wailed. “How can this be happening to us?”

“I don't know, Mer. I really don't.”

“You can't cooperate with them. You can't. They'll use whatever you give them against Dad. They're going after him, don't you see that? It's him they want.”

His heart softened the second he felt her small hand wrap itself around his. She pulled it off the wheel and kissed it, soft lips pressed hard against the inside of his palm. “You have to fight it,” she said, her voice hard and resolute. “You can't help them. We have to fight this as a family. If you give them anything, it will destroy us.”

He knew she was right. If he cooperated, it would destroy the Darlings. That was certain. The question, horrible and unclear, was what would happen if he didn't.

THURSDAY, 9:57 A.M.

T
here were days when Duncan was close,
this close
, to calling his broker friend at Sotheby's and saying, “That's it, I've had it. Put the apartment on the market and find me a little cottage in Connecticut where I can have some peace.” Lately, even small things triggered the impulse: a nauseating cab ride, a fourteen-dollar martini. The things that once infused him with energy now wearied him. The billboards around his office were too bright and the talk in restaurants was too loud. Fifth Avenue was too packed with holiday tourists from Iowa. And since last summer, negative economic news had saturated the city. Friends were losing jobs, restaurants were closing, and everything,
everything
was on sale.

For twenty-seven years, Duncan had been fiercely loyal to this 22.96-square-mile cement block of an island. To his London and L.A. and even Brooklyn friends, he swore countless times that he would leave Manhattan only feet first, in a pine box. But lately he couldn't shake the sensation that his cement island was sinking slowly beneath him.

He had felt worse than usual since Monday, when he had awoken with a rush of foreboding and it dawned on him that Thanksgiving was upon him. He hadn't done a damn thing about it, either, probably because on some subconscious level, he had been hoping that it simply wouldn't happen. Of course, that was childish and irresponsible, and now it was here.

He called Marcus because he didn't know what else to do. Duncan had been doing that a lot lately, calling Marcus, about small daily details like seating arrangements or whether he ought to buy an iPhone. Marcus was currently his most stable friend. This was, to some extent, by default; historically speaking, Duncan's most stable friend was Daniel. But Daniel and his wife Marcia had both been laid off in the past six months, and Marcia had gotten herself pregnant by accident sometime in July. So Duncan felt that, at least for the time being, it was probably best to lean on Marcus instead.

“You sound like Chicken Little, Duncan,” Marcus shouted over the roar of a contractor's drill. Duncan could see him standing in the middle of his Tribeca loft, BlackBerry pressed to one ear, hand clamped over the other so he could make out what Duncan was saying. “Even your column is starting to come off as vaguely alarmist. If I didn't know better I'd say you sounded like a fucking bankruptcy attorney.”

“We should all be so lucky,” Duncan muttered back. He was walking to work because he had promised himself that he would only take cabs if he was running late or if the weather was inclement.

“What's that?” Marcus shouted. “Sorry, my contractors are finishing up the bathroom renovation. We're two weeks behind already. What a nightmare renovation is, you know?”

“No, I don't.”

“I can't hear you.”

“Nothing.”

The drill stopped. Marcus said, “Look, don't worry for one second about Thanksgiving. Just order up some stuff from Citarella, Pieter and I will take care of the wine, and Leonard is a pastry chef for chrissake so I'll call him and make sure that he knows he's in charge of the desserts. We'll all come over early and help you set the table. Okay? It's going to be simple, I promise. Just like Mom used to do, except with only very well-dressed men.”

“Well dressed, yes. Thanksgiving in Chelsea.” On the corner of Twenty-third
and Eighth a twentysomething couple stood wrapped in an embrace that seemed excessive for 10 a.m. One's mouth enveloping the other's until the light changed. Duncan glared at them and then looked away, feeling a bad taste on his tongue, a cocktail of acrimony and loneliness. “I want Marcia and Daniel to come,” he said. “Did you speak to them?”

“They may have to go upstate to be with Daniel's family, love.”

Duncan sighed. He had no idea why it embarrassed him suddenly that all his friends were gay. “I just don't want my niece to be the only woman at the table. I don't want it to be awkward for her.”

“She knows you're gay, Duncan. This isn't
La Cage Aux Folles
.”

“I know she knows I'm gay.”

“Then why do you care if she's the only woman? She won't care. We'll give her lots of undivided attention.”

“I know. I've been dying for you and Pieter to meet her. She's adorable, you'll see. Nothing like her crazy mother.”

“Her mother is your sister.”

“Right. Now don't you feel sorry for her?”

“Is she seeing anyone?”

“I don't know. I think she might have just broken up with someone; she seemed down when I spoke to her. Sanders are all doomed to spinsterhood.”

“Stop missing Henry.”

“I can't help it.”

“We're going to have fun on Thursday. Pieter and I will be over around eleven, booze in hand.”

“Have you spoken to him?”

“Who, Pieter? Or Henry? No, of course not. I hope you haven't, either.”

“No. I don't even know where he's living.”

“Better that way. I'm hanging up now. Go call Citarella and order a turkey.”

Thursday morning, 9:57 a.m., right on time.
Thank God
, Duncan thought, when he was interrupted from reading the morning paper by the insistent blare of the service entrance buzzer. As hard as holidays were in Manhattan, at least everything could be catered. He was still in his fluffy house shoes and had barely lifted a finger except to set the coffee to brew.

At one time in his life, Duncan had been a decent cook. He had gone through an entertaining phase in his late thirties, and found it was far less expensive to cook than to continue to order in. He had signed himself up for Fine Cooking I at the Institute of Culinary Education on Twenty-third Street. He enjoyed it so much that he briefly considered enrolling in one of their degree programs. Instead, he satisfied himself by taking as many weekend and night courses as he could: Essentials of Tuscan Cooking, Knife Skills I and II, French Bistro Fare, the Art of Artisanal Bread Baking. It was in the latter class that he had met Leonard, a pastry chef and instructor at the ICE, and it was Leonard who introduced him to Henry.

Henry was an investment banker at Morgan Stanley. He was from an old money family and had gone to Exeter and Princeton. He was pale and thin and wore bespoke suits and little round glasses. His main interests were the foreign currency market and the slightly obscure sport of court tennis. In short, not at all Duncan's type. Their first date had gone badly. Henry was twenty minutes late and kept checking his BlackBerry, and Duncan was recovering from an allergic reaction that had caused his cheeks to swell up like balloons. They had parted ways after a quick dinner and no dessert. Duncan had called Leonard on his way to the nearest subway station to complain about his swelling, and to make it clear that while he had no interest in seeing Henry again, Leonard should at least let Henry know that Duncan had been suffering from an allergic reaction and was, in fact, a very handsome man.

“I'll tell him, but why on earth do you care,” Leonard replied. “You said you weren't interested. You're not in the same circles. You'll probably never see him again.”

Three weeks later, Duncan and Henry ran into each other while both were reaching for fig jam at Murray's Cheeses on Bleecker Street. After a few minutes of slightly stilted chatting, they discovered that they were both headed to the same dinner party and had both been given the task of bringing something other than wine. The coincidence catalytically melted the ice between them. All of a sudden the mood was warm and slightly flirtatious, and they decided to split the cost of manchego and fig jam and Marcona almonds. Henry noticed how attractive Duncan was when not swollen, and Duncan thought that Henry wasn't nearly as uptight as he originally supposed.

A year later, they traded Duncan's one bedroom in London Terrace Gardens for a two bedroom directly upstairs. Duncan became the managing editor of
Press
and Henry was promoted to managing director at Morgan Stanley. They rented a house in Sag Harbor for the month of August; they adopted two Jack Russell terriers and named them Jack and Russell; they sent Christmas cards from the “Sander-Smith Family.” Over the years, they took several classes at the Institute of Culinary Education (Sushi for Couples, Sunday Night Suppers, Cheese and Wine Pairings) and went on a Tuscan cooking tour for Duncan's forty-fifth birthday. Then, just after Duncan's forty-seventh birthday, Henry moved to London, alone.

This was Duncan's third Thanksgiving without Henry, but it was his first without
anyone.
After Henry left, there was a parade of progressively younger men, each more attractive and less interesting than the last. No one was a substitute for Henry, and indeed, Duncan didn't intend for any of them to be. They kept Duncan treading water at a time when his friends became concerned he might allow himself to drown in his own misery. And for a long time, that was enough.

Duncan learned quickly that there was no shortage of young writers and artists and designers who salivated at the opportunity to hang off the arm of
Press's
managing editor. He could exchange them one for the next, or play around with more than one of them at a time, and no matter how poorly he behaved, he never seemed to suffer any real consequences because, he knew, they were using him just as much as he was using them. He found these relationships to be not altogether dissimilar to cocaine, his youthful vice of choice. He felt exhilarated and powerful at first, then paranoid, and eventually nauseatingly empty. And so, as he had with cocaine, he eventually quit cold turkey.

As he laid out seven places at the table, Duncan recalled the toast he had given the previous May, at his fiftieth birthday party: “One is never alone if one is among friends.” At the time, he more or less believed that statement to be true. There had been fifty guests at his fiftieth birthday (there was an elegant synchronicity to this, he felt) and they had all raised a glass and nodded, smiling, when he made this declaration. He had rented out Le Bilboquet for the occasion, a tiny French bistro on the Upper East Side. The space could barely contain all of his guests. They sat nestled shoulder to shoulder, neighbors' forearms grazing against one another in pleasant intimacy, and the room glowed from the company and the wine. Duncan went to bed that night thinking the evening a great success.

In the morning, he had woken up alone and sorted through the photographs and felt profoundly depressed. It dawned on him that nearly all the guests had been work colleagues, if not people with whom he worked directly, people whose professional lives were entwined in some way with his. Duncan's business, of course, was knowing people. He knew socialites and fashion designers and social entrepreneurs and politicians. Great dinner company. But while they would come to his birthday party and sometimes invite him to theirs, it was clear in the bright, hungover light of Sunday morning that almost none of these people were really his friends.

Daniel and Marcia, of course, were dearly loyal, though now that she was pregnant (finally, at forty-one), and he had lost his job (shockingly, at forty-six) they had slipped quietly away into connubial isolation. There was Marcus, his roommate from Duke, and Marcus's longtime partner Pieter; constants, both. And Leonard, of course, who had squarely taken Duncan's side when Henry left, was the sort of friend who would come bail him out of jail at 4 a.m. without asking questions. Duncan spoke to his mother once a year on Christmas, and to his sister as infrequently as possible. He was unaware of any cousins, aunts, uncles, though he suspected there were a few floating around down in North Carolina. His father, not unfortunately, was dead.

Duncan had never much liked children. In fact, they made him nervous. Any paternal instinct was quickly squelched by his fastidious distaste for mess, and his skittishness around random, unpredictable movements. Anxiety had been a lifelong problem for Duncan, and he found that he was most comfortable in pristine, light-colored environments. His home, much like his office, was appointed primarily in beige. The furniture was minimal—clean lined and sharp edged—and the windows opened to a glorious terrace overlooking the Hudson River. Decidedly not childproof.

On the best days, light poured into his apartment and music was kept to a quiet, soothing minimum, Nina Simone, perhaps, or Ella Fitzgerald. Anyone who had ever lived with Duncan, or who had been a guest in his home, was required to remove his shoes at the door, to speak quietly, to return books to their given spot on the shelf. The dogs were notably well behaved. Henry had taken them with him, of course, along with the Barcelona chairs, the Frank Stella lithograph, and worst of all, the Le Creuset six-piece cookware set they had bought together at the conclusion of their culinary adventure in Italy.

People with children were rarely, if ever, invited over. As a result, Duncan didn't have occasion to get to know his niece until she was a grown woman. There were other reasons for this, more pertinent but less palatable. His sister, Roxanne, was difficult, and from an early age, disapproved of Duncan's sexuality. He left North Carolina the day after his eighteenth birthday and never looked back. In New York, he received the occasional phone call or birthday card from his sister, and offered the same to her, and later, to her daughter.