A ruling passion : a novel (32 page)

"When the president reaches so far he stumbles and nearly cracks his skull," he said, "either he's mortally wounded and gets shoved aside or he figures out what he's done, which was to rob his top people of the chance to do what they do best and what they love to do. We've got a bunch of brilliant engineers at Omega, talented and eccentric and fiercely independent. They're on the cutting edge of this whole crazy industry we're inventing as we go along, and they'll work together like kids in a sandbox if you give them the sandbox and then leave them alone. But they won't give you the time of day if you make their decisions and do even a part of the job you told them was theirs. That's what I learned. Omega is the top company in Silicon Valley because if s made up of creative engineers who don't want anybody else to do their work. These days I have a job to do there and it's the only one I do, and if I forget it, there are a lot of people to remind me.

The laughter was warm and genuine, and that anecdote became part of Nick's standard speech. It was quoted in newspaper articles on him, in March, in The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times^ and in cover stories in Time and Newsweek when Omega Computer was offered to the pubhc, and one billion dollars' worth of stock was snapped up in the first few weeks.

Nick, his twenty percent of the company now worth two hundred million dollars, had become an instant celebrity.

Sybille called. "Ifs amazing. It's just... astonishing. Who would have guessed, when we were in that awful house.. .'The American dream'—which magazine said that? Both of them, probably. And 'new

breed of entrepreneur'—do you feel like a new breed? And 'boy wonder of Silicon Valley'—I never thought of you as a boy... how old are you now?"

"Thirty-one."

"Definitely not a boy." There was a silence. "Congratulations," she said. "What will you do now?"

"Probably what I've been doing. If you read the stories you know the 2000 was released this week; there's a lot to do to market it—"

"But you don't have to do that anymore! You can do anything you want!"

"Right now this is what I want. I have to go, Sybille, we're in the middle of Chad's birthday party. I'm sorry you aren't here; he enjoyed talking to you last night. You'll be here in April?"

"Yes, unless something comes up at the office."

"I'll talk to you soon." He paused. There was no longer any pretense that she would try to take Chad from him; she had stopped hinting and they had never even talked about it. But the relationship between Sybille and her son was still vague and Nick was never sure whether he should suggest other ways they might get to know each other, or leave it alone. Today he left it alone. "Thanks for calling," he said. "We'll talk to you soon." And he hurried back to the din of twenty four-year-olds who had taken over the backyard.

The games were over, the fried chicken and lemonade had disappeared, and now Chad stood beside the birthday cake, baked by Elena in the shape of his favorite stuffed monkey. He carefully held the knife Elena had taught him to use. "Daddy, we're waiting!" he yelled over the jabbering of the children as Nick came from the kitchen. "I'm blowing out the candles and then Elena said I could cut the first piece."

"Hold on." Nick grabbed his camera from a redwood bench and focused it. "All set. Who's singing 'Happy Birthday'?"

Elena's husband Manuel began it, his baritone rolling like an aria as the children lustily picked up the words and followed along. Chad, deeply serious, bowed when they finished. He took a long breath and blew out all the candles arranged in the shape of a 4, bowed again when everyone applauded wildly, then very carefuUy cut a wedge of cake as Nick captured it all on film. While Elena and Manuel handed out the remaining pieces, Nick moved among the children, talking to them and taking more pictures as they stuffed cake and icing into small mouths that were never still.

"Could I have more cake?" one of them asked.

"Sure, there's plenty." Nick reached out to the table where Elena had left extra pieces on paper plates. "Do you still have your fork?"

"I don't need it."

"Of course not." He grinned. "Why would you need a fork?"

"How come Chad lives with you all the time and not with his mother?" asked the boy.

Taken by surprise, Nick said, "She lives in Washington."

"Yeh, Chad told us. So how come he doesn't live in Washington? My dad lives in Phoenix and we visit."

"There are lots of ways of doing things—"

"But you're doing it the wrong way!"

"Who said?"

"I said! And everybody at school."

Nick frowned. "Everybody?" Chad had never said a word about that. He loved school; he chattered about it witii delight, he wouldn't even let his father call it nursery school. "It's pre-kindergarten," he would say indignantly. "It's a real school!" But how much trouble was he having? Nick wondered. How much did he have to defend the way he lived because it was different? "Does Chad say it's wrong?" he asked the boy.

The boy shook his head. "He says to shut up."

"Do you?"

"Sure. Chad knows how to hit."

"Chad knows how to hit," Nick repeated, bemused. He had never seen Chad strike out at anyone.

"So how come he lives with you?" the boy asked again.

"That's how we worked it out," Nick replied, knowing it was a poor answer for a curious four-year-old. "It isn't wrong, it's just different. Chad's mother has a job that keeps her very busy and she thought she couldn't spend enough time with him."

"My mom works and I hve with her," the boy said doggedly. Nick felt a strong urge to help him stuff the rest of his cake into his mouth all at once.

Instead, he stood and raised his voice. "I think it's time for the magician."

Twenty small bodies shot up. "Magician?" "A real magician?" "Chad didn't tell us!" "I didn't know!" Chad yelled. "Daddy just said there'd be a surprise!"

Like the Pied Piper, Nick led them into the house, where they sat in a semicircle in the large den. In front of them a tall man in a white suit, with red shoes, a red tie, and a red wig beneath a red straw hat busded

about setting up a table with paraphernalia. He paid no attention to the children. Suddenly, without warning, things began disappearing, then reappearing in various parts of the room, sometimes in the children's hair or the fold of a sleeve. The magic show had begun.

Standing at the side, Nick watched Chad and the others. He listened to the chatter of their sweet, high voices and he ached with the beauty of them in their small perfection. They laughed in quick peals of pure deUght; their faces were rapt as the magician whirled from wonder to wonder; nowhere was there a sign of boredom or smugness, or greed or hatred or arrogance. Great kids, Nick thought; I hope they figure things out the first time around better than a lot of their parents did.

Later, Chad could not stop talking about his party. "Remember the water in the pitcher? He filled it up and then he turned it over and nothing came out? And those three toy poodles? He stuck 'em in that doghouse and they were gone and then they were"—he started giggling—"in the refrigerator!" He took his bath, reliving every magic trick, and put on his pajamas, talking about the games they had played, and crawled into bed, talking about his birthday lunch.

"Whafs this?" Nick asked as he sat beside him. He held up a piece of birthday cake, wrapped in a napkin, that had been tucked behind Chad's pillow.

"Ifs, uh, I guess it's a piece of my cake."

"You had three pieces after dinner; I thought we agreed that was enough."

Chad frowned at the slice of cake. "Yeh. I don't know how it got here."

Nick's eyebrows went up.

"Well, see. Daddy, there's this hand"—he held it out—"and it does things I don't even know about."

Nick burst out laughing, and Chad laughed with him. "Do you really want it?" Nick asked.

"I guess I could wait till tomorrow."

"Then I'll take it back to the kitchen. Did you thank Elena for making it?"

"Uh-huh. She said it was my birthday present from her. I gave her a kiss. A hug too."

"Good."

"Can we read out of one of my new books?"

"Sure. But I'd like to talk a little bit first, okay?"

"What about?"

'Why your mother couldn't be at your party,"

Chad's face closed up. Watching it, Nick realized that was what happened every time he began to talk about Sybille, and that he talked about her less because of it: it was so painfiil to see Chad struggle with the dilemma of how to feel about her that Nick simply avoided it. But that doesn't solve anythin£f: it just makes it toucher for Chad, because then he has no one to talk to and bottles it up inside.

"I know it's hard to talk about," he said, "but I think we should."

"Why.>"

"Well, for one thing, it seems your friends at school are talking about it."

"So what?"

"So I thought you might like to have some answers."

He shook his head angrily.

"Chad," Nick said gently, "we're doing something different here, you and I, and your mother too, and I should have known the litde bits we talked about it weren't enough. I kept thinking we'd wait till you're older, but I was wrong."

"You weren't! Everything's okay! You're ruining my birthday!"

Nick hesitated. Four was awfully young; he could wait a while longer.

But that was what he had been saying for two years. "I'm sorry if I'm ruining your birthday, but this is important and it might not be as terrible as you think. The reason it's so important is that sometimes people, like your friends at school, for instance, get the idea there's something wrong with you"—Chad shot him a look of surprise—"and there isn't. Just because your mother lives somewhere else doesn't have a single thing to do with you. There is nothing wrong with you, Chad. You're the most terrific guy I know—"

"You're my daddy! You always say that!"

"I'm usually right, too, remember how often you've told me that? Anyway, lots of other people agree with me." Nick reeled off a list of his friends, especially the married couples who included him and Chad in Sunday brunches and backyard barbecues. He swung his feet up on the bed and leaned against the headboard with his arm around Chad.

"You didn't take off your shoes," said Chad.

"Right. I should." He put his shoes on the floor and once again held Chad, ignoring his son's clear unwillingness to be held. "Look, this isn't simple, but I'll try to make it as clear as I can. Some people like to be left alone; they aren't comfortable living with other people. Your mother is like that. It isn't that she—"

"She's living with Quentin."

"Yes, but I get the feeling they don't spend a lot of time together. We hardly saw him, did we, when we were in New York last time? I think tliey got married because they like each other, but they also like to do things by themselves and that's the way they live. It isn't that your mother doesn't love you, Chad; it's just that it's very important to her to make her own kind of life, with her own work and her own way of doing things, and there isn't a lot of room in it for anybody else."

There was a silence. Chad held his body stiffly within Nick's embrace. "She doesn't want me." Nick bent his head to hear. "She doesn't love me!" The tears welled up and ran down his cheeks. Chad was gulping through his sobs and then he gave up trying to hold himself straight and collapsed against Nick, clutching his shirt, his body heaving against his chest. "She doesn't love me!"

God damn you to hell, Nick raged silendy to Sybille. He closed his eyes against die tears that stung them and pulled Chad to his lap, holding him tighdy.

"Listen," he said firmly. "Are you listening? She loves you in her own way. She can't show it the way I do, but she thinks about you a lot. You know how many presents you get from her; who do you think buys them—the mayor of New York?" A strangled giggle came through Chad's sobs. "And she calls, or we call her, a lot, and she'll be here to visit in a few weeks... no, I'll tell you what. Why don't we surprise her and go to Washington?"

Chad jerked upright, eyes wide, cheeks glistening from his tears. "Could we?" Then he shook his head. "Uh-uh. She doesn't want us."

"Of course she does. She may not think so because she's pretty busy, but we'll call tomorrow and tell her we're coming. The two of you will go out to dinner, maybe you'll go to the zoo—you haven't been to the Washington 2x)o—and you'll have a great time. It'll be like another part of your birthday. Chad, listen to me."

Chad's eyes were war)'. "What?"

"Your mother isn't going to be like other mothers, no matter how much you want it. Whether we go to Washington or she comes here, she's not going to change. Sometimes she has trouble managing her life, but I guess she's doing the best she can, and we can't ask her to change or expect her to be different. We just have to take her as she is and love her if—"

'Tou don't love her!"

"Not the way I used to, but that has nothing to do with you. You should love her all you want, and not be ashamed of it or think there's

anything wrong with it. You tell your friends at school tliat we have our own way of doing diings and it's not wrong, it's right for us. You can tell them you have a big family—your mother and your dad and Elena and Manuel and Ted and lots of other people who care about you and think you're the greatest, even though they don't happen to live with you. I know it's hard, just having a father—"

Chad threw his arms around him and mashed his face against his. He was cr\^ing again, noisily. "I love you, it's not hard, I love you..."

Nick, unable to reach the handkerchief in his pocket, wiped Chad's face with a corner of the sheet. "I love you, my friend," he said softly, his voice husky with his own tears. He kissed Chad on his closed eyes and clasped him t'ghdy, his arms wrapped around him like a cocoon, letting no dangers in. "Dearest Chad. My dearest son, my friend, my companion, my champion birthday-cake eater with a hand that does things he doesn't even know about..."

Another giggle burst from Chad in a little explosion of air. They sat quiedy then, and Nick felt he was holding his whole life in his arms: the meaning and the purpose, the beauty and the joy. He loved his son with a passion he had thought only a woman could arouse; it stunned him and convinced him that Chad was all he needed. This passion, so different, so crucial to him, was enough, he thought, and he would do everything he could to make up for the pain Chad had already known, to bring back the delight that had illuminated his face during the magic show, and to keep it there. Chad would have no more pain if Nick could help it; he would always know he was loved and cherished and needed; he would have the best chance Nick could give him to become a man able to love, to give friendship, to share.