Barefoot Beach (10 page)

“His name is what?” Margo choked out a spritz of her caramel macchiato and Emine reached for the napkin dispenser.

At four thirty on Monday afternoon, the three of us were gathered at the Turquoise Café to perform a postmortem on the Manolises' party. We all agreed it had been fabulous. But now I reported on the email Jack had received as he walked off the softball field the day before. I wasn't sure how fabulous
it
was.

“Dr. Dirk DeHaven, Donor Dad,” I repeated, adding sugar to my already sweetened chai. I needed an antidote to the sour taste on my tongue, the residue from pronouncing his name aloud.

“Try saying that fast three times in a row.” Margo snorted.

“Jack thinks it's some kind of sign from above. That's what he said this morning.” I didn't know whether to laugh or cry.

“The D-D-D-D-D, like a stutter. This is a sign?” Emine looked puzzled. Also tired. Her eyes were haloed, not with kohl but with the dark smudges of a sleepless night. I wasn't looking so hot either. I'd slept fitfully, pummeling the pillow, then awakened fully and finally around three a.m. from a dream about treading water. My subconscious was ridiculously transparent.

“Jack said it's amazing that he's been calling this man DD and he turns out to have the initials DD. Jack thinks it's a good omen.”

Margo blotted coffee from her chin. She'd been all wound up since my disclosure a few minutes prior that Jack had been searching for Sixteen. I'd shot an eyebrow warning to Em and she'd awkwardly pretended to be surprised, playing along because neither of us wanted to hurt Margo's feelings.

“Jack told you about the email when?” Margo leaned in, green eyes glittering. Oh, the drama of it all.

“Actually, he didn't tell me much of anything. When we got home after the party, he grabbed a soda from the fridge, futzed around with his iPhone, pulled up the email, and handed the phone over. I read it.”

“He showed it to you?”

“Yes.” I stirred my chai into a whirlpool. “DD's first line was, ‘Your note was a welcome surprise.'”

Margo had been tracing her index finger over a plate that had recently held baklava to pick up every last crumb and smidgen of syrup. “Surprise. Oh, I'll bet he was surprised. No sign of Jack when he turned eighteen, and now here's sonny boy come to call at nineteen. Quintuple D must have wet his pants.” Then she added, “The welcome part was a nice touch, though.”

I put her in time-out while I explained exclusively to Em, “He wanted to know all about Jack. The fertility clinic had emailed him the essentials. Jack's birthday, Lon's and my names, our contact information. But he was eager to learn more. Where did Jack go to college? What was his major? His interests? That kind of thing. He asked Jack for a photo. His was attached.”

“You lie.” Margo's sticky finger shot out to poke me, but I retreated into the booth's cushiony back and she missed. “The DD sent a photo with the first email?”

“A recent portrait that he said was from the staff page of the website of his hospital. In color.”

Jack had peered at it for a very long minute in our kitchen while I
wondered how many times and for how long he'd stared at it since its arrival.

“There's a resemblance,” he'd said. “Especially the eyes.” He handed over the iPhone. “What do you think?”

I'd thought that seeing DD in the flesh even in pixels was too much, too soon. But I made myself look.

Dirk DeHaven was more than presentable, posed, arms folded, in his white medical coat, pale blue shirt with monogrammed cuffs and navy tie. His hair had a just-trimmed look. Its platinum color was too light for a middle-aged man, so the blond was probably laced with white. No teeth on display in the smile, a modest, confident curve that would reassure a patient's family after he'd performed tricky, death-defying surgery on their loved one. His eyes were large, maybe magnified by the rimless eyeglasses he hadn't removed for the photo, which said to me he wasn't particularly vain. That was a point in his favor. The irises were the same bald-eagle gold as Jack's, which clawed at me inside. I'd searched Jack's face throughout his childhood for something,
anything
that would link him genetically to Lon and had come up with zip. Here the connection to DD was blatantly obvious.

“What do you think?” Jack had pressed.

“The eyes are yours,” I'd agreed.

“And maybe the chin,” he said. “Okay. I'm forwarding the photo so you can look whenever.” He'd been sure I'd want to and he'd been right. I'd found myself mildly obsessed. By now, I'd given up counting how many times I'd opened the attachment.

“You have it on your phone? Oh dear God, why didn't you say so in the first place?” Margo was frothing, or that white mustache above her upper lip was the last of the foam on her macchiato. “Give it here,” she commanded.

She and Emine leaned in so their heads touched, blond to brown. A
hand from each shared a grip on the rim of the screen. After a moment of peering silence, Em pronounced, “He looks kind.”

“He looks rich,” Margo said. “Check this out.” She turned the image toward me and tapped DD's wrist. “The watch is a Mont Heurigné. Older model. Collector's item.” Margo knew her jewelry. “I'd tag it at thirty thousand dollars. Maybe more. He either inherited it or he makes a ton of money. I assume he's in private practice?”

I shrugged my ignorance. “What I know is Dirk M. DeHaven, MD, FACS, is a department head at Gilbreth Medical Center. Cardiology.” A heart surgeon, which carried its own freight of irony.

“You Googled him, of course.”

“He's one of the top docs in his field. Pediatric cardiology. Much published. Of international repute. He treated a prince in the Dutch royal family and operated on the nephew of the emir of Qatar. Consults occasionally on medical issues for CNN.”

“So he's a
macher
.”

I knew what that meant. Back in college Margo had taught me some Yiddish. Hell, I was probably the only half-Irish, half-Italian American woman with a house on the ocean who could tell someone, in beautifully articulated Yiddish, to go shit in it.
Gay cocken offen yom.
So
macher
was a snap. Maker. A major player.

“And the personal life of this jet-setting healer?”

“Divorced. Didn't say how long. That's from the email. He also wrote, ‘There's lots more, Jack, but I don't want to overwhelm you with information in our first exchange.' Something like that.”

“I like him already.” That was from Emine, of course. “And how old did you say he is?”

“Forty-eight,” I muttered reluctantly.

Muttered and reluctantly because I'd predicted what was coming next and from what source. Margo was shooting sparks from every pore.
“Single and couldn't be more in your age range, the bio progenitor of your only child. If Shakespeare had been born in the twenty-first century, he would have written this play.” I didn't ask, tragedy or comedy? “Oh God, I feel a heat wave coming on.”

“Order an iced macchiato,” I snapped.

“No more coffee for me. All the caffeine is sending my bladder into spasms.” She slid out of the booth and onto her feet. “I'm heading up to pee.”

Margo had a thing about public restrooms, which she declared were germ-infested cesspools, even the one offered at the Vatican when she and Pete had had an audience with the pope. Who knew what cardinal had committed what sins before planting his behind on what seat? She generally insisted on using a bathroom in the Haydars' apartment above the store.

Em said, “I cleaned the ones down here myself half an hour ago. Nobody's used the ladies' room since then.”

“Fine. But don't you dare discuss anything important until I get back. CNN announced a comet coming on a path so close to earth it could wipe out the human race. Chat about that.”

As she sashayed across the room, I figured we were safe.

I turned back to Emine. “Did you have your talk with Adnan after the party?” I noticed the tremor in her hands and laid mine over hers.

“I gave him bloody hell for letting Merry out of his sight. What was he thinking?”

The sun in the café was splintering into shadows. It was nearly five, slow time at a coffee shop. The crowd would pick up again for dessert after dinner. Adnan was lettering the menu board for the evening's special, pomegranate cheesecake. When he saw me look his way, he waved with the marking pen. I waved back, wondering if he knew we were talking about him.

Emine's voice lowered as she replayed her telling him about the scene in Margo's kitchen. “The skirt rolled up. How the boys were clapping and laughing. You know what he said?” She turned a pinch of index finger and thumb against her lips as if she were twisting a key. “Nothing. For half an hour, nothing. He sits in front of the computer, staring at a soccer game from Turkey. Then he follows me into the bedroom and he tells me he has the answer. Definitely the answer for the problems with Meryem.”

Margo had peed fast, not wanting to miss anything. Em, across from me, was facing in the opposite direction and didn't see her trotting on the return. I gave my head a quick, subtle shake, but Em missed it. She was saying, “And then he tells me that—”

“Who tells you what?” Margo loomed over us.

I intervened. “Wolf Blitzer tells her that if the comet does hit the earth, he hopes it lands on your back lawn.”

“Very funny.” Margo plunked herself down across from Em, eyes narrowed. “So, what's the big secret?”

Emine knew it was useless to resist, and she was up to the part she was eager to share. “Adnan wants to bring his mother here.” She paused to let that sink in. “For the summer, at least.” Another pause. “To keep an eye on Meryem.”

Margo said, “Oh shit. Selda's coming to Tuckahoe? But she was here just three years ago and you haven't recovered from that invasion yet.”

“This visit has a purpose, Adnan says. Meryem has become more difficult over the past months.” Em dashed a look at me that I knew was a reminder to keep the secret of the events in the kitchen. My head bobbed my guarantee. “He believes Selda can guide Meryem away from trouble. She has a strong hand, he says.”

“And a big mouth, did he also say?” Margo snapped.

“To him, his mother is an expert at setting limits. At setting fires, I answered back.”

Margo grabbed a handful of pistachios from a bowl on the table. “So Selda would apply some Turkish muscle, huh?” She cracked a shell between her perfectly aligned, brilliantly capped teeth. “Well, think about it, Em. It might not be the worst idea in the world.”

“It is the worst in the universe.” Emine bristled. “You know my mother-in-law plays the queen, wanting everyone to bow to her. Me first. She hates women. She never had a daughter. Four spoiled sons but not one daughter.”

“She really does have the people skills of a boa constrictor,” I added.

“She'll drive me crazy. Meryem will go—what does she call it? Ballistic. My mother-in-law is always seeing problems. Merry eats too much sugar. Her face will break out. Her feet are too big. Her voice is too loud. And Selda hasn't seen her in three years. She will be shocked at what she finds. Everything will be my fault, of course. It always is.” She pulled a sigh. “I know she will only add to the trouble. I have told Adnan absolutely not, but he refuses to give up. He wants me to think it through. Then we will talk about it calmly and I will see his side. This is what he tells me. He doesn't realize I am putting my foot down on this.”

We all lapsed into a moment's silence in honor of Em's foot.

“I've come to a conclusion,” Margo finally drawled. “Men are idiots. Irresistible idiots, but idiots. Or maybe we're the idiots, because we don't understand the entire gender and we still give them so much power.”

At which point, as if to underline her theory, Emine's iPhone sounded, playing a sweet Turkish melody that signaled an incoming email.

She looked at the screen curiously at first. When she gave me a sly smile I had the feeling it was something more than an ad from Zappos.

“We just had a new online sign-up for tomorrow night's class,” she said, her voice singing a light melody.

“I thought you already closed class,” I said. “We're only twenty-four hours away.”

Em said, “I removed the sign-up sheet from the front desk, but with all that is going on at home, I forgot to pull it off online. But I don't say I'm sorry. Take a look.” She handed me her phone.

“What? Who?” Margo leaned so close we brushed shoulders, blending our vapors of Poison and Eternity. “Oh . . . my . . . God.” She swept the fringe of bangs back from her eyebrows and squinted as if she hadn't read it right the first time. She inhaled theatrically and on the exhale murmured, “Scott Goddard.” She turned to me. “Scott—the handsome hero—Goddard. Well, well, well. Now, what do we make of this, Nora?”