Heart of the Matter (22 page)

Nick nods and tosses out another question. “What are you doing tomorrow? For Thanksgiving?”

“We’re all going to Jason’s house,” Valerie says—which, of course, Nick already knows. “Jason’s boyfriend, Hank, is quite the cook.”

“Is he a chef?” Nick asks.

“No. A tennis pro,” Jason says. “But he knows his way around the kitchen.”

“Ah. Okay,” Nick murmurs. “Nice perk for you.”

Valerie can tell her brother is resisting a smart-ass remark, probably something about the perk of dating a doctor—when he stands, rubs his hands together, and says, “Well. As much as I’d love to stay and chat, Hank and I have a turkey to baste.”

Nick looks relieved as he stands and shakes Jason’s hand again. “Good to see you, man,” he says a bit too robustly.

“You, too, Doc,” Jason says, flipping up the collar on his leather jacket. “It was a ... nice surprise.” On his way to the door, he shoots his sister a bemused look and mouths, “Call me.”

Valerie nods, locking the door behind him, and steeling herself for the awkward exchange to come.

“Shit,” Nick says, still sitting rigidly in her grandmother’s chair, one hand gripping each armrest. “I’m really sorry.”

“For what?” she asks, returning to her spot on the couch.

“For coming tonight. . . For not calling first.”

“It’s okay,” she says.

“What are you going to tell him?” he asks her.

“The truth,” she says. “That we’re friends.”

He gives her a long look and says, “Friends. Right.” “We
are
friends,” she says, desperately clinging to this version of their story.

“I know we’re friends, Val,” he says. “But. . .”

“But what?”

He shakes his head and says, “You know what.”

Her heart stops and she considers a last-ditch effort to change the subject, get up, hurry out to the kitchen to finish her casserole. Instead she whispers, “I know.”

He exhales slowly and says, “This is wrong.”

She feels her hands clench into two fists in her lap as he continues, a note of panic in his voice. “It’s wrong on several levels. At least two.”

She knows exactly what those two levels are but lets him spell it out.

“For one, I’m your son’s doctor—there are ethics involved. Ethics and rules designed to protect patients . . . It would be unfair of me to ... take advantage . . . of your emotions.”

“You’re Charlie’s doctor, yes . . . But that’s not what this is about,” she says adamantly. She has thought about it often, and although she feels endlessly grateful to him, she is certain that she’s not confusing gratitude with anything else. “Besides,
I’m
not your patient.”

“You’re his
mother.
It’s actually, probably worse,” Nick says. “I shouldn’t be here. Jason knows it. You know it. I know it.”

She nods, staring down at her hands, aware that he is referring to his second point, the one she has yet to address. The small issue of his marriage.

“So does that mean you’re leaving?” she finally asks.

He moves to the couch, next to her, and says, “No. I’m not leaving. I’m going to sit here next to you and continue to torture myself.” His eyes are intense, almost angry—but also resolved—as if he hates to be tested and refuses to lose.

Valerie looks at him, alarmed. Then, ignoring everything she believes, all that she knows to be right, she responds by pulling him to her in the embrace she has imagined so many times. After several seconds, he takes control, slowly lowering her to the couch, covering her with the weight of his body as their legs entangle, their cheeks touch.

After a long time like this, Valerie closes her eyes and lets herself drift off, lulled by his steady breathing, the feel of his arms encircling her, and their chests rising and falling, together. Until suddenly, she is awakened by Eminem’s “Slim Shady,” the ring tone that Jason programmed into her phone just for his calls. Nick jolts in such a way that she can tell he fell asleep, too—the idea of which thrills her.

“Is that your phone?” he whispers, his breath warm in her ear.

“Yes. It’s Jason,” she tells him.

“Do you need to call him back?” Nick asks, repositioning her slightly, just enough to look in her eyes. He reaches out and touches her hairline, so tenderly and naturally that it feels as if they’ve been together like this a thousand times and done everything else, too.

“No,” she replies, hoping he won’t move away from her. Hoping he won’t move at all. “Not now.”

Another moment passes before he speaks again. “What time do you think it is?” he says.

She guesses nine, even though she believes it to be later. “Maybe ten,” she adds reluctantly, wanting to be truthful.

He sighs, then swings himself into an upright position, pulling her legs onto his lap before checking his watch. “Damn,” he mutters, shaking his sleeve back over his watch.

“What?” she says, looking up at him, admiring his profile, yearning to touch his lower lip.

“Ten after ten. I better get going,” he says, but does not move.

“Yes,” she says, processing what has just transpired, wondering what will follow. She can tell he is doing the same, asking himself all the same questions. Would they retreat or move forward? Could they do this thing they were on the verge of doing? Did they have it in them to make a wrong decision just because it felt right?

Nick stares ahead, then turns to look down at her, his eyes jet black in the dimly lit room. He holds her gaze, then her hand, as if to tell her that the answer,
his
answer anyway, is
yes.

Then he stands and collects his coat from the closet. She watches him, still unable to move, until he comes to her, taking her hands in his, pulling her to her feet. Wordlessly, he leads her to the front door, which she unlocks and opens for him.

“I’ll call you tomorrow,” he says, which has become a given. Then he hugs her hard, an upright version of their last embrace, his fingers cupping the back of her head, then running through her hair. They do not kiss, but they might as well, because in that silent moment, they both stop pretending.

23

Tessa

It
is Thanksgiving morning, and I am in my kitchen, preparing dinner with my father’s wife, Diane, and Nick’s mother, Connie. In past years, the collaborative effort would have annoyed me, as much for Diane’s gourmet airs as my mother-inlaw’s tendency to usurp my kitchen. But this year, oddly enough, my first Thanksgiving as a stay-at-home mother, I feel no sense of ownership of the meal, and am actually grateful to be stationed at the sink, peeling potatoes, the least important task on the Thanksgiving totem pole. It occurs to me, as I stare out the window into our fenced backyard, that I might be depressed—not depression-commercial miserable where the women can’t get out of bed and look as if they’ve been beaten with a bag of rocks, but the kind of depressed that renders me unnerved, exhausted, and largely indifferent. Indifferent to whether we use rosemary or thyme to flavor the turkey. Indifferent that the children are running around in sweats instead of the matching chocolate-brown corduroy pants and jumper my mother sent. Indifferent to the fact that Nick worked late last night—again. And that we argued this morning—over nothing, really, which is the best kind of argument to have when a marriage is working, the worst when it’s not.

“Tessa, dear, please tell me you have white pepper,” Diane says, jolting me out of my thoughts with her usual sense of urgency and affected Jackie O accent. Earlier this week, she gave me a long list of ingredients for her various side dishes—but white pepper was not among them.

“I think we do,” I say, pointing toward the pantry. “Should be on the second shelf.”

“Thank
God,”
Diane says. “Black pepper simply won’t do.”

I force a smile of understanding, thinking that Diane is a snob in the classic sense of the word, feeling superior on just about every front. She grew up with money and privilege (then married and divorced someone even more well-to-do), and although she does her best to hide it, I can tell she looks down on the middle-American masses—and even more so on the nouveaux riches—or as she calls them in a whisper, “parvenus.” She is not classically beautiful, but is striking in the first-glance kind of way that tall, high-browed blondes often are, and looks a full decade younger than her fifty-eight years due to diligent grooming, obsessive tennis playing, and a few nip and tucks she openly, proudly, discusses. She also has a natural grace about her—the kind that comes from boarding school, years of ballet, and a mother who made her walk around balancing encyclopedias on her head.

In short, she is everything a first wife fears—refined and sophisticated with no trace of bimbo to be found—and as such, I do my best to disdain her on my mother’s behalf. Diane makes the task difficult, though, for she’s never been anything other than gracious and thoughtful to me, perhaps because she never had children of her own. She also makes a great effort with Ruby and Frank, lavishly gifting them and playing with them in a heartfelt, on-the-floor way that their two grandmothers never do. Dex, who is spending Thanksgiving with my mother in the city, is suspicious of Diane’s efforts, certain that her kindness is more about showing off to my father and showing
up
my mother, but Rachel and I agree that her motivation doesn’t much matter—it’s the result we appreciate.

Above all, Diane keeps my father in line and happy. Even when she’s complaining—which she often does—he seems content to remedy whatever’s ailing her, almost inspired by the challenge. I remember April once asking if I ever felt in competition with her—if she had somehow eroded my “daddy’s girl” status. Until she posed the question, I hadn’t quite realized that my dad and I never had that kind of relationship. He was a good father, prioritizing our education, taking us on great European vacations, teaching us how to fly a kite, tie sailing knots, and drive a stick shift. But he was never particularly affectionate or doting, the way Nick is with Ruby—and I have the feeling it might have something to do with my mother and how closely I aligned myself to her, even as a child. It was as if he sensed my disapproval, my affiliation with a woman he was betraying, even before I knew what he was up to. So, in short, Diane’s flamboyant arrival on the familial front didn’t really change much between my dad and me.

I watch her now, reaching into one of her many personalized Goyard bags, retrieving a pair of cherry-red, jeweled, cat’s-eye reading glasses that only a woman like Diane could pull off. She slips them on and peers down at her cookbook, also pulled from her bag, humming an indeterminable tune with an aren’t-I-adorable expression—a look that she kicks into high gear as my father pops into the kitchen and winks at her.

“David, sweetheart, come here,” she says.

He does, wrapping his arms around her from behind, as she turns and kisses his cheek before returning her full attention to her butternut squash soup.

Meanwhile, Connie is manning the turkey, basting it with peasantlike efficiency. In high contrast to Diane’s ultrafeminine skirt suit and sleek crocodile pumps, Connie is wearing elastic-waist pants, a fall-foliage sweater adorned with a pilgrim pin, and tie shoes that are either orthopedic or her attempt to win an ugly-footwear contest. I can tell she disapproves of Diane’s cookbook, as she is firmly in the no-frills-or-recipe camp, especially on Thanksgiving. In this sense—in
every
sense—she is utterly traditional, a subservient wife who thinks Nick, her only child, walks on water. She actually refers to him as a miracle child—as he came after her doctor’s prognosis that she could not have children. Considering this, and the fact that Nick has met and surpassed all parental hopes for greatness, it is another miracle that Connie and I get along at all. But for the most part, she pretends to approve of me, even though I know it kills her that I’m not raising the kids in the Catholic church, or
any
church for that matter. That my father’s Jewish (which, in her mind, makes me half Jewish, her grandchildren a quarter so). That I use spaghetti sauce from a jar. That although I love Nick, on most days I don’t think he lassoed the moon. In fact, the only time she has ever seemed genuinely pleased with me was when I told her I was going to quit my job—an ironic juxtaposition to my own mother’s views on the subject.

My hand sore from peeling, I set about filling a large pot with water while listening to two parallel conversations—one about Connie’s neighbor’s battle with ovarian cancer, another involving Diane’s recent girls’ spa trip, with only the most attenuated thematic connection between the two threads. It is one of the only things that Diane and Connie have in common—they are both big talkers, incessantly chattering about people I’ve never met, referring to them by name as if I know them well. It is an annoying trait, but it makes them easy to be around, requiring almost no effort other than an occasional follow-up question.

The next two hours continue in this vein, the noise level ramping up as the kids infiltrate the kitchen with their most nerve-trying toys, until I succumb to a string of Bloody Marys—which, incidentally, is the only other thing Diane and Connie have in common. They are both big drinkers. So by four o’clock, when we all come to the table, at least three of us are tipsy, possibly four if you include Nick’s dad, Bruce, who has drained several Captain and Cokes but never talks enough to reveal any signs of consumption. Instead, he sits gruffly, and after a nudge from Connie, makes the sign of the cross and speeds through his standard prayer: Bless us, O Lord, and these thy gifts which
we are about to receive from thy bounty through Christ our Lord. Amen.

We all mumble
Amen,
while Nick’s parents cross themselves again and Ruby imitates them, with a few too many touches—in what occurs to me, with amusement, looks more like a Star of David than a cross.

“So!” my dad says, as uncomfortable with religion as he is with Nick’s parents. “Looks delicious!” He directs his praise at Diane, who beams and helps herself to a comically small portion of mashed potatoes, then conspicuously refuses the gravy, passing it along to Nick’s dad.