Irresistible Forces (7 page)

“So tell me about this Dr. Kildare you're married to, Meredith. Trauma work must be pretty intense, particularly after a disaster like this weekend. You mustn't see much of him.”

“Sometimes I don't,” she smiled, “but I'm pretty busy too. We're a good balance for each other.”

“Have you been married for a long time?” He seemed to be intrigued about her, and she never talked about her personal life. All he knew of her was how she handled her professional dealings.

“Fourteen years. We got married when I was at Columbia, in business school.” Their wine had arrived by then, and the waiter poured it for them.

“Do you have children?”

“Nope.” She said it in a surprisingly firm tone, and he raised an eyebrow at the way she answered.

“That sounds like a resounding
nope.
I take it the idea doesn't appeal much.” He was curious about her.

“Not at this point. Neither of us has time. I always thought we'd have them one day … but I just can't see when. I'm beginning to think it may never happen.”

“Would that be a disappointment to you, if it didn't?” He seemed hungry to know more about her, but she was comfortable talking to him. And in the next two weeks, they were going to see a lot of each other. There didn't seem to be any harm in knowing more about each other.

“It wouldn't be a disappointment to me,” she said honestly. “In some ways it would be a relief, not to worry about it, or have to figure out how and if we could do it, and still be fair to the kids and each other. But it would be a disappointment to my husband, if we didn't have children. He's been talking about it a lot lately.’’

“And you? Have you been talking about it too?” Cal pressed her.

She smiled in answer to his question. “I've been talking about your IPO, and your red herring, that's what I've been talking about.”

“That says something, doesn't it?” He smiled at her.

“I just can't see the point of having kids when you're in the office till midnight most of the time, and sometimes two in the morning. And when things get crazy at work, Steve works sixty-eight to seventy-two-hour shifts, until there's a real emergency, and then he's gone for however long he has to be. Where are we supposed to fit kids into all that? On the occasional long weekend, or for a week in the summer? It wouldn't be fair to the kids. They deserve more than that from their parents. What about you? How do you manage it? You said you have three children, the last time I was in California.”

“I do. Their mother was a lot like you. She's an entertainment attorney. She was working in L.A. when I met her. I was living down there too then. She didn't even want to get married. I talked her into marrying me, ‘forced her’ to, as she said later, and when I moved up to San Francisco to get involved in Silicon Valley years ago, she refused to come with me.”

“And that was the end of it?” Meredith looked surprised that his wife had been so adamant about it. San Francisco didn't seem like a bad place to live, and she assumed there had to be entertainment lawyers there too, though maybe not of the magnitude of those in L.A. But Callan smiled as he answered her.

“No, that wasn't the end of it. She commuted. It was a crazy existence. We were never in the same city at the same time, and when we were, we were either annoyed about something, out of touch with each other, or exhausted. The only surprising part of it is that that was when we decided to have children. Maybe
decided
isn't the right word exactly. The first one was an accident, and the next two were a result of my convincing her that it wasn't fair to have an only child.”

“I'm an only child,” Meredith said with a look of amusement.

“So am I,” Callan said, and didn't really surprise her. He had the kind of intensity and drive and urge to succeed typical of only children. “It's all right now, but I didn't think it was much fun as a kid. And I thought that as busy as we were, it would be better for them to have siblings.”

“I'm surprised she went along with that theory.”

“She was a good sport. She really tried for a while. We both wanted to make it work, but I guess I wasn't very realistic. She was never very maternal, and she was far more interested in business than in her children. She hired a nanny, and as soon as she had each of them, she headed back to L.A. on the next plane she could get on. She acted more like a visiting aunt when she came home on weekends, when she did, than their mother. And eventually, she came home less and less often. She said it was too noisy and too confusing. The truth is, I'd never say it to them, but the kids drove her crazy.” It sounded sad to Meredith, and exactly what she didn't want to happen in her life. She wondered how they were now, and how high a price they had paid emotionally for their mother's bad behavior.

“Where is she now?”

“That's another story. What I didn't realize in the midst of all that was that she and her partner had been romantically involved for several years before we met, and for most of our marriage. We'd been married for seven years before she told me. And by then, we had three kids, and she wanted out. She gave me custody of the children without batting an eye, they closed their practice in L.A. a year later, and moved to London to open up an office there. We've been divorced for eight years, and she finally married him a few years ago, and I think they're very happy. Needless to say, they don't have children.”

“Does she ever see the kids?”

“She flies over a couple of times a year for a few days, usually if one of her clients is making a movie in L.A., and then she comes up to see the kids. And she takes them to the South of France for a few weeks every summer.” She sounded heartless to Meredith, and she couldn't help feeling sorry for his children.

“Do they hate her for it … or are they just heartbroken?”

“Neither one. I think they accept her as she is. They've never known anything different. And I'm around most of the time. I try not to work too late usually, and they can always call me at the office if they have a problem. My house is only about five minutes from the office. Weekends are sacred, and I take a month off to be with them in Tahoe every summer. It's worked out pretty well, though not exactly what I had in mind in the beginning. I thought we were going to have one of those perfect little families with a mommy and a daddy and a flock of little children. Instead, it's just me and the flock … or rather, the flock and I.” He smiled at her. “We have a good time together, and they keep me pretty busy, mostly on weekends.”

“I'm surprised you never remarried,” Meredith said honestly. “It can't be easy bringing up three kids on your own.”

“In some ways it's easier,” he said with surprising candor. “You don't have to argue with anyone about how to bring them up. There are no battles over what's right or wrong or good for them. You get to make all your own decisions. We have a good relationship, and I think they respect me. And to be honest, I think Charlotte cured me. I've never been anxious to get into that kind of relationship again. There's something incredibly artificial and dishonest about marriage.” Particularly if your wife spent the entire marriage sleeping with her business partner. But Meredith was careful not to say that. After all, they may have been friends, but he was still a client.

“You must have been pretty badly hurt when she told you the truth,” Meredith said gently. “Were you surprised, or did you suspect it?”

“I never suspected it for a minute. I thought she was the most honest woman alive. And so did she. In fact, she was very proud of herself that he was the only ‘other’ man she had ever slept with while we were married. In her eyes, that was almost as good as being faithful. I didn't see it quite that way. I was pretty bitter about it for a long time.”

“And now?” Meredith asked, as they finished their first glass of wine and started on dinner. It had been an interesting conversation, and a surprising glimpse into the private man. It was a story that made her sorry for him. If Steve ever had an affair, she knew she would have been heartbroken. In Steve's case, she knew he never would. But Callan's wife sounded like a different breed completely. “Do you think you're still bitter about it?”

“Bitter? No, not now. I still get angry about it sometimes when I think about it. It wasn't exactly fair play, but that's the way it works sometimes. I'm just not inclined to do anything as foolish as that again. I don't need to put my head on the chopping block and offer someone the opportunity to knock it off, or rip my heart out. Marriage can be kind of a tough playing field at times, kind of like the Colosseum. I just don't have the urge anymore, to offer myself up to the lions.” The images he used were strong, and so was the picture he painted with them. He had been betrayed by the one woman he had loved and trusted, the mother of his children, and it was obvious that he had never forgiven her for it, or entirely recovered from it either. And Meredith wasn't sure she blamed him.

“How old are your kids now?”

He smiled as soon as she asked the question. It was easy to see that he was crazy about them. “Mary Ellen is fourteen, not an easy age, I might add. She thought I was great until about a year ago, according to her my IQ has been slipping ever since then. She thinks I'm senile. Julie is twelve, and still thinks I'm okay, but she's starting to slip into that same red zone. In another year I'll be heading downhill with her pretty quickly. And Andrew is nine. By some miracle, he still thinks I'm terrific. I hope you meet them sometime, Merrie.” Without prompting, he had adopted the same nickname Steve used, but she didn't mind it.

“I hope I do too. They sound like nice kids.” But she couldn't help wondering how hard it was for them not having a mother figure around, particularly for girls going into their teens. She couldn't imagine that it was easy for them, or for Cal either. And it was a very intriguing story. He was a man of many faces, and it was interesting knowing something more about him. She didn't want to ask, but she wondered if he had a girlfriend, or if he was one of those men who, once bruised, was satisfied to have a chorus line of temporary companions, maybe even one at a time, to be disposed of any time they got too close to him. He didn't sound like a man who was willing to entertain the idea of commitment, not after what he'd experienced the first time, and in a way, she felt sorry for him.

But he surprised her with his next question. “Why do you think you don't want kids, Meredith? You're missing out on a wonderful experience, but people who don't have them don't know that.”

“I've never had time to have a baby. I'm just too busy. It wouldn't be fair to my children. I don't want to do what your wife did, hire a nanny, and rush back to my office. I think children deserve to have full-time mothers, and to be honest, I think I'd hate that. I have too much fun doing what I'm doing.”

“Do you really think it's that, or is it more a statement about your level of commitment to your husband?” She was stunned when he asked her the question, and she was quick to shake her head when she answered.

“I think Steve and I are about as committed to each other as two people can get. That's never been the issue between us. It's really entirely career-related.”

“That's what Charlotte said when I first suggested we have kids. But the truth was something very different. She was in love with another man, who had never wanted to marry her. And I don't think she was as sure of her feelings about me as she thought she should be. I think when a woman really trusts a man, she wants to have his children. Maybe you're not as sure of Dr. Kildare as you think you are, Meredith, or your feelings for him.” It was a shocking theory, and she didn't even like hearing it. There was certainly no truth in it for them, whether or not Callan Dow believed her.

“I promise you, it's not that in our case. We're very much in love with each other. Maybe I'm just one of those women who don't need to have children, and I'm smart enough to know it. I probably wouldn't be a very good mother. But it has nothing to do with a lack of commitment to my husband.”

“I'm not sure I believe you, Meredith. You may think you're committed to him, but I think it's only natural if you truly trusted the relationship, you'd want to have his children.” Just listening to him say it to her suddenly annoyed her.

“That is utterly ridiculous, Cal, and you know it. I can't believe you actually think something as chauvinistic as that. You've got to tell me you're joking.”

“I'm not. You don't have to admit it to me. But think about it when you're alone tonight. Why is it that you really don't want his children?”

“Because I've spent the last twelve years doing exactly what I'm doing for you, organizing syndicates, writing red herrings with the legal staff, and taking clients on road shows. Just how much time do you think I'd have for my children?”

“As much as you wanted to. Your clients are no substitute for a baby in your arms, Meredith. We all come and go, a child is forever. But maybe your marriage isn't.” At a glance, he saw then that he'd offended her, and with a kindly look, he changed the subject. And for the next two hours they talked about his IPO and the road show. But in spite of the assurances she'd given him, he had nonetheless managed to unnerve her. And when she went back to her room at the hotel, shortly after ten o'clock, she was still thinking about it. What he had said was ridiculous. She had the kind of valid reasons women used all the time not to make a terrible mistake, in having children when they didn't want them, or if they weren't ready. Her career was as important to her as his was to Steve, and in its own way, hers was equally demanding. Unless she wanted to cut back radically, or leave the firm, there was no way she could reconcile her business life with having babies. Even Steve understood that, and she couldn't imagine why Callan Dow didn't. Just because he had three kids didn't mean that everyone else was suited to it, or would even enjoy it. God knows his wife certainly hadn't, and what she had done seemed worse to Meredith, having them, and then giving them up and virtually abandoning them for a man, a career, and a life in another country. That was something Meredith would never consider doing, once she had them. She preferred not to put herself in the same bind Charlotte Dow obviously had, and then renege on her responsibilities as a mother. Meredith would have had her tubes tied before that, and had often thought about it, but she knew that Steve would be upset if she did that. He had in fact begged her not to.