My Father's Wives (7 page)

Reggie Jackson hit his historic third home run right after she asked that. We joined the crowd in a standing ovation, and when the game resumed Lee had forgotten all about the question. But I didn’t forget. Even as I watched the Yankees spill out of their dugout to celebrate, I
couldn’t get the question out of my head. I didn’t know the answer, but I knew who would.

“Your dad is a powerful man,” my mother told me that night at home. “Powerful men make decisions they believe in and stand up for them, even when other people criticize them. So you can feel proud to know that your father stands for something, even if some people don’t like it.”

“Do they not like him?” I asked.

“It’s not him,” she said. “Every one of the men who disagree with your father would love him if they sat down together. They just disagree with his positions.”

I have since come to know that at the time of this conversation, my father was already involved in a relationship with the woman who would become his second wife, and my mother knew it.

“I don’t understand,” I said that night. “Why does Lee’s father care if Dad washes his own windshield?”

“He doesn’t care about your father’s windshield, he cares about his own,” my mother said. “Your father believes that people like Mr. Marshall, who have a lot of money, should pay some of that money in taxes so that people who have less can afford to live. Like those men in the street who wash the windshields. Do you understand?”

“I think so.”

“Does that seem fair to you?”

“I don’t know.”

“That’s right, because you’re seven years old and all you should care about is that your favorite team won the World Series. Don’t let things you don’t understand interfere with your fun. Remember that the next time anybody mentions your father.”

I still remember it today. Just as important, I remember that when I am in trouble it is invariably my mother who can make things better. So, on my fortieth birthday, nursing a miserable hangover (I wasn’t lying about that), I rode a later train into the city and took the subway downtown to see my mother.

The apartment she lives in is the same place where I mostly grew up; with my father we lived on Central Park West, but when he went his way we went down to Sullivan Street, where we were surrounded by the artists and beatniks among whom my mother felt much more comfortable than she did the power-and-politics set uptown. She loved telling people we lived on the street that Bob Dylan used to live on, which was true. My mother loves Bob Dylan. “In his lyrics,” she says, “you can find the answers to just about anything.” I listened to Dylan on my iPod all the way into the city that day, but nowhere in his songs could I find what a man is supposed to do when the only promise he really cares about has been broken.

I picked up two steaming lattes and two chocolate croissants from the café on the corner of MacDougal and Bleecker streets. Not from Starbucks. Never Starbucks for my mother, who began bemoaning the loss of identity of her beloved neighborhood the day they opened the Banana Republic on Sixth Avenue. When I rang the bell I could hear yoga chimes behind her voice over the intercom. “Surprise,” I said.

“I’ve been expecting you,” she replied. “Hold on.”

A moment later I heard the cavalcade of locks on the door being turned, one by one. A crank, a click, a slide—nine in all, the same nine locks that have guarded that door since 1978. The sounds they make, in the order my mother opens them, are burned into my memory.

After the ninth lock, a lengthy, crackly slider, the door flew open and I found my mother exactly as I expected her: bare feet, yoga pants, baggy T-shirt, headband.

“Chocolate?” she asked, pointing at the paper bag.

“Absolutely.”

“Can’t resist that,” she said, and took the bag from beneath my arm. “Now, what the hell is going on with you?”

The apartment smelled of burning incense and espresso, and from the old-fashioned stereo came the chimes and sounds of the ocean that my mother listened to on cassette while she did her yoga. I pointed toward the mat in the center of the room. “Did I ruin this?” I asked.

“I was just about done,” she said. “Do you want to do some sun salutations with me?”

“No, thanks.”

“You want a decaf espresso?”

“I brought lattes,” I said. “In the bag.”

“Yum.” She sat at the kitchen table, pulled a croissant from the bag, and took a bite without a plate or napkin, just a hand beneath her mouth to catch the crumbs. “Oh, that is just delicious,” she said, and took the top off one of the lattes, held it up to her face, and inhaled deeply. When she looked up, a tiny bit of foam was on the tip of her nose.

I sat across from her and pulled the other croissant from the bag, took the biggest bite I could, and felt the warm chocolate ooze in my mouth. Delicious. I took another bite.

“Jonathan,” my mother said. “Put that down and finish chewing.”

I smiled, laid what was left of the croissant on the table. “Like I’m still eleven years old.”

“Not like that at all,” she said. “When you were eleven years old I was concerned you were going to choke. It’s obvious to me now that you can manage to eat without killing yourself, but that doesn’t mean you have any idea what eating is for. If all you’re doing while you are chewing is waiting to take another bite, then you aren’t experiencing what you’re eating. You’re eating just to eat. Something like
this
is meant to be experienced.”

I looked down at the table. I had almost none of my croissant left. Mother had taken just the one bite and was licking the flaky crumbs from her hand.

“I need to talk to you about something important,” I said.

“I’m not in a hurry if you’re not.”

I nodded and took a sip of my latte. “I have reason to believe that Claire may be having an affair.”

AFTER I HAD TOLD
her all I could think of to tell, and all the croissants and coffee were finished, my mother looked across the table at me with a serious face. “So, you were outside the door?”

“Yes.”

“You didn’t go in the room?”

“No.”

“You didn’t
actually
see her?”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know what?”

I shook my head. “I don’t know what I don’t know. I saw someone. It looked like her. I think I was in shock; maybe I still am.” I put my elbows on the table and laid my head in my hands. “I have this horrible, empty feeling. And I’m scared to death to confront her, because I feel like if it’s true then I’m going to have this feeling for the rest of my life.”

Mother made her face even more serious. “Jonathan, I understand what you’re saying. And I know how difficult confrontation is for you. But unless you are going to tell me you don’t care if your wife is sleeping with another man, there just isn’t any option.”

I let my hands fall to the table with a dull thud. “I want you to tell me I’m crazy, that I must have imagined it, that there’s no way in the world Claire would do such a thing.”

Mother sighed. “Sweetheart, I wish I could tell you that, but the truth is that sometimes people are capable of things that take you by surprise.”

I heard a tapping sound beneath me and looked down to find it was my own feet bouncing on the hardwood floors. “I just wish I knew for sure,” I said.

“Confronting her is the only way to know for sure,” my mother said. “It’s not like you’re going to hire a private detective.”

I heard my feet stop.

“Listen, Jonathan,” she said, her voice lower, “you’re a grown man, you can make your own decisions. But don’t do anything crazy.”

I nodded, and she looked a little relieved. Which suggested she’d interpreted my nod to mean I wouldn’t do anything crazy. But that wasn’t the way I meant it at all.

WHEN I ARRIVED AT
the office I went directly to see Bruce. I found him with his leg on the desk, icing his calf. “Getting old is a bitch,” he said without looking up. “But it won’t stop me from kicking your ass again today.”

I sat down and stared past him out the window toward the towering skyscrapers of midtown. “Bruce, can I ask you something?”

“Yeah.”

“It’s not an easy question.”

“What is it, man?”

He is very direct, Bruce. It is his best quality.

“I want to ask about your marriage,” I said.

Bruce’s eyes narrowed in a little smile. “This should be interesting.”

“I find myself wondering . . . about . . . your
arrangement
. You know. The city?”

Bruce scratched his chin. “I’m a pretty smart guy, but for the life of me I can’t think of why you would be asking me such a personal question.”

I desperately didn’t want to get into details. “Something happened,” I said uneasily.

“You all right, Johnny?”

“I’m fine. But . . . I have concerns about my marriage. I need a little guidance.”

“Okay,” Bruce said, stretching out his leg. “I’ll say this: What works for Helen and me may not work for everyone. It doesn’t have to work for anyone else. It just has to work for us. It’s all about boundaries. I do what I do, but never at home and never with anyone that could connect to us.”

“So, you’re discreet?”

“That’s a bullshit word, Johnny. I do what I do and I make sure it never winds up in her face. If it does, she takes me for half of everything.”

I nodded, took a deep breath. “Bruce,” I said even more tentatively. “Do you remember that time with Fernandez?” He nodded. “I need some help of that kind.”

Bruce leaned closer immediately. “I’m going to give you an address right now. I am not going to write it down, I just want you to remember it.” He told me the address. “He’ll be expecting you in one hour.”

REGGIE FERNANDEZ HAD BEEN
an executive at our firm who departed for a competitor and, we suspected, violated terms of his contract by copying files and other sensitive data before giving his notice. Fernandez worked on my team, so it was me to whom he quit.

“Fernandez is going across the street,” I had told Bruce. “And between you and me, I don’t have a good feeling about protocol.”

Bruce nodded. An angry look flashed across his face but only for a moment, then he leaned back in his leather chair. “Disappointing,” he said. “Seemed like a decent kid.”

“He’s smart. And ambitious. Sky-high.”

“Not surprised then,” he said. “That young, they think they’re invincible.”

“How do we handle?”

“Is he married?”

A chill went up my spine. “Yes, he’s married,” I said.

Bruce picked up his phone. “I’ll take it from here. See you on the basketball court in an hour.”

I hadn’t thought much about that conversation since. In part because it was the only one of its kind we ever had, but also because it rather scared me, like something out of a John Grisham novel. A week later I heard that Fernandez had made a startling decision: he turned
down the offer from our competitor and was instead moving his family out west to work for a smaller firm. It was the talk of our office for several days but I never asked any questions. As my mother said, sometimes it’s hard to imagine what people are capable of.

I’M NOT SURE EXACTLY
what I expected a private detective to look like.

I guess I pictured Peter Falk, crumpled and quirky but trustworthy. Lowell Cranston didn’t look anything like Columbo. He was tall and thin, probably six foot five, with neatly parted hair and a well-kempt mustache. He wore a tight-fitting gray suit and slim black tie, more European banker than private eye. His office was small but tasteful, furnished more like a living room than a place of business: mahogany desk, bare hardwood floors, leather sofa, flat-screen television, fully stocked bar.

“Welcome,” Cranston said with a warm smile, rising from behind the desk as I entered. “Can I get you a drink?”

“Tempting, but no thanks.” I sat on the couch.

“If you feel ill at ease, Mr. Sweetwater, let me assure you that is very much the norm. Most of my clientele is of the sort that never imagined they would be sitting with a private detective. You’re thinking you need to explain to me that you are a normal, upstanding family man, a pillar of society. You needn’t bother. I know who you are.”

I nodded. And regretted not accepting the drink.

“Let me tell you a few things,” Cranston went on. “You’ll notice there was no one at the door to greet you, no assistant, no secretary, no partner, no intern. In this office, and in our transaction, you will deal with me and me alone, and I am the only one who will ever be aware this meeting took place. If we decide to proceed together I will remain the only person alive who will ever know of our dealings. In short: your secrets are safe with me. So why don’t you fix yourself that drink you’re reconsidering, make yourself comfortable, and let’s figure out what’s going on.”

In the refrigerator I found a tray of freshly sliced limes, each covered in thin plastic wrap. I took two and peeled the protective layer off each, squeezed one into a glass, and dropped the other in whole. Then I unscrewed the cap from a bottle of tonic water, filled a third of the glass, sloshed it about so the lime juice disappeared into the bubbles, then topped it with Grey Goose. “I don’t really know where to begin,” I said, still facing away. “What did Bruce tell you?”

“Mr. Sweetwater, I cannot confirm that I am acquainted with anyone named Bruce, just as I will never confirm to anyone that I am acquainted with you. As for the details of your case, I know absolutely nothing except what you will choose to tell me right now.”

I turned to face him. “I think my wife is having an affair.”

Cranston leaned back in his chair, hands clasped behind his head. He didn’t say a word.

“Did you hear me?” I asked.

“I most certainly did,” he said. “And I’m still listening.”

I told him everything there was to tell. He took notes by hand without looking down. When I was finished I downed more of the drink in large gulps. It wasn’t making me as drunk as I wanted to be.

“Nothing can change the world,” Cranston said, “but we can change the circumstances. In my experience, the only way to do that is first to know precisely what the circumstances are. So, that is where we will begin. We must find out for certain that which you strongly suspect. Does that sound agreeable to you?”