Sleeping Beauty (77 page)

She would rather go to Chicago with Josh. Or with Leo. But this was something that had been waiting since she came back: for the two of them to face the shadow of Vince at last, and deal with it, together.

“All right,” she said. “I'll call my office and push everything back a couple of days. And tomorrow I'll go to Chicago. And talk to Charles.”

F
rom his desk on the sixty-fifth floor of the Sears Tower, Charles could look through walls of glass in one direction at the sprawl of Chicago fading into the hazy distance, and in the other, across Lake Michigan to the Indiana shore. It was a view he savored each morning as he walked in, striding across the blue carpet Marian had chosen for Ethan when he had signed a lease for Chatham Development, soon after the building opened. The carpet, and everything else in Ethan's office, was now Charles', and no matter how bad his days had become, the view always gave him a feeling of satisfaction. He was still there, still president of his company, riding high above Chicago, and he might still come back in a way that would make his family, and the whole city, admire him just as they had admired his father.

But the day Anne arrived, there was no view. While Charles waited for ten o'clock, when she had said she would be there, he gazed at a layer of heavy white clouds below him, stretching to the horizon. The only evidence of the city below were the antennas of the Hancock Building thrusting through the clouds. There were clouds above, as well, and between those two white layers, Charles' office seemed bleached and ghostly, floating in a colorless world.

Anne wore a red suit and black sweater, with a Florentine necklace and earrings of gold and silver links. She was like a bright beacon in the unearthly light of his office, and Charles watched her walk toward him with a sense of wonder that
this stunning woman, who seemed to bring light with her, was his daughter.

He stood indecisively behind his curved desk that Ethan had designed, then walked around it to meet her, holding out his hand. “This is very nice. You've never been here.”

Anne took his hand and leaned forward and kissed his cheek. “Can we sit here?” she asked, and led the way to a gray suede couch near the windows. A silver tea service stood on the walnut coffee table in front of it. Charles, flushed with pleasure, followed her. “I remember the furniture from Grandpa's old office,” she said as she sat down. “He gave me blueprints to play with and I watched him work. You haven't changed anything.”

“No, he'd brought it all with him when he moved here, and I couldn't think of anything I wanted to be different. I didn't remember that he brought you to his office. How old were you?”

“About seven, the first time.”

“Right after your mother died. I was traveling a lot in those days, on business.”

“Yes.”

There was a pause. “I'm sorry,” Charles said. “I know I didn't spend enough time with you. I wish I had; I wish I'd known how to be what you wanted. I didn't plan it that way, you know; a lot of the time I didn't even know what was happening.”

When Anne was silent, he spread his hands, then let them drop. “The saddest thing, for me, is that I didn't make myself part of your growing up. I look at my friends who have scrapbooks and stories to tell going back through the years, and even though they may have had some bad times with their children, they have their memories and they know they were part of something that was as important as anything else in their life. And now they have friendships, the kind that grow, because they've been growing, too, right along with their children. It doesn't always end so happily, I know that, but I look at my friends who've made it with their children, and they seem so much more complete than I am. They have love, and a place to belong, and a feeling of
the generations blending into each other that I've never had. And I envy them.”

He paused, frowning slightly. It seemed to Anne that her coming to him had freed something in him so that the words spilled out; it was as if he had been waiting for that kiss on his cheek.

“I've never been friends with either of my daughters,” Charles said, his voice low. “I'd like to learn how.” He glanced at Anne, then, quickly, away. “You said once, last September when I was in Tamarack, that you didn't forgive me and couldn't love me. I keep hearing you say that. I don't know what I can do to change it. I've lost all those years of your growing up, but if we could find a way now . . .”

He sat up straight, changing the subject as if afraid of what she might say. “I'm sorry, I'm not being a good host. Would you like tea? Or coffee?” He touched the silver teapot. “This is cold, but we have plenty in the kitchen, keeping hot. What would you like? Croissants? Or toast? I bought éclairs, too; I remember you used to love them—what is it? Is something wrong?”

“No.” Anne shook her head sharply.
There is nothing in the world as good as chocolate éclairs. They're wonderfully messy to eat. Definitely my favorite.
“I don't eat them anymore; I haven't for a long time. Just tea would be fine.”

Charles went to the door and opened it and spoke to his secretary, who followed him almost immediately with another silver teapot, this one steaming, and a covered basket. “I haven't had breakfast; I hope you won't mind if I eat.”

“Of course not.” Anne watched him spread jam on a piece of toast. His hand was shaking.

“Would you pour the tea?” he asked, and began to talk again. “I really don't know anything about you, that's the terrible thing; I don't know what I can talk about and what I should stay away from. You know”—he paused to swallow a bite of toast—“Christmas dinner, when you were asking all those questions about Chatham Development and Tamarack, I wanted to tell you to stop; I couldn't stand it that you weren't on my side. I knew you weren't because you hadn't forgiven me, but I kept thinking of how wonderful it would
be if we were together, you and I, maybe even working together; that seemed so wonderful to me.” He reached with a nervous hand to take another piece of toast from the basket. “You see, I really don't know what to talk about.”

“You could start with me,” Anne said quietly.

Startled, he looked at her, his hand suspended above the toast basket. “What does that mean?”

“That so far I've only heard about you.” Anne gazed at her teacup. She remembered the pattern; Marian had bought it at the same time she bought the carpeting, a Villeroy & Boch flowered china, too delicate for an office, but Ethan had liked it for just that reason, and Anne had always felt grown-up and festive when the secretary brought the tray for just the two of them and Ethan took a few minutes from his desk to join her on the couch. “There's always been something missing in our family,” she said, looking up at Charles. “A kind of caring that connects people to each other. You've always been so wrapped up inside yourselves, all of you, except Gail, you haven't had room for anyone else. You just told me all the things that you wished you'd done differently so you'd feel happier and more complete, and I'm sorry you have so much sadness, but I can't see that it's even occurred to you that if you'd done those things differently, your daughter might have benefited; she might have been happier; she might have had a father to trust when her uncle was”—her throat locked and she began to gag, but she pushed the words out—“forcing himself on her week after week and destroying what was left of her childhood.”

Charles had drawn back into the corner of the couch. The toast had fallen to the floor, but he had not noticed it; his eyes were fastened on Anne, and he seemed to shrink as she spoke.

“And then you talked about Christmas dinner,” Anne said. “That I wasn't on your side because I hadn't forgiven you. You might have thought, if you were thinking about something beside yourself, that I was worried about Gail and Leo, and trying to help them keep their home and their company, that I was being part of their family, that I wanted
to be connected to them in a way that nobody in my family ever tried to connect with me.”

She stopped. Her voice had grown intense, almost heated, and she had promised herself, before she arrived, that she would stay calm. She had been feeling closer to Charles with each discovery they had made about Vince, and her kiss when she arrived had been genuine and spontaneous, but then, as he spoke, her anger had returned, and within her there had come a familiar bleak emptiness, the same sense of loss that had welled up in her as she sat at the dinner table on her fifteenth birthday.

But this time she was not alone. This time Gail and Leo and the children were with her. This time there was Josh.

“I didn't mean to jump on you,” she said with a small smile. “I hoped we could begin to find out what we could build together; I didn't mean to get carried away and talk like a prosecutor.”

Charles was still hunched in the corner of the couch. His face was drawn. “Is that really us?” There was bewilderment in his voice. His head lowered, his breath came out in a long sigh. “A daughter shouldn't have to teach her father how to be a father. I never realized . . .”

He rubbed his forehead with the knuckle of his first finger and suddenly Anne felt like crying. She remembered that gesture from when she was very young; her father, sitting alone, rubbing his forehead and weeping after her mother died. “You're right; you're right about us,” he said. “We're not reflective about ourselves. You're different, Anne; you think about what goes on inside people and how their relationships work, and we just never seem to. I don't know why we don't; we aren't bad people, you know.”

In a minute Charles sat up. He took his cup from the coffee table and sat back, more relaxed, as if, once again, Anne had freed him to talk, this time by making him look at himself in a new way. “It might be because of Dad. I think about him all the time these days; it's as if, when he died, he got even bigger, though that's hard to believe because he was the biggest man I ever knew. Maybe he dominated us so much that we all closed up, to get away from him. Or maybe
we were jealous of him, or in awe of him and spending all our time trying to please him, or impress him, and that didn't make us very generous to each other.” He sighed. “I don't know; I'm no good at figuring out why people do what they do.”

Anne smiled. “I don't think we should blame our parents for everything that goes wrong.”

Charles, too, smiled. “But it's so handy. And so comforting.”

They laughed together. And then they stopped, and exchanged a long look. They could not remember ever laughing together.

The sound of their laughter lingered, warming Anne, and for a moment it seemed to her that she could be a daughter with a father, sharing the things of the world in a way different from any other sharing a man and a woman found. But she knew it would not happen. It was too late. She thought they would find friendship, and even companionship, but that was all. Too late, she thought, and regret filled her. Too late. Too late.

“Maybe there were just too many men,” Charles said, still looking for explanations. “After my mother died and Dad was in such a bad way over it, and then
your
mother died, and it took me so long to give a damn about anything after that, everything was so different, so out of balance. I never thought of this before, but I don't think we had enough women in our family. Only Marian and Nina were left, and they were always so . . . vague, I guess you'd say. Marian's much sharper now, much more aggressive—when you left, she seemed to be in shock, and after that she began to change—but when you were young, she just sort of floated around. You probably remember that. So for years there were just men running our family, almost like a business. Not enough women. Not enough gentleness.”

Anne nodded. “Maybe. There's hardly ever one neat explanation for everything that happens. My clients are always looking for one; some tidy way to explain the failure of a marriage or of living together. But it's always so much
more complicated and there's usually plenty of blame to go around.”

“But that wasn't true when you were young. What happened to you was—”

“I can't talk about that.”

“But I thought—”

“We can talk around it. I've been doing that for twenty-five years.”

“You've never talked to anyone about it? Not one person who could help you?”

“I've never needed anyone. I managed by myself.”

“My God,” Charles said softly. “You made yourself what you are without anyone to lean on, anyone to take your hand. . . . My God.” He thought for a minute. “I've always needed other people. I've always looked for someone to smooth the way, or at least point it out to me, help me get to it. . . . Whoever it was, my father, or Vince, whoever seemed to have some secret about getting through life in triumph, instead of failure. I was always so afraid of failing, of seeing people point their fingers at me because they'd known all along I wasn't good enough. Where did you get such strength?” he burst out.

“Desperation,” Anne said. She tried to say it lightly, but it came out with absolute seriousness. “I was ashamed of myself; I think I hated myself. I had to find a way to like myself again, and be proud of what I was, and I couldn't talk about the past because it made me sick and ashamed, all over again. And maybe I got some of my strength from my grandfather. The biggest man you ever knew.”

Slowly, Charles nodded. “He told me once the worst thing he ever did was what he did to you that day. He wouldn't blame the rest of us; he only blamed himself and he never forgave himself for it. He never stopped hoping you'd come home so he could ask you to forgive him. For a long time, he refused to lock his front door, because he wanted you to be able to walk right in.”