That Part Was True (6 page)

But then, as she leaned in to cut the first of the twiggy lavender stems, wearing a white apron over her dress and cardigan, it had occurred to her that if this fellow, the old boyfriend—Ted? Ned?— had seen the newspaper announcement, then other friends of Virginia's might have seen it, too. Perhaps a lot of people would turn up the next day after all, people she didn't know, from London.

Eve had imagined then a crowd of smart, ageless women with unwavering tans and well-insured jewelry arriving with their self-confident husbands. Husbands who would grill her with those sorts of questions that self-confident husbands always feel compelled to grill people with: “So, what do you do with yourself out here all day, Eve?” “Manage the garden all on your own, do you?” It didn't matter that they would instantly forget her responses; she would still have to come up with some. It was an appalling thought. And then the women would begin comparing her to her mother. “You wouldn't think she was Virginia's daughter, would you?”

She'd felt all of a sudden as if she might faint, and had stood up straight and then lowered her head again to shake it off. But the dizziness had continued and with it had come a tightness at the base of her throat. She'd sat on the gravel, still morning-damp, with the scissors on her lap, hoping to recover. But she hadn't. Her heart had gone on crashing at her ribs as if it might explode. The early morning sky, flat and pale, had seemed to sink down and envelop her.

Eve had, at that moment, thought she was dying. Thought she would have no life without her mother after all. No life in which to enjoy her house, to read in bed if she chose to, to wear her hair loose without attracting negative comment. Gwen, coming upon her there, trembling and ashen, had feared the worst, too. But later, at the doctor's surgery in Sudbury, Eve's symptoms had been attributed to exhaustion. This diagnosis was confirmed the following week when extensive tests from the local hospital certified that she was in perfect health.

“Still going on, is it?” Gwen said now.

“Yes.”

“I had wondered.”

“This week, with Izzy and Ollie. It was ghastly. I can't go on this way, Gwen. I just can't.”

“No,” Gwen said. “No. You can't.”

The truth was that Izzy was as nervous about seeing her father as her mother was. She had seen him twice in seventeen years, and if she had spent any significant time with him before that, she couldn't remember it. While she waited nervously for him in the lobby of the very grand hotel in central London where he'd suggested they have lunch, she was suddenly struck with the fear that she would not recognize him.

“Izzy,” a voice said at her back.

She turned and there he was. Exactly the same. Extremely handsome and beautifully dressed. Grayer, but exactly the same.

“I'm so sorry if I've kept you,” he said, glancing at his watch.

“No. I was very early,” she said.

He smiled.

“I thought we'd have a drink before we went to our table…if you'd like to.” He suddenly seemed unsure, too, and that relaxed her somewhat.

“Of course, yes. Why not?”

“This way then.” He stood back to let her pass. They walked through an arched doorway and went into a large high-ceilinged room where prettily covered chaise lounges and gilt-edged chairs clustered around piecrust tables. “A champagne cocktail, my dear?” he asked, regaining his charm and composure as they sat.

“Yes. Thank you.”

“So,” he said, settling, adjusting his jacket. “Tell me about this chap. Does he deserve you?”

Izzy's first response was nervous, girlish. She wanted to impress him with Ollie. But then she caught herself. Who was this man to question her choices? He had deserted her as a child and barely made any attempt to contact her since. Cards at Christmas and birthdays attached to exorbitant, meaningless gifts. No, she would not have it.

“We're very happy,” she replied. Her drink arrived, and she lifted it and sipped it with tight lips.

“Good,” Simon said, appraising her. She was good-looking, he thought, but lacked her mother's prettiness. Eve had that soft look, like a watercolor. Izzy was all angles. Like her grandmother.

“My condolences on the loss of your grandmother, Izzy,” he said steadily.

Izzy did not loosen any at this. “Thank you,” she replied and put her glass down.

“And your mother,” Simon went on. “How is she?”

Izzy caught his eyes; there was a sincerity in his tone. “She's…she's fine,” she said, feeling a novel loyalty to Eve. Not wanting to say too much about her to this man, this stranger.

Her father's voice interrupted her thoughts.

“I'm so glad you called, Izzy,” he said, leaning toward her slightly as if he might take her hand.

Izzy, though, was still feeling defensive. “Well, it wasn't as if you would have called me,” she said.

Simon Petworth looked stung. But he caught himself.

“No…no, you're right. I would not have called you. But that does not mean I didn't want to hear from you, wasn't happy to hear from you. It will sound trite, I know, but I have thought about you a great deal over the years.”

Izzy was shocked by how much she wanted this to be true. She tried to counter her weakness by bristling.

“It does sound trite, I'm afraid.”

“Yes…yes. Anyway, let's see about some food, and then we can discuss this wedding. I realize I have let you down in many ways, Izzy, but I assure you I will do my best to make sure you have the wedding of your dreams.” He raised an elegant hand and momentarily an ornately uniformed waiter brought their menus.

Izzy relaxed slightly when she opened hers. Food was familiar territory.

The waiter, who had greeted her father by name, said, “We have carpaccio today, madam. And also lobster bisque. Or if something lighter appeals, perhaps a little consommé.”

A lively discussion ensued before she settled on quail eggs and veal.

“Very good, madam,” the waiter said, as if it had been a delight to serve her. And then he turned to her father to take his order for broad bean salad and Dover sole before the sommelier was summoned. By the time the wine was settled, it was time to go to their table.

When they were seated in the opulent dining room, Simon looked at his daughter fondly and said, “I see your mother has raised you with her love of food. Do you cook as well as she does?”

“I don't cook,” she said. And then, suddenly fed up with all this parent business, with both of them, she said, “And it was Gin-gin who raised me. My mother always kept herself out of the picture. Not so far out of the picture as you, granted, but out of it nonetheless.”

Simon Petworth looked at this striking girl who was his blood and his features stilled. “Your mother is a fine woman, Izzy. There is not an atom in her that isn't decent, and unless she has changed very much, I doubt that she has ever done anything deliberately unkind to you or anyone else.”

Izzy was taken aback. He had spoken to her sternly. He had sounded like…a father.

“Well, no,” she said, pausing as her quail eggs were laid in front of her with some ceremony. After the white wine was poured, she said, “No, not unkind, I just, well, she didn't seem terribly interested in me. Not like Gin-gin was.”

“Gin-gin,” Simon answered with obvious control, “was your grandmother, and I understand that you had a great deal of affection for her.”

Izzy was about to respond to this, but his expression warned her off.

“But you were alone in that. No one else could abide the woman. If she was good to you, I am glad—it may absolve her somewhat in death—but she was never good to your mother. In fact, it is to my great shame that I allowed her to treat your mother the way she did and that I abandoned your mother to that. I feel as badly about that now as I do about abandoning you. Virginia Lowell was a calculating, ruthless bully, and she treated her daughter like a slave. I suspect Eve simply let her mother take over your upbringing because she was too terrified to do anything else.”

He ended his speech then, and began to eat methodically. The charged air hung between them.

It was Izzy who spoke first.

“I would like to have my reception at Hadley Hall,” she said.

“Very good,” Simon said. “Yes, that will be fine. Simply make any arrangements you choose and have the paperwork sent to me. Whatever you want will be fine.”

Izzy was feeling disturbed. She was not used to feeling disturbed and she didn't like it. Perhaps her face signaled her bewilderment.

“I'm sorry, Izzy,” her father said. “I do understand you cared for your grandmother.”

“Loved my grandmother,” Izzy corrected.

“Yes, loved your grandmother. But you are a young woman now, perhaps you'll have children of your own before too long. Try to be compassionate to your mother. We all owe her that.”

Izzy lowered her fork slowly and stared at the man who had made this statement.

“If you cared for her so much, why did you abandon her for that…” She stopped herself from using her grandmother's description.

Simon lowered his silverware, too, and returned his daughter's gaze. “I have no excuses. Reasons maybe, I was young and arrogant, and rather without guidance. I lost my own parents in my teens, as I'm sure you know.”

Izzy did know this. She acknowledged the fact with a brief nod as the table was being cleared of their first course.

“I regret…well, I cannot say I regret everything, because if I had not done what I did, I would not have my sons and I cannot say I regret them.”

There was another silence then, only slightly masked by the arrival of their main courses, the surgical table-side filleting of the sole, and the pouring of more wine. Simon realized that the mention of his sons had been inappropriate, cruel even, and Izzy was stunned by how much the comment had pained her. It was one thing that he had denied her any fathering, but this denial was all the more brutal when combined with the reminder that he had not inflicted it on his children from his second and third marriages. Boys, perhaps he was only interested in boys, she thought.

Simon spoke once the waiting staff had left the table. Izzy was staring vaguely at her plate and did not lift her utensils, so neither did he.

“I am a better parent to my sons than I am to you.”

“You
are
a parent to your sons,” Izzy stressed.

Simon winced at the amendment, but accepted it. Music from the small orchestra in the room where they'd had their drinks drifted in to them. “Yes,” he said quietly. “Izzy, I think that you and your mother have reason to detest me. I understand that. But I hope, too, that this meeting, and my help with your wedding perhaps, will put some of it right. I am not young anymore and life has taught me a few lessons, and I would like to make it up to you as best I can.”

Izzy was fighting tears at this point, and to mask this lack of composure, she at last lifted her knife and fork. Her father followed suit and, still eyeing her, took a bite of his fish. Izzy, slowly, forked a mouthful of veal between her pale lips.

“Up to your mother's standards, I trust?” He smiled gently. “She was always such a marvelous cook.”

“She still is,” Izzy said, and a small softening was established between them.

A short while later, after some light chat about Izzy's job and Ollie's job and Ollie's family, Izzy asked, “Who will you bring to the wedding with you? I assume you will come to my wedding?” Her smile was nervous.

“It's up to you, Izzy. Although I suggest that if you'd like to meet your st…” He held back from saying stepmother. “…Laura, and the boys, it would be best to do so before your wedding. Weddings can be overwhelming occasions. I should know,” he added.

Surprisingly, they both laughed.

After her father had put her in a taxi, diplomatically avoiding a too-familiar kiss or too-formal handshake by tenderly taking her upper arm in farewell, Izzy took her telephone out of her bag and rang her assistant to say, unusually, that she would not be coming back to the office. She felt more shaken, more unsure of herself, at that moment than she had ever felt in her life.

“I don't like it,”
Jack said quietly to Dex. They were sitting at a bar next to a swimming pool in Los Angeles.

“Don't like what?” Dex asked while watching, with no fervent purpose, the lime triangle punctuating the lengthy back view of a passing blonde.

“Feeling aimless,” Jack said.

“Works for me,” Dex said, turning to him.

Jack laughed. “You're not aimless. You're ‘Up and Coming.' Maître d's know your name.”

“I'm too old for ‘Up and Coming',” Dex said. “I'm an ‘Overnight Success.'”

They both laughed. Dex was in California for meetings and other things that Jack didn't really follow, to do with his new movie. He was busy but living in a good hotel, and Jack, on a whim, had flown out to join him for a weekend. It had turned into a week. A week during which he hadn't written a word, although he'd intended to.

Brooke, Dex's daughter, suddenly, sparklingly teenaged, had joined them for a couple of days, and then, in the wake of that convivial visit, Jack had determined to work. But he'd missed Brooke. Not so much Brooke herself, whom he barely knew, but her energy, the playful affinity between her and Dex. He'd been enthralled by it, had wanted to be part of it, and had wanted Brooke to like him. Maybe we're hardwired, he'd thought after she'd left, to want the young to like us, to want to be near them. Maybe our pleasure in their infectious greenness drives us to protect them—evolutionary yin and yang.

In Brooke's absence, Dex was around less again and Jack told himself he'd write. But although it wasn't his style to ball up pages and toss them dramatically into a wastebasket, he'd felt like it once or twice over the past couple of days. Looking over the pool from the suite attached to Dex's, he'd felt like it. The comparison was so hard to avoid. There was Dex, out advancing his career, and there was he—staring at a blank screen, like a sap. It made him feel inadequate—a new feeling. One of too many lately.

“I've decided to take a break from writing after I finish this one,” he said, although he hadn't really decided it until right then. He didn't know what had changed. But something had. Undeniably it had. The novel, this new one, wasn't making any headway. Hadn't been making any headway even before he'd come to L.A. It was one of the reasons he'd come, and then stayed. To escape the concrete acceptance of the nonwriting. Even when he was writing, it was, for the first time, against the tide, rather than with the push at his back. Which came first, he wondered, the failure or the feeling of it?

“I think this series has run its course,” he said.

Dex cupped his hands to his lips and spoke in a movie trailer voice, “Six best-selling titles, three major motion pictures.”

“This one's not coming so easy. And anyway I don't want to just go on churning it out. I don't want to produce a load of derivative crap just because it's popular.”

Dex twisted his legs to face Jack. He removed his dark glasses and polished them slowly on his shirt, thinking. Then he clipped Jack, not hard, but resoundingly, upside the head.

“Listen to me, Coop, you prick. I am the self-indulgent one in this pairing. I am an actor, we're meant to be self-indulgent. You, on the other hand, are a straight-up decent guy. You are also extremely talented. The stuff you've written is popular because it's good, because it tells a good story and people want a good story. You entertain people, Jack, and that is not crap. It is important. It takes skill. It's a skill you've got, and if you don't wanna use it anymore, if you'd rather sit on your ass for the next twenty years, or look for some anemic hobby to fill your old age with, go ahead. You can afford never to work again, so that's the sort of luxury you can avail yourself of, but don't go whining about it. Not to me anyway.”

“Whining?”

“You were whining.”

The music at the bar was loud, and the California sunshine was making the skin of all the slick people glisten. Dex was looking younger by the day. He was looking, Jack had thought ever since he arrived, vibrant—vibrant and purposeful.

“If you really want something to take your mind off your nonexistent troubles, that li'l Hailey over there's got a yen for ya,” he said, nodding his head toward a pretty brunette, dancing in a pair of very short shorts on the other side of the pool. Hailey lifted her hair with one hand, raising a slim bare arm, and tossed it back over her shoulder. Then she looked toward Jack and smiled—a poppy, opening to the sun.

Jack smiled back, but it was a smile with no promise in it. “Gals like Hailey are part of the trouble, Dex. I just ain't equipped for them anymore.”

“They got pills for that, pardner.”

Jack laughed. The trip to the West Coast had been good in one respect: It had reminded him that, while he was wary still of being old, he didn't actually want to be younger. Younger was nice to look at, nice to be around, but it was just as complicated to live. He wanted, he'd realized, what he felt fifty oughtta have—children maybe, a Brooke of his own. And a wife. Not like Marnie, a real marriage. The way his parents had had a marriage. He wanted that. He wanted what he could have had with Paula all those years ago if only he'd been seasoned enough and smart enough to see it. A relationship with a woman he could talk to. He wanted a friend. And he wanted some sureness. Weren't you supposed to be sure of yourself by the time you were middle-aged? Wasn't that the compensation you got for your sagging butt and dependence on reading glasses?

Dex, looking at him as if he knew what he was thinking, said, “I'm gonna say this again, because you still seem to be determined to avoid the possibility of an available solution: What about Adrienne?”

“It may surprise you to hear that I have been thinking exactly that myself. What about Adrienne?” Jack said.

Gwen had made a play of standing over Eve while she made the doctor's appointment, handing her the little red leather index book she kept on her desk with telephone numbers in it, pointedly opened at “D.” But Eve would have made the appointment anyway. She had had enough. The talk with Gwen had let in the possibility of getting help, levered back the sides of the narrow crack in the wall of hopelessness that she'd never managed to crawl through on her own. She wanted to get help. She wanted to go to her daughter's wedding and behave like the mother of the bride, for Izzy's sake as much as for her own. She had never done enough for Izzy, simply stood back and let her mother and the nannies take over. She owed her. She was suddenly acutely conscious of that. She owed Izzy a mother.

The young locum in the surgery smiled warmly at Eve when she walked in. He was not much older than Izzy and his shirt was escaping from his trousers. “What can I do for you?” he asked, as if he already knew.

“I had a panic attack,” Eve said firmly.

“Uh-huh. I see there are some test results on your file from…last year and then there was a hospital visit a few weeks ago. Is that right?”

“Yes. There's nothing actually wrong with me,” Eve said.

The doctor looked at her.

“It's just anxiety. I get terribly anxious. But it feels…” She trailed off.

He looked at her for a moment then twisted back to the computer on his desk. “Certainly the results of the tests we've had from your last episode here, and then this more recent one, don't suggest any obvious physical cause. No heart irregularities and the lungs are clear. You have no history of asthma? Or family history?”

“No, none.”

“No dry cough, or more general episodes of breathlessness?”

“No.”

“Well, anxiety, or stress, could be at the root of your symptoms. I can refer you to someone who you could talk to about that. Therapy is often very helpful in these cases. In the meantime, a short course of medication can also be extremely effective.”

“Yes,” Eve said, though part of her still wanted to deny all this, to retreat into the coping Englishness she was infused with. And although she would have argued, if such a topic had ever come up in her hearing, that emotional and mental illnesses warranted the same sort of treatment as physical ones, she still wished she were seeking treatment for a broken arm. “Yes.” She sighed. “Yes, anything that might help would be very welcome.”

“Well, it's not going to get better overnight. You know that.”

“Yes, Gwen. I do.”

“But you've made a terrific start,” Gwen beamed.

“I hope so,” Eve replied.

Eve found the notion that Jackson Cooper would envy her ridiculous.

Izzy had been in touch with her father regularly since their lunch date. He had telephoned her the day afterward, and it had gone from there. But she had not mentioned this to her mother. She was not sure what had stopped her. In fact, she had only barely discussed it with Ollie. She had felt, strangely, guilty, but happy, too. It was perplexing. On the one hand, the bond with her father was growing; on the other, with that rush of fresh feeling, she was also aware of a new rawness with regard to her childhood. A grieving for what she hadn't had. Izzy was a young woman who had never really been a child; never thought of herself as a child. Her grandmother, who had been by far the strongest force in her youth, had always treated her like an adult. She had always wanted to be one. But lately there had been times when she'd wanted to be a little girl, wanted to be held in someone's arms and comforted like a little girl.

In fact, everything had shifted suddenly. Here was her father acting like her father, and here was her mother acting like…Izzy couldn't put her finger on what it was that Eve was acting like, but she certainly was not acting like Eve.

“I don't know what the problem is,” Ollie said. They were eating tapas in a noisy bar near Izzy's office.

“She's changed.”

“Changed good? Or changed bad?”

“Just changed.”

“Be specific.”

“Last night, when I telephoned her about the weekend, there was music playing in the background.”

“Well, that's bloody suspicious.”

“Don't be facetious, Ollie. You know what I mean.” She lifted a small circle of spicy sausage from her plate and then rejected it in favor of a sliver of squid. “It was jazz,” she said. She popped the squid into her mouth and made a face.