The Family Man (8 page)
T
ODD WILL SAY,
"I wasn't even in sight of the restaurant, yet I looked up and there's this guy checking his watch—gray-haired, lawyerly, obviously nervous, obviously love-starved despite devastating good looks—so I say to the woman with the twin stroller who's standing between us, 'Excuse me. May I trade places with you? I think that handsome gentleman to your right is my blind date.'"
In fact, all that is exchanged on the corner of 86th and Broadway is a "Henry?" which evokes a "Todd?" followed by a handshake and a shared laugh over sound hunches. "Delighted to meet you," says Henry.
The light changes. Todd will testify, in his future Technicolor version, that the mom with the stroller calls over her shoulder, "Have fun, you two."
They don't even make it to the sushi restaurant, but duck into a bar that is near-empty, its small round tables and little lamps suggesting a swing-era nightclub. They both order martinis, the house specialty: one cantaloupe and one peach.
What does Todd look like? Later Henry will describe him this way to Sheri Abrams, PhD: You know the short, redheaded boy in high school whose mother put creases in all his clothes? Clean-cut and very cute? Probably on the gymnastics team? Add thirty years and a few inches to the waist.
Et voilà.
Denise is, of course, the men's first topic of conversation. Henry asks how they met, and Todd says, "I crashed a party she threw. No, I take that back. I went along to help the caterer, a friend; okay, maybe a boyfriend—that lasted a minute. But I was useless, all thumbs—ever try to pipe deviled egg filling out of a pastry bag?—so I took off my apron and joined the party. Eventually Denise noticed me and asked, 'Have we met?' I said, 'I came with the caterer, but he threw me out of the kitchen so I decided to console myself with a glass of your excellent champagne.' She didn't mind. In fact, she was very gracious. She introduced me to the guests of honor—her stepsons—as her new friend Todd and didn't miss a beat."
"I heard about that party," says Henry. "The boys had just been made partners."
"Tweedledee and Tweedledum. Ever have the pleasure?"
"Never."
"Not that I talked to either one of them, but my impression was: merchant princes who think they're Donald Trump Junior and Donald Trump Junior the Second. Ever meet the husband?"
"I did once. Socially." Henry raises his eyebrows above the rim of his glass. "Before I knew he was sleeping with my wife."
"Ouch. Sorry. But I have to say I didn't see what the attraction was, unless he cut a more dashing figure in his adulterous youth. Quite the gasbag, too. He gave an endless self-congratulatory toast to his new partners that was all about the boom in the box business. I sneaked out before he finished."
Henry confides, "You know, I'm sure, that he left everything to those boys."
"I most certainly did
not
know!"
"There was a pre-nup. Which Denise signed, then promptly suppressed. As you can imagine, she was back in touch with me with a vengeance."
"Not for money!"
"For advice. And—please note the irony of this—a shoulder to cry on."
"What about the daughter?"
"What
about
the daughter?" Henry asks carefully.
"Diana? Athena? Something mythological, right?"
Henry says only, "It's Thalia, who was one of the Muses. So, yes, mythological."
Todd leans closer, squints diagnostically. "And how should I characterize that expression on your face?"
Don't be tempted,
Henry thinks.
Don't start waxing euphoric and paternal.
"You can trust me," says Todd. "I mean that." His grin is gone, replaced with a gaze so solemn that the next thing Henry says is, "Thalia and I are reunited. You probably don't know that I adopted her when I married Denise, then lost her in the divorce."
"I didn't even know about
you,
let alone which child came from which husband and who was lost in the process."
"I was husband number two. Denise's first husband died when Thalia was a baby."
"Which makes her how old now...?"
"Twenty-nine." Henry smiles. "Which is all I can say unless I have your promise that what I tell you won't be reported to her mother."
Todd raises his right hand. "I solemnly swear that whatever you say to me, right now, or next week, or a year, or ten years from now, will stay between the two of us." Another solemn gaze goes straight to Henry's bloodstream. Immediately, Todd says, "Sorry. Tell me about the daughter."
"Thalia. She's great. I didn't have to go looking for her because she works at the salon where I have my hair cut."
"Who recognized who?"
"I saw her picture at Denise's and recognized her."
"And what's the confidential part I must never tell Denise?"
Henry, though still holding on to news of the misguided Hollywood arrangement, feels free to say, "We've been reunited. So far, seamlessly. She seems to have come through the divorce, and through Denise, unscathed."
"And how did Thalia turn out?"
"Wonderfully."
"Actress, right?"
"Some TV. Making inroads."
"Beautiful?" Todd asks.
"More interesting than beautiful."
"Spoken like a true father," says Todd.
"Thank you," says Henry. "And just in case I forget to mention it, Denise doesn't know that Thalia and I have been reunited."
"Doesn't know and won't find out?"
Henry smiles. "I think I'm punishing her. She had an exclusive for twenty-five years, and it's my turn. It helps that mother and daughter aren't on speaking terms—"
"Since when?"
"I don't ask—"
"I could ask for you," Todd says happily.
Too much, too fast? Henry wonders. But no, he's wrong. Todd is joking. Todd is not overstepping the line between Thalia and the rest of the population that Henry is monitoring. Todd lowers his voice. "You weren't at Krouch's funeral, were you?"
"I wasn't. But I heard about it. Denise told me she rambled on about stupid stuff. Trivia. She couldn't get out of the hole she was digging."
"Did she tell you that the sons walked out? First one, then the other, wives trotting after them. Then one by one their stiff-necked friends."
"I didn't get the impression it was that bad."
"Bad? It was fabulous! Although I may not be the best judge of what's offensive at the funeral of someone I hardly knew."
"At what point did the sons walk out?"
"I believe," Todd says dryly, "that that particular point would have been ... let me see ... the vasectomy soliloquy."
"No," says Henry. "Not even Denise—"
"Yes! To the tune of:
He never told me until we were married that I couldn't have his child. Well, maybe I knew, but it didn't sink in until we were on our honeymoon. He had you two boys, the heir and the spare, and Thalia, you were his princess, DNA notwithstanding. My biggest regret
—read: grudge—
was that we didn't have a child together.
Subtext: to even the sides. And then we heard how the boys' away games ruled their weekends for at least a dozen years, further testimony to Glenn being father of the year, every damn year, all twenty-four of them. P.S. He had no interest whatsoever in reversing the vasectomy."
Henry, who has been shaking his head throughout, asks wearily, "Was she drunk?"
"If only!"
"Was this in a church?"
"A chapel in a funeral home. Do you think she'd have said anything different if it was Saint John the Divine?"
"No wonder she's been ostracized. No wonder she turned to me. I must be the only person she knows who missed this."
Todd says, "
Please
don't be saintly about this. Because if you're saying Denise isn't the most outrageous widow who ever gave a eulogy, I'm afraid I have to go home now."
Does Henry feel a pinch of loyalty or pity for the inappropriate Denise? No, he does not. He slides the check toward his side of the table and says, "I'll get this one."
Up the street, they secure the last two seats at the sushi bar, not ideal for conversation, but most agreeable for meaningful contact between adjacent shoulders.
"What do I
do?
" Todd volunteers before Henry asks. "That's always an awkward question."
Henry waits, hoping this isn't the moment when Todd's resumé reveals something unsavory and insurmountable, or a lifetime of dead-end auditions. "Awkward because...?" Henry ventures.
"Because it usually stops the conversation dead."
"Out with it," Henry says. "Unless it's something I wouldn't want to testify to under oath."
"Here it is," says Todd. "The humble truth: I'm in retail. In table tops. At Gracious Home."
On one hand, Henry is relieved; on the other, a question relating to
Last year of education completed?
rears its snobbish head. "Which store?" he asks.
"Here," says Todd. "Broadway and Sixty-seventh. And, believe me, I know: It's not a career a mother brags about over a game of bridge."
"But you like it?"
"I do," says Todd. "I like my coworkers, and"—he smiles—"I get to make the Upper West Side's table tops a little more beautiful."
One of the two sushi chefs puts the finishing touch on an elaborate roll, looks up, and asks the men what they want.
"Are we hungry?" Todd asks Henry.
"Quite."
Todd points to a model vessel behind the chef. "I've always wanted to get the Samurai Sushi Boat. You game?"
The chef asks, "You like challenging?"
"Excuse me?" asks Henry.
"Challenging or beginner?"
Henry turns to Todd, who says, "Let's go for it."
"Challenging," says Henry. "And we'll get two more Kirins."
All tables are filled, and there is a line of patrons waiting to be seated. Anyone observing the two men would be surprised to learn that they'd only met this night. They are both whittling splinters off their chopsticks as they joke about the big boat that will—in both retellings—become the centerpiece anecdote of Our First Date.
T
HALIA MOVES INTO
the maisonette with the help of two uninsured and unincorporated young men whom she found on Craigslist. From his lookout on the second floor, Henry hurries downstairs to meet the truck as its front wheels bump up onto his sidewalk. Thalia exits the truck's cab, looking a little more animated than a week of packing should induce and carrying a pint-sized Christmas cactus, which, she reports, has never bloomed.
For the next hour, Henry silently notes the transport of her sad little lot: a futon frame and its mattress, covered with a fitted sheet he recognizes as Marimekko, circa 1970. An unmoored door and the concrete blocks that hold it up; lumber and more concrete blocks that become a bookcase; a matching rattan love seat and chair with jungle-print cushions; a dozen boxes of college texts and paperback novels; two plastic hourglass-shaped stools in lime green that turn out to be night tables; a computer, a printer, and a naked headless mannequin.
This charmless junk depresses him. "Did your mother and Glenn ever visit your apartment?" he asks as he watches her unwrap what she is euphemistically calling china.
"Probably. Maybe not Mott Street, but the one before that. Why?"
Instead of answering truthfully—
How could they let you live an unfurnished life?
—he asks what he can do to help. Does she need tea towels or sponges? His cleaning woman put the shelf paper in. Does she like it? Gracious Home had other patterns, but he thought polka dots.
"I do. I love them." She is lining up mugs, all four of them. When he compliments a pale blue cup and saucer, Thalia says, "This was from my Angel Sister my freshman year in college. Do guys have Angel Sisters? Like secret Santas? She was a senior on my floor and one of those beautiful creatures that everyone worshiped from afar." She holds the cup up into the light of the hundred-watt ceiling bulb. "You can almost see through it. It wasn't new when she gave it to me. It was hers, and she must've wrapped this up in a hurry for the big Angel Sister reveal. But I liked that better, that demigoddess Jodi Kleinholz would keep a teacup and saucer in her dorm room—and then it was in mine."
The way she is talking about and gazing at her cup and saucer is breaking Henry's heart—this love of beautiful things narrowed to two pieces of bone china. He squelches his impulse to say, "Please come look through my cabinets. Please take what you want."
Thalia must see Henry's pained expression because she says, "They're giving me a decent housing allowance and I'm sure it would cover ... stuff. The stylist threatened to take me shopping, but I don't want this place to look decorated. It's supposed to be the three humble rooms of a struggling actress."
"But if you like pretty things, and if you're not inviting the paparazzi inside...?"
"I'm not. But they have their telephoto lenses and probably their night vision goggles. I've been warned never to walk around naked or even in my underwear in case..." She tilts her head toward the still-quiet street outside.
Just as Thalia pronounces
underwear
the movers enter the kitchen with a clipboard and a pen. "We need your signature," says the driver and apparent boss. Since they've arrived, Henry has noticed a surfeit of good manners: This boss has been instructing his sidekick to wipe his feet each time they cross the threshold and has run his palm along the walls like a man who understands wainscoting. Henry has also noticed that this team leader is quite good-looking—dark-haired, olive-skinned, hazeleyed, untattooed, Strand Books T-shirt, hair well cut.
"It's just to say that your possessions arrived safely and nothing broke in transit," the man explains.
"I haven't unpacked everything yet," says Thalia, not altogether inhospitably, "so I can't really say that with any authority, can I?"
"Anything particular you're worried about?"
"Dishes and stuff"," says Thalia, and gestures to the one unpacked box on the counter.
The man smiles. "How about if we unwrap the remaining valuables before I leave, and we'll see what damage we've wrought." He extends his hand—as if they haven't been in each other's company for three hours—and says, "I'm Philip."
"Then why is your friend calling you that other thing?" Thalia asks.
"Nickname," says Philip. "Dino. Left over from college."
"Meaning what?"
"Meaning nothing except it's short for Dinosaur."
"And why is that?" she asks.
Philip, uninvited, is unwrapping mismatched glasses that appear to have started their lives as jelly jars. "I got a late start. Worked construction. I was a couple of years older than the morons in my house."
His buddy is standing in the doorway, looking resigned in a way that makes Henry think that Philip's conversational overtures are not atypical.
Henry says to Thalia, as lightly as he can manage, "Don't forget this young man and his partner are paid by the hour."
Philip says, "That's true. But the clock stopped ten minutes ago. That's Sid. And this gentleman?"
"Henry," Thalia provides. "Landlord and guardian."
Henry nods, then turns his attention to the document on the clipboard.
"He's a lawyer," Thalia warns.
"Uh-oh," says Philip. Then, "Just kidding. It's boilerplate, off the Web. All it says is, 'We didn't break anything or destroy your property.'"
Henry reads, purses his lips, nods, and passes her the clipboard. She scrawls a signature, which Philip studies for a few seconds. "
Thalia,
" he says. "That's an unusual name. Is it French?"
"Greek," says Thalia. "My mother's of Greek descent."
"I had one Greek grandparent," says Philip. My mother's mother. I grew up celebrating two Easters."
"Really? Me, too." They unwrap and inspect in silence, side by side at the counter, until Thalia asks, "So do most of your friends call you Philip or Dino?"
"Both. Either. Just when I think I've heard the end of it and I've been reincarnated as an adult, someone pops up from my past and I'm Dino again."
"Hey,
Philip
" says Sid. "We were due in Park Slope a half-hour ago."
Philip takes the clipboard, scribbles some numbers, tears off the top yellow sheet, and gives it to Thalia.
"Don't I need to write you a check?" she asks.
Henry doesn't hear the answer because vendor and customer have left the kitchen and are conferring by the front door. Sid does not follow. Henry asks him after a minute has passed, "Is there more business to conduct?"
"Nope."
"She's kind of spoken for," Henry says. "Maybe you could tell him that."
"Maybe she's tellin' him right now."
Henry says, "I'm sure you don't have to stay in the kitchen." Sid slides his baseball cap back on his head and forward again. "Are you her father?"
"Stepfather," then thinks to add, "and I live upstairs."
"He's an okay guy. And smart. This is his day job."
"What does he do at night?"
"For work? He's a deejay."
"Oh," says Henry. "The real thing."
Henry doesn't know what defines
real thing
in that field. His only frame of reference is the freelancing radio disc jockeys who were hired to spin forty-fives at dances in his youth.
"He's got a following," says Sid. "Mostly East Village. But it's growin'."
"Do you do that, too?"
Sid laughs. "No. I do
this.
Days, and small jobs at night that I can do by myself. I've got a kid."
"You really should get insurance," says Henry. "You could charge more and do bigger jobs."
He shakes his head. "Not my call."
From the outer room comes a cheerful, "All set, dude!"
Sid tips his Mets cap and heads for the front door.
All set with what?
Henry doesn't like this development at all.
"It isn't me being prudish," he explains, raising his voice to be heard above the vacuum cleaner. Thalia is cleaning up the detritus of packing materials, and Henry is trailing behind. "It's just that I know the signs—"
"Of what?"
"Of potential complications."
"If...?" she shouts.
"
If?
You can't mean that. Any minute now you're going to be publicly in love—nay, engaged—to Leif Dumont. You can't have a little thing on the side."
Thalia shuts off the vacuum and says, "Wow, cool," when the cord retracts with a loud swoosh.
"Maybe I'm wrong," Henry continues. "Maybe I was witness to nothing more than a gracious service person making pleasant conversation with his patron. Maybe you weren't aiding and abetting."
She points to the vacuum and asks, "Where does this go?"
"It's mine," he says. "I'll bring it back upstairs with me. You can borrow it anytime. Actually, Lidia will be giving this place the once-over Mondays and Thursdays."
"Thank you," says Thalia. "I'll reimburse you from my generous weekly housekeeping allowance."
"No, you won't."
Thalia links an arm through his and asks if his cappuccino machine is up and running.
"Absolutely! And I have paper cups and lids. I'll be right back."
"Don't be silly. I'll come with you."
On their way up the back stairway, Henry tells her that this passageway connected the servants' quarters to the main house.
Upstairs, Downstairs,
Upper West Side version. He turns at the top step and says, "I can't quite believe you're here. It's just hitting me that you actually live downstairs."
"It's so great," says Thalia. "It's like
Nancy Drew and the Hidden Staircase.
"
"Note the unlocked door," he says, "which will stay this way."
"I'll call first," she says.
After he's made their coffee, after he's led her to the library and he's lit the precise arrangement of logs and kindling in the fireplace, Henry says, "Again, it's not me being prudish or paternal. It's me being contractual with respect to your new friend."
"Leif?"
"Not Leif. The mover."
"Nope," she says. "Nothing to worry about."
"There wasn't an exchange of phone numbers?"
"Only because I checked the box that said he could use me as a reference."
"Is that wise?"
She sets her mug down on a
Raisin in the Sun
coaster after admiring it anew. "Okay. I'm not doing a good acting job here. Which might be a politer way of saying, I'm fibbing. But let me tell you why all of this is beside the point: Men don't follow up. You could tattoo your number on the palm of their hand and they still wouldn't call. They don't e-mail unless they've left a DVD at your place and want you to mail it back to Netflix. Okay, they send a text message, but it's
What was the name of that bar you told me about in Williamsburg?
If you run into one of them on the street he'll say, 'Oh, hi ... I was going to IM you. Maybe we can get together later this lifetime.'"
"This is very hard to believe," Henry says.
"Is it different for you? With your gang?"
Henry smiles. "We don't text message."
"Seriously, I did
not
mean to flirt back. But you might have noticed how attractive and charming he was for a straight guy."
"I might have," says Henry. "But here's the problem: Let's say he does call. You're not going to be able to say, 'I've signed up to be someone's girlfriend, but it's only a publicity stunt, so if you could keep that to yourself and call me in six months..."
Henry recognizes something in her face that her acting ability isn't masking—a war between her wanting to confess and wanting to protect him from the confession.
"You already told him," he guesses.
"Kind of..."
"A stranger you'd known for five minutes?"
"It
looked
like five minutes. But there were many hours of meaningful social intercourse at the other end. Then the ride over here took a half-hour. You learn a lot about someone from the way he reacts in heavy traffic. And would I be moving into a relative stranger's in-law apartment if I didn't have faith in my excellent judgment?"
"I'm listening," says Henry. "Nervously."
"Okay. This was very contractual: I made him swear on his mother's life that he'd never repeat what I'd told him."
"Which was what, exactly?"
"Mainly: That I had an acting gig coming up. That it involved a guy. It wasn't what it seemed. And he couldn't tell a soul."
"But you just finished telling me that men are utterly undependable—"
"Which is why I had him sign a confidentiality agreement! And you're forgetting he walked into the kitchen as we were discussing how I shouldn't walk around naked in case the paparazzi were outside. Where's he supposed to put that piece of information?"
Henry blinks, and his eyes stay shut for several long seconds. "How, may I ask, did you consummate a confidentiality agreement?"
"On his copy of the contract, the blue page. One sentence in legalese about never uttering a word. He signed it, dated it, and we shook hands."
Henry knows he cannot scold, cannot reveal his disappointment in Thalia, his distrust in the human race in general, or truck-driving deejays in particular. He gets up, adds a log to the ire, and jabs it with a poker.
"Henry. Okay. I know: I leap into things. Take this whole Leif deal. Sally Eames-Harlan calls me one day, and twenty-four hours later I'm eating bucatini across from my intended. And how about this? You and me. The father-daughter thing. I'm taking your name and your advice and wearing your dead mother's clothes on the strength of what? Trust and my excellent instincts." She pats the couch. "Come. Drink your coffee. I know you'll like this part: I didn't give him my number. I gave him
this
one. You can play Screener Dad. Suspicious Sitcom Dad. Won't that be fun? I thought it would be just the safety net you'd wholeheartedly approve of."
Henry curls his lip. "Monumental fun," he says.