The Stork Club (46 page)

Then, as David happily watched the train go round and round through the miniature village, clapping and shouting every time it passed, Rick made popcorn and strung all the pieces David hadn't eaten, and soon there was yards of it. Then he held David up high so the little guy could sling the long white strings across each branch
of the tree, because that was what Rick's parents had done with him every year when he was small.

After lunch they had a party to attend, so Rick bathed David and dressed him, showered and dressed himself, and pointed his car west toward the address on St. Cloud Road. There were live reindeer in the front yard, and a backyard full of imported snow, which, thanks to the cold wave, wasn't melting. There was an actor in a Santa Claus suit giving gifts to the children, pretty girls dressed as Santa's elves passing hors d'oeuvres, and a lot of familiar people from the business.

David sat in his usual spot on Rick's shoulders looking over the crowd. A few passersby waved to the cute baby as Rick stopped and talked about his latest projects with an agent from CAA and a guy he knew from Disney. Then at one of the buffet tables, without bothering to get a plate, he made himself a roast beef sandwich on a small roll, ate that quickly, and followed it with a ham sandwich, which he munched while he handed pieces of fruit up to David, who put them in his mouth and let their juice roll down his chin and onto Rick's head.

When a strikingly pretty young actress reached past Rick to get a napkin roll filled with silverware, he said to her, "I know it's probably the pineapple juice on my forehead that makes you think I'm attractive, isn't it?"

The girl looked blankly at him, then up at David, then back at Rick and said, "Ahhh, your grandson is really cute."

Rick let out a loud burst of a laugh in appreciation of the joke, then looked around to see who was watching. He was trying to figure out who had set the girl up to say that to him, but there was no one around that he recognized. She wasn't kidding, and certainly he was easily the right age for her to think that. But for some reason it didn't matter to him one bit.

"You know what?" he said to David as the girl strolled away. "I think it's time for you and me to go to the airport."

"And see airplanes!" David said in agreement.

Now the two of them were at the same gate where Rick stood lifetimes ago when he'd waited alone for the pregnant Doreen to arrive. She had been a little pink puff of a girl then, and he was aware that the time which had passed since he last saw her would make a difference in her appearance, but he wasn't prepared for the person who walked through that same door today. Something about her appearance, much more dramatic than the added years, was so different it startled him. It was her entire mien, her posture, the look in her eyes, and it could only be described as beaten.

The sight of Rick brought a nod of acknowledgment as their eyes met, but hers were the eyes of an unhappy woman. Light-years older and wiser than the ones that used to contain an irrepressible twinkle. The sight of David at Rick's side brought first a look of amazement but then a look of pain, filling Rick with instant regret that his hopes for this visit had been foolish, or worse yet, a cruel mistake.

"Hello, you guys," she said, offering her best smile, which was meager, and hugging Rick weakly. David grabbed Rick's pant leg and hid behind it.

"A shy guy, huh?" Doreen said and knelt, and when he peeked around and looked at her and repeated, "A shy guy," she squeaked happily, "He talks like a big boy!"

In the car she sat in the back with David and held his tiny hand, but said very little to Rick. "How's Uncle B.?" she asked at one point, and Rick filled her in on Bobo's life and illnesses and friends at the home, looking in the rearview mirror to see if she reacted, but for the most part she looked blankly out the window.

At the house she unpacked gifts, which she stacked under the tree, and then she walked around the kitchen helping Rick with the dinner preparations while she held David, who never left her arms for hours. He babbled, impressing her with his vocabulary, amusing himself by trying to remove the eyeglasses from her face.

When the last fork was laid on the table and the dinner was bubbling away on the stove, the doorbell rang.

"Yayyy," David shouted, running to the door.

God, they were a beautiful sight to Rick, the whole group of them standing in the doorway. What could make your heart dance like the faces of the people you loved? It was raining so they hurried in. Howard and Mayer and Mayer's billowy blond fiancée, Lisa, were holding brightly wrapped gifts. And Patty, smashing-looking in a bright red coat, was holding Bobo's arm, giving Rick a look he knew meant it had been a near miracle for her to get the old man here. But it was worth it all when David shouted, "Uncle Bobobobobobo!" and Bobo laughed a big hearty laugh, and said, "Hiya,
boychik
."

This is the best night of my life, Rick thought to himself as he took their coats and introduced Doreen to the boys and to Patty. I have a family. A support system, Barbara Singer calls them. Rick looked at Doreen, flushed and wiping her hands self-consciously on the kitchen towel she'd stuck in the waistband of her slacks. She was okay with Bobo, who greeted her warmly, but she seemed awkward with Patty and the boys and Lisa. A few times she called Patty "Mrs. Fall" and Rick overheard Patty say, "Please call me Patty."

Howard was focused on a computer game some friend had given him and he was pushing buttons so it blipped and bleeped. Soon Doreen was sitting next to him on the sofa, and Howard gave her a turn at it, and they were laughing together. Lisa oohed and ahhed over
David, and Mayer roughhoused with him. Rick carved the turkey and Patty arranged the plates in the kitchen and brought them to the table. By the time they were eating, Rick was relieved to see Doreen joking with both the boys and Lisa. Yes, she was doing fine, holding her own, seated next to David's high chair, wiping cranberry sauce from his chin.

"This kid's a genius," Howard said. "You know those games where they have all the different shaped holes and then the blocks to put in them? He never misses."

"That's because he has such great genes," Doreen said and laughed.

Bobo and Patty were chatting away too, and the time really felt right for what he wanted to say, so Rick picked up his spoon and tapped gently on his wineglass.

"Attention, please. I know as soon as this meal is over we're rushing over to the Christmas tree to dig into our gifts, but there's one gift I'd like to give separately from the others because this is for someone who has done so much for my life, and I want to acknowledge her with a gift that isn't under the tree."

As he was about to take the gift out of his pocket, he caught sight of Doreen's face and knew by the way she reddened and her half smile that she thought he'd been speaking about her. And that when she realized he wasn't, she might be hurt. When he looked at Patty he could tell by
her
expectant eyes that he had to go on. So he pulled the box out of his shirt pocket, looked at Patty, and said what he'd thought about for weeks. "If you like we can have a very long engagement until you decide how you feel, but I'd like to ask you to marry me and David too."

There was an instant of shocked silence until the two boys laughed and said, "Oh wow!"

"How romantic," Lisa said.

"Thank the good Lord I lived to see it," Bobo said chuckling.

Patty opened the box to see the diamond ring Rick had chosen after endless meetings with a jeweler. When she looked at Rick, her eyes were sparkling brighter than the stone and she said, "This is completely crazy. You're completely crazy, and I should take a long time to decide, like forty or fifty years. But right here in front of God and everybody, I have to admit I really would like to marry you both."

He stood, she stood, and they embraced. Mayer lifted David out of the high chair and squashed the little boy in a happy hug, and it sounded to Rick as if he said, "I've got another brother." Then Patty, visibly shaken, walked over to Bobo's chair and hugged the old man, who was grinning happily. The boys hugged their mother, and Mayer said, "My dad would have been happy about this. He loved you, Uncle Ricky." And Lisa hugged Patty and said, "Maybe we should have a double wedding," and Bobo said, "Just make it soon, will you, I'm a very old man."

Doreen had a smile on her face as she watched it all, as if she were watching a movie, and when Rick went over to hug her he felt her body tense. Maybe, he thought too late, making the announcement tonight when she was here was wrong. He had hoped it would make her happy to see David getting an experienced grown-up woman as a mother. But probably she felt afraid that her own relationship with David would now be threatened.

"She'll be good with him," she said as they all sat back down to eat.

Rick could hardly wait for them to open their gifts. Howard was fascinated with computers but was still using his old Apple II, so Rick bought him a brand-new Macintosh. There was a thirty-five-millimeter camera
Mayer had been longing for and Rick bought that for him with two lenses. Bobo liked to think of himself as a dapper dresser, so both Rick and Patty bought him clothes, including a beautiful robe from Neiman-Marcus. That way he could still look handsome to the ladies at the Motion Picture Home on those days when he was too tired to put on his street clothes.

For David's Christmas, Rick had gone totally berserk. A rocking horse, and a playhouse and a climbing gym for outdoors, a jeep that the boy could get inside and drive with his feet, and a whale he could sit on in the pool. Rick, so full of joy tonight, wondered where Christmas had been for him for so many years. Aside from a dinner with Bobo at some restaurant in the Valley, he had spent most of them at parties like the one he and David had attended that afternoon. Parties populated with people who took each other's hands in their own and with the most sincere expression they could muster looked into each other's eyes and said, "We're family." But not one of them gave a shit about the others, unless there was a deal to be made. Family.

One of Doreen's gifts from Rick was a college guidebook accompanied by a note which said
IOU four years of college tuition
, something he thought would thrill her, but instead he saw her trying to summon enthusiasm. She's a teenager, he thought, they live in the now, she doesn't understand at this moment what that's going to mean to her life. He wasn't surprised when the curling iron and hair dryer and vanity mirror Patty had bought for her got a bigger reaction.

On the last day of her visit, she was quiet, sitting next to David on the trip back to the airport. The baby, who had been chatty and giggly at first, fell asleep in the car seat.

"What have you told Bea about why you ran away?" Rick asked her, breaking the silence.

"Nothing yet."

"You know you have to tell her, don't you? To tell someone."

"Well, I didn't want to spoil everyone's holidays, because it's going to be ugly when I finally do tell. I've been thinking about exactly what I'm going to say," and for the first time since she arrived he heard a lilt in her voice, as if she knew what she was telling him now would please him. "But I'm just trying to figure out when the best time is to say it. I mean, Don and my sister have been fighting a lot. I keep thinking he's going to leave her any day now, and that'll make it easier to do what I have to do." Rick felt assured by the sound of hope in her voice that soon things would work out for the best.

"When you're ready to prosecute, I'll pay the legal bills, no matter how high they are. You're doing the right thing, you know that, don't you?"

"Oh yes" was all she said.

At the airport when her flight was called, she knelt and looked into David's little face, and Rick was amazed at the way the child didn't fidget, didn't move while she talked to him, but seemed to take every word with great seriousness.

"Good-bye, little darling," she said. "I can't tell you how I hate to leave you. But at least I know that you're getting a mother and some big brothers. And even though you may not exactly remember this visit years from now, somewhere inside you you'll know that I was here. Now give me one last hug, and please make it a big one, 'cause it's gonna have to last me for a long, long time."

David must have understood every word because he put his pudgy arms around her neck, his mother's neck, and squeezed very hard, while Rick looked at them together and wished he could stop her from leaving.
Call the police, adopt her too. But there was nothing he could do, until and unless she was willing to reveal what happened to her. He longed for the magical solution that could put him between her and the onslaught of pain she would have to face before things would get better for her.

"I love you," she said to David, then stood and hugged Rick. She was already turned toward the jetway when she tossed the words "And I love you too" over her shoulder, and was gone.

She'll tell Bea, he promised himself. But for weeks he couldn't get the image of the once feisty girl who had walked like a zombie through their Christmas together out of his head.

The day the letter arrived at the office it was opened first, as were all letters to the office, by Andrea, who came in and handed it to him, and without even seeing it he knew by her face who it was from and what it would say. And as he read it, he felt as though he'd been slammed against the wall.

Dear Mr. Reisman,

      
I am writing this to tell you we lost our sweet Doreen this week, when she took her own life. She didn't leave a note, but for a really long time she seemed sad and scared to me. I know she trusted you a lot and I did too, or I wouldn't have let her come and stay with you at Christmas, so I figured you would want to know.

      
That little baby was always in her heart. Maybe giving him up was too hard for her to live with, or maybe I was wrong and being able to come and see him wasn't the best thing. I wish I knew, though it wouldn't bring her back. Maybe some boy at school hurt her and broke her heart. My other kids are feeling really awful that she's gone.