Under the Influence (12 page)

I
t was June now, and I hadn't been over to Swift and Ava's for a while. Normally I was there almost daily, working on my photography project for Ava, but the Havillands had been off at Lake Tahoe, and then I'd been over at Elliot's house in Los Gatos. He'd been on vacation, and I'd had no jobs, either, so we'd driven up the coast and gone camping for a few nights. That Saturday, when we got back, we'd gone bike riding, and the next night he'd invited a few of his friends over and barbecued chicken. Nothing like the kind of gatherings that took place on Folger Lane, but we'd had a nice time together.
Nice.
I couldn't think the word now, let alone say it, without hearing Ava's voice in my ear.

Just nice?

The morning after I returned from our camping trip, I headed over to the Havillands' to get back to work on the book project. But above all, I wanted to see Ava. She was there in the driveway to greet me, calling out my name even before I got out of my car. Lillian and Sammy raced in circles around me like long-lost friends.

“Do you have any idea how much I missed you?” she said. “I know I used to get along fine without you, but honestly I don't know how.”

She reached out her long, sculpted arms to throw around my neck. I breathed in her gardenia perfume.

“Estella just came back from the market with the croissants and they're still warm,” she said. “You have to tell me everything.”

There wasn't a lot to say. When I was going on awful dates, I'd had a million stories for her. Now that I was spending time with Elliot, there was only one.

“I'm happy,” I told her. “I know it sounds crazy, but I think I might actually love this man.”

“That's great, honey,” she said. I couldn't say why, but something in her response left me feeling faintly deflated. I had the sense I'd disappointed her, fallen short of her hopes. As if I was her child, and I was telling her I'd gotten into a program to become a dental assistant, when she'd expected me to be a cardiac surgeon.

I had thought Ava might like to hear more about my trip to the Sierras. Or that we might talk about Elliot and me. I had been looking forward to telling her more, though not so much the intimate details.

In the past, I had always told Ava everything. But I felt a new and unprecedented sense of protectiveness around this relationship. Still, I had pictured the two of us sitting in the garden, maybe out by the pool, sharing iced coffee and discussing our men. Planning a dinner—just the four of us, maybe. Though early on in my relationship with Elliot the Havillands had professed a desire to meet him, nearly two months had passed since we'd started seeing each other, and they had yet to follow up with an invitation.

“Listen,” Ava said now, when we got in the door. “I'm hoping you can do me a favor. You remember Evelyn Couture?”

This was the rich widow from Pacific Heights whom Swift had befriended somehow, who'd shown up—with her driver—at the Havillands' last couple of parties. An unlikely friend for Ava and Swift, but you never knew who those two would take under their wing. I figured they'd noticed she was lonely. Maybe she had no family, or the family she had only wanted her money.

“She's moving out of her house on Divisadero and moving into a condominium in Woodside,” Ava said. “And she's just overwhelmed, trying to figure out what to do with all her things. I volunteered to help her.”

Ava never acknowledged any limitations created by being in the chair, but I had to ask her. It seemed unlikely that the house would be handicapped accessible. What was she planning to do?

“Those Pacific Heights mansions are impossible!” she said. “Maybe she'll have some lovely giant of a houseboy to carry me up the stairs and set me on one of her velvet couches. More likely I'll need to drop you off. I know you'll be amazing at calming her down. Evelyn needs help making a plan. She has so much stuff in that house, she'd never know where to start.”

There was no houseboy, of course. Ava left me at the house on Divisadero and went to Pilates, in a building that was handicapped accessible, and did some other errands in the city—hair, brows, therapist. I spent the rest of the morning and part of the afternoon with Evelyn Couture, helping her sort through the clothes she'd be donating to an upscale resale shop, the proceeds from which would benefit the ballet. Before I left (Ava having pulled up in front to retrieve me), Evelyn presented me with a brooch in the shape of a butterfly and a pair of earrings still in their Macy's box with the price tag attached: $14.95.

“That's so Evelyn,” Ava said, when I showed her the earrings. “Let's just hope she's more generous with her donations to our foundation. We've got high hopes.”

We both knew the big moment for that would be Swift's sixtieth-birthday party, when the Havillands would go public with their plan for free spay-and-neuter clinics in all fifty states. The Havilland Animal Centers, under the auspices of BARK.

“Just because I asked you to help Evelyn out today, I don't want you to think that I don't recognize your professionalism as a photographer,”
Ava said as we were driving back to Portola Valley from the city. “This book you're making for us, it's going to be a real artwork. Today was just greasing the wheels. You know the kind of thing you sometimes need to do, when people have a lot of money and you want to keep them happy.”

“I
have these friends,” I had told Elliot the first night we met. “Wonderful people. The best friends I ever had. They sort of took me under their wing. They're like my family.”

The weekend we went to Mendocino I had told him the whole story about what happened with Ollie. That terrible moment in the courtroom when it felt as if the building were crashing down over me, and after, packing my son's belongings in cardboard boxes and trash bags. My worries about Dwight losing his temper with Oliver and Cheri ignoring him. My hope of someday—when the lawyer was finally paid off—hiring a new attorney, a better one, and trying to get the custody order changed. But all that seemed like an impossible goal.

“You're not the first person on earth to get a DUI,” Elliot said. “You go to AA. You don't drink anymore. Can't you at least bring your son over to your apartment sometimes?”

“I keep asking, but Dwight never allows Ollie to spend the night at my place,” I said. “It's like going to the principal's office. Every time I stand on Dwight's doorstep to see Ollie, I feel like this pathetic loser.”

“Never mind what they think about you,” Elliot said, “so long as you get to spend time with your son.”

“But Ollie never seems to want to see me anymore,” I said, quieter now. “I think he's angry at me. Even though he's not close with his father, I'm the one he blames.

“Then there's the whole thing about the Sacramento relatives,” I continued. “He's always getting invited to these elaborate birthday parties on weekends. Bouncy houses and magicians and trips to a water park.”

“One thing Ollie doesn't get over there,” Elliot said—he took my hand here—“is you. He might not even know it yet, but he needs his mother. Once you get to spend some real time with him again—not just an hour here or there—you can rebuild his trust.”

An idea had occurred to me, in fact: something that would entice Ollie to make an overnight visit, if his father okayed it and we could find a weekend when he wasn't all booked up with social engagements. I'd bring him to Swift and Ava's.

In the years since my marriage had ended, I'd come to feel that what I offered Ollie now—because it didn't come with the trappings of family life—was no longer enough. But at the Havillands', family life was always going on. I knew the house on Folger Lane would be just about irresistible to an eight-year-old boy, with the pool and all the things Swift had bought for Cooper when he was a kid: the jukebox, the pinball machine, the professional-quality air hockey table, the DJ turntables and mixing board. What were a bunch of PlayStation games and a Wii compared to that? And I could offer my son Ava and Swift—Swift in particular, who was in certain ways just like a boy himself.

Ollie would love Swift. And as a boy who had asked for a puppy since he was three years old, I knew he'd love the dogs. As the son of a father who always seemed to be yelling at him for not cleaning up his room, Ollie would love the relaxed, easy way life went on Folger Lane, where a person's one responsibility was to have fun.

The next day, over lunch in their garden, I asked the Havillands if I could bring Ollie over one weekend day. “I'd love for you to meet him,” I told them. “I know he'd love it over here. And he'd love you.”

No need for convincing. “It's about time we had a kid over here again,” Swift said. “With my boy off at that expensive business school of his.”

“We have a kid here,” Ava said. “I'm looking at him. What Swift really means is, he could use a playmate. So by all means bring Ollie over, Helen. The sooner the better.”

That night I called my ex-husband to suggest that Ollie spend the night with me the following weekend. “If you want to ask Oliver, be my guest,” he said. He put our son on the line. “Your mother has something to ask you,” he said, handing over the receiver.

”I have these friends who've got a pool,” I told Oliver. It was a bribe, and I knew that, and I didn't care. “Also they've got a boat. I was thinking it might be fun, if you came over here next weekend, we could spend some time over there. Maybe have a cookout or something.”

“I don't know how to swim,” Ollie said. His voice was flat, wary, as it nearly always was now when I talked with him.

“It could be a good opportunity to work on that,” I said. “And they have dogs.”

He hesitated.

“Three of them,” I said. “Their names are Sammy and Lillian and Rocco. Sammy loves playing Frisbee.”

Partly I hated it that I was using the Havillands and their dogs as bait this way. But I just wanted to get Ollie back with me, one way or another, someplace where we could settle in with each other a little.

“Okay,” Ollie said.

We set a date for the following weekend. I'd be picking Ollie up Saturday morning, bringing him over to Ava and Swift's. Swift would grill burgers. Ava would make her homemade ice cream. There was no telling what else Swift would come up with, but I knew it would be something Ollie had never experienced before, something wonderful.

What I didn't feel I could do—because I didn't want one thing to go wrong, or risk upsetting Ollie—was include Elliot. I was nervous telling him, but he said he understood.

“You're wise not to introduce your son to the man in your life until you feel really sure of where you're headed,” Elliot said.
The man in my life.
He was calling himself that.

“It's okay,” he said. “I'm a patient man. Meeting Ollie means a lot to me. I want to do this right. I plan to be in your life—in both of your lives—for a long time.”

T
he weekend came.

I changed four times before making the drive to Walnut Creek to pick my son up at his father's house. Dress, shorts, dress again, jeans. In the end I decided that the best idea was to look as if I hadn't been trying so hard, which was what brought me to the jeans. I had also noted, the last time I'd attended one of Ollie's games, that his stepmother, Cheri, appeared to have put on weight, so I liked it that I was thinner than usual, myself, and definitely slimmer than the woman for whom my husband had left me.

“I hate it about myself that I still care about looking good when I go over there,” I told Ava.

“You're human,” she said. “Look at Swift and me. I don't have a doubt in the world that he adores me, but on the rare occasions when I know we're going to run into the monster woman”—this would be Swift's first wife, Valerie, Cooper's mother—“I go and do something crazy like get my hair blown out.

“It's not about anything between Swift and me. It's about me and the ex-wife,” she offered. “Same as it is for you, probably. You probably want to look good around your ex-husband, but more than anything I bet you just want to look better than his wife. And make sure she notices that.”

“I hate how women can get with each other,” I said. “It's like we never graduated from junior high.”

“You know one of the things I love about our friendship?” Ava said. “There's none of that kind of crap between us. I never worry about you that way. We don't have this sick competition going on. And I know you're not after my husband the way so many other women are. With you, it's just not an issue.”

I knew this was supposed to be a compliment, but thinking about what she'd said as I drove along the freeway to pick up my son, I couldn't help but feel, as I often did, small and colorless. So invisible I could be jumping off a diving board naked and the most sex-obsessed man I ever met wouldn't even look up.

There was one who would, though. Elliot. He wasn't like Swift, but to him, for some reason, I was the most desirable woman on the planet.

“I'm not going to be the kind of jerk who calls you a dozen times a day,” he said to me, on one of the many occasions when he did call me. “But I just want you to know, that's how often I feel like calling. Not to mention how often I think about you. Which is constantly.”

We had spent the night together two nights in a row that week, but now we wouldn't be seeing each other all weekend.

“I might be an idiot in some ways,” he told me, “but one thing I'll never do is interfere in your relationship with your son. That's the most important thing in the world for you.”

I kissed him then. One thing I could always count on from Elliot (in fact, there were many) was his understanding.

“I just want you to know,” he said. “I'll be missing you like crazy this weekend. I'll probably have to drown my sorrows in rereading the tax code, or watching every
Thin Man
movie.”

That was Elliot for you, I thought. It could be the most beautiful day outside, and he'd be happy holed up in his study with the blinds down, watching old movies or working on his laptop. Whereas someone like
Swift would be off on his motorcycle. Or taking a seminar on tantric sex. Or just practicing it.

I registered a small, tight feeling then, like a constriction on my heart. When a relationship was really good, you didn't think critically about your partner the way I was inclined to do. You didn't compare him to your friend's husband, or find yourself observing, as he stood there in his old bathrobe, making the coffee, that he really did have terrible posture and a poochy belly. Or that the bathrobe was made out of this cheap kind of terry cloth, the kind your friend's husband would never be caught dead wearing.

But there was this other part, and it confused me: Hearing Elliot say how much he'd miss me that weekend, it occurred to me that I would miss him, too. As much as this was true, I also felt a kind of relief that Elliot wouldn't be around for my weekend with my son. If he were, I'd be worrying about what the Havillands thought about him.

And who was I, anyway? I, who owned an equally unstylish bathrobe, and probably looked as ridiculous in mine as he did in his. I, who also loved old movies, and would have liked to spend a whole afternoon—even a sunny one—watching three in a row with him. If I had felt more confident about Elliot's ability to be enough for my son, I could have suggested that he be the one—he, and not Swift—who could come along with us on fun excursions and cook out together, to help Ollie get past that hard, bitter place he inhabited, in which he viewed his mother as a person who'd abandoned him. I would have chosen Elliot, not Swift, as the man to hold out to my son that weekend with the message:
See, you can have a good day with your mother. And if there's one, there can be more.

But the truth was, I knew my son wouldn't be that impressed with Elliot. The lure for Ollie would be Swift and the picture of life on Folger Lane. The pool, the dogs. But mostly Swift.

At the time, I admitted none of this—not even to myself. As guilty as I felt for looking critically at Elliott, I felt equally guilty for being as contented with him as—more and more, when we were alone together—I
was. Sometimes, now—remembering all Ava had told me—I found myself worrying that there might be something wrong with me for being so satisfied with someone so seemingly ordinary as Elliot. As if I had made the choice to have a smaller, lesser life. Opting for simple, uncomplicated contentment over large and extraordinary passion.

Don't settle,
Ava had said. When I was with Elliot, I didn't feel I was doing that. But every time my car pulled up in front of the house on Folger Lane, the doubts returned.