Under the Influence (18 page)

W
hen Swift had first offered to hire Marty Matthias to file for a change in custody of my son, I had held out a hope that maybe we could work things out in time for Ollie to start the new school year with me in Redwood City.

But that wasn't realistic. And as far as I knew, Swift had not yet placed a call to Marty. I longed to remind him of his promise, but I didn't want to pressure him. Swift was just preoccupied with the foundation, I told myself. He'd get around to it soon, and in the meantime, I was getting to see a lot more of my son than I had in three years. We still had a full week left before he had to return to Walnut Creek for the start of third grade.

Labor Day weekend was coming up. To my son this meant only one thing: the big swim race. Himself versus Monkey Man.

Ollie came back from Sacramento. The Havillands returned from Lake Tahoe. With Oliver still sleeping on the air mattress, Elliot and I barely saw each other, though one night he brought ice cream over and we sat in the kitchen, sharing the pint and speaking in whispers. Ollie was a sound sleeper, but I worried what he'd think if he woke up and saw my boyfriend there.

“I don't like it that we have to pretend to your son that nothing's
going on between you and me,” Elliot said. “Like being together is something to be embarrassed about.”

“Ollie's gone through a lot,” I said. “And things are good now. I just don't want to rock the boat.”

Elliot didn't say anything.

“Maybe we can take our bikes and have a picnic,” I said. “Somewhere flat, with no traffic, where Ollie can ride along with us. The bike path by the reservoir. Just not quite yet.”

“Maybe you need to stop protecting your son so much,” Elliot said quietly. “Did it ever occur to you that having me in his life could actually be a good thing, instead of some big problem for him to deal with?”

In fact, it had not.

In the end, I agreed to let Elliot come over one night and cook us dinner. The surprise was that the three of us actually had a good time. We played charades, with Ollie on both of our teams, and made popcorn. Ollie didn't know there was another way to make popcorn that didn't involve the microwave, he told Elliot. Hearing this, Elliot looked very serious—which he was good at—and said maybe he should reconsider our relationship.

“But my mom makes great peanut butter cookies,” Ollie told him.

“In that case, I'll stick around,” Elliot said. “She hasn't made those for me yet.”

Afterward, we put on a movie. Elliot had brought over a DVD of his all-time favorite movie,
Old Yeller
. Ollie said it didn't look too exciting, and that he liked action movies better, but he cried at the end. “This part always gets me, too,” Elliot said, putting an arm around Ollie. In the past, Ollie might have stiffened at a moment like that, but he showed no sign of resistance, and when he fell asleep, a few minutes later, with his head on Elliot's shoulder, Elliot said he didn't want to get up because he didn't want to wake Ollie.

“You can't just sit there like that all night,” I told him. A rush of tender feeling came over me. Not heat or passion, or the drug that came from a certain element of drama and danger in a relationship. This was something different, that I couldn't name.

“There are worse things than having your sleeping son leaned up against my shoulder,” he said. “In fact, there are not a whole lot of better things.”

W
ith two days left before Ollie was scheduled to return to his father's house, it was time for the big swim race.

“I know I said I was going to give you a head start, pal,” Swift told Ollie when they got out of the pool that afternoon. “But I have to take that back. You're just too fast. You don't need an advantage.”

I had brought my son a towel, and was wrapping it around him. It was things like this—small moments—that I had missed the most since he'd gone to live with his father. Ollie settled himself in my lap while I dried him off. Applying the sunscreen. Getting to watch, from one day to the next, how his frame was changing over the summer: how he'd lengthened, how his body fat was disappearing. Buying milk by the gallon instead of the quart, knowing he'd be around long enough to finish it.

“Not that I won't pulverize you, understand?” said Swift. “I just mean, we will conduct this race fair and square. No baby stuff.”

The one thing Ollie hadn't mastered was his flip turn for when he got to the end of the pool. Swift had shown him how to do it, but he still had trouble, and sometimes when he tried it he'd come up gasping and coughing, which slowed him down.

The race was set for Saturday, Ollie's last day with me. Swift and Ollie spent all morning working on Ollie's flip turn. Ava and I sat on
lounge chairs, taking in the sun, while our two boys—Ollie and Swift—moved endlessly back and forth, up and down the length of the pool, flipping, reversing direction, flipping again. By lunchtime Ollie had it down.

“Tonight,” said Swift. He placed a hundred-dollar bill on the table. “Ten laps. Winner take all.” He held up his palm and Ollie slapped it.

“I thought you said if I won you'd take me out on the Donzi,” said Ollie. He was doing that thing again with his voice, when he spoke to Swift—cool and tough, as if none of this mattered so much to him, though I knew this race mattered to Ollie more than just about anything.

“No question about that, pal,” Swift told him. “I'm just figuring it may be a while before you and me can make it up to the lake. This is just a little cash on the barrelhead, for now. But only if you beat me, understand?”

The race was scheduled for six o'clock. Ava had invited a few of their friends over. Following the race there would be a cookout. Ava was making her homemade ice cream with berries from the farmers' market, to be served with Estella's biscuits. When I had asked Ava if Elliot could join us, she said of course, though as always when his name came up, I noted a hint of disapproval in her response.

“Whatever you want,” she said.

Early that evening, the friends started to arrive: Renata and Carol, the lesbian contractors; Swift's childhood friend Bobby, who had made the long drive from Vallejo; Ava's massage therapist, Ernesto; and a new friend of Ava's, Felicity, whom I'd been hearing about but hadn't yet met.

Ava had run into Felicity at the vet's office. She was probably around my age. She had recently lost her husband to cancer and now had to sell her house and find a job. On top of all that, her dog needed surgery. Ava ended up paying for that, of course. Now Felicity was standing alongside the pool in a long green dress I recognized from Ava's closet. She was holding her Cavalier King Charles spaniel in her arms.

“Oh, Felicity,” Ava said when she saw her new friend in the green
dress. “You have no idea how beautiful you are.” It turned out she had a cashmere shawl in just the right shade to go with the dress; they'd go upstairs after dinner and get it.

I stood by the side of the pool, looking around for Elliot—aware, to my surprise, of how much I wanted to see him. Just after six, Swift emerged from the pool house wearing a monogrammed bathrobe, arms held up over his head like Muhammad Ali entering the ring. Ollie trailed behind, in a bathrobe monogrammed with the initials
CAH
that must have belonged to Cooper when he was younger. My son had thrown back his shoulders and puffed out his chest, but I knew he was anxious about the race—afraid of not doing a good job, with everyone watching. Afraid of disappointing Swift, most of all.

The two of them lined up at the edge of the pool and took off their robes—Swift with his broad, hairy back and muscled shoulders; my son beside him, skinny and shivering.

Swift owned a miniature cannon (of course he would) that used real gunpowder. Ernesto lit the fuse, and bang: The two of them dove into the pool.

I had been wondering how Swift would play this one. Knowing the differences not only in their age and strength, but also that just three months earlier, Ollie had been afraid of the water, it seemed unlikely that Swift would put up a real fight in this race. Of course he wouldn't want to let Ollie know the race had been handed to him, but I was sure he'd let Ollie win.

But when the two of them hit the water, Swift launched into his freestyle no differently than he might have if his opponent had been another adult swimmer, not an eight-year-old boy. When he reached the end of the pool, he was already a good five meters ahead of Ollie, and his lead was widening.

Ollie was giving it a real fight. I'd never seen him swim so fast, or so intently, but the flip turns were slowing him down. That, and the fact that he was a child who'd only recently learned how to swim.

Only once, when he came up for air after a flip turn, did my son look over to check where Swift was, but he couldn't have determined anything from that one quick glance. As it happened, Swift was alongside him, but a full three laps ahead in the race.

As Swift was closing in on the finish, he stopped. Three meters from the end, he flipped over on his back, then started treading water. Ollie was coming up behind him, stroking for all he was worth, but with another two laps to go. Swift looked out to the group of us standing on the sidelines of the pool and grinned. Only when Ollie approached the finish line on his final lap did Swift resume swimming.

Ollie touched the edge of the pool just one stroke ahead of Swift. From the side of the pool, all of us cheered.

I had never seen a look on my son's face like the one he wore as he pulled himself out of the water. His body was shaking, and for a moment, he covered his face with his hands, as if the whole thing was too much for him.

“Did I do it?” he said.

Swift was pulling himself up out of the pool now too, alongside Ollie. “You were amazing, little buddy. I thought I had you there for a while, but in the last crunch, you pulled out all the stops.”

I was sitting next to Ava a few feet back, taking it in: my beaming son, the unmistakable hoot of Swift's laughter as he slipped the medallion they'd gotten for him around Ollie's neck. Standing beside Swift, Ollie was still trembling all over and shaking his head, looking stunned. “I can't believe I did it,” he said. “I still can't believe it.”

Beside me, Ava touched my sleeve. “That's Swift all over,” she whispered—a tight smile on her lips. “He knew Ollie had to be the winner, but he couldn't help himself from competing. Swift
hates
losing.
Anything
.”

Over by the pool, Ollie was still in a state of disbelief over his victory. “Now I get to go up to Lake Tahoe with you, right?” he said to Swift. “And ride in the Donzi.”

“Absolutely,” said Swift. “As soon as we get a nice long weekend, that's where you and me are headed.”

“This meant so much to Ollie,” I said to Ava. “You two made his summer. Mine, too.”

“Swift is basically a boy, too,” she said. “Just a larger one, who's gone through puberty.”

“Ollie worships him,” I told her. Not that she didn't know.

“Don't we all,” Ava said.

Afterward, Swift dried off and put on one of his crazy Hawaiian shirts. He presented one to Ollie, too—decorated with monkeys in banana trees. The shirt was miles too big, but Ollie put it on anyway, displaying his victory medallion outside the shirt. When Swift asked him if he wanted a burger or a steak, Ollie said he was still too excited to eat.

Elliot came up to me. He had been standing off in the shade with Evelyn Couture—after Elliot, the most unlikely guest at the Havillands' parties.

“What were you and Evelyn talking about?” I asked him. It was hard to imagine an odder combination than those two.

“She heard I was an accountant,” he said. “She was telling me about moving out of her house in the city. Evidently she's donating the property to Swift and Ava's foundation.”

I hadn't heard this. Whenever I was over at Evelyn's, we were always boxing up donations of clothes and antiques for various charities—the ballet and Junior League resale shops—with most of her furniture headed for an auction house. I had assumed the house would be going on the market.

“That's wonderful,” I said.

“You probably greased the wheels with all the help you've been providing,” he said.

“I doubt that,” I told him. “People don't decide what to do with their five-million-dollar house just because somebody's friend comes over to help them pack.”

“That house of hers is worth a lot more than five million dollars,” Elliot said. “From what she told me, I'm guessing more like twenty. That's a lot of dog spaying and neutering.”

I was accustomed to a consistent tone of tenderness in Elliot's voice whenever he spoke to me, but at this moment all I heard was skepticism.

”I'd like to know who's on the board of directors of this nonprofit of theirs,” he said.

“Just a bunch of rich people who love dogs, no doubt,” I said. “Why does it matter?”

“You know me,” he said. “I can never resist a good spreadsheet. Going over figures is probably my favorite thing in the world.”

I was going to make a joke, but he suddenly looked even more serious than usual. “Actually, that's not true,” Elliot said. “My favorite thing is being with you.”

T
he next day I drove Ollie back to his father's house. He didn't cry when I dropped him off, and I knew he wouldn't. I had learned long before that this is how a child of divorced parents protects himself, the way he closes off the feelings that go with leaving one parent's world to enter the other.

Earlier that morning, while I was helping him pack, I could tell Ollie was gone already. When I put my arm around him, he stiffened in that way he had. I knew not to push it.

“You said maybe I'd get to stay here with you,” he had said the night before, when I put him to bed for the last time on the air mattress. “But it didn't happen.”

“I'm working on it,” I told him. Or Swift was. I hoped he was, anyway. I had to talk to him about it.

Ollie wanted to bring his swimming medal and the hundred-dollar bill from Monkey Man back to Walnut Creek. That last night, after we got home from the race, he had slept in that shirt. Now he placed it on a hanger, studying the fabric as if he was memorizing it. For reasons he did not explain but ones I felt I understood, my son had chosen not to bring the shirt to his father's house.

“We can still go over to their house when you come for visits,” I said, studying my son's face as he touched the collar.

“And we're going to Tahoe together,” Ollie told me. “He promised we'd go out on the Donzi.”

“I'm sure you will,” I said. “Maybe not right away, but eventually, for sure.”

When we got to Dwight and Cheri's house, I said good-bye to my son out on the sidewalk.

“I'm going to see you very soon,” I told him—my words inadequate. I got down low and put my arms around him.

In times past, my son's body would have stiffened at such a moment. Now I felt him melt into my arms. He held on for a long minute. I didn't want to let go.

I was not yet home when Ava texted me.

“Come have dinner with us,” she said. It was a funny thing about those two, how they never asked if I had other plans. As it happened, I did have other plans—sort of. I'd told Elliot I'd call him when I got back that evening, and that we could get together if I felt up to it. But now all I wanted was to be at the place where I'd spent so much of that happy summer with my son: the Havillands' house.

I texted Elliot:

Sorry. Not feeling so hot after leaving Ollie. OK to beg off tonight?

He responded a few minutes later, kind and understanding as always:

Of course. Take it easy and know I love you. See you soon.

I headed over to Folger Lane.

When I got there, Swift and Ava were already well into the wine. I had let myself into the house, knowing they'd be out in back, having guacamole. Ava said nothing when I reached them. She put her arms around me. Swift poured me a Pellegrino. For a moment, I almost asked him to give me a glass of wine. I was feeling awful about Ollie leaving, and I wanted a drink.

“I'm going to miss that kid,” Swift said.

I couldn't say anything. Just the sight of the pool made me sad.

“I was really hoping he could go to third grade here with me,” I said.

Now was the moment for Swift to bring up his promise about the lawyer. Filing papers. Applying for a new evaluation based on change of circumstances, my perfect record of sobriety, character references from Swift and Ava and others. From across the table, I studied their faces.

“Swift's grilling salmon tonight,” Ava said. “Felicity's joining us.”