Degree of Guilt (28 page)

Colvin seemed poised to ask a question, then did not. At last, he asked, ‘Do you think Mary has a clear impression of how Carlo’s living now?’

How, Paget wondered, to explain Mary as fairly as he could, yet leave out those things that Colvin did not need to know. ‘Mary has a clear impression,’ he answered. ‘She just doesn’t
feel
it the way you and I might feel it.’

Colvin leaned forward. ‘I thought, from what you said, that she despised her parents and pretty much hated her whole childhood.’

Paget nodded. ‘All true. After seeing Chez Carelli at first hand, I’m amazed that she accomplished all she did. But becoming who she is took pretty much all she
had
. Mary’s very tough now, in a cut-and-dried sort of way. She doesn’t process bad experiences; she just leaves them behind. Just like rules. She learned that her parents’ rules were a trap, so she invented her own and still does her damnedest not to care about anyone else’s. If you have a problem, Mary would say, fix it however you need to. Don’t feel sorry for yourself, and don’t whine to
me
about it.

‘Mary’s so completely practical that it’s become a form of ruthlessness. And like a lot of self-invented people, the distance she’s come, and her success in getting there, has made her judgmental in a social Darwinist sort of way.’ Paget paused. ‘Although I would guess that it’s part of Mary’s creed never to pass moral judgment on herself.’

Listening, Colvin watched Paget’s face. ‘You seem to know her well,’ he finally said, ‘for so short a time spent together.’

Paget found himself staring out the window. ‘Mary Carelli,’ he answered, ‘is someone to whom I’ve given a great amount of thought.’

‘Does she ever ask you for anything?’

‘It’s worse than that: she won’t
take
anything. I don’t know why.’

Colvin seemed to reflect. ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘So why doesn’t she feel Carlo’s situation?’

‘It’s simply this: some part of Mary must think that Carlo can survive all this. Because she did.’

Colvin paused for a moment. ‘Do you think that?’

Paget stood, walked to the window. ‘No,’ he answered. ‘Carlo’s not a clone of Mary. There are other things inside him.’

Colvin was quiet. After a time, he joined Paget, and the two friends gazed out of the window together.

‘You’re right,’ Paget said. ‘This
is
a great city. I’ve liked it since you first showed me around, in college.’

Colvin turned to him. ‘What are you going to do?’

Paget shook his head. ‘I have absolutely no idea.’

Standing in front of the door, John Carelli shook his head. ‘You can’t see him,’ he said.

‘Why not?’

‘Because this is my house.’ His voice was rough. ‘I’m sick of you hanging around.’

‘Next time, I’ll see him elsewhere. Is Carlo here?’

John Carelli folded his arms. ‘You make my daughter pregnant, you think that gives you rights?
Anybody
can make a girl pregnant if she lets him. That doesn’t make him a father,
or
a man.’

Paget stared at him. Quietly, he said, ‘How true.’

Carelli flushed. ‘You’re a rich, spoiled boy. Carlo’s never going to be like you – or Mary.’

There was only judgment in this house, Paget thought. Carlo would see himself only in the Carellis’ eyes, the son of a flawed woman, another person not worth cherishing.

‘Have you given any thought,’ Paget asked, ‘to what
Carlo
will be like when he grows up? Or is it more rewarding to hate a daughter than to love a grandson? Because I’ve looked at you, Mr Carelli, and there’s no love in you.’ Paget paused. ‘If there
were
, you’d see that Mary’s real sin was not sleeping with
me
but leaving her son with
you
.’

John Carelli raised his hand to slap him. Paget grabbed his wrist; suddenly he felt exhausted. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said softly. ‘I had no right to say that. Please, I’ve just come to say goodbye.’

Slowly, John Carelli reclaimed his hand. ‘Leave him be,’ he said. ‘You’ve done too much harm already, stirred Carlo up for nothing. Now leave him be.’

‘Papa?’

It was Carlo, standing behind his grandfather in the alcove. He had left his television program; from the living room, Paget heard the disembodied voices of John and Ponch. The boy looked up at him, eyes the shape of his mother’s, their color as blue as Paget’s own. ‘Northern Italian recessive,’ Mary had called them, as if dismissing any father at all.

‘Hi, Carlo,’ Paget said, and then looked to John Carelli.

‘Five minutes,’ the old man said. ‘Then I call the police.’

Silent, Paget nodded, and then Carelli moved aside.

Paget knelt by Carlo. ‘Will you watch with me?’ the boy asked.

Paget shook his head. ‘I’d like to. But I can’t.’

Even to his own ears, the words sounded empty.

‘Are you going away?’ Carlo asked.

Paget nodded. ‘I have to go now.’

‘Why?’

‘Because I have to go to my house.’ Paget hesitated, trying to explain. ‘I live in California, where John and Ponch live.’

Carlo looked down. ‘That’s far away, isn’t it?’

‘Yes.’

The boy nodded. ‘My mommy goes away.’

‘I know. But she’ll be back. Mommies always come back.’

‘Will you come back?’

‘Uh-huh. Someday.’

Carlo went to the living room. When he returned, he was holding the rubber ball that Paget had given him. He put it in Paget’s hand. ‘When you come back,’ he said, ‘bring this.’

‘But I wanted you to keep it.’

Carlo shook his head. ‘We can play with it. If you come back.’

Paget felt Carlo press the ball into his palm. When Paget closed his hand, Carlo did not let go of the ball; Paget’s fingers curled around the boy’s.

There were tears in Carlo’s eyes. ‘What’s your name?’ he asked Paget. ‘I forget.’

‘Christopher.’ Paget paused, gazing at the boy, and then spoke before giving himself time to reflect. ‘I’m your father.’

Carlo looked blank for a moment; Paget thought he saw a faint spark of hope, and then the boy glanced over his shoulder, as if afraid.

Paget picked up the boy and held him close. Carlo was stiff, uncomprehending. Then, slowly, his arms went around Paget’s neck.

‘I’m your father,’ Paget murmured again, ‘and it’s going to be all right.’

Paris was as beautiful as Paget had remembered.

It was a fresh spring afternoon, two days after he had left Carlo. Paget sat alone at Les Deux Magots, the outdoor café on the Boulevard St Germain that he had haunted during his college year in Paris. He had liked it then for the boulevard’s walking street show, and the corner café still offered a glimpse of every variety of Parisian – street jugglers, elegant women, would-be artists, older people who walked their dog and would stop for a glass of wine at this café or next door at the Café Flore. Near the entrance were the sculptures of two Chinese merchants from which Les Deux Magots derived its name; across the street was the forbidding stone mass of the twelfth-century cathedral of St Germain-des-Prés, its small garden surrounded by an iron fence and graced by Picasso’s bust of the poet Apollinaire. Paget watched a tall, dark-haired woman cross the street with the self-conscious grace of a runway model; it reminded him again that he had missed Andrea by one day and that she would dance tonight in Prague, six hundred miles away.

Idly, reflexively, Paget touched the briefcase full of papers.

‘Basking in nostalgia?’ the familiar voice asked. ‘Or imagining an evening with that slightly overdone brunette I saw you watching?’

Paget turned. ‘Nostalgia,’ he answered. ‘I was counting the years since last we met.’

‘Five,’ Mary said. ‘Would you like to talk here? I wouldn’t mind a glass of red wine. I’ll buy, of course, given that you’ve come all this way.’

Paget nodded. ‘In that case, I’ll have one too.’

It wasn’t until Mary had slipped off her coat and sat across from him that he started to absorb the changes in her. She was a woman in her thirties now, whose assertiveness had become self-possession. Her clothes and makeup were perfect as well: not too much of anything, but enough to suggest taste and an eye for detail. Even her speech, now well modulated for television, was clearer and more polished. Paget didn’t know whether the better analogy was to a fine wine or a chameleon: there was nothing about this woman that suggested she and John Carelli belonged to the same race, let alone the same family. Even to Paget, she felt like a stranger.

‘Why did you pick this place?’ she asked.

‘When you said you’d be in Paris, I thought of it.’ Paget glanced toward the street. ‘Not only is it good for people-watching, but this corner has a rather rich history – street battles of various kinds, even a few beheadings.’

Mary smiled faintly. ‘And naturally, you thought of me. For my taste, though, that cathedral is a bit grim. I can’t imagine spending any time there.’

‘Be respectful. In the thirteenth century, clerics died there, defending it from attack by students from the Latin Quarter. Not to mention the Huguenots who had their tongues yanked out for heresy.’

A short, bustling waiter, officious and classically French, interrupted and took their order. When he left, they were silent for a time.

‘You came about Carlo,’ she said at length.

‘Yes.’ Paget paused. ‘I want him to come live with me.’

Mary raised an eyebrow. ‘Just like that.’

‘No,
not
just like that. As I said on the phone, I’ve visited him several times lately, taken him to a child psychologist, gotten enough sense of your parents that I don’t require any more. Carlo needs a father – or, more accurately, needs a parent. I told you how unhappy he is, how he reached out to me.’

She made a brief dismissive gesture. ‘Chris, you can’t possibly know what you’re doing.’

‘In what sense?’

‘In every sense.’ Her tone was impatient. ‘You can’t just declare yourself a father and start making decisions.’

Paget leaned forward. ‘I didn’t declare myself a father,
you
did – the night before we testified. So here I am.’

Mary shook her head. ‘I’ve asked you for nothing. Or haven’t you noticed?’

‘That’s not true, Mary. You asked me for a great deal. Just not since Carlo was born.’

Her eyes widened. ‘Is that what this is about? Making yourself feel better? Because what’s done is done, and you’ll just have to live with that. It’s far too late for regrets.’

‘I know that very well,’ Paget said coldly. ‘But it’s not too late for Carlo. In two years, it will be.’

The waiter brought two glasses of red wine. The wine sat before them, untouched.

‘Since when,’ Mary asked at length, ‘did you become such an expert in child development? I already know there are problems, because I know my parents. Believe it or not, it bothers me to leave him there for a couple more years, until my career gets straight. But I’ll be able to change that. What suddenly makes
you
the one right answer?’

Paget decided to change tactics. ‘Look,’ he said quietly. ‘I’m not. And this isn’t some sort of contest between the two of us. It can’t be, for Carlo’s sake.’

‘He’s
my
son, Chris. I can’t give him up. It really is that simple.’

‘It isn’t, though. Because Carlo’s not an inanimate object. Although if he keeps living in your parents’ home, he may well become one.’ Paget’s voice rose. ‘Damn it, the night I called, I
told
you how things are – as if you should even
need
that.’

‘I
am
coming back.’ She gave him a look of disbelief. ‘Really, this is grotesque. You never wanted to be a father, never wanted Carlo, and, until this moment, paid him less attention than one of your precious paintings. This conversation must be happening in a dream.’

Paget stared at her. ‘Make up your mind, Mary. Am I the bad parent who never wanted Carlo, or the man you effectively disowned as a father the moment Carlo was born? Because “whatever suits my need of the moment” cuts no ice with me. Not, at least, on the question of this boy.’

There was a subtle change in Mary’s expression, as if she had deliberately forced patience on herself. ‘How much thought,’ she finally asked, ‘have you actually given this?’

‘As much as I could, in the time allowed. Not as much as I will.’ Paget stared at his wineglass. ‘It’s obvious that Carlo needs special tutoring, physical activity, and, most of all, consistent love and attention.’ He looked up at Mary. ‘Someone, every day of his or her life, has to make Carlo believe that he’s the most important thing in it.’

She smiled slightly. ‘You make it sound like a form of atonement, or a crusade. Of course, you used to be good at crusades.’

‘Not a crusade. Just a lot of time spent, and a certain sensitivity.’ Paget paused again. ‘In other words, the things neither of us got from our own parents.’

‘Which you alone have to give.’ Mary leaned forward. ‘Tell me, is Ms Pavlova aware of your new ambitions?’

Paget hesitated. ‘If you mean Andrea – no, not in detail. But I’m sure we’ll work it out.’

‘Oh, I’m sure.’ Mary gave him a sardonic smile. ‘I can so easily imagine it. “Back from six straight days in Pittsburgh, my love, dancing
Giselle?
Carlo and I are going out to his Little League game, but you can meet us later at McDonald’s.” Assuming, of course, that they have Little League in San Francisco. Do they?’

‘They must.’

Mary shook her head. ‘Honestly, it doesn’t sound like you have much of a clue. You had an emotional reaction to my parents and caught a plane to Paris,
both
of which I completely understand. But that is
not
much basis for changing Carlo’s life.’

Suddenly Paget had the feeling that Mary was testing him, or perhaps just tormenting him – he could not tell which. It created feelings of hope and desperation.