Goodbye To All That (11 page)

Doug wasn’t so sure. He could imagine his mother freaking out if an appliance stopped working—but he could also imagine her phoning him or Gordon and asking for assistance more easily than he could imagine her giving up and returning to her husband in defeat. His mother was a stubborn woman.

And forty-two years was an awfully long time to be washing someone else’s beard hairs down the drain without a word of thanks.

HE DIDN’T GET HOME until after seven. He and his father had played all eighteen holes, then retired to the club house for a drink. Doug had nursed a scotch while his father had knocked back two whisky sours. By the time his father had swallowed the liquor-soaked maraschino cherry from his second drink, Doug had learned that his father was panic-stricken about having to prepare his own dinner every night—“I could do take-out, but that gets expensive over time, and all those fast-food places use too much sodium, I’ll wind up with blood pressure problems”—and irritated when he thought about the one-carat-total-weight diamond stud earrings he’d given his wife for her birthday some years ago, and worried when he thought about how the separation might affect Abbie’s bat mitzvah. “That’s eight months away,” he’d lamented, sounding more maudlin the more he drank. “I hope to God we’re back together by then. Abbie shouldn’t have any sadness on her special day.”

Brooke had left the outside lights on for Doug. Four post lamps stood in intervals along the curving driveway that led from the street to the garage. Two matching wall lanterns flanked the front door, and two more hung above the outer two garage doors. He slid his car into the middle bay and directed a prayer of thanks toward the ceiling that he had a wife waiting for him, one who cared enough about him to leave the lights on when he rolled in later than expected.

He’d phoned her from the club to let her know he and his father would be having a drink and he’d be home late. He’d implied that his father needed something strong and wet more than he did, but that wasn’t exactly true.

He pulled his clubs from the trunk, stood them in their nook in a corner of the garage near the Range Rover, and turned off the garage lights before entering the house. The spotlights above the center island glowed in the kitchen but the room was empty.

He headed up the stairs, following the sound of voices, and found Brooke reading
Harry Potter
to the girls. Doug had mentioned that he thought Madison and Mackenzie were too young for
Harry Potter
, but Brooke had argued that if she was going to read to them, she might as well read something she found entertaining, and chances were the girls didn’t understand most of the scary stuff, anyway. Doug supposed he’d feel the same if he’d spent as many hours reading to his daughters as Brooke had, so he didn’t argue.

The girls were in their nightgowns, tucked into their beds—five bedrooms in the house, and they insisted on sharing one, though Doug assumed that would change when they got older. They hollered a shrill greeting as soon as they saw him filling the doorway. “Daddy! Daddy!”

Brooke tucked a finger into the book to hold her place and smiled at him. “I made bowties for them,” she said. “I figured you wouldn’t mind missing that.”

Bowties were just mutated spaghetti, as far as he was concerned. “Did you eat?”

She nodded. “If you want to throw together a sandwich
 . . .
”

“Maybe later.” Contemplating his parents’ screwed-up marriage had pretty much killed his appetite. He waved to the girls, then sauntered down the hall to the master bedroom to wash up. He didn’t want to breathe booze on them when he kissed them good-night.

He paused for a moment at the entry to the master suite. It was, he had to admit, the most spectacular area of a spectacular house. The main room was big enough to hold a king-size bed, Brooke’s triple dresser, Doug’s bureau, a small sitting area with a sofa and coffee table facing a fireplace above which hung a flat-panel TV. Two walk-in closets opened off the main room, separated by a dressing area at the end of which was a bathroom larger than the bedroom he’d had growing up. Another room off to one side served as an exercise room, equipped with a treadmill, a rowing machine and another TV so he could watch DVD’s of “St. Elsewhere” while he worked out. Brooke had decorated the entire suite with superb taste. The carpet was a plush cream shade, accented by a few Oriental area rugs. The furniture was Shaker—simple and elegant—and the bed was a four-poster with horizontal beams connecting the four posts, the purpose of which Doug couldn’t fathom. Sometimes, when he was in bed, he felt as if he’d gotten shut up inside a carton with invisible walls.

Brooke’s voice drifted down the hall in a gentle murmur. The hall light glinted off the three-way mirror above the little vanity table she’d tucked into a corner of the room, spraying the walls with trapezoids of light.

It all seemed so
 . . .
right
.

Had there been a time in his father’s life when everything had seemed right? Had he come home to Doug’s mother every evening and believed she was as content as he was, as satisfied with the world they’d created? Had he entered his bedroom confident that she loved him and was devoted to him and her feelings would never change?

Jesus fucking Christ. What if, thirty years from now, Brooke decided to walk out on Doug?

He raced into the bathroom, took a quick piss, splashed water on his face and gargled a capful of mouthwash. Then he jogged back down the hall to his wife, needing reassurance. When he saw the light off in the girls’ room and Brooke gone, he had to pause, take a deep breath and convince himself that she was somewhere in the house. Probably in the kitchen fixing him a sandwich. Just because she wasn’t where he’d last seen her didn’t mean she’d left him.

He tiptoed into the girls’ room, bent over each bed and kissed each daughter on the forehead. “Today was fun,” Mackenzie said in a sleepy, happy voice.

“Aunt Melissa’s friend was so nice,” Madison added.

“He fixes hair,” Mackenzie told him.

“He was wearing boots.”

“I’m glad you enjoyed yourselves,” Doug murmured.

“Uncle Gordon played a video.
Pocahontas
. It was good,” Mackenzie reported.

“Noah kept making snorting pig sounds, though,” Madison said.

“He’s a boy,” Mackenzie pointed out, as if that explained everything.

“I love Grandma and Grandpa,” Madison said, then yawned.

“Me, too.” Mackenzie’s voice overlapped Madison’s, as if she’d known what Madison would say and wanted to express her agreement immediately.

I love them, too,
Doug almost said. But he was angry and unsettled, and a little scared. So instead, he said, “It’s bedtime now. Good-night, girls.”

“Good night,” they chorused with a final burst of energy before burrowing under their matching yellow blankets.

Leaving their bedroom, Doug contemplated the fact that the girls had no idea what was going on with their grandparents. Maybe they’d never have to know. Maybe the bickering Bendels would get back together again before their separation registered on their grandchildren. Maybe his mother’s coffee pot would break or his father would overdose on salty take-out dinners and they’d apologize to each other and vow to accommodate each other’s wishes and moods a little more.

Brooke wasn’t in the kitchen, although she’d left an empty plate, a package containing half a loaf of pumpernickel bread and a jar of mustard on the center island’s granite counter. Did she expect him to eat a mustard sandwich? It wasn’t even Dijon mustard, just the usual yellow stuff. He wondered whether she had cold cuts or cheese stashed in the fridge.

Not that it mattered. He still wasn’t hungry.

“I’m in here,” her voice drifted to him from the family room. “I didn’t know what you wanted to eat.”

What he wanted was to drink, not eat. He filled a glass with Chivas and abandoned the bread and mustard for the family room.

Brooke lounged on the couch, a goblet of white wine in her hand and her bare feet propped on the teak table. The TV was off, the windows filled with a sky halfway between blue and black. The lamp on the end table beside her spilled amber light over her hair, turning it gold. She looked so much better than he felt.

He dropped onto the couch next to her, leaned over and planted a kiss on her lips. He tasted wine on her mouth, and also a vanilla undertone. He wondered if it was her lipstick or her lips that were vanilla-flavored.

“How’s your father?” she asked.

He sipped some scotch. “His game was so bad, he asked me to tear up the score sheet.”

She opened her mouth, then closed it and gazed toward the window, as if unsure what to say. After a minute, she turned back to him. “Do you think I should get bangs?”

He nearly choked on the scotch in his mouth. She wanted to get
banged
?

“You know, like Melissa has. Bangs.” She brushed her fingers over her forehead.

“Oh. Bangs.” Hairstyle. “I don’t know. Your hair looks great the way it is.”

“Bangs might soften it a little. I was talking to her friend, Luc?” Brooke’s voice rose into a question. “He said he thought bangs might soften the lines of my face.”

“You don’t have any lines,” Doug said, floundering. Was she fishing for compliments? Worrying about non-existent wrinkles? And why the hell had she been discussing this with Bronze Brondo?

“Not lines like old-age lines,” she clarified. “Lines like the line of my nose or my cheeks. He had some really good ideas.”

“Why would he have good ideas about bangs?” It would never have occurred to Doug—or to any man Doug knew—to discuss hairdos with a woman he’d just met. For that matter, it would never occur to him to discuss hairdos with a woman he knew well. He couldn’t believe that today, after having spent an hour and a half listening to his mother calmly explain why she was leaving his father and what she was leaving him for—a job at First-Rate, for God’s sake—and another three hours listening to his father say things that left Doug with the clear impression that the old man was simmering with a combination of rage and fear, he should find himself cuddled up on the family room sofa with his wife, discussing hairdos.

“He’s a hairdresser,” Brooke explained.

He fixes hair,
Mackenzie had said.
He seemed a little faygela,
his father had said. Holy shit. “The guy’s a hairdresser?”

“Stop thinking like that,” Brooke said, frowning and poking his forearm, almost causing him to spill his drink. “Now you’re going to assume he’s gay.”

“I didn’t say that.”
I only thought it.

“He’s your sister’s boyfriend,” Brooke reminded him. “They’re a couple. He works at Nouvelle, an exclusive salon in Manhattan. I assume you don’t get to work at a place like that unless you know what you’re talking about.”

“When it comes to bangs, maybe.” Why couldn’t Melissa find a normal guy? An attorney like her. An Ivy Leaguer. Someone who made lots of money and talked about baseball.

“Anyway, he thought I should consider bangs. What do you think?”

“I think you’re gorgeous,” Doug said truthfully. “Whatever you want to do to your hair is fine with me.”

She smiled, kissed his cheek and cushioned her head against his shoulder. “So, about your parents.”

“My father’s trying hard not to be a wreck,” Doug told her. “My mother—God knows. Did she say anything when she drove you and the girls home?”

“What could she say with the girls in the back seat? She asked them about school and they wouldn’t shut up. They spent the entire drive telling her about the ashtrays they made out of clay in art and the class’s pet turtle. Its name is Shelly and it likes to eat lettuce and crickets.”

“Ashtrays? They made ashtrays?” He scowled. “Nobody smokes anymore.”