The Apartment (14 page)

Claire and Abby shared a cab to Kennedy Airport, since their planes were leaving at almost the same time, Claire's to San Francisco, and Abby's to L.A. Claire thought that by the time her flight left, George might have landed in Aspen, but she hadn't heard from him yet. She was going to have a quiet Thanksgiving holiday with her parents, as she always did. She no longer saw her old friends when she went home for a few days. She had been gone for ten years since she left for college, their lives were too different now, they had nothing in common, and she was closer to her roommates in New York. Sometimes she ran into her high school friends when she went out with her mother, and she was always surprised by how little their lives had changed. They had married the people they had dated, or were living with them. A few had children now. Some worked for their parents, or at unexciting jobs. It was a small city, and other than the high-tech world of Silicon Valley, there were very few interesting opportunities. Her more enterprising friends had moved to New York and L.A. And there was no fashion milieu to speak of, so there would have been no jobs for her. She was glad she had gone to design school in New York, and stayed. And even though she missed her, her mother was pleased that she had opted for a life in New York. Her father never understood why she didn't move back to San Francisco and find something to do there. She no longer tried to explain.

Abby and Claire chatted on the way to the airport. They had hardly talked since her breakup with Ivan. She had been plunged in her writing night and day. It was as though freeing herself had fueled her, and she had a lot to talk about with her parents. They had always given her good advice in the past, and she needed to decide where to go from here. All she wanted was to finish her novel. It was going well.

Ivan had called a few times to make weak excuses for his behavior, and told her he was all alone. She stopped taking his calls, and he gave up calling quickly when he realized she wasn't sympathetic to his cause and hadn't changed her mind. He wanted her to feel sorry for him, but she didn't. She was just angry at herself for the time she had wasted, and for being such a fool. It had taken her years to realize what a loser he was, while he pulled her into the swamp with him, and used her in every way he could, and she had let him.

“See you on Sunday,” Claire said as they hugged each other outside the terminal. Claire was going to check her bag at the curb, and Abby only had carry-on. Claire always took too much with her. And Abby disappeared into the terminal a minute later. Claire glanced at her phone while she checked her bags. George hadn't called her yet, so they probably hadn't landed. She hoped the weather was decent. George had told her that the airport was dicey in Aspen, coming in over the mountain for a sharp landing, but she wasn't worried about it. His pilot had been there with him many times before.

Alex and Sasha's flight to Chicago left two hours later, and she had packed even more than Claire for their four days in Chicago. She wasn't sure what to wear, so she had brought a multitude of options, mostly borrowed from Morgan and Claire, in varying degrees of dressy to casual, and conservative, which Morgan had for work. Sasha wanted to make a good impression on his parents, and every time she asked him, Alex said they wouldn't care what she wore. He described their dress code as preppy, which was what he wore too when they went out. His father and brother would wear suits for Thanksgiving and he would do the same, otherwise a blazer and slacks, and his father always wore a tie and looked like a banker. He said his patients expected it of him. And as a surgeon, his brother wore scrubs most of the time. Sasha informed Alex proudly that she hadn't brought hers, nor clogs or Crocs. She packed sneakers in case they went sailing on his brother's boat, since they were die-hard sailors, but he said it was probably too cold for her. She could stay home with his mother, or explore the city on her own. His parents' home was on the lakefront, and his brother lived in the Wicker Park district, comparable to lower downtown New York. He said his brother was doing very well. He said it without envy, only pride, and she knew they were very close.

They landed at O'Hare Airport at one o'clock local time, which was an hour earlier than New York. His parents would still be at work, and his brother was coming for dinner that night. Alex knew they would all be curious to meet her, but he didn't make an issue of it to Sasha—she was nervous enough as it was.

The airport was jammed, and it took them an hour to get their luggage, and another hour to get home. A housekeeper let them in, and threw her arms around Alex the minute she saw him, and glanced at Sasha with curiosity and a polite smile. The house on Lake Shore Drive always looked the same to him, and was his boyhood home. It was elegant and traditional, with serious antiques and warm-colored fabrics. There were flowers in the living room, and a comfortable country-style kitchen, where the family often gathered. And then he showed her his boyhood room, filled with sports trophies and mementos of his school years. His diplomas from Yale and Harvard were on the wall as she looked around and smiled at him. And his brother's room looked much the same right next door. The two boys shared a bathroom. Their rooms were done in navy and plaids with a view of the garden, down the hall from their parents' big sunny bedroom. And he led her to a guest room across from them, where he and Sasha would be staying. His old room had a narrow single bed, and he would have felt strange staying in that room with her anyway, even with a bigger bed. The guest room was neutral ground, and he had never stayed there with anyone. He set her suitcase down. The room was done in blue and yellow floral chintzes. And she could tell they had used a decorator, unless his mother had decorating talent, and it was very pretty. The style was somewhat English, and the walls were a pale yellow, which made the room look sunny even in Chicago winter weather. They were predicting snow for the weekend.

They stopped in the kitchen and made a sandwich, and Alex suggested they go downtown and look around. He wanted to show her the city. He still had an old Toyota in the garage, which he kept there, and hadn't let his parents sell. He used it when he came home, and the housekeeper drove it for errands and to buy groceries. It started easily, and they headed from Lake Shore Drive to Michigan Avenue, on the scenic tour he had been planning for days. He was excited to have her with him, in his native city, and she had never been to Chicago before.

“There's the Wrigley Building and the John Hancock Center. My mom's office is in that tower, and my dad's is at the University of Chicago Medical Center in the Hyde Park area. Ben's in the same building, on another floor.” It was the medical building where most of the high-end doctors were. Ben had joined a practice there as soon as he finished his residency.

They drove around the city, which seemed smaller than New York but had the same electric buzz. It was very different from Atlanta, where she grew up. And the shops on Michigan Avenue all looked sophisticated and were the same big-brand names and luxury stores as in New York, which was true of most cities today. But there was still a distinct flavor to the city, the buildings were even taller than in New York, and he explained that they were designed to accommodate the weather, so one had to brave the elements as little as possible. An office building would occupy the first twenty floors, topped by four floors of a department store, with possibly a restaurant above it, and then thirty or forty floors of apartments, so one never had to go out in the freezing cold or snow.

“It's one-stop living,” he said, smiling. “It's very convenient, especially in the winter.” Sasha found herself thinking that she wouldn't like living on the sixtieth floor in any city, but it did make sense.

They parked the car and got out and walked for a while. They wandered into a bookstore, and an art gallery, and it struck her immediately how friendly people were. Salespeople were pleasant, anxious to help them, and chatted with them.

They headed back to the house around five-thirty. Sasha started to fidget in the car, and Alex smiled at her and leaned over and kissed her. He understood why she was nervous, although he was certain that her fears were unfounded—he knew his parents and how kind and welcoming they were, and his mother had been pleased he was bringing someone home.

“They're going to love you,” he repeated to Sasha for the thousandth time, and she looked worried and unconvinced.

“What if they hate me?” she said miserably. She had never been as anxious about meeting anyone. She loved him, and didn't want to screw it up somehow.

“If they hate you, I'll stop seeing you immediately, and you'll have to go to a hotel,” he said with a straight face, and she looked panicked, and he laughed. “Will you stop it? First of all, they're going to love you. Second of all, I'm thirty-two years old, not sixteen. I make my own decisions, and you're the best thing that ever happened to me. And my parents are smart enough to know it. You're the prize here, not me.”

“You're their son. They want to protect you from bad people and conniving women,” she said, smiling at him.

“Are you conniving? How did I miss that? Listen, as long as you don't dress and act like your sister, everything will be fine. And knowing them, if I said I loved her and she showed up in a bikini and high heels, they'd be fine too. They're very open people, even if they look conservative. Don't put so much pressure on yourself. You'll see what I mean when you meet them. My mother is the nicest woman alive. She loves everyone. If you introduced her to a serial killer, she would explain to you about his terrible childhood, and say that he was probably having a bad day.”

“I wish I could say the same about mine,” Sasha said wistfully. “My mother hates everyone, and sees the dark side in every situation. She's the toughest divorce lawyer in Atlanta, and assumes the worst about everyone, including her clients. There's a good person in there somewhere, but she's gotten very hard with time. And she has nothing but bad things to say about my father and his wife. Charlotte's not a very interesting person, but she's a sweet girl and she makes him happy, and they have cute kids. My mother nearly went over the edge when he had them, and never stops telling Valentina and me how little he cared about us when he was setting up his business.” He owned the most profitable department stores in Atlanta, and malls throughout the South. “I don't know how my mother got so angry and bitter, but she is, and she's getting worse with age. She gets along better with Valentina, because my sister doesn't take any guff from her. Every time I see my mother, I feel like I've been run over by a train.”

“My mom's not like that,” he said gently. “She'll probably want to adopt you. She was really sad when Ben and Angela broke up. She always wants us to have the kind of relationship she has with my dad. They're good together.” He said it warmly, and as he did, Sasha realized that she had never seen a marriage like that. Her father was nice to her stepmother and protective of her, but they were by no means intellectual equals, and sometimes he acted like she was stupid and couldn't think for herself. She treated Sasha's dad like her father, and relied on him for everything, and all decisions. She had no mind of her own, and participated in none of their important plans. And her mother had been too hard on their father, and verbally brutal with him at times. She had always considered him beneath her because he wasn't as educated as she was, but he had been very successful in spite of it. He had a good head for business and was a bright guy. Her mother dismissed his business acumen as luck, and being in the right place at the right time, which Sasha knew wasn't true, and was a mean thing to say about him, along with all the rest of what she still accused him of, including being a lousy father, which Valentina agreed with, and Sasha didn't. Valentina thought their mother was a legal genius, while Sasha thought she was smart, but a bitch, which she certainly was to her. And their mother had more respect for Valentina's modeling career and international stardom than for Sasha's medical career, where she warned her she'd never make a dime thanks to the rigors of modern medicine and HMOs. Money mattered a lot to her, except Sasha's father's, which she dismissed, because it was his. And Valentina had the same profound worship of money as their mother.

“My parents were so mean to each other, and so unhappy,” she said honestly, “that I never wanted to get married, and I still don't, if that's how it ends up. It was kind of a relief when they got divorced. Until he remarried and my mother went nuts about it, and she still is. They refuse to be in the same room, and only one of them could be at my graduation.” She had never admitted that to anyone before.

“Which one came to your graduation?” Alex asked with interest.

“My father. My mother was trying a landmark case. She won, which justified not being there, to her. I think if I ever told her I was getting married, she'd kill me. Recidivists, as she calls them, are the mainstay of her business. She's handled two or three divorces for some of her clients. They always come back to her because she does such a good job, and gets them a ton of money from the other side. She usually represents women. She doesn't believe in marriage, and always told me and Valentina not to even think about it, just to have fun. Valentina took her seriously.” She smiled at him. “And she likes rich guys, no matter how they make their money.” As she said it, she thought of Jean-Pierre, who would have terrified her. There was something deeply unsavory about him, but Valentina didn't care or even notice. “It's hard to imagine people like your parents, who've done it all right. No one in my world ever has. All I ever heard about were the disasters, and all my friends' parents were divorced, growing up.”

“A lot of my friends' parents were too,” Alex said quietly. “My parents married very young. Maybe that helps. They just kind of grew up together, had us when they were young, and expected it to work.” His father had just turned sixty, and his mother was fifty-nine, she knew. Her parents were almost the same age, but had a very different life experience. It was hard for Sasha to imagine. Her mother was always telling her about marriages that fell apart in a year. And the high divorce rate nationally supported what she said, that marriage just didn't work, and was an antiquated idea. According to her, women no longer needed to get married if they had careers, and to some extent Sasha believed her. And in her own way, Valentina did too. She had never gone to college and had started making big money at eighteen as a model, and she still made a fortune at what she did, more than Sasha ever would using her skill and brain. But her job had longevity, and Valentina's didn't. One day she'd be too old to model. But she'd made a few good investments, with their father's advice, so maybe she'd be okay, and Sasha knew he would always help them.