The Love Children (40 page)

I sat down across from Philo with a Glenlivet. I smiled, and he smiled, and he asked how Isabelle was, and my heart felt like a leaf folding because he'd asked about her, because he'd remembered, because he was saying that he knew that she was the most important thing in my life.

After the last customer left, Manuel finished the cleanup and Artur came in and sat down with a great sigh. I signaled Eberly to serve the three of us. He poured wine for us, a Pinot Grigio, and assembled the salad so it was ready when we finished the seafood. Then I told him he could go home. The pastry chef, Lou, had already gone, leaving behind three portions of orange crêpes.

Artur talked eagerly with Philo about mushrooms. The two of them got along famously, but Artur could see what was happening as well as Isabelle could, and as soon as dinner was over he busied himself with what I call polishing the kitchen, ordering me not to help but to sit and rest and talk to Philo. Artur went into the dining room to check it over. It would be vacuumed and polished tomorrow. When he returned, he yawned—rather theatrically, I thought—and asked if I would mind closing up, he was tired. I agreed, acting as if this were normal, when in fact I had never closed up before; Artur always did it.

“Nice to meet you, Philo.” He pronounced it “Pheelo.” “We talk again about mushroom . . .”

“Nice to meet you too, Artur,” Philo said, standing and reaching out his hand. “Sure, anytime.”

“You go beck to farm now? Is far?”

“Yes. No, it's not far. Less than an hour's drive.”

“Okay,” Artur said, as if he were approving something, and turned away and went upstairs. I knew perfectly well that he would wait until I left and come down again and check that everything was locked, but I could not bring myself to leave quite yet.

We were both tired, but mellow. Philo talked about college, the Périgord, Paris, and the Sorbonne. I talked about the commune and Sandy and Bishop. Eventually, out of sheer weariness, we sadly agreed we had to leave. He stood around while I locked up, then walked me to my car and waited while I settled the still-sleeping Isabelle. We stood there together. He took my hand in his.

“See you next week,” he said.

 

When I looked at myself in the bathroom mirror that night, I had to laugh. All my plans and fussing, and I looked as bedraggled and hot and sweaty and messy as I did every other night. Raspberry sauce had splattered on my blouse. My new shoes were spotted with grease. My face was bare of makeup and my hair was limp. But it didn't matter. We'd had a special evening, we'd touched each other someplace. I was full of hope.

Every week, Philo came down from Springfield with a half dozen boxes of mushrooms, eventually raised to a dozen, then two. Artur began using black mushrooms in a beef Stroganoff he'd only imagined in the USSR. I put mushroom omelets on the menu as a first course, added mushrooms to many of our salads, and invented salads and hot vegetables with some form of mushrooms in them. My mushroom soup (thickened with a puree
of mushroom stems and finished with cream), already famous among my customers, became a standard, and I started to make it with a variety of mushrooms.

For my soup, I sautéed shallots in butter, then added chopped mushroom stems and half the caps, sliced. When this was liquid, I poured in quarts of chicken broth and a little salt and pepper and simmered it. After about forty minutes, I pureed the whole thing in small batches in the blender. That was the base. When someone ordered it, I heated a small amount, added a dollop of cream, and sprinkled a few raw mushroom caps and chopped chives on top. Sometimes I made croutons from rich white bread toasted in a ton of butter. When people were on a diet, if they requested no cream, I skipped it and the croutons, using nonfat milk to thin the soup. We noted on the menu that our mushrooms came from Champignons Jacquet in Springfield, Vermont, and Philo's business gained some fame too.

It stayed easy between us; he was never again as stiff and sexist as he had been that first day, although sometimes his assumptions needed . . . enlightening just a little. We talked about our families, our old friends. Philo had had a younger brother who had died of a heart attack when he was only twelve, when Philo was fifteen; and an older brother, who lived in California and worked in computers. The older brother was very successful; he lived in a fourteen-room house with a pool. He was married, with a son and daughter. He'd done everything right, Philo said, with chagrin.

Philo's parents lived in Florida; his father was retired and played golf all day. His mother liked to go to the pool. Both played bridge. They were tan year round. Philo acted dazed when he talked about them, as if they were people he had only heard about. He visited them in Florida once a year, at Christmas.

I told him about Mom and Dad, who fascinated him. He said they sounded real; he felt that his parents weren't real. It had
never occurred to me that I might be lucky in my parents, given the misery of our household when I was growing up. But remembering Sandy's home environment, which I had envied, yet felt off balance in, I thought that maybe domestic tranquility was not the greatest good. But I still wanted it, for myself and Isabelle.

I told Philo about my old friends, of whom I had occasional news. Sandy still lived in Northampton and worked in a clinic there. We wrote each other a couple of times a year, and I knew that she lived with her partner, Louisa, who taught chemistry at Smith and, like Sarah, played a mean game of tennis. Sandy did not live as comfortably as her parents had, but she felt she was much happier. She and Louisa had built a whole world in the Connecticut River Valley: tons of friends, tennis and swimming and string quartets—Louisa's best friend was a violinist. They felt useful.

Bishop and Rebecca had gone back to Cambridge, where Rebecca was in med school. She planned to do her residency in pediatrics at a hospital in Boston that catered to a largely black population and they were buying a house on the fringes of Roxbury, where Bishop had opened a children's book store. He also sold toys—high-quality, educational toys—and was in his element. They were obviously not rich, but someday they would be comfortable. And they too were very happy in their lives. Bec intended to get pregnant when she finished her residency. I didn't know if Bishop ever saw his mother and father; I wanted to ask, but because we spoke only on the phone, I felt hesitant bringing up possibly uncomfortable subjects.

Dolores, who had finally written to Mom, was in New York, going to graduate school at NYU. She was becoming a therapist specializing in incest, and had already published a paper. She was elated about that.

Philo—my Philo, not Mom's Philo—hardly ever heard from Debbie, and he never called her, which made him feel guilty. I
tried to sympathize, but the truth was, I was pleased. I seldom spoke to Stepan; we called maybe twice a year, and when he visited, it was to see Isabelle. He was involved with a new woman at Pax, Elissa, who was also from the Soviet Union. For the first time in his life, Stepan was overwhelmed with passion and thinking of marriage. This was fine with me, and Isabelle was not jealous when on one visit, he brought Elissa with him. They brought a tent and sleeping bags and stayed out in the woods, which gained Dad's respect, and he stopped sniping at Stepan.

There was a problem, however. Stepan had decided he wanted partial custody of Isabelle and spoke about going to court to obtain it. I was outraged and furious with myself for ever telling him about her. I was prepared to fight him to the death over this, but Philo, calmly, rather sweetly, persuaded me that it would not be so bad. It wasn't, he said, as if Stepan wanted her every other weekend; he wanted her for a weekend once in a while and for a month in the summer. Philo said it might be good for her to live on a farm for a month in the summer, and I had to concede that he was right. And Isabelle liked Stepan. He was kind to her, affectionate. The first time she went to stay with him, she was five. Philo and I drove her out to Becket. She took one look at the farm and ran, wide-armed, into paradise. By then they had a couple of dogs and cats, besides the horses and chickens, and Isabelle made herself at home. She loved the animals, and the smell of hay, and all the folk about, and the two older kids, whom she followed around on their chores.

 

After we'd known each other for a few months, I asked Philo to come up on a Monday night to meet Dad. I made an everyday sort of dinner, purposefully; I didn't want Dad making snarky comments on the bloody artichokes he had to eat because we had company or Isabelle crying and refusing to eat the skate or bream she wasn't used to. So I made a dish I knew both Dad and Isabelle
would eat with gusto, the plainest possible meal, spaghetti Bolognese—pasta with chopped beef, tomatoes, garlic, and basil. I also made Mom's salad: lettuce, avocado, and red onion, with a vinaigrette. All the vegetables and herbs came from Kathleen's garden.

Philo showed up exactly on time, at seven o'clock, and Isabelle ran to the door when the bell rang. We sat outdoors on the porch looking at the lake. Dad offered Philo a gin and tonic, which he accepted. It was hot, but there was a breeze off the lake, which was beautiful, framed by pine trees. Dad talked about the horrors of Harvard; Philo talked about the horrors of Penn. I did not even bring up Andrews.

Isabelle sat on the floor, coloring, looking up every once in a while at me or at Philo. I know I was looking at him more often than at her or Dad, and after a while she stood up and climbed into Dad's lap, a rare event. He was thrilled, and he put his arms around her, cuddling her, and she lay against him, sucking her thumb. I talked about gardening, which interested Philo. When he talked about mushrooms, Dad listened and asked questions. Isabelle then slid off Dad's lap and walked off, as though in a huff. I called her but she ignored me. I followed her indoors. I grabbed her hand. “Want to help me make dinner, Isabelle?”

This thought delighted her; she loved to help her mommy. I fastened her tiny apron around her, then put on my own and started dinner. It didn't take long—I'd made the sauce earlier, and set the table. I just had to boil the pasta and put the salad together. I found things for Isabelle to do—I had her put napkins at each place, and she put rings of red onion on each salad plate with great care, concentrating.

The food warmed everybody up. We all began to chatter. I poured more wine. I gave Isabelle a drop, with water. I said it was a special occasion. Her mood improved even more. By the time dinner ended, she would look at Philo, and when I took her off
to bed, she hugged her grandfather and let Philo kiss her on the cheek. Warily.

Success.

 

Philo and I got married the next year. Philo wanted to have a child, and we thought we should be married, for the child's sake. We started out living in his house in Springfield. We had a guest room for Dad to stay in, but he never came to stay. He'd come for dinner once in a while, then scurry home. Mom did stay, though, and often. The next year, I had a son, whom we called William, after Philo's brother who had died.

By that time Isabelle was five and going to kindergarten. I had to take three months off from the restaurant; William was born in January, so once again I was away only in the slow winter months.

Isabelle fought Philo off as long as she could, but by the time we were married she had given in and was glued to him like his shadow. She fought me for his attention. She cuddled the new baby and played with him the way the dog played with her. Philo adored her, while his own son terrified him—for the first year, anyway. I had to teach him not to provoke power struggles with William, and he had to teach me to let him have his own relationship with him. The two of us had to deal, once in a while, with the kids' jealousy of each other. We were, in other words, a relatively happy family. And this had happened without my consciously doing anything.

Soon after I married Philo, Dad went to New York for an opening and met a rich woman from the art world and married her. He moved to a New York loft and became part of the art scene in the city, and I didn't see him anymore, but would see his name in newspapers and magazines. He left the cabin empty, saying he would come up summers. He probably did, once in a while, but he didn't call me. Mrs. Thacker still went in one day a week
to clean the place and make sure nothing had leaked or broken or exploded, and Philo and the kids and I went over occasionally to swim or canoe in the lake. We'd wash in the outdoor shower and sit on the porch, and put our soda in the fridge, but we didn't disturb things in the house.

We were mostly happy. Philo did housework along with me, automatically. He was used to it, having lived alone. Sometimes I felt frustrated with him because he had trouble being interested in anything but mushrooms; he didn't make much conversation and I was often parched for it. I couldn't get it from other women, because with the restaurant, the children, and the housework, I didn't have time for friends. Only after the kids were older did I have time to form friendships with smart local women who were fun to talk to.

The zest went out of our lovemaking after some years, but by then I wasn't as hot as I had been and the longing for something more was rare. I think Philo still felt the same longing, which of course made me feel terrible. But once in a great while, we'd have an intense desire for each other, and those times made up for a lot. One evening at the restaurant when dinner was over, Mildred, Artur's girlfriend, came out to the kitchen as we finished cleaning up and caught me and Philo looking at each other. That was all—we were just looking at each other across the kitchen table, both tired after a heavy night, me of cooking, Philo of delivering—and thinking what we'd do in another hour or so. When Mildred appeared it broke the connection, and Philo went to take the garbage out. Mildred came over to me and said softly, “There is nothing sexier in the world than a mature couple as handsome as you and Philo looking at each other with lust.” She stepped away with a secret smile, then grabbed Artur's arm as he walked past her with some pâté to be refrigerated, and he stopped and kissed her.