On Turpentine Lane(37)

“You asked me why I had to tell your mother about Tracy. That was precisely why. How could I sleep with two women, effectively cheating on both of them! Can you imagine what I was going through? After a marriage of almost thirty-six years, and then the fates or the stars or God sends me this overwhelming passionate new life!”

I said, “Um, Dad. I’d rather not go there.”

Joel said, “Ya, right. God’s big on people fooling around.”

There was no letup. You’d think another male, in this case my thirty-four-year-old divorced brother, might be the more likely ally, but he demanded, “Did you screw around on Mom before this? Because I remember wondering about what’s-her-name, the woman with the crazy eyes who worked for you and drove a Mustang?”

“I don’t know who ‘crazy eyes’ refers to, but it doesn’t matter, because I never had an affair with anyone in my office.”

More to ponder, more to rewrite about my parents’ allegedly happy marriage. “No affair with anyone in the office” sounded like words chosen carefully in grand-jury-testimony fashion, suggesting adulteries elsewhere. I closed my eyes.

My father continued, “Your mother had a sense. I don’t mean back when I first moved. I mean lately. She’d picked something up.”

“Such as?” Joel asked.

“Something indiscreet that was left on voice mail.”

“By Tracy, I take it,” I said.

He nodded. “Nothing big. Just an endearment and a reference to an upcoming date.”

“Oh, really? That’s all? A date? Why would that make any wife suspicious?” Joel sputtered.

“You don’t think Tracy left that message on purpose?” I asked.

“It’s done,” he said. “There’s no point in second-guessing—”

“It sure did the job, though, didn’t it?” Joel said.

A waitress was at our table, her apologetic body language conveying that so far she’d sensed no good moment to be asking any of the usual questions, but duty obliged her . . .

“Just the check,” said our father.

I said, “I’m going outside to call Mom.”

“Can you wait until you’ve heard me out?” Dad asked.

“There’s more?” Joel asked.

“Just what I came here to assure you of. Nothing changes. Your mother and I both love you, and just because—”

“Jesus!” Joel yelled. “That’s what you say to your eight-year-old when you’re moving out—‘Mommy and I aren’t happy together, but we both love you very much, blah blah blah.’?”

My father was looking at me, pleading for something . . . anything that was less than antipathy. Don’t go all soft, I scolded myself. Don’t jump ship. But seeing his watery eyes, I shushed Joel, then heard myself say, “I guess I sort of get it.”

“Just like that?” Joel asked.

“What’s our getting so pissed off going to accomplish? If we stop talking to him, do you think he and Mom will renew their vows and that’ll be the end of Tracy?”

Joel’s one-shoulder shrug was unhappy but faintly obliging. I reached over and patted my father’s dejected hand.

“Please don’t forget I was in insurance,” he pleaded, “always factoring in life expectancies.”

Joel and I exchanged newly worried glances.

“I don’t want to hang my hat—or more precisely my heart—on actuarial tables. We never know how much time we have left, do we?”

“Are you ill?” I asked. “Is that what you’re trying to tell us?”

“No! I’m fine. I’m great. Ironically, I’ve never felt younger . . . ‘in this short Life that only lasts an hour.’?”

“Huh?” Joel said.

“Emily Dickinson, of course,” Dad supplied.

We didn’t give him our blessing exactly. But this? We’d never before heard Henry Frankel quoting poetry.





25





A Lot for a Daughter in One Day


I DROVE STRAIGHT FROM BOSTON to what I’d previously considered my parents’ home, dropping Joel off beforehand as he was insisting this condolence call needed to be woman-to-woman.

Finding the back door unlocked, I let myself in, calling, “Mom!” then “Nancy!” from room to room before heading partway up the stairs, tiptoeing like a daughter who hoped her mother was merely napping and not dead by her own hand.

“Faith?” I heard, and though far away, it sounded normal, even pleasantly surprised that her overly busy daughter had dropped by unannounced. “I’m down cellar. Be right up.”

“You okay?” I called.

“Laundry,” she answered.

I didn’t wait, but hustled downstairs. First impression: not a good sign that in late afternoon she was dressed in a flannel housecoat and slippers. “You okay?” I asked, watching her rather nonchalantly pretreat stains before I blurted out, “I know everything! I’m still in shock!” Within seconds, uninvited, my arms were around her neck and I was blubbering condolences and apologizing for being the daughter of a man who would do such a thing.

She didn’t melt into my embrace or even pat my back. Instead, she untangled soggy me from around her neck. “Buck up,” she said.