Dear Edward(53)

“What’s your plan?”

Crispin holds back from saying, I’m not sure. He never says, I’m not sure. Uncertainty is weakness, and he has a policy against it. He says, “I might just dump the whole mountain on Louisa. That would really mess with her head. The damn woman has spent her life trying to get my money. I could just hand it to her on a silver platter.” This idea makes him chuckle.

There’s a pause on the other end of the phone, because Samuels is Louisa’s lawyer as well. He’s choked with professional discretion. “As you wish, Cox. I’ll alert Ernie.”

Now, as Crispin sinks gratefully into his seat, he sees the raindrops outside as his fortune, sinking to earth. This is a woebegone idea, because the money—without him attached to it—has no meaning. Just green and white paper rectangles that he spent his whole life, his whole self, socking away. He would love to mess with Louisa, but she doesn’t need the cash—wouldn’t even notice the addition in her day-to-day life. As a friend of his once put it, “You can’t eat any better than you do now.” He and Louisa both eat as well as is humanly possible.

He’s always given a crap about his money and about what it takes to get more. The numbers mattered to him until his lawyer’s phone call this morning, and if that has fallen away, what’s left? Across the aisle, this kid, who looks high as a kite, is banging away on his keyboard like every letter he hits is going to make a real difference. And maybe it will, maybe it does.

Maybe it did.

The pain is a collection of marbles now, rolling around his abdomen. As he falls asleep, he thinks, I should have taken my kids camping when they asked.

Bruce rubs his head—a nervous tic that he’s not sure counts as a tic, because he’s always aware when he does it—and stands up.

“Just going to say hello to your mother,” he says. “Be good.”

Eddie says, “Dad, we’re not five.”

Jordan says, “Tell her thank you for the dessert, but it had dairy in it, so I gave it to Eddie.”

Bruce sighs, because in the dream he was just having, Eddie was five. The little boy was sitting on his lap, on the couch, and Bruce was reading Winnie-the-Pooh to him. Eddie was leaning against his father’s chest, and the sensation of that weight—the complete trust and lack of inhibition with which the boy relaxed every ounce of his body into his father’s—was one of the things that made parenthood unmissable.

Bruce had read Eddie that book twelve or thirteen times, from start to finish. He knew that all children liked repetition, but Eddie more than most. Once he learned to read, he read some of Winnie-the-Pooh to himself almost every night in bed, and he’d watched his favorite movie, The Jungle Book, countless times. “At least he has good taste,” Jane used to say when Bruce worried aloud that he wasn’t reading enough other books. “At least he likes the classics.”

The twelve-year-old Eddie is made up of spindly limbs. His chubbiness is gone. He’s awkward in his hugs; he feels, in his father’s arms, like a sapling at risk to the elements. Putting his hands on the piano keys seems to be the repetition Eddie now craves, and he no longer needs or wants his father to read to him.

Bruce pushes the first-class curtain to one side and sees that the seat beside Jane is empty.

“Sit down,” she says. “I don’t know where he went.”

Bruce eases down next to her. “That guy doesn’t look too good,” he says, indicating the old man sleeping across the aisle.

“Apparently he’s a famous baron.”

“Baron,” he says, and smiles. “Why would he fly commercial? If I were a baron, I’d have my own plane.”

“He’s actually a hornswoggler, a bamboozler,” she says. “And that goes double for my seatmate. I can just tell.”

“How’s the script going?” Bruce tries to make sure his tone isn’t too weighted. He wants to have a conversation, not a fight. He has missed his wife from the far reaches of economy class.

She seems to sense what he’s thinking, as usual. “I’m sorry,” she says. “Again.”

She fits her hand over his and presses. Her skin is soft, and the pressure makes his mouth form a smile. He can be furious with her and still be aware that he loves her at the same time. It took years for him to be able to accept the absence of logic in their love. Frustration plus a bad mood plus a particular smile of hers equaled a shot of joy in his belly. He hopes that his boys find this same kind of unbalanced logic in their own futures. He remembers the look on Jordan’s face in the Chinese restaurant and wonders, for a fleeting moment, if it’s possible that his older son already has. But then he dismisses the thought as absurd.

“What?” Jane says. “Please think out loud.”

“We should sign Eddie up for the Colburn School in L.A.”

Jane raises her eyebrows. “Really?”

“Don’t you agree?”

“Yes, of course. I think he’s talented, and he loves the piano. But that will remove him from your curriculum.”

“Not entirely. I can still make sure he gets his math and reads history.”

“Jordan will be lonely.”

“I know. We’ll have to figure something out. Maybe he’ll like spending even more one-on-one time with his dad.”