A Family Affair(19)

“Do you suppose that has something to do with you not being curious about your father’s anonymous recipient?”

Mike shrugged. “I guess it could. I want to respect his wishes and his privacy. And also, what will it change? Will it make me happier? Sadder? Why open that envelope? The girls, though. They want to know. They think they have a right to know.”

Anna was a little surprised. “Even Bess?”

“She doesn’t stir things up much, but yeah—even Bess. Though you know Bess will do just about anything to avoid confrontation. But eventually Jessie is going to push you to try to find out.”

“I doubt that will do any good,” Anna said.

“Can’t you contest or something?” Mike asked.

“Sure, if I want to build a case that I deserve that ten percent, which I don’t. But even if I won the ten percent I might never learn the identity of the anonymous recipient.”

“But you do want to know?” he asked.

“Here’s where I am on that,” Anna said. “I thought your dad and I didn’t have secrets. Not important ones. I knew his passwords, his bank card code. I even made his doctor appointments. It galls me that he had such a big secret. Maybe a secret life of some kind. I’m equally pissed that he died.”

“Maybe he was sick,” Mike said. “Ever think of that?”

She shook her head. “Your father was a strong and brave man in many ways, but not with his health. He couldn’t endure a hangnail without complaining. Remember how we used to laugh at the ‘man cold’? That was the main reason I didn’t want him to go on that rafting trip. He sprained almost everything on his body on the last long-distance bike ride he took and swore to never do anything like that again. You know how we met. He fell off the pier and nearly drowned in the San Francisco Bay! But he wouldn’t be stopped on the rafting trip. It was mysteriously important to him.”

Mike sopped up some sauce with his bread, chewing thoughtfully. “I guess he was kind of a candy-ass.”

“Sometimes,” she agreed. “Emotionally and psychologically he was a brick. The things he had to hear in therapy sessions were sometimes stunningly terrible, things that would make a meeker man sleepless for a year. That was his true gift. Not to mention the number of people he helped.”

“Like I said, Jessie is eventually going to push you to try to find out the identity of the person getting the money,” he said.

“But not you,” she said. It was not a question.

“Not me,” he said. “You were his wife. I think he should have always been honest with you and you with him. You probably have a right to know. But he should be able to have a private life from his children. If that’s what he wanted and needed.”

She rested her chin on raised folded hands. “I think that’s just an extension of refusing to open that sealed envelope. You’re afraid of what might be inside.”

“No,” he said. “No.”

“Yes,” she said. “What if there’s something inside that causes you to lose respect for your father? What if you don’t admire him as much? Missing him and grieving him is hard enough, why add another dimension to that?”

“I guess,” he said with a shrug.

“What we all have to get through this process is the reality that none of us is perfect and it’s okay, even admirable, to love an imperfect soul deeply. Right now, snatched from us, he appears perfect. Remember that old saying—the good die young? It should be the young die good. Live long enough and there’s plenty of time to screw up. At the end of the day, we are all human. And imperfect.” She paused, thinking about that long-ago affair she’d never told her children about. “We all have secrets.”

Michael pushed his plate away. “Remember that pot you found in my backpack? That I said was Matt’s?”

“Yes,” she said, remembering it clearly.

“It was mine,” he said.

“I know,” she said, laughing.

Anna loved Mike best. That was the thing a mother was never supposed to say, so she kept it her shameful secret. But they sat in the great room after spaghetti casserole and talked until eleven and it was a bit like coming home. She tried to ignore the fact that Mike was like Chad in his sensitivity, his perceptiveness. His empathy. He asked her pertinent questions: Did you feel he understood you? Do you miss him or the idea of him?

And Michael said profound things. He was really just a goofball who liked playing with kids, that’s where we bonded. In his own way he was charismatic and knew how to make people follow him—not only was that his gift, it was the thing most important to him. I think what he really wanted was to be most popular. Anna thought that was entirely true.

That was it, of course. Chad knew how to make people follow him, lean on him, need him—her, Joe, a mistress some time ago, clients, perhaps other women along the way. Chad was their guru.

She was filled with her son’s spirit all the next day. Mike came back to finish chores around her house, but while he let her make him a sandwich, they didn’t share a meal or sit up late talking. He had plans and off he went.

The next day was Monday and because her colleagues were still giving her plenty of support and covering for her quite a bit, Anna took a long lunch despite the fact that the cases were piling up in her office. For the first time in her memory she was having trouble staying focused. Instead of working, she dwelled on her grown children, starting with Mike. She grabbed a sandwich and sat on a bench in a small park near her office and thought about her son.