Finding Isadora(56)

Studying Gabriel over the top of my wine glass, I wondered how he could be so committed to helping the disadvantaged people in society, yet seem unable to reach out to someone he loved. Tentatively I said, “It sounds like you’re leaving it all in Richard’s hands.”

He stared at me over the top of his pizza slice. “Say what?”

“You agreed to the test because he wanted it, which is good of you. But you’re letting the future of your relationship depend on his reaction to the results.”

“Doesn’t it?”

I was getting a strong inkling as to how Gabriel’s and Richard’s relationship might have gone so wrong. In some ways, they were very alike. In their stubbornness, for example. “Relationships take work,” I pointed out.

“If something takes that much work, it wasn’t meant to be.” He took a slug of wine and detached another slice of pizza, which he handed to me.

I bit off the point and chewed slowly, reflecting. After I swallowed, I said, “That’s a load of crap, and you know it.”

He froze in the act of separating another slice of pizza, then stared at me with an expression that suggested he couldn’t make up his mind whether he was more angry or amused. “Crap?”

“Relationships aren’t about fate, Gabriel. They’re about emotion and effort. If you love someone, then you don’t let circumstance dictate whether the relationship is going to work. You invest in it. Time, emotion, hard work,” I said vehemently. “You discuss things, share, try to understand the other person. You support them, glory with them in their triumphs, comfort them when they fail.”

He shrugged. “When it comes right down to it, we’re all alone. A person can’t count on having someone there to pick them up when they fall down. They have to learn to do that all by themselves.”

“Children ought to be able to count on their parents.”

“Told you I was rotten at parenting.”

I could see why. He seemed determined not to grasp my point. But then I remembered Richard saying his father had probably grown up in a dysfunctional family. Perhaps Gabriel didn’t have a context from which to understand about loving, committed relationships. So I’d give him an analogy. “You’re a lawyer, an advocate. You fight for your clients, right?”

“Yeah, sure. What’re you getting at?”

“In your work, you support and defend your clients, you fight for them, you don’t give up. You don’t take the attitude, ‘If something takes that much work, it wasn’t meant to be’.”

As I parroted his words back to him, his eyebrows rose.

“But when it comes to your son, you opted out a long time ago. And isn’t your son more important than a client?”

I expected him to curse, to maybe throw me out. Instead he just chewed pizza slowly and methodically, not looking at me. When the slice was finished, he gazed at me, his eyes expressionless. “Yeah. And so?”

“So it’s not too late. You love him, Gabriel. Fight for him. You can’t make up for the things you did and didn’t do when he was growing up, but you can apologize, tell him how you feel, try to build something better.”

He ran a hand down one side of his face, across his jaw, and up the other side. He must have pressed hard because a flush came to his dusky skin wherever his hand had touched it.

His skin. For the first time I realized he was clean-shaven, rather than stubbled as he’d been when he brought Valente to the clinic. When he’d showered, he had shaved. For me?

“Richard doesn’t want a relationship with me,” he said.

“I think you’re wrong. He’d be prickly at first because he’s felt for a long time that you didn’t care. But you can get through to him.”

Gabriel rose and walked over to a window. For a few minutes, he gazed out in silence. Then he came back and squatted in front of me so our eyes were on a level, less than a foot apart. “I don’t know how, Isadora. I don’t know how to be a father.” Those brown eyes were dark with pain.

I touched his shoulder. “Most parents don’t have any instruction, they go with their instincts.”

“Instincts.” His eyes sparked to life and, under my hand, his muscles tensed. Then he sprang to his feet, jerking away from my touch, and paced away from me. Half way across the room, he turned and stared at me. “My instincts can’t be trusted.”

The tension in the air had changed, and I knew he was talking about more than his paternal instincts. It was the closest either of us had come to admitting an attraction, and I desperately didn’t want him to go any further. Once something was acknowledged, you could no longer pretend it didn’t exist. I sucked in a breath and grabbed my wine glass, cupping it tightly in both hands.

“The first instinct should be to protect your child,” he said. “Shouldn’t it? To keep him from harm? From being hurt?”

I nodded warily. “I think so.”

“Me, too.” He walked toward me, but only to pick up his own glass and move away again. He paced over to his desk and leaned against it, staring at a painting of a weathered totem pole.

After a few minutes of silence, still looking at the painting rather than me, he said, “When he was a baby I was busy with university, then law school. And activism. And let’s face it, I was also smoking dope and screwing my brains out. Yeah, I loved Richard, but a kid didn’t fit my life. He fit Diane’s, so I left the two of them alone together much of the time. It set a pattern.”