Goodbye To All That Page 8

  He’d phoned her from the club to let her know he and his father would be having a drink and he’d be home late. He’d implied that his father needed something strong and wet more than he did, but that wasn’t exactly true.

  He pulled his clubs from the trunk, stood them in their nook in a corner of the garage near the Range Rover, and turned off the garage lights before entering the house. The spotlights above the center island glowed in the kitchen but the room was empty.

  He headed up the stairs, following the sound of voices, and found Brooke reading Harry Potter to the girls. Doug had mentioned that he thought Madison and Mackenzie were too young for Harry Potter, but Brooke had argued that if she was going to read to them, she might as well read something she found entertaining, and chances were the girls didn’t understand most of the scary stuff, anyway. Doug supposed he’d feel the same if he’d spent as many hours reading to his daughters as Brooke had, so he didn’t argue.

  The girls were in their nightgowns, tucked into their beds—five bedrooms in the house, and they insisted on sharing one, though Doug assumed that would change when they got older. They hollered a shrill greeting as soon as they saw him filling the doorway. “Daddy! Daddy!”

  Brooke tucked a finger into the book to hold her place and smiled at him. “I made bowties for them,” she said. “I figured you wouldn’t mind missing that.”

  Bowties were just mutated spaghetti, as far as he was concerned. “Did you eat?”

  She nodded. “If you want to throw together a sandwich . . .”

  “Maybe later.” Contemplating his parents’ screwed-up marriage had pretty much killed his appetite. He waved to the girls, then sauntered down the hall to the master bedroom to wash up. He didn’t want to breathe booze on them when he kissed them good-night.

  He paused for a moment at the entry to the master suite. It was, he had to admit, the most spectacular area of a spectacular house. The main room was big enough to hold a king-size bed, Brooke’s triple dresser, Doug’s bureau, a small sitting area with a sofa and coffee table facing a fireplace above which hung a flat-panel TV. Two walk-in closets opened off the main room, separated by a dressing area at the end of which was a bathroom larger than the bedroom he’d had growing up. Another room off to one side served as an exercise room, equipped with a treadmill, a rowing machine and another TV so he could watch DVD’s of “St. Elsewhere” while he worked out. Brooke had decorated the entire suite with superb taste. The carpet was a plush cream shade, accented by a few Oriental area rugs. The furniture was Shaker—simple and elegant—and the bed was a four-poster with horizontal beams connecting the four posts, the purpose of which Doug couldn’t fathom. Sometimes, when he was in bed, he felt as if he’d gotten shut up inside a carton with invisible walls.

  Brooke’s voice drifted down the hall in a gentle murmur. The hall light glinted off the three-way mirror above the little vanity table she’d tucked into a corner of the room, spraying the walls with trapezoids of light.

  It all seemed so . . . right.

  Had there been a time in his father’s life when everything had seemed right? Had he come home to Doug’s mother every evening and believed she was as content as he was, as satisfied with the world they’d created? Had he entered his bedroom confident that she loved him and was devoted to him and her feelings would never change?

  Jesus fucking Christ. What if, thirty years from now, Brooke decided to walk out on Doug?

  He raced into the bathroom, took a quick piss, splashed water on his face and gargled a capful of mouthwash. Then he jogged back down the hall to his wife, needing reassurance. When he saw the light off in the girls’ room and Brooke gone, he had to pause, take a deep breath and convince himself that she was somewhere in the house. Probably in the kitchen fixing him a sandwich. Just because she wasn’t where he’d last seen her didn’t mean she’d left him.

  He tiptoed into the girls’ room, bent over each bed and kissed each daughter on the forehead. “Today was fun,” Mackenzie said in a sleepy, happy voice.

  “Aunt Melissa’s friend was so nice,” Madison added.

  “He fixes hair,” Mackenzie told him.

  “He was wearing boots.”

  “I’m glad you enjoyed yourselves,” Doug murmured.

  “Uncle Gordon played a video. Pocahontas. It was good,” Mackenzie reported.

  “Noah kept making snorting pig sounds, though,” Madison said.

  “He’s a boy,” Mackenzie pointed out, as if that explained everything.

  “I love Grandma and Grandpa,” Madison said, then yawned.

  “Me, too.” Mackenzie’s voice overlapped Madison’s, as if she’d known what Madison would say and wanted to express her agreement immediately.

  I love them, too, Doug almost said. But he was angry and unsettled, and a little scared. So instead, he said, “It’s bedtime now. Good-night, girls.”

  “Good night,” they chorused with a final burst of energy before burrowing under their matching yellow blankets.

  Leaving their bedroom, Doug contemplated the fact that the girls had no idea what was going on with their grandparents. Maybe they’d never have to know. Maybe the bickering Bendels would get back together again before their separation registered on their grandchildren. Maybe his mother’s coffee pot would break or his father would overdose on salty take-out dinners and they’d apologize to each other and vow to accommodate each other’s wishes and moods a little more.

  Brooke wasn’t in the kitchen, although she’d left an empty plate, a package containing half a loaf of pumpernickel bread and a jar of mustard on the center island’s granite counter. Did she expect him to eat a mustard sandwich? It wasn’t even Dijon mustard, just the usual yellow stuff. He wondered whether she had cold cuts or cheese stashed in the fridge.

  Not that it mattered. He still wasn’t hungry.

  “I’m in here,” her voice drifted to him from the family room. “I didn’t know what you wanted to eat.”

  What he wanted was to drink, not eat. He filled a glass with Chivas and abandoned the bread and mustard for the family room.

  Brooke lounged on the couch, a goblet of white wine in her hand and her bare feet propped on the teak table. The TV was off, the windows filled with a sky halfway between blue and black. The lamp on the end table beside her spilled amber light over her hair, turning it gold. She looked so much better than he felt.

  He dropped onto the couch next to her, leaned over and planted a kiss on her lips. He tasted wine on her mouth, and also a vanilla undertone. He wondered if it was her lipstick or her lips that were vanilla-flavored.

  “How’s your father?” she asked.

  He sipped some scotch. “His game was so bad, he asked me to tear up the score sheet.”

  She opened her mouth, then closed it and gazed toward the window, as if unsure what to say. After a minute, she turned back to him. “Do you think I should get bangs?”

  He nearly choked on the scotch in his mouth. She wanted to get banged?

  “You know, like Melissa has. Bangs.” She brushed her fingers over her forehead.

  “Oh. Bangs.” Hairstyle. “I don’t know. Your hair looks great the way it is.”

  “Bangs might soften it a little. I was talking to her friend, Luc?” Brooke’s voice rose into a question. “He said he thought bangs might soften the lines of my face.”

  “You don’t have any lines,” Doug said, floundering. Was she fishing for compliments? Worrying about non-existent wrinkles? And why the hell had she been discussing this with Bronze Brondo?

  “Not lines like old-age lines,” she clarified. “Lines like the line of my nose or my cheeks. He had some really good ideas.”

  “Why would he have good ideas about bangs?” It would never have occurred to Doug—or to any man Doug knew—to discuss hairdos with a woman he’d just met. For that matter, it would never occur to him to discuss hairdos with a woman he knew well. He couldn’t believe that today, after having spent an hour and a half listening
to his mother calmly explain why she was leaving his father and what she was leaving him for—a job at First-Rate, for God’s sake—and another three hours listening to his father say things that left Doug with the clear impression that the old man was simmering with a combination of rage and fear, he should find himself cuddled up on the family room sofa with his wife, discussing hairdos.

  “He’s a hairdresser,” Brooke explained.

  He fixes hair, Mackenzie had said. He seemed a little faygela, his father had said. Holy shit. “The guy’s a hairdresser?”

  “Stop thinking like that,” Brooke said, frowning and poking his forearm, almost causing him to spill his drink. “Now you’re going to assume he’s gay.”

  “I didn’t say that.” I only thought it.

  “He’s your sister’s boyfriend,” Brooke reminded him. “They’re a couple. He works at Nouvelle, an exclusive salon in Manhattan. I assume you don’t get to work at a place like that unless you know what you’re talking about.”

  “When it comes to bangs, maybe.” Why couldn’t Melissa find a normal guy? An attorney like her. An Ivy Leaguer. Someone who made lots of money and talked about baseball.

  “Anyway, he thought I should consider bangs. What do you think?”

  “I think you’re gorgeous,” Doug said truthfully. “Whatever you want to do to your hair is fine with me.”

  She smiled, kissed his cheek and cushioned her head against his shoulder. “So, about your parents.”

  “My father’s trying hard not to be a wreck,” Doug told her. “My mother—God knows. Did she say anything when she drove you and the girls home?”

  “What could she say with the girls in the back seat? She asked them about school and they wouldn’t shut up. They spent the entire drive telling her about the ashtrays they made out of clay in art and the class’s pet turtle. Its name is Shelly and it likes to eat lettuce and crickets.”

  “Ashtrays? They made ashtrays?” He scowled. “Nobody smokes anymore.”

  “But first-graders make ashtrays out of clay. It’s what they do. They can’t master a pottery wheel at that age.”

  He managed a tentative smile. As long as his daughters weren’t smoking, they could make any damned thing they wanted in art. “So my mother didn’t tell you anything?”

  “No,” Brooke replied, adding grimly, “Your parents promised to watch the girls when we go to Nevis. How is that going to work out if they’re divorced?”

  “Oh, Christ. Nevis.”

  “I know it sounds selfish, Doug, but we booked that trip months ago and your parents promised.”

  “Shit.” His mother would be living in some dingy apartment somewhere. Were his daughters supposed to stay in that dingy apartment with her? Or at the house with his father, unsupervised because his father would be at work? Hell, his mother would be at work, too. “My mother’s got a job,” he told Brooke.

  “She mentioned that during the drive. You’ll have to convince her to take that week off.”

  A week’s vacation seemed doable. Maybe he could cajole his mother. For the sake of her two beloved granddaughters, who adored her so very much. Maybe the girls could make clay ashtrays for her at school. That would melt her heart. “This whole situation is so stupid. I don’t know why my mother is moving out on my father. She always seems happy.”

  Brooke pulled away and gave him a look that said, Are you insane?

  What had he missed? He saw more of his father than his mother, thanks to their golf games and occasional lunches when Doug found himself in the Longwood district of Boston, home of Beth Israel Deaconess, the hospital where his father’s practice was located. But whenever he saw his mother, she seemed happy enough to him. She always gave him a hug and a kiss and fixed meals she knew he’d enjoy, and she asked him about his work and then fussed over the girls. Wasn’t that the definition of happiness for a grandmother? A chance to cook and spoil her precious granddaughters?

  “How do you know she’s been unhappy?” he asked.

  Brooke opened her mouth, then shut it again and leaned back into him, her hair stroking his chin and her shoulder digging pleasantly into his chest. “She never glows. She always looks tired and drab.”

  “That’s just the way she is. She’s never been a glamour queen.”

  “It’s not about glamour,” Brooke said, sounding a touch impatient. “It’s about having energy and enthusiasm. Maybe you didn’t notice because you’re always with your father.” She shrugged. “Maybe it’s just a matter of people only seeing what they want to see.”

  Was that what Brooke thought of him? That he saw only what he wanted to see? He had perfect vision, damn it—thanks to the skilled surgery of Barry Steinmetz, one of his closest friends since their med-school days and one of the finest Lasik surgeons Doug knew, other than himself. If his mother had been drab or unenthusiastic, his 20/20 vision would have picked up on it.

  Certainly his 20/20 vision would pick up on any drabness or lack of enthusiasm in Brooke, wouldn’t it? He didn’t have to worry about her not being happy. She glowed all the time.

  “You would tell me if you were unhappy, wouldn’t you?” he asked, aware of the anxiety filtering through his voice.

  Brooke nestled closer to him and sipped her wine. “Of course I would,” she said. “I think I might be happier if I had bangs.”

  He wasn’t sure if she was joking, but he decided to pretend she was. “If you want bangs,” he murmured, “get bangs.”

  Chapter Seven

  Jill lay in bed, contemplating whether she needed to pee again. She’d consumed a whole damned six-pack of Diet Coke today, and for most of the past two hours her bladder had felt like a water balloon, stretched and sloshy and ready to burst.

  Six twelve-ounce cans. All that caffeine. She was never going to fall asleep.

  Gordon wasn’t asleep, either, but that was because he was trying to get her in the mood. He nuzzled her neck and caressed her breast. He had always operated under the assumption that an erect nipple was the equivalent of an erect penis, and if he rubbed her breasts enough to get her nipples hard and swollen, that meant she was ready for sex. She’d tried to explain to him that her nipples got hard and swollen every time she left the steamy shower stall in their bathroom and stepped into the cooler air of the bedroom, and every time she went outdoors in sub-freezing weather. “Sometimes my nipples do that because I’m cold, not because I’m hot,” she’d explained.

  She was neither hot nor cold at the moment. Jittery, yes. Blame the caffeine. Blame the fact that Melissa and Luc were cozying up in Abbie’s room just down the hall, while Abbie camped out in the family room. Blame her failure to persuade her parents not to go their separate ways and live separate lives. Blame the fact that, although she loved Gordon and he was a wonderful man and a terrific father and all the rest, he’d left a blob of pale green toothpaste on the surface of the sink ten minutes ago, and she’d wound up washing it away.

  Did that mean her marriage was doomed? Twenty-eight years from now, would she be moving into a seedy little apartment and working at a convenience store because of that wart of toothpaste?

  Shit. She was thinking too much. Thinking about toothpaste and her parents was not going to get her turned on, no matter how perky her nipples happened to be.

  Maybe she shouldn’t have let Melissa and Luc spend the night. Abbie—clearly a better hostess than her mother—had insisted that they stay. She’d argued that Jill couldn’t send Aunt Melissa off to a motel when Aunt Melissa was so sad and really, Abbie didn’t mind unrolling her sleeping bag on the couch downstairs, and besides, wasn’t Luc cool?

  Jill wasn’t so sure about Luc, but she had to concede that Melissa was sad. She’d whimpered through dinner—an assortment of take-out dishes Gordon and Noah had picked up from Bangkok Palace. Wielding her chopsticks and stuffing her face with pad thai and chicken with lemon grass, Melissa had sniveled about how children of divorce had so much more trouble maintaining their faith in love, and maybe she sh
ould just give up on true love, and while she was at it maybe she should forget about ever having children because she would never want to cause another human being the pain she was suffering right now.

  When she’d confessed her doubts about true love, Luc had glanced at her, looped an arm around her shoulders and given her a squeeze. Then he’d winked at Noah—he did have strikingly pretty blue eyes—and whispered, loudly enough for everyone to hear, “Girls can be a little dramatic sometimes.”

  Noah had nodded knowingly. “You’re telling me?”

  Gordon had laughed, and Jill had sublimated the urge to throw the container of sticky rice at his head by grabbing her can of Diet Coke and chugging enough soda to make her eyes tear from the carbonation.

  After dinner, Abbie had retreated to her bedroom to text her friend Caitlin, and the guys had retired to the family room to watch something suitably manly on television, leaving Jill and Melissa to clean up the dinner things. Not an onerous task, given that Jill hadn’t even bothered to empty the waxy white cartons from Bangkok Palace into serving bowls. All she had to do was stack the plates in the dishwasher. Melissa’s help had consisted of gathering the cartons, napkins and chopsticks and depositing them in the trash.

  Melissa had poured herself a glass of wine—Jill foolishly had stayed with Diet Coke; if she’d had some wine instead, she might be asleep by now, or at least not fretting over the engorged state of her bladder—and leaned against the counter near Jill’s desk. “Do you think Dad’s having an affair?” she’d asked.

  Jill had mentally reviewed the family conference at her dining room table that afternoon. She’d sensed undercurrents, but not an adultery undercurrent. Her father’s hair had been as gray as always, no sign that he was coloring it to look younger. No updated fashion sense. No cockiness, forgive the pun.