“What do you mean, no one’s talking about divorce?” I asked.
“Exactly that. Your mother and I are not dissolving our marriage. I’ll be living with Tracy, but—”
“Oh, like Tracy is going to love that you’re not getting divorced. That’s fine with her? She doesn’t want to marry you?” I demanded.
“As a matter of fact, she doesn’t. At least not yet. It would be complicated, financially. We’re taking it one step at a time.”
“Why can’t you just seduce models in your studio like other artists do?” Joel asked.
Our dad’s phone was ringing, or more accurately, wind-chiming. My father answered, then whispered, “Still. Can I call you back?”
“She has her own ringtone?” Joel asked. “Who showed you how to do that?”
Our besotted father then offered his caller a good-bye so tender that something shifted in my anger equation.
“What are you going to tell your girlfriend when she asks, ‘How’d it go with the kids today?’?” Joel asked.
“I’ll have to be honest. I’ll say, ‘It didn’t go well. To my great disappointment, Joel and Faith would rather I keep my newfound happiness to myself, preferring I just sneak around behind their backs.’?”
“At this stage? Would that be so terrible? You were already living in separate cities, and Mom was okay with that, believing that you only flew the coop because you were painting 24/7,” Joel said.
“If this makes it any better, that was the reason for my renting the studio. Meeting Tracy came months after I left Everton.”
“Just like that? You weren’t looking—”
“I promise you, I was not looking to have an affair. Your mother adjusted once she understood that I had this need, this itch to paint, and I wasn’t moving out for personal reasons.”
“Yeah, well, that itch didn’t take long to shift south,” Joel muttered.
“She told us you came for supper every few weeks and you stayed over, implying conjugal visits,” I said.
“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.