“Who’d want to after knowing what I know?” I said.
“Ten, fifteen more minutes and we’re done,” one of the men said.
I asked if they could drive away without attracting any more attention than they already had. And would it violate protocol if they left through the bulkhead door instead of the scandal-inducing way they came in?
34
Care to Share?
MY BROTHER FORWARDED our mother’s follow-up e-mail: WHY DID YOU TELL ME THAT FAITH’S ROOMMATE IS GAY BECAUSE HE’S NOT IN THE LEAST!!! I SUPPOSE IT WAS YOUR IDEA OF A JOKE, CAN YOU DO DINNER THIS WEEK? LUV, MOM.
She also left a message on my father’s cell phone, no details, just “Call me. It’s about Faith”—alarming him and resulting in a 7:45 a.m. fact-check. Was I okay? Joel? The house, the car, the job?
Even though his call woke me, I answered with a lilt in my voice, rather coyly, Nick asleep next to me, “I’m fine, Dad. More than fine . . .”
Wouldn’t anyone, especially a relieved father, say, “You sound unusually happy, honey. Tell me more.” But his only follow-up was a return to a stickier “You weren’t so fine when I last saw you.”
I slipped out of bed with my phone, grabbed my bathrobe, and crossed the hall to what was now our spare bedroom. “Would that be the lunch where you told me you were in mad love, would be shacking up with a much younger woman and her two brats?” I demanded.
“Sarcasm noted . . . But I gather you’re okay?”
“I’m very okay! My basement, on the other hand, was apparently the scene of a murder or two, which may have been the reason for Mom’s news bulletin.”
“When? Since you closed?”
“No! The previous owner.”
“Murdered?”
“Not the victim—the perp! She had a couple of husbands who died in falls down the cellar steps.”
“Husbands, plural? No doubt naming her the beneficiary on their life insurance policies. You know what my reaction is to fell down the stairs? No, they didn’t.”
“That’s exactly what Nick said. She pushed them.”
“Remind me who Nick is.”
“You know who Nick is! He’s in my department—Major Gifts—my officemate. And since November he’s been my housemate. Things changed on Christmas Eve, which I’m sure is the other thing Mom wanted to discuss.”
“He’s moved out?”
“No, just the opposite! We’re now . . . a couple.”
No congratulations issued forth, no mazel tov. “Your mother’s message didn’t sound like she had happy news to announce,” he said.
“I know. She’ll come around.”
He asked if she had grounds for her objection other than the obvious one.
Not Jewish, he meant. “She’s confused. Joel didn’t help matters by telling her that Nick was gay to get her off the scent.”
“What scent?”
“I think Joel was picking something up between Nick and me that I wasn’t even acknowledging yet, so when Mom was quizzing him about my new roommate, Joel thought it was the fastest way to get the subject dropped.”
Poor Faith, I was hearing in his silence. Poor, born-yesterday, clueless Faith. “Can I tell you what my feeling is when a man is thought to be gay? Almost always, where there’s smoke there’s fire.”
“But Joel was teasing. It’s a complete fabrication.”
“Does he know the man?”
I vowed at that moment never to tell anyone about Joel’s little joke, since the word gay seemed to hijack any conversation and distract any listener from the lovely news that Faith Frankel was now half of a couple. “All of that is beside the point. I was thinking you might be happy for me. Or at least be relieved that Mom wasn’t calling you about me in an intensive care unit.”
“Are you in love?” he asked.
This was the reconstructed Henry, the sensitive man with the new emotive vocabulary and throbbing nerve endings.
“I might be.”
“Care to share with your old dad?”
I did not. I said, um, not at this juncture. It was still early in the relationship. Don’t want to jinx anything. “How’s Trixie?” I asked instead.
“Tracy.”
“Didn’t I say Tracy? No matter. Is she still the love of your life?”
“I can’t tell whether you’re being facetious.”
“Kind of.”
“The answer would be it’s a love I never knew I was capable of.”
Oh, dear. I said, “I’m not used to hearing stuff like that from you.”
“Am I supposed to talk like the person I was before? Like a dead man? Like an insurance agent? I can’t believe any of it; I can’t believe Tracy shares these feelings. Do you know we go to services every Friday night, and I thank God for putting her in my path?”
What does a daughter, not given to similar confessions and pronouncements, say? I made some noises that sounded empathetic. And admitting to myself that only someone’s worst enemy or ex-wife would begrudge him his miracle, I said, “Well, good for you. And good for your art, no doubt.”
“It’s fueling me! Chagall is so . . . so magical! Each painting has a narrative. The more I do this, the more I feel as if I’m channeling him.”
“Dad? You’re sounding New Agey. Nothing wrong with that. Just a little weird coming from you.”
“I’m evolving.”
“From what to what?”—asked too reflexively before I considered the treacly answer I’d have to endure.
“From a man with a frozen heart, at least in the sense of love given and love received, to what I’ve—”
“Who said you had a frozen heart? Tracy? She’s saved you from us?”
“I didn’t say that, Faith. And just so you know, this is me digging deeper, me unlocking feelings and, yes, potency I never knew I was capable of.”