He looked down at his feet. “Don’t say that. Please don’t say that.”
To be honest, I hadn’t filed the papers yet. There must have been some reason for that.
“Fine,” I said.
“Fine what?”
“Fine. I won’t say that. I will sleep in the same room with you with a line of pillows separating us.”
He grinned. “Well, baby, that’s a start.”
A few minutes later, in the passenger seat of the highly impractical convertible James had procured for me after I got my license, I could feel tears coming down my cheeks. It was too soon to leave my son, even if it was only for two nights. James squeezed my shoulder, which grossed me out. I had told him not to touch me with those hands. That was not a good sign for our future.
“He’s going to be fine, sweetheart. He’s too young to realize you’re gone. Five months from now, he’ll be screaming bloody murder every time we leave. That’s when things are going to get tough.”
“Yeah, Mom,” Vivi said. “You need a little bit of time to yourself.”
I wiped my eyes and turned to grin at her. She’d had a hard few months. Vivi deserved some time with both of her parents. She deserved for it to be about her.
“So,” I said, “we have Pilates first thing when we get there.”
“Look fourteen,” James interjected.
“Oh, right,” I said. “You have to be fourteen to go into the gym, so we neither confirmed nor denied your age.”
Vivi laughed. “Then is it sparkly manicures and pedicures?”
“Yes!” I said. “Do you think I should get sparkles, too?”
“I do,” James interjected. “You definitely look young enough to have sparkles.”
You couldn’t blame the man for trying. It was a pretty obvious ploy, but I didn’t hate it.
“Then horseback riding on the beach,” James said. “And then your mom and I are going out while you do dinner and a movie with the other kids.”
“Yay!” Vivi said.
“Wait,” I said, trying to keep my voice even so she wouldn’t catch on. “I thought this was supposed to be family time.”
“But Mom,” Vivi said, “I want to do the kid stuff at least part of the time. It’s so fun. And you and Dad can have a boring grown-up dinner and talk.”
She caught her dad’s eye in the rearview mirror. They planned this, the little sneaks.
Three fights over the Pandora station and two bouts of James thinking he knew better than Waze later, we had arrived. You would think that after living on the sound for months, the water wouldn’t affect you so much. But looking out the window onto the beach was still incredible. At Mom’s, we had sand, of course, and sea grass, and the water quietly lapped the sandy shore. But the majesty and power of the ocean, roaring to the beach and then retreating, was a surprise every time. It never got old. And it never ceased to remind me that the world was large and, in the scheme of things, my problems were nothing.
We were all sitting on couches in our penthouse living room. I loved the Cloister. My aesthetic was much lighter and brighter, but I still appreciated the heavy Oriental rugs, the dark stained beams on the ceiling, the deep reds and blues of the décor. They felt very Old World, very Sea Island, very much the Cloister.
“Caroline?”
“Yes?”
“Are you up for tennis yet?”
“Tomorrow?” I asked.
Usually when we played, it was Vivi and James against me. In New York, I did cardio tennis three mornings a week at our tennis club and then had a match every Friday afternoon. I don’t like to brag about my skill level, so let’s just say that if I’d indulged my fantasy about taking a racket to Edie Fitzgerald’s head, I’m pretty sure her modeling days would have been over.
“How about you and me versus Dad?” Vivi asked.
Yes, I thought. What happened to you and me versus Dad?
I remembered giving her the talk about having her father in her life, about how I would give anything to have my father back, just for one day. For the second time, I realized that while I hated this situation, I was largely responsible for it.
“Pilates time!” I called, retreating toward the bedroom.
Vivi jumped up. “Yes! Getting my clothes on.”
James followed me.
When I turned, I said, “What do you think you’re doing?”
“Just wanted to talk to you.”
“No,” I said. “I am changing. You may wait outside.”
“Caroline, come on. I’ve seen you naked for like the last fifteen years.”
“Yes,” I said icily. “That was before you were seeing other people naked.”
I was proud of how I looked in my leggings and top. The shirt was tight at the bottom and blousy throughout, which was perfect since I hadn’t totally gotten my abs back yet. But the Pilates would help. Tennis, too. It was always fun to quit doing something for a while and then see how sore you were when you got back to it.
Vivi looked so cute. Her outfit was exactly like mine, only neon green, not black.
“All right, girls,” James said. “I’m going to the driving range and will meet you back here after the spa.”
As much as I missed Preston, I had a great afternoon with Vivi. We needed this time to relax and really talk about friends and school and everything in between. Over sparkly pedicures, we agreed that while we loved Peachtree, we were both on board with moving back to New York.
“I understand that Daddy might not be living with us,” Vivi said. She was so grown-up. “A lot of my friends’ parents are divorced.” She paused. “But Mom, it sure would be cool if he were living with us.”
Talk about feeling like the worst person in the world. That was the moment I decided that I was really going to give it a shot. I was not going to make snide comments. I was going to attempt not to hate him so much—although, God, I sure did hate him—and I was going to give this thing a fair shake. I didn’t want Vivi to be one of those kids with divorced parents. If she was, it would be because I could not move on. And we would all have to be OK with that.
So we added blowouts onto our spa day, and I wore James’s favorite dress and slid on those strappy shoes he liked so much. And when he came in, handed me a glass of wine, put his arm around my waist, kissed my cheek, and said, “You look so unbelievably beautiful,” I didn’t slap his hand away or say something nasty.
I smiled and said thank you.
James took my arm, and we walked the short distance to the Georgian Room. A bottle of my favorite champagne was already chilled and waiting at the table when we sat in the floral upholstered chairs and slid under the white tablecloths. Everything about dining at the Georgian Room was impeccable.
I eyed the bottle of champagne and said, “So, James, trying to get me drunk?”