Gordon lined up his shoulders, straightened his left arm, and swung. The ball floated like it had wings and then dropped into the river about ten yards shy of the tugboat he was aiming for. “Touché,” he said to Kelly.
Every time Gordon looked at Kelly these days he was struck by the same thought. What in God’s name was I thinking? A man of his age, a three-time loser, a goddamn billionaire (twelve billion is where Forbes had pegged him last March, and they weren’t far off, no siree!), marrying a cocktail waitress less than half his age and not insisting on a prenup? It boggled the mind! It was one of the great mysteries of Gordon’s life. He peed a good five or six times each night these days, and every time he woke up thinking the same thought: Fuck, I have to goddamn pee again and why didn’t I make Kelly sign a goddamn prenup?
She wasn’t even pregnant when he married her! That at least would have made some sense. A tearful, knocked-up young girlfriend, a sentimental rush to do the right thing. But Kelly got pregnant on their honeymoon. Gordon had had a paternity test done, secretly, all men in his position did that, it was practically included in the price when you sprung for the presidential birthing suite at Lenox Hill—but there was only a 1 in 11,200,247 chance that Rocco had been sired by someone other than him.
Rocco was the only reason Gordon lived in Beekman. After Rocco arrived, Gordon had become obsessed with solving the problem of where to raise him. He didn’t like his options. It was live with either the rich assholes in Connecticut, the rich assholes in the Hamptons, or the slightly less rich assholes up in northern Westchester.
Finally he sat down with the Best Real Estate Agent on the East Coast and said exactly that. He needed to live near the city and he didn’t like his options. There had to be another choice.
The agent had had him sit back in his chair and close his eyes and told him to describe exactly what he was looking for. To imagine he could have every last thing he wanted. He told Gordon to dream out loud. It sounded a little airy-fairy to Gordon, but he decided what the heck and went with it.
He started by saying he wanted to live someplace where there were ordinary people.
(“How ordinary?” the Best Real Estate Agent prompted.)
People who lived contentedly in houses with four bedrooms. People who paid strangers to mow their lawns but looked at the lawn-mowing bills and thoughtfully considered both the economics and family-time trade-offs of buying mowers and doing it themselves the next summer. Some millionaires, that was fine, and impossible to avoid these days, really. But: Churches. Bake sales. Soccer games. A place where kids built forts out of sticks they found in their backyards. Rock collections. Snowball fights. Sledding! Cheerful, chubby stay-at-home moms who believed in raising their own kids and giving back to the community. A picturesque main street with no chain stores or homeless people. And not New Jersey. He wasn’t going to live in New Jersey.
(“That’s it?”)
A Fourth of July parade with people waving those little American flags. Trick-or-treating. Kids who believed in Santa longer than you thought humanly possible. A scenic, manageable, non-Hamptons-like commute to the city. Mostly Caucasian. Mostly Protestant. Some solid, salt-of-the-earth Catholics, that was fine. A public school he could feel good about putting his son in, at least until fourth or fifth grade. A view of the ocean, or anyway a view of some water. But not a lake. Lakes creeped Gordon out.
(“Is that it?” the Best Real Estate Agent asked him one last time.) Gordon thought for a moment.
“I like trees.”
*
Owen had taken Wyatt shopping at GroceryLand. It was one of the things Owen and Lucy tried to do with Wyatt at least once a week, to pique his interest in different types of food. So far, it hadn’t worked.
“Hey! You’re Owen.”
“Yeah,” said Owen. “Hi, uh—”
“Izzy. Izzy of ‘Izzy and Owen.’ Remember? The mouse and the hippo!”
“Of course.”
“And who is this young man?”
“This is Wyatt.”
Izzy crouched low and met Wyatt’s eyes. “Hi, Wyatt,” she said. “I’m Izzy.”
Wyatt didn’t say anything and looked down at his shoes.
“You are a handsome little boy. Are you helping your daddy do his grocery shopping?”
“We’re buying banana yogurt,” said Wyatt.
“I love banana yogurt!” said Izzy. “Banana yogurt is my absolute favorite!”
“We’re buying it all,” said Wyatt matter-of-factly. “We’re buying all the banana yogurt in the store.”
It was true. There were twenty-three banana yogurts in their grocery cart. La Yogurt brand banana yogurt was one of the five foods Wyatt would eat. And it was hard to find. So when they found it, they bought them all.
“Oh no. So none for me?”
“Nope.”
“Not even one?”
“Sorry, Charlie.”
“But I love banana yogurt,” she said.
“We’re buying it all,” said Wyatt. “Sorry, Charlie.”
Izzy stood back up and turned to Owen. “Oh my God, he’s gorgeous!”
“Thank you.”
“He looks just like you.”
“No one ever says that.”
“It’s true! He has your eyes. And I’m serious about the children’s book,” said Izzy. “Give me your e-mail. We’ll just send a document back and forth while we work on it. It’ll be fun.”
She pulled a crinkly receipt out of her purse and Owen found himself writing his e-mail address on it while Wyatt looked at him out of the side of his eye.
In the parking lot, Owen was loading groceries into the back of the car when Izzy drove by in a black pickup truck. She rolled down her window.
“Izzy and Owen!” she shouted, and then she drove off.
“Izzy and Owen!” Wyatt said as Owen strapped him into his seat. “Izzy and Owen! Izzy and Owen!”
That was one of the things Wyatt did: he repeated what he heard. It was called scripting. His brain was filled with scripts, scripts from months ago, scripts from videos he’d seen on YouTube, from cartoons he’d stopped watching years ago.
So when Wyatt repeated “Izzy and Owen!” on the drive home, Owen had no idea how long he would keep it up.
“Izzy and Owen! Izzy and Owen! Izzy and Owen!”
*
Lucy was taking a shower, washing her hair with a cheap drugstore shampoo that smelled like strawberries. It was that chemical strawberry scent that smelled stronger than the juiciest of strawberries, and it brought to mind something Lucy hadn’t thought about in years.
It was before she had Wyatt, long before Beekman, back when she and Owen were still living on the Upper West Side and trying desperately to have a baby. She had just come from work and she was waiting in line at the Gourmet Garage when she overheard a woman in front of her talking into her phone.
“I don’t know, really,” the woman had said. “I just want something juicy in my life.”