Come Pour the Wine (47 page)

Unable to cope with her mother’s remarks, Nicole came back with, “You can rationalize
anything,
mother. But I still say a woman your age living with a man is … You know, I have to say this in dad’s behalf … at least he keeps his little romances discreetly hidden behind his closed door … My God, mother, what will people think?”

Janet couldn’t resist the answer. “I know it’s a bit corny, Nicole … but frankly, my dear, I really don’t give a damn.”

The humor of it sailed high over Nicole’s outraged, dismayed sensibilities … Only just last week her father had asked her, “Do you think there’s maybe at least a chance your mother might consider coming back to me?” And she’d said … “If you really went after her, I’m almost positive.” And when he’d asked, “You really think she still might care for me?” she’d told him, “Oh, daddy, of
course
she does …”

Her poor father. It was so unfair, he’d hoped and tried but now she knew there was simply nothing else she could do to try and persuade her mother that this thing with Allan Blum would
have
to lead to disaster …

“I never thought I’d say this to you, mother, but I don’t see what else I can do … What’s going to happen when you come home? And you’ll have to, you know, sooner or later. In more ways than one. Suppose it lasts … is
he
going to move in and the two of you live here … ?” Her anger building, she repeated, or rather amended,
“If it lasts …
how will you feel having to explain living openly with a man to your grandchildren, knowing they have a
real
grandfather … can you answer me that?”

Good Lord, Nicole, you sound like a prig … Once again, reversing roles, mother sounding like daughter … “I’ll handle it, Nicole, when the time comes. Honey, be happy for me, please. I really do love this man.”

“I also remember you really did love dad a whole lot—”

Janet’s patience was getting a bit thin. “Nicole, be sensible. I think
you’re
getting slightly confused. Of course I loved your father, but
he
left
me.
It wasn’t, you know, the other way around. And thank God, Nicole, that human beings seem to have the capacity to love more than once. What a world it would be if we couldn’t. I want your blessing, darling … Believe me, I know this is right. I’d like you to respect my feelings, the way I’ve tried to respect yours.”

Nicole fought back the tears, then slowly put her arms around her mother. “I hope you’re right, I only hope you really do know what you’re doing. I just don’t want you to be hurt anymore … I love you, mother.”

“I love you too, darling … and thank you. Thank you …”

When Nicole went home after her emotional bout with her mother, she sat in her living room, watching her father play with his grandson, tossing the little boy into midair, delighting in his squeals of laughter. “Again, grandpa.”

“That’s enough, Gerald,” she said.

“One more time, mommy.”

“All right, but just once. You’re wearing your grandfather out.”

“Who says? Hey, buddy, your mother seems to think we’re a couple of old men. Come on, fellow, up you go.”

After Gerald had been put down for his nap, Nicole came back and found her father sitting in his favorite chair. He seemed to be born to his new role. “You know, Nicole, I’m sure glad you’re raising your children in the country. It’s the only way. Gerald’s healthy, brown as a berry, and swims like a fish. Damn, he sure is a handsome little guy … in fact, I’d say he looks just like your mother, wouldn’t you?”

If Nicole hadn’t been so rattled at this moment, she might well have at least been tempted to remind her father that one of his biggest complaints had been Westchester … he seemed to have forgotten all that, when it came to his grandson … But the mention of her mother made the thought unimportant, frivolous. Her very pregnant stomach did somersaults as she wondered how to tell him … God, where did she find the right words?

Her silence was so abrupt Bill wondered if she were having premature labor pains. “You feel okay, Nicole?”

She wanted to cry. “I’m really fine … physically, that is.”

“Which I take it means you have something momentous on your mind? You can tell me anything, you know that.”

Anything but this
… “I know, daddy … but some things are more difficult than others—”

“Well, come on, we’ve shared a lot together. If you’re having a little problem with Mark, remember I’ve been there, that even the best marriage has its ups and—”

“It’s not Mark or … I just don’t know how to tell you this.”

“Look, princess, whatever’s on your mind, it’s got to help to talk about it.”

She braced herself, and said, “Daddy … mother’s … involved … she says she’s in love and …”

His shoulders slumped. He closed his eyes and ran his hand across his forehead. “I think I’ll have a drink. Can I get you anything?”

She shook her head.

He sat down in his not-so-favorite chair at the moment and took a long swallow. “Well … I guess that was inevitable. Your mother’s a beautiful woman … still young and, God knows, desirable … It’s that Allan Blum, right?”

She nodded.

“Did she say when they were getting married?”

“They’re not,” Nicole said, wincing.

“They’re
not?
But you said they were in love—”

“True, but she says she doesn’t ever want to marry again …” And now Nicole had begun to cry and ramble, as though she were speaking to herself. “I literally prayed that the two of you would remarry … I know you still mean a lot to her … I just can’t see her … well, you know what I mean …”

He damn well did know what Nicole meant. It was far more difficult for him to visualize her with this Blum or any other man the way she and he had once been together … “Except you’ve got to remember, Nicole, that apparently your mother’s in love with this man … remember how it was with you and Mark.” He was really talking to himself as much as to his daughter.

“I know, daddy, but that just seems so different from this. Besides, I was so sure of your relationship … the two of you are so close that I have to remind myself you’re not married … Daddy, how much do you love mother, really?”

“All I can say is, I always have … I always will.” (Even though it might have been hard to tell from his actions.)

“Then why don’t you try to stop her … fight for her?”

Kit had asked that question a long time ago in a hospital room …
I love her, Kit
…
Then fight for her, Bill.
But this was different. This was someone else’s ballgame. If Janet was ready to give herself to this man … “I can’t fight for her, Nicole … I don’t have that right any longer.”

Showing more anger than she intended, Nicole said, “Right? All’s fair in love and war and if you really cared about your grandchildren you’d try to keep another man from coming into their lives, our lives … My God, don’t you see what this will do to our
family?
Can you imagine spending the holidays with this … this man sitting at our table?”

“I imagine your mother must have thought about that.”

“You’re being damned placid about this, taking it remarkably calm for someone who just last week was wondering if she still cared for him …”

“Nicole, please … don’t carry on like this in your condition … it’s not good for you—”

“Carry on! You want me to stay calm, knowing my mother’s going to live openly with a man? You know something? I think you’re glad … it’s like letting you off the hook.”

Bill bit his lower lip, got up and poured himself another drink. Sitting opposite his daughter, he said, “You’re wrong, Nicole. For quite a long while now I’ve even been trying to get up the nerve to ask your mother to remarry me, and it just
might
have worked, because for the first time in my whole damn life I’m ready to make a total commitment to someone, to belong to someone … I can admit that I need that. But like most of my life, I’m in the right place at the wrong time … When I said I didn’t have the right to interfere in your mother’s life, it was because I’ve
lost
that right. Knowing her the way I do I also know she wouldn’t take this step … unless she loved the man. And I’m not going to be the one—not again—to louse up her life. I’ll just have to live with the fact that I left the best woman I’ll ever know … If I’d had the brains I have now things would have been different, but it took a few million hours of psychiatry to make me understand myself, and my damn fears … too bad it happened too late. Anyway, Nicole, be happy for your mother. She deserves it. As for me, it may be tough but I’m going to try to accept this man … not for him, but because it’s the least I can do to make up for all the years she lived alone on account of me.”

Nicole was shaking her head. “You know, I guess I have the most incredible parents in the world.”

“Your mother is, anyway … And now, baby, if you’ll excuse me, it seems I’m a little beat, after all….”

Shutting the door bearing the name plate, McNeil’s Pad, Bill sat on the edge of his bed, allowing himself the indulgence of reliving years past. The times of Janet and Bill … small things adding to … ? Champagne running down his suit … a naive young girl in a marbled lobby waiting for him to step out of an elevator … the virginal young woman who’d given herself so completely … the anxious months … the insecurity of waiting … Maine in November … a vision in white satin walking down the aisle to become his wife … the joys of the first-born, and then another … nineteen years of living … a shattering, awful parting … five long years of separation … And now, for her, a new love … Oh, God, Janet, how could I have been so blind to lose so much? Well, be happy, my darling … And then even the silent monologue was washed away in the tears he could no longer hold back.

When Nicole finally left, Janet felt almost lightheaded. She had a greater sense of herself than ever before in her life. She felt a huge relief. A weight was now truly gone. She could fly. She called Kit. To share her joy with her, who better, more appropriate for that, than Kit? She was going to grab the brass ring, you bet.

Kit closed her eyes, said to herself,
I love you, God. You really did work it all out.
To Janet she said, “Have a ball, baby … have a
ball.
I’ll take care of your mail and the bills. What about the shop?”

“Give it to Renée.”

There were still a few calls to make. She wondered if there’d be the same confrontation, explanation with Jason. Well, the Fates, never mind the facts, were on her side … “Darling, I have some wonderful news to tell you. I’m going away for a while, with Allan Blum. It all sort of happened very unexpectedly, but I’ll write you a long, long letter explaining everything. What’s
important,
Jason, is that we love each other and—”

“That’s enough for me, mom … the past is past. Be happy, mom. You deserve it.”

Janet brushed away the tears. “Thank you, Jay. You know, for a very young man you’re pretty damn smart. Also, it seems I’ve been blessed with two wonderful children.”

Hanging up, she wondered how best to tell her mother. A phone call? Too abrupt. A long letter would be the right way. Unlike Nicole at first, Janet knew her mother would understand, not judge her. The most painful thing was anticipating Bill’s reactions. He would be sad, regretful, look back at all they’d had and lost, the way she had done so often in the beginning. It would not be easy for him to accept another man in her life. And in a strange way she still loved him, as she knew he loved her. But life had its own way of dealing …the acute, malignant losses eventually became benign. And Bill did have the children and grandchildren, and she would never pretend he didn’t exist, that they had not existed … their family, if nothing else, proved otherwise. But from now on the man in her life was Allan … it was the way it was….

When Allan had taken out the last of the suitcases and put them in the car, Janet locked her door, and didn’t once look back….

I
T WAS TWO YEARS
now, two years that they had been away, two years lived as a lifetime, not just a
new
beginning, but a beginning all on its own, at once an evolution for both Janet and Allan from their pasts and a revolution in the quality of their lives. Neither would have claimed, or even intimated, that what had come before they met was somehow merely a prelude, to be forgotten or somehow downgraded. Without the acknowledged pain—and yes, pleasure too—of their relationships with their previous spouses, and without for Janet the love and special growth through her children and their lives, none of this would have been possible for either of them. An Allan Blum whose life had not been seared by a rejecting wife, who had not learned the price of presumed happiness through outward appearances, would never have had the wisdom, the compassion, and above all the patience to make himself available for a woman as complex and surely apprehensive and confused as Janet was when they first met. And Janet, without her testing, without the
living
that had taken her from the well-meaning if remarkably naive nineteen-year-old girl who came out of Wichita, Kansas, would never have had the courage to take advantage of the new depths of feeling and involvement that a man such as Allan offered her.

And perhaps paramount among what he offered her, gave to her, reinforced in her, was his sense of origins, his Jewishness that gave room for her own to grow and merge with her hardly Jewish upbringing. The process, on a personal level, that had begun for her all those years ago on a tenement street in New York City with a woman with, to her then, the improbable name of Fayge, and that was further opened up by her long-delayed talk with her father about his background, and therefore hers, was now accelerated and given fresh meaning by her association with a man who had lived as a Jew—and all that that meant, regardless of his station in life. Janet Stevens no longer felt like an outsider, looking in at her origins. Now she
felt
she belonged to her own roots, whereas before she had only occasional reminders of them.
This
was indeed the entirely new part of her life, and with Allan she was free and able to pursue it in a way never before possible. It was one thing to have a Jewish son-in-law like Mark Weiss, and to have a daughter who had converted, embracing her husband’s religion, its special teachings and joys
and
deep sorrows. But now it was she, she becoming for herself, she learning to feel and know who she was and whence she came at a level altogether new and enriching. Not that they dropped off in every synagogue in every city they visited—although they did some of that and she was astonished, for instance, to discover that Jews and their traditions were not only known but important in such faroff places as Brisbane, Australia—but there was a new tone, a new sense of belonging in her life that was an undercurrent to the person that was now Janet Stevens.