Custody (8 page)

On the windowsill two tomatoes from the garden ripened in the sun, and in the middle of the table sat a clear Mason jar of roses, just as if Randall’s mother were still here. Randall checked in the refrigerator: red grapes, grapefruit, a small filet of beef, a pitcher of lemonade. So his father was eating well. Except for the pajama top, he was showing no signs of senility. Of course, he forgot words now and then, but so did Randall.

Randall walked through the rest of the downstairs, reading his past in every nick in the woodwork. The walls were covered with his mother’s paintings, portraits of her children, pets, and friends, still lifes of flowers and fruit, some landscapes. She had been, if not a famous painter, an accomplished one, with an eye that saw the harmony in diverse and ordinary objects.

As Randall paused before a still life of a ceramic mixing bowl, a muddy pair of gardening gloves, an open book, and a tangle of turquoise beads, he was transported back to the moment when his mother came in from church, checked to see that the bread was rising, took off her necklace and earrings so she wouldn’t lose them in the garden, and rushed outside. The open book was there because there were open books everywhere in the house.

He wished his mother were still alive, for Tessa’s sake. Walking through this house, with its worn Oriental rugs, rump-sprung armchairs, sofas with faded slipcovers, and its shelves of books on almost every wall, Randall contemplated not for the first time the possibility of moving here. Was it odd—was it
sad
somehow, a grown man dreaming of living in the home where he’d been a child?

The thing was that Tessa loved animals and was wild for the outdoors. She adored her grandfather and worshiped Brooke Burchardt, a thirteen-year-old horse-crazy girl who lived across the road with her three younger siblings, a father who taught elementary school, and a plump, jovial, stay-at-home mother.

Certainly Randall was eager to move out of the temporary quarters he’d established when he left Anne, hygienic but stark rooms in a block of expensive modern apartments on Mass Ave. The only good thing about his present lodging was that it was close to Tessa. True, if he moved out here, he’d have a long commute every day to and from the hospital. But he never had felt at home anywhere like he did here.

It had been Anne who loved the French Provincial house he had so gladly left. He just couldn’t get comfortable there. It was too formal, too artificial, like the rooms of a posh hotel. You could admire the high windows with the swagged draperies, the chandeliers, the marble floor in the foyer, but you couldn’t relax there. Randall had felt like a kind of visiting diplomat in those gilt and rose rooms.

Anne had wanted that house as much as she ever wanted anything in her life, and so they bought it. Cool and elegant, it was a civilized environment that let nothing affect it. So in its way, it provided a contrast for Anne, a haven. You couldn’t imagine anyone being sick in those rooms, or crying out in the extremity of pain or fear or grief. The rooms smelled of flowers and perfume, not of antiseptic, gangrenous flesh, and death. The mutations of the weak and mortal
body were held at bay there, had no place there, in that stiff patrician edifice.

Years ago, when he met Anne, she was a nurse at Brigham & Women’s. He was just beginning his practice, and he came to admire and love her for the way she handled medical exigencies, remaining rational when others were screaming, her movements sure and deft and sober. Over the years of their marriage, Anne had decided she wanted to save not just lives but the world, or her portion of it, and she had the self-confidence, the necessary arrogance, and the skill to do just that.

He wished her well. But he was not the only person affected by the way Anne’s chilly self-control carried over into the most private parts of her life. Tessa was affected, too.

And as Randall walked through this old house that smelled of fruit and new-mown grass and hearth rugs still exuding the odor of dog, he thought that this very place might provide the perfect balance for his daughter’s life.

For the first time in a long time, he realized that he was happy. He was
looking forward
. It had something to do, he was certain, with the woman he’d met in the cemetery. She’d made him feel something he had forgotten still existed—
hope
.

After the brunch, Kelly dropped Donna at the Harvard Square T stop, zipped through the maze of streets to the parking lot behind her apartment, jumped out, locked her car, raced up to unlock the back entrance of the building, and went through to the foyer.

“Hey.” Jason stood by the elevator, Rollerblades slung over his shoulder. In his white shorts and red polo shirt he looked as healthy as a glass of milk. “Perfect timing.”

Perfect timing, she thought, what is that? When you meet at the time you said you would? That’s just
expected
. Perfect timings surely must be when two people meet accidentally, without forethought or planning. As she had met that man this morning.

Guilt made her peck a kiss onto Jason’s cheek.

The ornate bronze doors of the elevator slid open. They stepped inside. Jason pressed Kelly into a corner, resting his forehead on hers. He was very tan and smelled like sun and lemonade. “Sure you want to go out?”

“I’m sure.” The handrail bit into her back. She’d started this with her kiss, but he was making her feel trapped. She pushed him away. “Don’t, Jason.”

The elevator pinged. The doors slid open. Always the gentleman, Jason moved away to let Kelly exit first. She led him down the carpeted hallway, fit her key neatly into her door, and opened it. She could feel him right behind her, the heat of his body coming toward her.

He put his hand on her waist.

She moved away. “Give me just a minute to change.”

In her bedroom, she stripped off her dress and pearls. The third change of the day, she realized as she tugged on black-and-fuchsia spandex bike shorts and a sleeveless turquoise tee, and not the last one, either, for she and Jason were having dinner that night at his mother’s.

She came out of her bedroom to find Jason lounging on her sofa, remote control in his hand, rapidly switching channels. Unconsciously he tapped a foot on the floor—Jason was always moving. He was like a young stallion, charged with energy, impatient, eager, restless. Black Beauty, she thought, looking at his gleaming black hair.

When he saw her, he sprang to his feet, clicked off the television, and tossed the remote control on the coffee table. “You look colorful.”

“I
feel
colorful,” she replied. He came toward her, smiling. She opened the closet door and ducked inside to grab her Rollerblades. “Let’s go.”

They sat on the apartment steps to lace up their skates, dropped their shoes in the vestibule, and headed for the long stretch of Memorial Drive closed off on Sundays for roller skaters and bikers. It was a hot day, bright with light bouncing off the Charles River paralleling their path. When they coasted under the graceful shady leaves of the ancient sycamores, it was like swimming through cool pools of air.

Jason was lean and muscular, but he was just a fraction of an inch shorter than Kelly, so she had to alter her stride a bit to match his as they went along, weaving in and out among the crowd. Still, they looked great together, Kelly so fair, Jason so dramatically dark.

Jason had known they would, the moment he saw her during a pre-trial conference where they represented opponents in a divorce case.

Jason was a junior lawyer for a prestigious Beacon Hill firm of which his deceased father had once been a partner. The very best of private education had honed his natural intelligence into a diamond-sharp dazzle. Quick-witted and shrewd, his mind flashed like a fencer’s foil, and
there was nothing he loved like a good opponent, which made him a formidable attorney—and a tireless suitor.

When they met, only months before, Kelly was still a lawyer for a small but growing firm based in Cambridge, but her hopes were high. She’d applied for a judicial position and just received a summons for an interview with the Eastern Regional Committee of the Massachusetts Judicial Nominating Council.

The law was her life. She loved what she was doing and dreamed not of walking down an aisle in a flowing white bridal gown, but entering a courtroom in a somber black robe. At thirty-four she’d never succumbed to that state of helpless dementia people called love, and that was fine with her. She had no time for love. No interest in it. As far as she was concerned, it was a conscious, deliberate choice people made to let themselves act like idiots. Absolutely
not
for her.

She
had
had several brief sexual liaisons of varying degrees of satisfaction. Sex was very nice, she realized, but god, it caused so many problems! She’d never seen a Venus flytrap, but she imagined love was like that: sensuous, alluring, so that people leaned forward to smell the fragrance, feel the satin petals—then
snap
! All at once there they were, eaten alive. You couldn’t be a family court lawyer without developing some cynicism about what was called love. As well, there was her own past.

That first day, the moment she entered the conference room and set eyes on Jason, her entire body had bristled. Even now she wasn’t sure whether it was hostility or desire that caused that frisson. Perhaps both.

At one end of the long black conference table, Jason had been standing next to his client, leaning over her shoulder to point out something in a pile of papers. His gray suit clung to his lean body as only something tailor-made could do; Kelly was glad she’d worn her new black Calvin Klein. A thin gold Chopard watch gleamed against Jason’s left wrist; on the little finger of his right hand he wore a discreet gold signet ring stamped with his family crest. His lush black hair shone like polished onyx; his profile was sharp, bold, aristocratic. He might as well have worn a badge stating:
OLD MONEY AND LOTS OF IT
.

Kelly hated him on sight.

And on principle. She had no time for guys like this, born entitled, chauffeured along the paths of their lives in gleaming limousines. They had no clue about suffering, and suffering was what opened a person to the realization of the problems of others, Kelly believed. Suffering brought compassion. Men like Jason, privileged by birth—and stunningly handsome as well—thought they were above the world. Well, they
were
above the world. They had more than they
deserved.

She knew the moment she looked at him that she’d be damned if she’d let him win this case.

At the same time, with astounding irrationality, she was glad she’d worn her red lace Victoria Secret bra and garter belt.

They were brilliant adversaries that day. Afterward, like actors after a play, they were both high on performance. The moment Jason was alone with his cell phone, he called to invite Kelly to meet him for a drink.

Amazed at herself, she accepted.

“I have to warn you,” Kelly told him that night, “I don’t have time for dating.”

“You’ll find time for me,” he assured her.

She had liked his cockiness, but she’d spoken the truth. In addition to her duties at the law firm, which paid her salary—and, unlike Jason, she needed her salary—she did
pro bono
work, sat on several committees, and was writing an article on improving the court’s assistance to
pro se
representation in divorce. When she wasn’t working, she had to take her clothes to the dry cleaners, buy her own groceries, clean her own apartment.
She
didn’t have a housekeeper.

So she had declined his next few invitations. Jason wasn’t used to rejection. The more Kelly refused him, the more determined he became to win her.

First, he treated her friends and colleagues to dinners at posh restaurants where he questioned them thoroughly about Kelly. What kind of flowers did she like? What perfume? What music?

Next, bouquets of irises arrived at her door, CDs by Aerosmith and Wagner, glittering bottles of White Shoulders and Passion, with never a note or return address. Kelly couldn’t prove they were from Jason, but she knew they were, and she couldn’t help but enjoy this kind of courtship and admire his persistence.