Going Back (29 page)

In the week since he’d taken title
to his house, he had spoken to each of parents several times, but
he hadn’t had a chance to see either of them. He’d been overwhelmed
by the basic labor of setting up his house—overseeing the delivery
of his furniture, arranging it to his satisfaction, waiting for the
cable and internet service to be connected, shopping for food,
toilet paper, a shower curtain and other odds and ends he hadn’t
thought to bring with him from Seattle.

He’d spent his days fixing up his
house and his nights feeling lonesome. His first night, his
nextdoor neighbors appeared on his doorstep carrying a loaf of
fresh rye bread and a small platter of cold cuts from a deli on
Bloomfield Avenue. Another morning, the woman who lived across the
street gave him some advice about what hours he’d be likely
encounter the shortest lines at the motor vehicle department, where
he’d have to go to change his car’s registration. One evening after
work, Brad had called Eric and invited him out to the new house for
a beer, but Eric hadn’t been available. “Now that you’re living in
the area,” Eric had said, “we’re going to be able to see each other
whenever we feel like it. So I don’t feel bad about having to take
a raincheck on the suds.” Just that morning—Brad’s first day at
work—Phyllis Dunn had tracked down his office phone number and
asked him when he’d like to meet her for lunch.

He shouldn’t be lonesome. For a
newcomer to the area, he was unusually well connected. Yet there
was an absence in his life, a void, an empty place that Daphne was
supposed to occupy.

Without her friendship, his new
house didn’t seem like the dream home he’d thought it was. It
seemed like...just a roof and four walls, a structure filled with
his belongings and costing him a bundle.

He had started to telephone Daphne
several times, but each time he’d hung up before pressing the final
number. He wasn’t an idiot. He knew that when a woman was in love
with you, she wasn’t going to settle for being your
buddy.

He blamed himself for the
situation. He’d been the one to suggest that they make love. Up to
then, their friendship had been reasonably solid; she hadn’t been
in love with him before that one night. He should have known the
experience would have a strong impact on her—but, then, he hadn’t
known it was going to be so special, so magical. It had had a
pretty strong impact on him, too. He couldn’t fault her for losing
her bearings in the aftermath of all that crazy passion.

“
Mr. Torrance?” Cindy broke into
his ruminations.

“Oh. Right. My parents.” He
reflexively straightened the knot of his tie, then said, “Please
send them in.” He hung up the receiver and stood to receive
them.

Cindy ushered them into his office.
Brad was immediately struck by how gleeful they appeared. His
mother’s hair was arranged in a buoyant new style, and her eyes
twinkled. His father was positively beaming. They were both dressed
casually, and they were holding hands.

Holding hands!
Maybe his “dream house” was going to fall short of his dreams,
after all, but
this
dream—Brad’s dream that his parents would rediscover their
love and reconcile—seemed to be coming true. Thrilled, he bounded
from behind his desk and greeted them with outstretched arms. “Mom!
Dad! It’s so good to see you!”

Penelope Torrance accepted the
first hug. “Such enthusiasm,” she muttered skeptically, although
she willingly returned Brad’s embrace. “I’ve tried to get you to
come to the city for dinner three times now, and you kept putting
me off. If it’s really so good to see me, you might have come to
see me sooner. How about you, Robert? Have you had any luck getting
Brad into town?”

Robert took Brad’s outstretched
hand and engulfed it in a vigorous handshake. “None whatsoever,” he
reported. “I suggested that he meet me at the club, but he swore he
was too busy.”

“Too busy for his parents,”
Penelope said with a sniff.

“You’d think he actually had things
worth doing in New Jersey.” Robert sneered, as usual putting a
derisive twist on the words “New Jersey.”

Brad refused to be insulted. He was
too pleased to see his parents together, standing side by side and
agreeing with each other. “I do have things worth doing there,” he
insisted mildly. “I’m barely settled in—I’m still trying to learn
my way around the neighborhood. But let’s not talk about me,” he
added quickly, guiding his parents to the sofa. “Let’s talk about
you.”

“That’s exactly what we’re here to
do,” Penelope informed him, examining the upholstery of the couch
and then giving Brad a nod of approval.

Brad’s father sat next to Penelope
on the couch, exchanged a meaningful look with her, and echoed her
hesitant smile with one of his own. They were acting almost like
newlyweds—sending coded messages to each other with their eyes,
positioning themselves close to one another, refusing to separate
their intertwined hands. Grinning, Brad settled onto one of the
chairs and leaned forward expectantly. “Well?” he prompted
them.

Penelope eyed her husband, and he
yielded the floor to her with a slight nod. “We know this is going
to be hard for you to understand—”

“Don’t worry about me,” he said.
“Whether or not I understand is irrelevant.”

“Thank you for being so
understanding,” Penelope remarked, causing all three of them to
laugh.

The laughter ebbed, leaving in its
wake the sibilant hum of the arctic air conditioning. “We’re
getting a divorce,” said Brad’s father.

At first Brad was positive that
he’d heard wrong. Weren’t his parents laughing, grinning, behaving
with an affection Brad hadn’t seen between them in ages? Hadn’t
they waltzed into his office like two infatuated adolescents? “What
do you mean?” he asked warily.

“He means,” Penelope interjected,
“we’re going to get a divorce. We’ve decided that there’s no chance
of putting our marriage back together again, so we’re going to
legalize what already exists and move on from there.”

“Move on?” Brad echoed, bewildered.
“Move on where?”

“Your mother doesn’t mean that
we’re literally going to move,” Robert explained. “I’ve agreed to
let her keep the Park Avenue apartment, given how satisfied I am
with my digs at Sutton Place.”

“His `digs,’“ Penelope repeated
with a giggle. “Listen to him talk. He sounds like a
hipster.”

Robert chuckled.

Brad gaped at his parents. How
could they be so lighthearted, so cheerful as they planned to take
such a catastrophic step? “Perhaps you ought to think this thing
through a little bit more,” he said.

“Oh, Brad, we have thought it
through,” Penelope assured him. “It’s not as if we’re doing
anything rash. We’ve been living apart for over a year now. It’s
quite enough.”

“That’s right—it’s quite enough,”
Brad argued. “One year apart is enough. It’s time for you to put
your marriage back together again.”

Robert didn’t bother to dignify his
son’s claim with a rebuttal. “I know you’re disappointed,” he said.
“But your mother and I feel as if an enormous burden has been
lifted from our shoulders. Now we’ll be free to find more suitable
partners for ourselves.”

“You’ve already found suitable
partners,” Brad argued. “Each other.”

“No,” Penelope said, reaching for
Brad’s hand and folding hers around it. “We’re not right for each
other. Perhaps we’ve never been. We’ve always bickered, always been
unhappy to some extent.”

“But—but you loved each other,
didn’t you?”

Brad’s parents exchanged meditative
looks. “I suppose we loved each other, yes,” said his mother. “But
it was a superficial sort of love—you know, the sort of love a
woman feels when she gazes into the eyes of a rich, handsome
stranger. It’s fun for a while, but it doesn’t endure.”

“We’ve never been friends,” Robert
added. “We’ve never really felt comfortable with each other. I
think it’s fair to say we’re closer to being friends now than we’ve
ever been before—simply because we no longer have this dreadful
marriage standing in our way.”

“It’s tiring trying to love someone
simply because he’s rich and handsome,” Penelope noted. “The next
time I get married, I hope it will be to someone who’s poor and
funny-looking. As long as he possesses certain necessary talents,
of course.”

“Of course,” Robert concurred,
sharing a private smile with her. “I would like to find an
intellectual powerhouse, myself. All my life, I’ve always wanted to
be married to an intellectual powerhouse.”

“But Dad—you’re such a sexist,”
Brad protested. “You don’t even think most women should have
careers.”

“I’ve always wished someone would
give me a worthy debate on the subject,” Robert remarked. “Someone
other than my son, that is. I would love for some firebrand woman
to come along and prove me wrong. Now that I’ll be a free man,
maybe I’ll find her.”

Stunned, Brad sank deep into the
cushions of his chair and stared at his parents as if they were
aliens from another planet. His father with a firebrand feminist?
His mother with a funny-looking, poverty-stricken lover?
Impossible.

“You’re upset,” Penelope fretted,
squeezing Brad’s hand. “You don’t understand.”

“He doesn’t have to,” Robert
reminded her. “We’ve already established that, haven’t
we?”

“But I’m your son, damn it!” Brad
railed. “I’m much more objective than you are, and I’m telling
you—you’re an ideal couple. You’ll never find yourselves better
spouses. You’re perfectly matched.”

“Brad.” Penelope tugged at his arm
lightly, urging him around in his chair to face her. “Maybe we’re
perfectly matched, but we aren’t happy. So what good is perfection?
Let us find flawed, utterly unsuitable partners for ourselves. If
they make us happy, we’ll accept them, imperfections and all. Wish
us happiness.”

“Of course I wish you happiness,”
Brad mumbled. He meant it, too. It vexed him to think that his
parents’ happiness depended on their divorcing each other, but he
did want them to be happy. He loved them.

“Good,” Penelope said, bringing the
visit to a decisive conclusion. She tossed Robert another brief
look, and they both stood. “We shouldn’t take up any more of your
time. It’s your first day on the job—you must be swamped with work.
But once things are settled at your new house, perhaps you’ll
invite us out to see it.”

“Speak for
yourself,” Robert snapped. “I have no interest in visiting New
Jersey.” He shuddered, as if saying
New
Jersey
left a foul taste in his
mouth.

Brad accompanied his parents to the
door. He kissed his mother, shook his father’s hand, and remained
in the doorway, watching as they strolled down the hall to the
reception area, presented Cindy with smiles of farewell and
disappeared through the outer door. As soon as they were gone, he
stepped back into his office and slammed the door shut.

He knew he hadn’t imagined the
whole thing. They were actually going to take that final step, sign
the papers and part ways forever. He was heartbroken.

His intercom buzzed, and he crossed
the room to his desk and lifted the phone. “Mr. Torrance,” Cindy
said, “I just wanted to remind you that you’ve got a two o’clock
appointment with Stuart Pace.”

Brad glanced at his wristwatch. It
read a quarter to two.

“Is he here already?” he
asked.

“Not yet,” Cindy reported. “I just
thought I ought to remind you.”

Cindy was going to be a gem, Brad
could tell. If she was sharp enough to have noticed his
shellshocked look, and considerate enough to realize he’d need to
be warned about an appointment for which he mustn’t be
shellshocked, she was going to prove an invaluable assistant.
“Thank you, Cindy,” he said before hanging up the phone and
preparing for his upcoming meeting.

There would be time enough that
evening to sort through his emotions concerning his parents’
divorce. There would be time enough to think, time enough to grieve
over the death of his parents’ marriage. He would return to that
empty, strangely barren house of his and wonder why perfection was
so hard to attain, and why dreams so rarely came true.

***

DAPHNE WAS twisting off the top of
a bottle of ginger ale when she heard the car engine outside. She
had already finished a summery supper of cottage cheese and sliced
tomatoes, and she’d exchanged her work outfit for a pair of cotton
shorts and a tee shirt.

Even given her light meal and her
relative state of undress, she felt sticky. The only air
conditioner she owned was the window unit pumping away behind the
closed door of her bedroom. She had her kitchen and living room
windows open, and despite the oppressive evening heat she didn’t
mind the lack of air conditioning too much. She liked being able to
hear the summer sounds through her open windows—chirping crickets,
the distant voices of a group of kids playing street hockey a few
blocks away, the isolated caw of a crow or rumble of a car cruising
past.

This car hadn’t cruised past,
however. Judging from the sound, she figured it must have steered
into her driveway. The engine idled for a moment and then
died.