Icarus. (7 page)

It began with Dom and Jack helping him out. Jack, especially, and later Caroline, talked to the boy, eased him through the crisis of losing a father, and the bond formed easily and naturally. At first it was based on need – Jack's and Caroline's as well as Kid's – but it lasted because of genuine affection and, ultimately, love. They gave the boy money when he needed it. Gave him advice when he needed it, too, and he usually needed that more often than the money. Kid was a wise guy, a tough kid. Stubborn as hell, always in and out of trouble. But there was something about him that was more than just an iron-willed street kid. Kid wanted to make something of himself. Jack saw it in his eyes, recognized it because he knew he'd had that same look when he was young. Kid wanted out and up. Out of the life that had molded him and up to a new and different level. Jack and Caroline's level.

Jack took him to Knicks games, as Dom had taken Jack years before. Kid grew into a talented athlete, so Caroline went to Staten Island and talked to Kid's mother, explaining that they were willing to send him to a suburban prep school so he could play football. LuAnn Demeter agreed, saying she wanted whatever was best for her son, so off Kid went to Bay Shore, Long Island, and to Webster's Academy. Jack also arranged for Kid's best friend, Bryan Bishop, to get a scholarship there. Bryan was enormous; he didn't just look like an offensive lineman, he looked like an entire offensive line. He was also devoted to Kid; they seemed joined at the hip and had been since they were little boys. It had been Caroline's suggestion to try to keep them together. She thought it would make Kid's transition a little easier as he began his new life.

Jack and Dom would drive up to watch their football games – Kid used his toughness to quickly become a star quarterback; Bryan rapidly became one of the best blocking fullbacks in the state – and afterward they'd take both boys out for pizza or, if it was a weekend, into the city to Jack's for a steak. In his free time, Kid was always hanging out at their apartment or at the restaurant. Caroline brought out his soft side and to her he would confide his fears and his problems. These were the only times Kid let down his guard. It was as if he sensed that his presence seemed to salve the wounds that still pained her over her failed pregnancies. With Jack, he was always cocky and confident because that's the way he wanted Jack to see him. He worshiped them both. When Kid reached college age, he went to St. John's in Queens, Jack happily paying the tuition. It's not a loan, he told Kid, it's an investment. He meant an investment in Kid's future but he also meant more than that. When Kid was going on twenty-one and a junior – still a quarterback, still friends with Bryan, who was still blocking for him – Jack took Kid out to dinner after a game, just the two of them, and said that he and Caroline had begun talking about it and if Kid was interested, they'd like him to think about coming into the business with them. Kid was overwhelmed by the offer but only said, cockily, yeah, he just might be interested at that. Jack had wanted more of a response but he knew the boy well, knew how pleased he was. A couple of weeks later, after another game, it was dinner as usual with Dom and Kid and Bryan, and Bryan got Jack off to the side, told him that Kid had mentioned what Jack had said. Kid's friend said that he'd never seen Kid so excited or happy about anything in his whole life.

But Kid didn't come into the restaurant business.

And he didn't grow into the son that Jack and Caroline had not been able to conceive.

Instead, he disappeared.

He had been devastated by something that had happened near the end of his junior year. A teammate, Harvey Wiggins, someone Kid had been close to, had been seriously injured on the football field during a team practice. Harvey had come in hard on defense, trying for a sack on Kid, and he got blocked at the wrong angle. Kid heard the snap when Harvey's neck broke and he saw him flop to the ground, a quadriplegic now and forever. Caroline had spent many hours talking to Kid about the accident; for some reason Kid had assumed a strong sense of guilt and shame and she assured him that he was not to blame. "People take risks," she told him, over and over again. "You can't protect everyone from what's nothing more than normal life."

But Kid changed after that incident. He became more withdrawn, spoke mostly in monotones and seemed to have little energy. Jack sat him down, asked him if he'd started taking drugs, but Kid denied that. There was no denying that a wall had come up between them, though, and then he came to Jack and Caroline at the end of his junior year, told them he was dropping out of school. Kid was very evasive, almost seemed angry, and reverted to his younger, sullen ways.

"Kid," Jack said, "I don't think this is something you can just decide on your own. Why don't you stay here a few days and we can discuss-"

"No!" It was the first time Kid had ever raised his voice to them. But he didn't back down. His words were forceful and full of fire. "There's nothing to discuss," he said. "I'm outta here."

"Is it anything we did?" Caroline asked. Her voice was soft and tentative, as if she were soothing a wounded puppy. "Because if it is, maybe we can fix it."

Kid responded to the softness. He looked, for a moment, as if he might collapse or burst into tears. But then his face turned grim. He wouldn't meet her eyes, just shook his head and clammed up again.

"I think you owe us more of an explanation," Jack said, and again Kid's anger seemed to surge through him.

"I don't owe you anything," he said, "except to get the hell away from you."

He refused to take any money, wouldn't give any further explanation. He said he'd get in touch as soon as he knew where he was going, but he never did. No call, no e-mail, no postcard with a phone number or address.

Not a thing.

One day he was there. The next day he was not.

Jack and Caroline were devastated. They discussed it endlessly. What had they done wrong? What had happened? Were drugs involved? Was he in trouble? They tried several times to find him through various friends and connections at St. John's. Bryan couldn't help them; he was devastated because Kid had cut all ties with him, too. Even Kid's mother had to admit that while she got postcards and letters from her son, she did not know how to get in touch with him. For many months, Kid's disappearance dominated their lives until Caroline said, "No more. We have to let it go," and when Jack said, "I don't know if I can," she shook her head firmly and insisted, "We have to. It's just as if we've lost another child."

Jack knew she was right. They had lost another child.

Gone is gone, Dora had said.

And Kid Demeter was gone.

Jack Keller woke up, as always, one minute before his clock radio sounded. And, as always, as he'd done for nearly twenty years now, the moment he flicked it off he instantly reached over to lightly pat Caroline, to reassure her that he was up, that he was all right, and she didn't have to rise with him. That it was 4:30 in the morning and there was no reason on God's earth why she couldn't stay tucked under their pastel-blue down-filled comforter and sleep for five or six more hours while he went to the meat district and then the fish market and then, unless their new baby chef, whom they'd recently stolen from Danny Meyer and his Eleven Madison Park restaurant, had decided to go, to the Union Square farmers' market.

"Sleep," he would whisper in her ear almost every morning, then kiss her lightly, his lips barely grazing her soft cheek.

"Mmmmm," she would breathe her contented response, because even though she had no intention of doing anything but sleep, this was their ritual. She needed to feel his presence in the morning. However brief that presence was. She didn't like to wake up to find him gone. It frightened her. Caroline did not like either empty beds or surprises.

But this morning his fingers didn't find the silk nightgown clinging to the small of her delicate back or her firm and familiar lightly tanned shoulder. His hand instead groped the cool texture of their antique off-white linen sheet and, for a moment, his eyes widened, disoriented, before he remembered.

Virginia.

They had decided to expand again, one more time, and she was down in Charlottesville, Virginia, preparing for the opening of the new restaurant. The new Jack's.

He lingered in bed for a few moments, smiling at the fact – amazed, really, after all these years – that he still missed her when they were separated. They spoke every day, of course. Three or four times a day, in fact. Even when it was just the minutest details of business, he still got a kick out of talking to her. Even when she was brusquely discussing square footage and the number of tables and the impossibility of finding a quality "anchor" to work the front of the restaurant, he was soothed by the cool huskiness of her voice and the affection that seemed linked to her crisp pronunciation and firm lilt.

Lately they'd been discussing a lot of minute details and Jack thought – realized with a start – that, for the first time in quite a long time, Caroline seemed genuinely happy again.

Maybe for the first time since Kid had disappeared.

It was a wound that, for both of them, had not quickly healed.

Jack saw the effect on Caroline for several years. No one else could possibly have detected it but he thought she seemed lonely and just slightly less joyful. He did not sense her full recovery until they decided to open up this new Jack's.

This was her baby. He'd wanted to throw himself full force into the planning and opening in Charlottesville and, at the beginning, he had. But it soon became clear that Caroline had developed a special attachment to this one. And that attachment had added an extra weight, an importance and sense of urgency she'd never shown before. She was becoming possessive about it; it had become personal with her.

"I watch you sometimes, in New York," she said. "The way you look around the restaurant. Not at the staff, not at the customers, at the place. The bar, the tables, the scuff marks on the floor. It's a living, breathing thing to you."

"It's a part of me," he said.

"Sometimes, my darling husband, I wish you looked at me the way you look at that goddamn swinging door you bought for the kitchen."

"It's an awfully beautiful door." He grinned, and she shook her head in mock dismay.

But then she took his hand, held it lightly, ran her fingers over the calluses on his right palm. "That's the way I feel down in Virginia," she told him, and he was surprised at the seriousness of her tone. "I have something down there that's beautiful. That's mine."

She never said that she wanted to go it alone, to have her head this time, but he knew her too well to miss the signals. And he understood, too, that it was a way for her to do what he'd done in London – to be alone for a while, to develop her own secrets. This restaurant was her idea to begin with. The town was only thirty miles or so from the family farm where she'd grown up; it was still in the family, although rarely used these days. Caroline's father was dead, nearly nine years now. Her mother couldn't bear to sell the property, but couldn't bring herself to live there, either. She basically stopped going to the farm right after the funeral. Too many memories, she said. It was where she'd been young; she didn't want it to see her sink into old age. So the farm had become a kind of elegant retreat, a stately – if ghostly – second home. Caroline's two sisters used it on the occasional weekend. The eldest, Llewellyn, had too many children with too many soccer matches and a husband with too many golf games to make it a permanent retreat. The other sister, Susanna Rae – never married, never particularly connected to the rest of the family, and always resentful, somehow, of Caroline's success and happiness – just seemed to stay away. So, for the most part, the wonderful estate was left to the care and goodwill of the Trottys, the black couple who'd worked for the family for too many years to count.

Even though she had run away as quickly as she'd been able, Caroline had always felt a special attachment to Virginia. It irked her somewhat that she was still bound to it, but she cared deeply for its beauty, its tie to the old South that was rapidly being eaten away by the encroaching anonymity of Starbucks coffee bars, Gap stores, and Blockbuster monstrosities. She loved the politeness of Virginia and its gentility. Above all, she loved the farm, where she could foxhunt and skeet-shoot and, on the spur of the moment, still pull on a pair of slick, shiny riding boots, leap onto her favorite mare, and go racing across the rolling hills.

They'd been there together many times during the course of their marriage, but Jack had firmly remained a city boy. He believed that if man were intended to get around on horseback, he would never have invented the BMW. He was always ecstatic to see the Manhattan skyline upon their return and it never failed to thrill him when he stepped back into their apartment and onto the terrace overlooking Central Park. Now, there was the perfect melding of man and nature. Good, competitive touch football games in the autumn followed by a cold beer made a hell of a lot more sense to him than spending hours in tight pants and silly little hard hats chasing some poor, terrified fox for miles and miles through the Virginia mud.

At the beginning, when she'd said she'd been thinking about Charlottesville as a location, he'd thought it was a strange choice. But she reminded him that fortunes had been made on such strange choices. No one thought Vegas was a food city before Puck and Emeril opened up there. No one thought rich New Yorkers would venture downtown to Union Square until Danny Meyer decided to open his Cafe there. And their research and marketing people assured him it was the right move. The D.C. intelligentsia and media folk had discovered the town over the past decade. They now had country retreats in the area. Even Hollywood had been coming in droves. A lot of the actors, producers, and directors who kept people's heads swiveling at the Jack's in L.A. and New York were now taking over the culture of the Virginia countryside. As the townspeople became more and more sophisticated, so too did the shops and the local theater. The only thing lagging behind was the food. All food explosions, he knew, followed two trends: coffee and bread. When serious coffee shops opened in a city, followed by upscale bakeries, the market was ready for top-of-the-line chefs. It happened in Seattle exactly that way. And Portland. San Francisco had not only followed that pattern, it had created it. And Charlottesville was filling up with wonderful quirky coffee bars and equally wonderful pastry and bread spots. Had been for a year now. The city was a bonanza waiting to happen for the right restaurant – the right name, the right combination of tastes, the right prices, and the right atmosphere – and Jack's was the perfect fit. Added to all of that, Charlottesville was also a huge tourist center, so close to Monticello, that testimony to the genius of man – or at least one man, Thomas Jefferson.