My Father's Wives (16 page)

“Jonathan.”

“Nice to meet you, Jonathan. Let’s begin in Child’s Pose.”

For forty minutes, Anne’s soothing voice guided me through a series of yoga poses—
Adho Mukha Svanasana, Tadasana, Utkatasana, Bakasana, Setu Bandha
—softly adjusting me with her experienced hands, ever mindful of my breathing. Her manner was so serene that I didn’t feel at all awkward, despite the intimacy of the interaction. For most of the hour I wasn’t even thinking of her connection to my father, I was just mindful of my posture and breathing. “Deeply in, deeply out,” she said time and again. For our final pose she positioned me flat on my back and ran her fingers over my face. “Eyes closed,” she whispered. “Take rest.”

I focused hard as I could on my breathing.

“Feel your head press deeply into your mat,” she whispered. “Now your back . . . your arms . . . your legs.” She ran a hand over my face again. “Give yourself to the earth.”

My body was drenched in sweat but I wasn’t tired. I felt relaxed and quiet, more like after a massage than a workout. The sun on my face was strong but friendly, a simple, warming glow.

“How do you feel?”

I sat up and found Anne seated in Lotus Pose by the reflecting pool, her hands again pressed together before her, head bowed, eyes closed.

“I feel wonderful,” I said.

“May the sun that warms your face spread across your soul so you may warm the hearts of all those who love you.” She opened her eyes and locked them deeply with mine. “
Namaste,
” she said.

“Namaste.”

Her lips curled into a gentle smile. She was a strikingly beautiful woman, for any age. “I hope you enjoyed that,” she said.

I scrambled to my knees. “I did, very much. I’d love to talk to you more about it.”

“You are welcome to join me for lunch.”

I couldn’t believe my luck. “That would be fabulous.”

Anne’s smile grew even wider. “It will be a pleasure,” she said. “And it will give us a chance to talk about your father.”

UP THE BEACH A
few hundred yards was Sunshine, a shack with reggae music blaring, hamburgers on a grill, and a white-bellied monkey called Frisky tied to a rope.

“How great, the monkeys,” I said as we took a table in the shade.

“The kids love them.”

“Why is this one tied to a rope?”

Anne smiled. “Because he would run away otherwise.”

A waiter approached wearing a red apron over a white T-shirt. “Mornin’, dahlin’,” he said to Anne.

“It’s not morning anymore.”

“It is for me,” the waiter said, and broke into a startling laugh.

“Say hello to Jonathan,” Anne said. “I knew his father once upon a time.”

“Pleased to meet you,” the waiter said, extending a huge hand. “Name is Rowley.” His fingers were stained yellow and smelled of smoke.

“What’s the best thing on the menu, Rowley?” I asked.

“Lobster,” he said. “And Killer Bees.”

“Two of each,” Anne said.

“What’s a Killer Bee?” I asked.

Rowley laughed again, shook his head without answering, and went back behind the bar.

“What’s a Killer Bee?” I asked Anne.

“You don’t have any plans for later today, do you?” she asked.

I shook my head.

“Then relax, you’ll love it.”

I looked around. Children were playing in the sand as the waves crashed onto the beach. The breeze was steady and cool. “I can see why you love it here,” I said.

“Been twenty years,” she said, her hair blowing gently in the wind. “Never plan on leaving.” She closed her eyes, resting her head on the back of her neck, rolling slowly one way and the other, stretching the muscles of her upper back and shoulders. “I assume you have many questions,” she said.

“I do.”

“What’s the first one?”

“How did you know it was me?”

Her lips parted, then spread into a smile. “Your aura.”

I was stunned. “What do you mean?”

“It doesn’t happen often,” Anne said, “but there was something strong in your presence. I could feel Percy in the air, in the breeze, in the sound of the sea. It was you that brought him, Jonathan. He was coming from you.”

We were quiet for a moment before being interrupted by Rowley, who slammed two large, red drinks onto the table. Anne lifted her head, nodded politely, picked up her glass. “Welcome to Nevis, Jonathan,” she said.

“This has got to be the most incredible moment of my life.”

We clinked glasses and she raised hers to her lips, but before taking a sip she let out a laugh, louder than any sound I would have
thought her capable of making. Her expression dripped with maternal empathy. “Jonathan, sweetheart,” she said, “your yoga session was charged to your room.”

“What?”

“Your room is registered to Mr. Jonathan Sweetwater. That’s how I knew who you were.”

I slammed the drink down on the table, harder than I intended. “You’re kidding.”

“I’m afraid not,” she said. “I’m sorry to disappoint you. I didn’t think you’d believe me in the first place, but when it seemed so important to you I couldn’t let it go on.”

I felt like I had been punched in the stomach. “I completely believed you,” I said. “Am I going crazy?”

Anne leaned back again in her chair. “I don’t know. Are you?”

THE KILLER BEE IS
made with two tablespoons of honey, orange juice, club soda, passion fruit juice, black pepper, lime, and a healthy portion of light rum. The first sip is an explosion. After that the ice in the cup melts quickly and softens the flavor, so the only ingredient you do not taste is the rum no matter how many you drink; I’d had three by the time the food arrived.

The lobster was fresh and delicious, spicy in a way that blended perfectly with the passion fruit in the Killer Bee.

“You must have been pretty young when you divorced Percy,” I said.

Anne’s mouth was full. She covered it with her hand as she chewed. “Before we start getting into how old I am, let me make one thing abundantly clear: I most certainly did not divorce Percy. He divorced me.”

“He seems to have divorced everyone.”

“He was that sort of man.”

“What sort of man divorces five women?” I asked.

“The sort who makes you feel like the most beautiful, desirable person in the world. And then, with no warning, moves on.”

“Do you hate him?”

Anne looked away. Just a scintilla of the serenity in her face disappeared, replaced by a slight furrowing of her brow.

“It’s all right with me if you do,” I went on. “I don’t know how much you know about me, but I had no relationship with him at all. The last time I saw Percy I was nine years old.”

“I assume you came here looking for me,” Anne said, still looking away. “Why?”

“So I could ask you this question exactly: Do you hate my father?”

Anne took a short sip of her drink, then leaned back again, eyes closed. She was breathing deeply, the
ujjayi
breath. “Have you heard of Thich Nhat Hanh?” she asked.

“No.”

“He’s a Buddhist monk, a brilliant one. He won the Nobel Prize for peace. He says that when another person makes you suffer, it is because he suffers deeply within himself and his suffering is spilling over. He says such a man does not need punishment. He needs help.” Anne opened her eyes and leaned closer. “Do you want to know what I say?”

I leaned as well, so close our noses nearly touched.

“I say: Fuck Him.”

She didn’t smile when she said it, didn’t change expression at all. Her breathing remained steady. Deeply in, deeply out. I could feel her warmth on my face.

“Do you mean Thich Nhat Hanh?” I asked.

Anne shook her head. “Of course not. Thich Nhat Hanh is a beautiful man and a genius. Your father, meanwhile, was an asshole. So fuck him.”

We stayed that way, our faces close. To an observer it might have appeared we were trying to decide whether to kiss. I felt the rum tickling my brain.

“So, that’s how I feel,” Anne finally said, and leaned back in her chair and went back to her lobster.

“How did you meet him?” I asked. “Did Percy study yoga?”

“My goodness,” she said, no longer bothering to conceal her chewing. “You really don’t know anything about him, do you?”

I shook my head.

“I wasn’t a yogi when I met your father,” Anne said. “I was a dancer. A prima ballerina at the Washington Ballet. Have you heard of it?”

I shook my head. I hadn’t. Though I did vaguely remember, now that she mentioned it, that she’d been a dancer.

“Just like your father,” she sniffed, “a New York snob. The Washington Ballet is one of the foremost dance companies in the world. I danced with Twyla Tharp.”

“Sorry.”

Anne softened. “I was mostly teasing. Anyway, it was very simple, how we met. I was dancing. Your father came to a performance. They brought him backstage afterward to meet the company.”

“Love at first sight?”

She let out a sigh. “He was something else, your father. He was sixty-five years old, but he had incredible energy and passion.”

“He was married at the time?”

“He was, but I didn’t know that at first. We chatted for several minutes backstage. The following night, he sent two dozen yellow roses to my dressing room. The card said:
Delightful to know you
. That was it.”

“Pretty smooth.”

Anne laughed lightly. “When a man sends you two dozen roses, it is a statement. When the most powerful member of the United States Senate sends them, it is a life-changing event.”

“You fell in love with him?”

“My goodness, yes. The first time we dined together. He was funny and interesting. But you know the best thing about him?” She paused. “He listened. This was a man who routinely dined with presidents,
heads of state. He traveled all over the globe helping to shape the world, but he listened to me. He was interested in my life. That was his gift.”

“That he cared about people?”

Anne shook her head. “That he made you
think
he did.”

Her life story, as she relayed it to me all these years after relaying it to my father, was not uncommon and mostly sad. She was raised by a single mother who pushed her hard to dance. She showed me her feet: gnarled, misshapen, two of the nails gray and withered. “Do you have a daughter?” she asked me.

“I do.”

“Does she love to dance?”

“She does.”

“Don’t
force
her,” Anne said. A tiny vein pulsated above her right eye. “I loved to dance when I was a girl. By the time I was in high school I hated it more than anything. The competition was unspeakable. And my mother wanted it more than I did. I was bulimic, depressed. Every cliché you’ve ever heard of.”

“And my father made it better?”

She smiled again. “He cared about me. He loved to watch me dance but made it clear it was unimportant to him. He told me if I wanted to give it up he supported me.”

“He told you that the first night?”

“Not exactly,” she said. “But not long after.”

“Wasn’t he still married to Elizabeth?”

Her smile faded. “That is my great regret. He told me they were separated, that a divorce was a formality. I was twenty-nine years old. He was a senator. I believed him.”

“But it wasn’t true?”

Anne brushed away a strand of hair that had fallen over her cheek. “I’m sure it wasn’t. If it was anything like the way he left me, it was the biggest surprise of her life. I never had the nerve to face her, even after all these years. I don’t even know where she is.”

I thought of telling her but then decided against it. Some wounds are best left untended. “So you married him,” I said.

“I most certainly did. And I never set foot on a stage again. That was twenty-three years ago.”

Rowley came to clear our plates. The breeze in the air had picked up. A newspaper resting on a nearby table came apart and blew away. A little boy was running in circles on the beach, wearing only a diaper, carrying a bucket filled with water. I watched him as he ran; it didn’t seem possible a boy so small could remain upright as long as he did. Finally he stopped, poured the water out of his bucket, and flopped down on his butt.

“We had wonderful times together, your father and I,” Anne was saying. “The press loved me, they loved our age difference. We were the Bogey and Bacall of Washington. And he didn’t care at all that I wasn’t dancing anymore.”

“How did your mother feel about it?”

“She didn’t care for it. And she didn’t much care for him either. Percy was several years older than my mother. That’s awkward no matter how hard you try.”

“Is she still alive?”

“She is,” Anne said. “She lives in Maryland. I don’t see her much.”

Rowley brought over a check and dropped it on the table between us. Anne began to reach for it but I snatched it away. “Please let me,” I said. “And, if you don’t mind, I have so much more I want to ask you.”

“Let’s take a walk,” she said. “I don’t have anywhere to be.”

I dropped a hundred dollars onto the table and covered the bill with a glass.

“I have this feeling,” Anne said as we walked, “that it wasn’t any great coincidence you found me. You didn’t just stumble into my yoga class today.”

“I did not,” I agreed.

“You were looking for me?”

“I was.”

“After all these years. Why?”

I shrugged. “Sometimes it’s enough just to know that you have to. You don’t always know why.”

“You want to know more about your father?”

“I want to know
something
about him.”

A wave crashed gently over our ankles, past our feet, lost steam, retreated back to the ocean.

“I’ll tell you something about him,” Anne said. “Your father was the most restless person I’ve ever been around. He could not sit still. He was the sort whose foot was always tapping. On vacations he never sat on a beach and read a magazine; he was always learning, studying. He needed to accomplish something every day. In the evening he might bask in the glow of it all with a good meal, but in the morning he was right back at it again.”

I thought of Claire’s hands, ever still, resting on a table. “Why was he like that?” I asked.