The Carlton Club (51 page)

“You’ve made your own happiness,” Kathleen said. She did not have generous feelings about Mark’s father. She added, “In spite of him.”

“He never wanted me to be unhappy, Kathleen,” Mark said, his voice gentle and sad. “He was just a man who wanted everything, the best, for his son. He thought that what he wanted for me would make me happy. That’s not so bad, is it?”

“But he drove you,” Kathleen said. Was Mark’s father pushing Mark for Mark’s sake? Or for his own?

“He was as much a victim of his hopes and dreams for me as I was,” Mark said wistfully. “I actually feel sorry for him.”

“So,” Kathleen began, then paused. So Mark is an incredible, kind, generous man, she thought lovingly. But I know that.

“So I am going to write to him, explain it to him if I can.”

“And?”

“And hope that now, or someday, he understands.”

Toward the middle of May, Leslie realized that she needed to find an apartment in Palo Alto. She would be moving at the end of June. She set aside time on Saturday to drive to Palo Alto to look.

She needed to be near Stanford Hospital. She would take calls from home but had to be available, close by, for emergency cardiac catheterizations and patients with acute myocardial infarctions and arrhythmias. The rentals near Stanford Hospital were almost exclusively large apartment complexes inhabited by young single adults.

You are a young single adult, she told herself. Even if you want nothing to do with other young single adults. Or anyone.

Joylessly Leslie signed a six month lease for a corner apartment in a beautifully landscaped complex complete with tennis courts and a swimming pool. It was walking distance to the hospital. Clean, neat and safe.

She should have been thrilled. But she wasn’t.

The ache that reminded her constantly that she and Eric were no longer together, had lost their forever, only intensified as the days turned into weeks and months. She dreamed about him—terrible tormented dreams—and sometimes woke up with tears in her eyes.

At work she could focus her mind away from him, even though the aching emptiness was a constant companion. Leslie worked long hours, spending extra time with her patients and with the more junior residents, interns and students. She started to study for her Internal Medicine Board exam and spent hours in the library reading about cardiology so that she would be amply prepared for her fellowship at Stanford.

Time heals all wounds, she told herself, but she had no evidence that it was true. What if the wounds were too deep? too gaping? too raw? What if they healed with bulky, deformed scars? What if they never healed?

A hundred times, Leslie reached for the phone to call Eric, but she never dialed. She didn’t know the man at the other end of the phone. He was, had always been, a stranger.

Leslie returned from her successful apartment-hunting trip to Palo Alto in the early evening. She had driven back to San Francisco along the coast highway. It was a flawless spring day. A warm gentle breeze carried the fragrance of lilacs and eucalyptus. The ocean beaches were crowded with swimmers, surfers, sunbathers, kite flyers and frisbee tossers. It was a day for Beach Boys’ music, hot dogs, laughter and love. Leslie was a spectator, uninvolved with the humanity but still dazzled by the blue sky and yellow sun and azure sea.

Ten minutes after Leslie returned to her apartment, the doorbell rang.

“James,” she breathed with a sigh.

“Hi. May I come in? I was just in the neighborhood.”

“Are you building a resort? Parnassus Palms?” Leslie asked sarcastically.

“Hey,” he said swiftly. “I’m not the enemy.”

“Did he send you?”

“No. I came because I wanted to see you. I’ve come before. This is the first time you’ve been home.”

“I spend as little time here as possible,” she admitted. Her voice softened. It was nice to see James.

“Leslie,” he said gently. Too gently. It reminded her of being loved.

Tears filled her eyes.

“Oh Leslie,” James said, wanting to hold her. She was so hurt. So vulnerable. So alone.

She had lost weight. Her shiny chestnut hair fell halfway down her back. Her eyes were tired, haunted and wary, as if on the lookout for someone who might hurt her again.

“Sorry,” she said as she wiped the tears that wouldn’t stop. “I’m still a little emotional.”

He put his arms around her and held her tight.

It felt good. And wrong. Leslie stiffened.

“You’re so tense,” he whispered.

You’re strung so tight if I touched you you’d twang. The clever words of a fellow intern thundered in her mind. The intern had been referring to her inner tension. Her rigid critical standards. Her perfectionism. Was she too rigid? Did she expect too much from everyone? Did she expect too much from herself?

“James,” she said finally. “It’s too hard for me to have you touch me.”

“Why?” he asked, releasing her but not moving away.

“I need . . . something.”

“You need Eric.”

“No.”

“Yes. Look at yourself. This is tearing you apart,” James said. Then he added softly, “Just like it’s tearing Eric apart.”

“I don’t want to hear about him,” Leslie said quickly.

“Well you just did. He looks about the way you look. He’s pushing himself as hard as you are pushing yourself. The company has never been more successful.”

“You know what he did!”

“I know what he
didn’t
do. He didn’t tell you about another woman because he knew it would hurt you. He didn’t tell you about his experience with hospitals and medicine because he knew it would make you question your career. And he didn’t tell you about a little boy who died because he knew it would make you sad,” James said, his voice breaking slightly.

“Did you know?” Leslie asked.

“I knew there had been something with Charlie. I didn’t know the rest until recently. Charlie told me, not Eric. Eric would never tell me about Bobby.”

Because of Michael, Leslie thought as she saw the emotion—a father’s emotion—on James’s face. There was no reason for Eric to share his sadness with James, or to warn him about the dangers of Reye Syndrome for James’s beloved son. The illness that had stolen Bobby would not claim Michael. In the years since Bobby’s death, parents, physicians, the media had become well aware of its signs, its symptoms, its causes.

“You didn’t need to know, James. I did. It had such a direct impact on our life together.”

“Maybe he didn’t want it to. I know he would never have wanted you to give up medicine because of him.”

“But I would have,” Leslie said thoughtfully. “I wouldn’t give up Radcliffe for Alan or my internship for whomever it was in medical school. But I would have given up everything to make a life with Eric.”

“But he wouldn’t have wanted you to give up anything, much less everything. Not your career. Not children. He must have been struggling with how to convince you of that once he told you. That may be why he put off telling you.”

“Because he wasn’t sure himself?”

“Until he met you, he never thought about having another child.”

“He told you that?” Leslie asked. Eric had told her that himself, the night he called her in Boston.

“He told Charlie.”

“Charlie, Charlie, Charlie. Maybe now Charlie and Eric will get back together. It seems right somehow,” Leslie said, remembering Victoria’s words.

“Love doesn’t work that way,” James said. “Not by default. Eric loves
you.”

“I don’t even know Eric,” Leslie persisted. Why was James defending Eric? Why wasn’t he helping
her?
“The most important part of his life was hidden from me.”

“Leslie, when a man loses his child, it
is
part of his life, every minute of his life, for the rest of his life,” James said emotionally. “Whether or not Eric told you the words, you knew that part of him. He couldn’t hide it.”

That was true, Leslie realized. Bobby had been there. In his eyes, in his gentleness, in the way he loved her.

She lapsed into silence.

“Leslie?” James asked finally as he watched new tears flood her eyes.

“This is your fault, you know,” she sniffed bravely.

“My fault? Because of Maui? Because he would have told you then if everything hadn’t gotten derailed by the revelation about you and me?”

“No,” she said quietly. “Because a year and a half ago you set the bar for what a relationship should be.”

“Even though it ended,” he said gently, knowing what they both knew.

The relationship had ended, but the caring had not. She wanted every happiness for him—and Lynne and Michael—and he wished the same for her. That was why he was here now. He cared about her and knew she was suffering and wanted to help.

“It ended with lovely memories,” she said. “And a very high bar.”

“Which, as we both know, Eric cleared with ease. Don’t forget, I’ve seen the two of you together.”

“I loved him very much. I don’t deny it. I believed he and I would spend our lives together. But that didn’t happen, did it? And this time the memories aren’t so lovely. They’re painful and angry and bitter.”

“That’s because the relationship, the
love,
isn’t over. No matter how much that smart, rational mind of yours tries to end it, your heart won’t let it happen. Maybe Eric made a mistake. Maybe he broke some of your rules.”

“James.” She wanted him to stop. He was confusing her. He was telling her that she was too rigid. That when you loved someone the rules changed.

James didn’t stop.

“You’ve broken some rules yourself, Leslie,” James said.

You had an affair with a married man. Love changed the rules, you allowed it to, because the love felt right despite the rules
.

On the first Friday evening in June, three weeks after James’s visit, Leslie dialed the unlisted number at Eric’s penthouse. Until that moment, she hadn’t thought specifically about calling him. But, she realized as her trembling fingers dialed the number she knew so well, for the past three weeks she hadn’t thought about anything else.

The phone was answered on the second ring. But not by Eric.

“Hello! Hello!” the voice bubbled, a cascade of joy. “We’re almost ready. Except Eric is pretending to have misplaced the wedding rings!”

Charlie
. Leslie recognized the voice.
Wedding rings
.

Leslie stared at the receiver for a moment then returned it to its cradle. The ache in her heart made her want to scream.

“Who was it, Charlie?” Eric asked. He had overheard Charlie’s words and watched her puzzled expression.

“I assumed it was Robert wondering what was keeping us. But it wasn’t. Whoever it was hung up.

“Before you answered?”

“No. Five or ten seconds after I stopped talking. Maybe it was a wrong number,” Charlie said. “You have the rings, don’t you?”

“Of course,” Eric murmured distantly. He had never gotten a wrong number call before. His number was unlisted so he didn’t get calls for other Lansdales. It was possible that someone had misdialed, but it had never happened before.

What if it had been Leslie after all these months? Leslie would have heard Charlie’s words, hesitated a moment, then hung up.

But Leslie wasn’t going to call him. Not ever.

But what if she had?

Eric stood motionless in the living room, his mind bombarded with what ifs, his heart pumping with uncomfortable energy.

“Eric?” Charlie asked.

“I have to make a phone call,” he said, surprised at his own words. He had made a decision. He couldn’t lose more than he had already lost.

“Now?”

“Yes. Now,” he said.

Eric left a stunned Charlie in the living room. He went to his bedroom and shut the door.

I can’t answer it, Leslie thought, startled by the telephone ring. It was so loud, so intrusive. I can’t talk to anyone right now.

Five rings.

Leave me alone, whoever you are.

Ten rings.

Please
. Give me time to understand. To recover. To get back to hating him again. It should be so easy this time.

Fifteen rings.

She answered it, finally, on the eighteenth ring. She answered it to make it stop ringing. The loud insistent noise made her ache even more.

“Hello?” she was surprised that she could make her voice sound almost normal.

“Leslie.”

Eric. Leslie closed her eyes. He’s calling to explain to me about Charlie.
I can’t listen to it
.

“Leslie?”

“Yes.”

“Did you just call me?” Eric held his breath.

“Yes.”
I have to hang up
.

“Let me explain,” Eric said quickly, sensing that she was withdrawing.

“There’s nothing to explain. I understand. I understand perfectly.”

“Charlie and I are not getting married.”

What did that mean?

Leslie waited.

“Charlie is marrying my father. That’s who she thought was calling.”

“She’s marrying Robert?”

“Yes. The wedding is tomorrow at the Carlton Club.”

“That’s nice.”

“It is,” he said. “It’s a lovely place for a wedding.”
A lovely place for our wedding.
“Leslie?”

She heard the gentle hope, the deep longing, of his unspoken thought. “Yes?”

“Why did you call?”

“I miss you.” Was that why she had called? Just to tell him that? She didn’t know. Except that now, hearing his voice, his hope, his longing, she knew there was far more.

“I miss you, too,” he said gently. “Every second of my life.”