The Family Man (19 page)
Denise reaches over and takes Henry's hand. "Only my friend here. Plus my doormen."
Sheri says, "What about your daughter?"
"She's not speaking to me."
Henry extracts his hand from Denise's. Sheri says to Denise, "I meet you and I see someone who is outgoing, attractive, intelligent, all the things people want in a friend. So where are these connections misfiring? Could it be that you are expecting too much from friends? That they should be reaching out to you as a widow? Do you think, after a little more time passes, that you'd want to revisit these friendships and work a little harder?"
"Do you have children?" Denise asks. "Specifically, a daughter?"
"Don't ask her that stuff," Henry snaps.
"It's okay," says Sheri. "The answer is no. But I
am
a daughter. I know that a mother-daughter relationship requires work."
"What about an ex-husband?" asks Denise. "An ex-anything?"
"Denise!" Henry hisses.
"Let me finish, sweet pea. She should know that I'm twice widowed and you're in the middle of that marital sandwich, the meat and the cheese, a cushion between those two tragedies. You're all I've got, and I wish we'd sought counseling when we were still married."
Sheri asks, "Henry? What would you say to more meetings with Denise?"
"Your walls, Denise," he says sadly. "They're black and blue. That's why we're here."
Denise confides to Sheri, "He doesn't like to talk about our marriage or divorce: touchy subject. And complicated."
"Is that true, Henry?" Sheri asks.
"Am I in a fun house?" Henry asks. "Are we talking about marriage counseling—as if ... what? Henry married Denise once, and they had their little issues, easily fixed, so maybe he'd do it again?"
"Of course not," Sheri says. "Please sit down."
"He paces when he's nervous," says Denise. "And I know why he's nervous: I kissed him like I meant it a few weeks back, and from time to time I tell him I love him. But that's just me. I'm very ... what's the right word? Passionate. Besides, I know he's gay. I also know that's not a thing that comes and goes." She sends an air kiss in his direction. "I know you think I'm a pain in the ass. And I am! Maybe I am off my rocker and/or depressed and now jobless and soon homeless. But I think, underneath all of that, you're very fond of me."
Sheri Abrams, turncoat therapist, repeats, "Homeless? Literally?"
"Not yet," says Henry. "And maybe never. I'm doing what I can."
"My rock," says Denise.
My ball and chain,
he thinks.
T
ODD INSISTS
he has to see it.
Has
to! His imagination fails him, accustomed as he is to muted, decorator-chosen palettes. So don't even make up an excuse, just, "Todd is dying to see what you did with the apartment."
"Does she ever go out?" Todd's mother asks. "Because she could have come to supper tonight. I could have called it a thank-you for fixing you up with Henry." She is at the stove, ladling too many meatballs onto platefuls of spaghetti. "If the occasion presents itself again, tell her she's very welcome and I use ground turkey instead of chuck."
"I'm trying to lay low," Henry says. "Too much Denise lately. Twenty-five years of relative peace and suddenly she's on my doorstep every time I turn around."
Todd says, "Want to know how nice Henry is? He took her to his shrink where she announced she had one friend in the whole world."
"John Henry Archer," says Henry.
Lillian brings a long loaf of bread wrapped in aluminum foil to the table and takes her seat. "What do you think she meant by 'friend'?" she asks.
"Buddy," says Henry. "Maybe confidant and free legal hotline."
"Co-parent, don't forget," says Todd.
"I noticed..." Lillian begins. "When she came to your brunch..." She stops, shakes her head.
"Ma, what?"
Lillian says, "Please help yourself to salad."
"Were you going to say that Denise was too chummy?" asks Henry. "Seemed too much at home?"
Lillian doesn't look up from the task of quartering a meatball. "It's understandable. You were married to her once."
"And you're worried he'd do that again?" Todd asks.
Henry, smiling, says, "I can promise you, if I were going to set up housekeeping with a nice widow, it wouldn't be Denise Krouch."
"Maybe that's not the most reassuring thing she ever heard," says Todd.
"You know what's lovely?" Henry asks. "That your mother has added me to her list of people and things to worry about."
Lillian takes a sip of red wine, Henry's hostess gift, before asking, "Are you going back to this therapist with Denise?"
"I promised her that if she'd see someone, I'd go along. The easiest thing was to call up my ex-shrink rather than start asking around for recommendations or explaining my whole life to a stranger. Don't forget the groundwork had been set through years of my talking about the divorce and what that wrought in terms of custody. But to answer your question, Denise is returning. I'm not."
"How's the daughter?" Lillian asks. "Still seeing that boy?"
"Which one?" Todd asks with a wink for Henry.
"The actor."
"We don't think it's going to last much longer," Todd says.
"It's complicated," says Henry. "Not a conventional romance. It's more of what you might consider a courtesy."
"You met her," says Todd. "You saw what a good sport she is. She's seeing him as—okay if I say it?—a favor."
Henry searches for words that will be code for
Don't make me violate the confidentiality agreement once again.
He tries, "You know how young people are. Why they see each other and
what
they see in each other is a mystery. In this case, especially, discretion is the better part of valor."
Lillian whispers, "Is he married?"
Todd says, "If only."
"You want her to be dating a married man?"
"I meant if only he were a married man, he wouldn't have needed..." Todd looks to Henry. "A favor," says Henry.
"Is this another gay situation?" Lillian asks.
Todd says, "A very good guess, but no."
"She never got that part, did she? In his Civil War movie? Was that it? She wasn't in love with him but she thought it might help her career if she went out with a director? You can tell me. I know the way the world works, and I won't think any less of her."
"Or us," says Todd. "Her enablers." He puts his knife and fork down. "It's a flop. A grand scheme that never got off the ground."
"Stop beating around the bush," says Lillian. "What grand scheme?"
When Henry doesn't answer, Todd says, "C'mon. Thalia wouldn't mind."
"It's not Thalia who can sue me for breach of contract!"
"I won't tell a living soul," says Lillian.
"And she is, you have to admit, the queen of don't-ask-don't-tell," says Todd. "She didn't ask me a single personal question in forty-some-odd years."
Henry says wearily, "Thalia was contracted by a publicity firm to be Leif Dumont's arm candy, i.e., girlfriend. It was supposed to make the papers, big gossip item. Confirmed bachelor finds true love."
"That's it?" says Lillian. "That's the secret? I thought it was going to be some big scandal that someone could go to prison for."
Henry says, "Well, there's that, too. An underage girlfriend back in California—"
"Unconsummated, according to Thalia," says Todd.
"Is she disappointed?" Lillian asks. "Do you think she was hoping it might start as a business arrangement, but then turn into something more?"
"Thalia is philosophical," Henry says.
"She can be," says Todd. "We think there are many suitors waiting in the wings."
"What about her mother? I don't know her well enough to judge, but she strikes me as the kind of person who might want to throw a celebrity wedding so she could see herself on
The Insider
"
"For better or for worse," says Henry, "Denise took an instant dislike to Leif based on the most superficial reasons—"
"His looks," says Todd. "Whereas Henry delved below the surface to the man's undetectable personality."
"Either way, nothing fuels a daughter's interest like a parent's disapproval," says Henry.
"'Interest' is too strong," says Todd. "More like 'fueled Thalia's humanity.' It offends her that the papers call him names based on his appearance."
"Not a good-looking man?" Lillian asks.
"Not even a good-looking
monster
," says Todd.
"I'm surprised at you," says Lillian. "Daddy and I didn't raise you to judge people by their exteriors. He can't help the way he looks.'
"Todd was being literal," Henry tells her. "Leif's work is mostly in horror films, which he'd like to break out of."
"Any I might have seen?"
Todd laughs.
"You don't know every movie I see," she says.
"Name one horror film you've seen."
"
Phantom of the Opera.
And what's the Alfred Hitchcock movie where the girl gets stabbed in the shower? Not
The Birds.
The other one.'
"
Psycho
" says Henry.
"I saw that in the theater when it first came out. I may even have seen a sequel." She smiles a shaky smile. "I always loved Anthony Perkins." Her face changes. "When he died in real life, I was so upset.'
"Translation," says Todd. "Gay. From AIDS. Very hard to maintain dinnertime joie de vivre when one's own son is in the same risk pool.'
Lillian says, "No one's touched the garlic bread.'
"I will,' says Henry.
Lillian says quietly, "It won't be good reheated.'
"I love Italian food," Henry says. "Every time I watched
The Sopranos
and they were eating at Artie's restaurant, I'd pick up the phone and order something close to whatever house specialty Artie was whipping up for Tony and Carmela."
Lillian says, "We don't get HBO." And after a pause. "His wife died on one of the planes that flew into the twin towers."
"Anthony Perkins's wife, she means,' says Todd.
"I'd forgotten that,' says Henry. "Almost incomprehensible.'
"They had two boys," says Lillian.
Todd says, "This is the longest and possibly the only conversation we've had about Anthony Perkins at this table."
"I understand," says Henry. "We feel as if we know these actors. Then you find out he's sick, and you're upset, but keep it to yourself because you hadn't yet had that discussion with Todd."
"It's not rational," says Todd. "She knows I'm fine and you're fine."
"It's not that," Lillian says.
"Great," says Todd. "Let's have a guessing game. Whose turn is it to guess what's made my mother go silent. Anybody?"
"Nothing is wrong. I'm eating my dinner. If you need to inspect Denise's ruined apartment, and if Denise needs to see a therapist, there are plenty more important things in this world for me to worry about."
"Not Denise, then," says Todd. "Okay. Maybe nothing at all, just a long pause in the conversation so you could twirl your spaghetti into your soup spoon."
"I hope I didn't say anything to worry you, Lillian," says Henry.
Todd tilts his upper body toward his mother to ask, "Did you ever think I'd bring home such a mensch?"
Lillian puts both utensils down. "Do you know what my friends say, every single one, when I tell them about Henry? 'Don't get too attached! It's a recipe for heartbreak. You get attached to the person your kid's dating, and then they break up and you suffer more than they do.'"
"Who are these relationship experts?" Todd demands. "Aunt Mim, whose kids see her twice a year? Or your yenta bridge partners who only recently realized that
faygeleh
is politically incorrect? One of those geniuses?"
Lillian says quietly, "Some new friends. In PFLAG."
"PFLAG? No wonder," says Todd. "You're probably talking to the parents and friends of promiscuous gays and lesbians!"
"They're very nice," says Lillian. "I enjoy the meetings. And I really don't think anyone I've met has a promiscuous son or daughter, at least from our conversations."
Henry says, "Your friends don't want you to get hurt. Even in my very limited experience as Thalia's father, I can see myself getting attached to one of these beaus, and then what happens? They disappear from view overnight. It's like a death."
"Um, Henry?" Todd says. "Can you say something reassuring now?"
Henry reaches across the table and covers Lillian's hand with his. "What would reassure you, Lillian?"
"Maybe if I knew that you weren't seeing anyone else besides Todd..."
"I'm not."
"Because I know that with men it can be very hard to be monogamous. They're built different than women."
"Why all of a sudden?" asks Todd. "Besides the social education you're getting at PFLAG. Is something else going on?"
Lillian's chin quivers.
"Are you crying?" Henry asks.
"I think I know what this is," says Todd. He gets out of his chair, stands behind his mother, and massages her shoulders. Above her head he mouths
worried,
then pantomimes with his fist the opening and closing of myocardial valves.
"Your last checkup was good?" Henry asks her.
"Same old stuff: my pressure, my reflux, my weight, my cholesterol, the arthritis in my toes. No big thing."
Todd says, "So of course she's worried about who will raise me after she's gone."
"It's not funny to me," says Lillian. "I know you're a grown man. You can take care of yourself, and you'll stay here after I'm gone because your name's on the lease. It has nothing to do with who will raise you." She finds a crumpled tissue in an apron pocket and blows her nose. "It's about who will
love
you."
"Ma—"
"
I
will, Lillian," Henry says.
W
ISH YOU COULD'VE
been there, Thalia tells them, three abreast on a bench in Central Park, she and Henry sharing the salt and vinegar potato chips that came with Todd's turkey sandwich. It probably was, she tells them, the pinnacle of her improv career. Not so much the content, which was uneven—
"Stop torturing us," says Henry.
"I'm due back at work in twenty minutes, and that includes my travel time," says Todd.
Thalia adopts a tone suitable to a
Dragnet
voice-over. "Eleven fifty-nine
P.M.
We arrive at the Box. Leif and I, in fact, do get in."
"Wearing?" asks Todd.
"Not what was prescribed—"
"But not one of Nana's hand-me-downs?"
"No. Jeans and those boots you approve of. In fact, these very things." She lifts her feet and displays her impossibly pointed snakeskin toes.
"Proceed," says Todd.
"Okay. I see the other girl, the hired hand, approach Leif, according to plan. She's not a good actor, but then again, she wasn't chosen for her acting skills. Huge boobs, blond hair, fake eyelashes, glitter on cheeks, shoulders, cleavage; skirt up to her crotch—so ridiculous, so obvious, that I laughed. But mostly I was watching Leif. Completely fascinating—he just could
not
do it, could not perform as love object."
"So did you follow the script, or didn't you?" Henry asks.
Thalia nibbles prettily around the edges of a large potato chip until it's gone, then plucks a napkin from Todd's knee to blot her mouth.
"We're dying here," says Todd. "Tell us it all turned out fine, a triumph. Mission accomplished."
Thalia stands and faces Henry and Todd for the walk-through. "Okay. So this girl is all over Leif. I take out my phone"—she does—"and next thing I know I'm snapping pictures like I'm a fan, like won't my girlfriends back in Toledo be thrilled when they get these. I ask, 'What's your name?' She says, 'Heather Maze. Like amaze, without the A.' Now I realize that she thinks I'm the press and has apparently forgotten about Thalia the jealous girlfriend. So I ask, 'Who are you wearing?' which she doesn't get. I move on to, Are you a regular here?' She says, 'Um, well, no, but I'd like to be. It's awesome.' I ask, 'Are you an actress? Because you're so'—gag me—'glamorous.' She says, 'I
am
an actress!' So I say, And who is this gentleman?' Now I've got a pencil poised as if I'm writing all this down—not really—it's lip liner and a bar napkin. Heather starts looking around, finally wondering what happened to the angry girlfriend who's going to throw the first punch. I ask her again, 'Who is this gentleman you're with?' She says, 'Um. Lee Dupont.' I say, 'Wow, a
Dupont.
From the chemical Duponts?' She says, 'I don't know. We just met.'"
"What's Leif doing while this is going on?" Henry asks.
"Nothing up to this point. But then, when I least expect it, he asks quite calmly, 'Thalia? What are you doing?' which clues Heather in. "'
Thalia?'
You're Thalia?' Mispronounced, of course. So even though I hadn't exactly thought this through, word for word, I knew I had to say something meaningful. I
wanted
to say to the crowd, All of you got into the Box tonight. Does that make you happy? Popular? Better-looking and more important than your friends who didn't get past the velvet rope?'"
"You said that, or you didn't say that?" asks Henry.
She sits down again. "Did not say that. I mean, the place is big. It's loud. And what was my platform? Fellow club rat? It wasn't as if I was challenging them via satellite from a refugee camp. So I told Heather her job was over. She shouldn't demean herself, and she shouldn't confuse acting with real life." She takes another chip and with her mouth full mumbles, "Which is when I kissed Leif."
"What kind of kiss?" asks Henry.
"How many kinds are there?"
"A stage kiss?" Todd supplies.
"Maybe not," says Thalia.
The two men meditate on this. Finally Todd says, "It makes sense. Instead of starting a brawl, you were turning a sword into a plowshare."
"How did Leif react?" asks Henry. "And what did Heather do?"
"Well, Heather by now is all mixed up. She muscles me out of the way"—Thalia pantomimes a big chest moving in for the assault—"and now
she
kisses Leif. And I mean kisses."
"And is Leif standing there like a cigar-store Indian?" asks
Todd.
"Leif did okay," she says.
"Meaning?"
"He actually looked the way a normal guy might look if two women were showering him with attention. And get this: He had his lips on her and his eyes on me. And you know what I saw?"
"No," they both answer.
"A look in his eye. Like he recognized the irony of the situation. As if he was saying,
Do you believe this is happening to us?
"
"Us?" Todd repeats. "He used that pronoun?"
"How could he use a pronoun? He was sending this telepathically."
"Which I notice you were receiving loud and clear," says
Todd.
"How long did this public display go on?" asks Henry.
"Until I tapped her on the shoulder, very calmly, once, twice. Finally—and now her lips have slid south, somewhere around the Adam's apple—she mutters, 'What the fuck...?' So I say, 'Heather? Why are you doing this? Do you need this job so badly that you'd put yourself in this situation, with people wondering if you're a floozy or a hooker or a pickpocket?'"
"No you didn't!" says Todd happily.
"I certainly did."
Henry says, "But she probably thought it was an honest day's work. Do you think it was right to humiliate her?"
Thalia pats Henry's knee as she says to Todd, "How very Henry of him to worry about Heather Maze, perfect stranger."
"What about phase two?" Henry asks.
"Remind me," says Thalia.
"You and Leif are photographed making up in the limo. Did any press show up?"
"Oh, that," says Thalia.
"No?" asks Todd.
"No. He was mad at me by this time. Livid."
"Probably because you didn't create the promised fracas," says Henry.
"You're missing a defining moment: I said Leif got
mad
at me. Leif the silent, the blocked, the inscrutable. He yanked me by the hand, out the door, and read me the riot act. Doesn't that sound like progress?"
"I don't get why it was a riot act," says Todd.
Thalia's lips move silently. Finally she says, "Along the lines of, I used him."
"How?" asks Todd.
"You've done nothing but help him!" says Henry. "Who could have been nicer throughout this whole fiasco?"
"I bet the kiss threw him off," says Todd.
"Something did."
"How was it left?" asks Todd.
"It wasn't. He put me in the limo, slammed the door behind me, and loped off into the night."
"With Heather?"
"Maybe she chased after him. I don't know. My driver took off."
"So this is it," Henry says. "It ends with a whimper instead of a bang."
Todd brushes crumbs off his knees and stands. "I have to run. Sharon is going to be eating her egg salad sandwich at the cash register if I don't get back. But here's my take: Leif is not livid. He's confused. He's still trying to figure out what happened." He compacts his lunch bag into a ball, tosses, misses the trash can, says, "I'll get it ... Bye, sweetie. Hesh? See you tonight?"
They watch him cut over to the trash can, pick up not only his bag but two other stray wrappers, then head out of the park on a westward path.
"Do you think he's right?" asks Thalia. "About the kiss? Mixed messages?"
Henry asks, "Why
did
you kiss him? You must have known he was developing feelings for you. I can't imagine you were doing it purely as performance art."
Thalia doesn't answer, except for a repentant shrug. She walks over to a vending cart and returns with two bottles of water. "So what's on tap for this afternoon?" she asks.
"For me? The usual."
"Which is what on a beautiful spring day with no briefs to write or contracts to negotiate?"
"Nothing," says Henry.
"Me neither. We're bums." She smiles. "Hesh."
Henry says, "Yiddish, I think. It doesn't usually slip out in public."
A nursery school wagon carting a half-dozen toddlers approaches, pulled by two smiling young women, one in purple leg warmers and the other in red high-top sneakers. Thalia and Henry wave. The children stare. One teacher says, "Wave back, you silly chili beans!" and one or two do, perfunctorily.
"Only half of them were wearing sweaters," Henry notes after they've passed by.
"We are so bored," says Thalia.
Henry asks, "Want to walk over to Lincoln Square Theater and see what's playing?"
She shakes her head. "I'm sort of waiting for a call. Unless I'm supposed to be
making
a call."
"To Leif?"
"Either to yell or to apologize. I haven't decided yet."
"Up to you," says Henry. "Or just leave it."
"I've already texted him."
"Saying what?"
"No words. Just a question mark." She waits a few long beats before saying, "Maybe there's a little more to it than I've confessed."
"Such as?"
"You're not going to like it. I may have to sugar-coat it."
He suspects it's contractual, and already he doesn't like it. "Did you sign something without me going over it first? A non-comp agreement, or an extension?"
Thalia lifts her face to the sun, closes her eyes, and says, "Hmm. Extension. Let me see. Yes. That word could apply to what happened between me and Hose."
Henry waits for the next pair of pedestrians, bird watchers speaking German, to pass by before asking, "You slept with Leif?"
"These things happen," she says. "I think once the idea was planted in my brain about—you remember the penis discussion?—I became a little more, shall we say, attuned." She sits up again and asks, "Wanna walk?"
He says only yes, sensing that a good father doesn't ask a grown daughter for details about a sexual episode, especially an inadvertent one.
They head north, then turn onto West 75th. "Don't worry," she says. "We agreed that it was more or less accidental and spontaneous, and it shouldn't happen again."
When they reach his front door, Henry says that he's late putting annuals into the flower urns by the steps. He had postponed the planting, thinking paparazzi might kill his flowers with their cigarette butts. Thalia sits down on the stairway and pats a spot next to her. "Like that ever happened," she says.
He sits, her cell phone between them. "Has Leif told the little girlfriend?" he asks.
"I told him not to. I said, What's the big deal? Confessions are ultimately selfish. Who does it help to say, 'Remember the woman they hired to pose as my girlfriend? I fucked her. But don't worry! It was only sex. It meant nothing.'"
"You said that to him?" Henry asks.
"More or less ... okay, less. All I said was, 'Don't blurt anything out in an IM to Caitlin.'"
"What does the Estime team know?" Henry asks.
"Nothing! Well, nothing about our little fling, but probably everything about my sermons at the Box."
Henry says, "I have to ask: Did Leif press you into having sex? Is there any chance it was the result of an action plan by Wendy Morelli?"
Thalia says no so quickly and firmly that Henry says, "Sorry. Just playing devil's advocate."
"I know I made a mess of this," she says. "Why did I think he was going to shrug it off?"
Henry doesn't know what to say next. He wishes Todd were here; Todd is so much better at this kind of thing.
"Maybe I'll go back to school," she says. "Isn't that what you do when you realize you can't keep saying 'actor' if your main job is checking coats?"
"This doesn't sound like you! You'll keep trying. There are headhunters and agents and managers. And you have a fallback."
"My trust fund? That doesn't kick in until I'm thirty-five. I lied about getting it now so you wouldn't worry so much about me living on tips."
"Not that fallback," Henry says. He puts his arm around her shoulders. Months have gone by and only now does he have his arm around Thalia in full view of neighbors and pedestrians on West 75th Street.
"You know what I think?" she says. "I think you're wishing some real-life guy will take me on that shopping trip to Tiffany's, and soon you'd be walking me down the aisle of Saint Nicholas. Will you admit to that?"
"No, I will not." He smiles. He points to the maisonette. "Because what if I got that wish, and your husband didn't want to live downstairs?"
"Are you kidding?
If
I ever get married it'll be to a starving artist or a slacker. In fact, your three and a half rooms will be the main reason he proposes."
Henry nods, then manages a "Good."
"You okay?" she asks. "Did I make you nervous? Don't be. I'm going to redo my resumé and get a job. I want to pay my own way."
Henry says, "I appreciate that. But at the same time, I hope you won't give up on your craft. I think you have talent. More than talent; you have that indefinable quality—"
Her phone vibrates, a growl from the stone step. Thalia, looking puzzled, doesn't answer immediately.
"Not Leif?" Henry asks.
She holds up the phone. "Krouch Carton," he reads.
