The Sins of the Mother (28 page)

“My mom was busy a lot,” he explained, “she traveled constantly for work, so my father and grandmother brought me up most of the time. She lived with us, and my mom was home between trips. I have two sisters and a brother, and it sounds like my oldest sister is about the same age as yours, and my youngest sister, whom I don’t see anymore, is a little younger than your brother.”

“Why don’t you see her anymore?” She looked sad for him, as though it were a circumstance she couldn’t even imagine, since her family was so close, even without their parents, or maybe because of it. Phillip wondered.

“It’s a long story, but she got very upset when my father died. She was mad that my mother wasn’t there. She was away on a business trip when Dad died, so after that, my sister moved to London. She was twenty. My mother and grandmother see her when she comes to town, and my sister saw her a few years ago, I think. I haven’t seen her in about ten years. She keeps her distance. We don’t have much in common. And families are complicated sometimes.”

“I know,” she said, looking sympathetic. “I had to work after school to pay for college and graduate school. My parents’ insurance money ran out before that, and we used it to pay for my brother’s college education. But it all worked out,” she said with a sunny smile, as his heart went out to her, and he felt like a giant spoiled brat. And Amanda’s demand for a “commitment of Grayson money” for her charitable causes in order to advance socially seemed flat-out disgusting. Taylor was real, Amanda just wasn’t. And Phillip had been blessed all his life. He would have been mortified now to tell her who he was and what they had, and why the bookcase he’d had delivered to her was nothing to him, all thanks to his mother. Taylor’s life put his into perspective very quickly.

They talked about her time in the Peace Corps then, and he said he’d just been to Europe, to Italy and France. He didn’t tell her he’d been on a three-hundred-foot yacht, he just said they’d all been on a family vacation, except for his youngest sister. She was impressed that they’d all gone together. There were so many things he couldn’t tell her about his life, because if he did, she’d be shocked by the lifestyle he took for granted. He realized that as he listened to her.

And she mentioned that she was fluent in Spanish. They had almost put her in a Spanish-speaking program in Spanish Harlem. She was excited about the job she was about to start, and talked a lot about it. And he hated to leave her at the end of lunch. She said she couldn’t see him the next day. She had to go to a teacher’s orientation meeting at her new school, but she was free over the weekend. He was dying to see her, but thought he had to spend time with Amanda. He didn’t know her plans, although she was very busy right now, getting ready to leave her office, and handing off her cases to others.

“What about dinner on Monday?” Phillip asked her, and Taylor said that would be fine. “I’ll call you over the weekend if I can get away.” She grew quiet then, and he looked at her. She looked sad, and it cut through him like a knife.

“Sometimes I forget you’re married,” she said quietly.

“So do I. We have a very strange marriage. I let it get that way, and now I don’t know whether to end it or fix it.”

“You should probably fix it if you can,” she said fairly. She didn’t want to destroy his marriage, and had told him that the first day.

“I don’t know if I want to,” he was honest with her.

“Because of me or other reasons?” she asked softly.

“Both. I think I married the wrong person. I think everyone knew except me. I thought her coldness was a challenge. Now I realize it’s impossible to live with. It’s like living in an igloo.” And in the face of Taylor’s warmth, he didn’t want to try. “I’ll figure it out soon. I swear.” He needed to anyway. He couldn’t go on like this forever, and Amanda’s demands were becoming increasingly outrageous. Taylor was just making the situation more acute. She was the catalyst he hadn’t expected. But all the problems with Amanda were there, and had been for a long time, even if he hadn’t wanted to see them.

When he left Taylor, he kissed her gently on the cheek, and promised to call her over the weekend, just to say hello. And as it turned out, Amanda had planned to stay in her office and work all weekend, and hadn’t mentioned it to him. He called Taylor on Saturday afternoon, and they went for a walk in Central Park, stopped at the model boat pond, listened to several bands, and lay on the grass. She had brought a blanket with her so they could. They stayed until six o’clock, just lying there and talking, and looking up at the trees. And at one point, he rolled over on his side, propped up on his elbow and bent down to kiss her. Her lips were so soft, they seemed to melt into his. He thought he had never tasted anything so sweet in his life.

He took her back downtown then, and they had dinner at the Minetta Tavern, an old favorite of his. And then he dropped her off at her place, and went home. It was ten o’clock, and he got in five minutes before Amanda. He had just turned on the TV, and she assumed he’d been there all evening. He was in a daze after the hours he’d spent with Taylor and their kisses in the park. It suddenly made him feel crazy when he saw Amanda. His situation had become a nightmare overnight.

“Are you okay?” she asked, staring at him intently.

“I’m fine.”

“You look sick.” She could see something, but she couldn’t identify it. And she wasn’t wrong. His stomach had just turned over at the thought of what he was doing. And he didn’t want Taylor to get hurt. She didn’t deserve it. He even felt sorry for Amanda. She was being such a fool. She was playing a high-stakes game, and she was going to lose if she kept pushing.

He went to bed early that night, and fell asleep immediately, exhausted from the tension he was feeling. And when he woke up in the morning, Amanda was gone, without leaving him a note. She was completely wrapped up in her own world these days, with total disregard for him. She had waited for her appointment to the bench for a long time, and it had gone to her head completely. Her narcissism was total. There was no one but her on her planet.

He met Taylor downtown again, and they decided to do something different and fun. They pretended to be tourists in New York, which she was. They went to the top of the Empire State Building, and he kissed her there, with the city at their feet, and then they took a ride on the Staten Island Ferry. He had never had such a good time in his own city. Everything he did with her was exciting and new. And no matter how much time he spent with her, he couldn’t get enough of her. She was the drug he had become addicted to. His whole life had turned topsy-turvy in a week, and hers along with it. And she hadn’t told her family either. They were both keeping it a secret. He because he had to, and she because she knew her brother and sister wouldn’t approve. It was a strange situation for them both, and a dangerous one for her. She could easily be the one to get hurt, and they both knew it.

And the following week, they kept meeting whenever they could, lunches and dinners, and stolen moments. They went back to Central Park, and sat in Washington Square with the students. They went to the café where they’d met, and the following weekend Amanda worked again, and he spent every waking moment with Taylor. Their romance had gone on for two weeks, but they were seeing each other almost every day, and Phillip still had no idea what he was doing. Amanda appeared to be oblivious to his indifference and change of mood. Part of him wanted her to stop him before this went any further and save their marriage to prove that she loved him, and part of him hoped she wouldn’t. She had no idea what was going on and was totally self-involved, more so than ever. Her hour of glory had come. And everyone was making a fuss over her at her office. She seemed to have forgotten that Phillip existed. And he had filled the void with Taylor. She filled his heart like air in a balloon until he felt like he was going to explode with excitement.

On Sunday they went to a street fair in Little Italy, ate lemon gelato, and then walked back toward her apartment. She offered to show him the bookcase, and he felt a little foolish parading past her roommates who were all young students, but he agreed to go up for a few minutes. And when they got there, no one was home.

The apartment was small and sunny, and crowded with old fraying furniture, most of which they’d gotten at garage sales, found on the street, or bought at Goodwill. Her bookcase from The Factory looked regal compared to everything else in the apartment, and he was touched by the simplicity in which she lived. Her room was neat as a pin, and spotless. It looked like a young girl’s room. Her clothes were in the closet, carefully hung on hangers, her desk was organized, her bedspread was a pink one she’d brought from home, and there were cushions on the bed that her nieces had made her. He took her in his arms and held her as soon as they walked in. Her hair smelled as fresh as it always did, and he loved nuzzling her skin and feeling her close to him. She was wearing a halter top and a denim skirt and flip-flops, and he was wearing jeans, and before he could stop himself, he was pressing her against him, and starving to hold her naked in his arms, and all she wanted was him.

He kicked the door to her room closed behind him in case her roommates came home, and seconds later, their clothes were off, and they were engulfed in passion and couldn’t stop until their bodies had exploded together and they lay panting in each other’s arms, breathless and unable to move. Phillip had never wanted anyone as badly as he did her, and Taylor had totally abandoned herself to him. The dam had finally broken, and the flood tides couldn’t be reversed. He was so in love with her, he couldn’t think straight.

“Oh God,” he said as he rolled slowly away from her and looked into her eyes. They were the eyes of a woman surfacing slowly from the depths of passion. “I’m so sorry … I didn’t want to do that.” But they had had no choice, and they both knew it.

“I’m not sorry,” she said softly, and meant it, slowly catching her breath again. “I love you … even if you never leave Amanda. At least we’ll have had this.” And then he worried about something else.

“Are you on the Pill?” She nodded, but they had both been trusting to have unprotected sex, and neither of them was worried. Everything about this felt right. And then he realized something else as he held her close to him again. “I want babies with you,” he whispered into her neck. He had never said that to any other woman, nor wanted to. Children were the one thing he had known he didn’t want, until now with Taylor. He felt as though he had waited for her all his life. And what he had just said told him what he had to do. “I’m not going to let this thing go on like this for long. I’m going to straighten it out soon.” And she believed him. She somehow thought that he would. She trusted him completely, which was what every woman involved with a married man had thought before her, but she knew that this would be different. Phillip loved her. She was sure of it. And she loved him.

They made love again that afternoon, and he hated to leave her after he did. He went home feeling as though he had a stone in his chest, consumed with guilt. He hadn’t wanted to make love to her until he was free. And now everything was more complicated, and he had no idea what to say to Amanda or when. He took a sleeping pill before she came home that night so he didn’t have to see her.

But she was there in the morning, looking bright-eyed and excited about everything she was doing, and talking about her induction as usual. He had a headache and a hangover from the sleeping pill he’d taken the night before.

“What do you want for breakfast?” she asked him as she made toast for herself. She never made breakfast for him, and he almost said “a divorce,” but he didn’t have the guts. He had to think about what he was going to do first. He had known Taylor for two weeks, and he was about to end his marriage of nineteen years. Was he insane? Was he wrong? Was this what he had been waiting for? He no longer knew. He wasn’t in love with Amanda, but he no longer felt sane either. He felt as though he had gone crazy in the last two weeks.

“I’ll eat something at the office,” he said, and walked out of the kitchen. She was humming something when he left, and the first person he saw in the hall when he got to work was his mother. He was so distracted he walked right past her and didn’t see her. And when she called out to him, he turned around looking glazed.

“Are you all right?” she asked him with a look of concern. She had never seen him look like that, and they hadn’t spoken since their argument over Peter. “Are you sick?” She was genuinely worried, and he just shook his head.

“No … no … I’m fine … a summer cold … it’s nothing.” And then he remembered. If it hadn’t been for Taylor, he wouldn’t have said anything or understood, but who was he to cast stones now? And his mother was single—he wasn’t. “I’m sorry,” he muttered darkly.

“What about?”

“About Peter … I didn’t know … I’m sure you know what you’re doing.” She was even more worried about him after that. Phillip, the Great Carrier of Grudges for All Time, had given in far too easily. She wondered suddenly if there was trouble between him and Amanda.

“Is Amanda all right?”

“She got her appointment to the federal bench. She’s over the moon about it.”

“Congratulate her for me,” Olivia said, still searching her son’s eyes for some explanation of why he looked so ragged, but there was none, and he hurried away to his office a few minutes later, as though he were afraid to talk to his mother.

She was so worried about him that she mentioned it to Peter that night. He was sure there was some simple explanation, and he was happy to hear that he had apologized. He didn’t find that strange at all. He owed it to her.

“Maybe he’s in love,” Peter said, only half-joking. Stranger things had happened.

“Phillip?” His mother laughed at the suggestion. “It’s the one thing he’s most afraid of. He’d rather have his heart ripped out with a tweezer. I’m not sure Phillip could tolerate being loved. That’s why he married Amanda. The human iceberg. I think Phillip is afraid of feelings. He doesn’t want to be hurt or disappointed, so he stays with her and feels nothing. It’s incredibly depressing.”