The Family Man Part 2

3. You Sound Dubious.

HE ASKS, PREFACING the question with "You mustn't feel obliged," would Thalia care to make lunch a weekly commitment?

He watches carefully for a telltale hesitation, and his heart contracts when he hears, "Sometimes I skip lunch if I'm leaving early because of an audition-"

"I understand," he says. "Of course."

"Hey! Don't fold. I was about to say, 'Great! Love to.' You'll give me your contact info so if I hear about an audition, I won't stand you up."

He adores her all over again-such decency and good humor! "Did you enjoy your meal enough to make this our regular place?" he asks.

Thalia blinks hard. "Did I enjoy my meal? Did you ever see anyone enjoy her food as much as I just did?"

"Would you like to order something for later?" he asks.

She groans, but gratefully, delightfully.

"Shall we make this our regular spot?" he asks again. Thalia looks at her watch, says, "Yikes," then immediately adds, "Oh, so what? I'll explain the very dramatic, life-altering nature of my lunch." She leans in to ask, "How insensitive is it of me to propose we meet next time at Trattoria Dell'Arte?"

"Insensitive?"

"You know-in case it's kind of sacred."

"Celeste, you mean?"

"Exactly"

"That would be no problem," says Henry.

"Your next haircut is on the second," she says. "Should we make it then so you don't have to make an extra trip?"

"Perfect," he says. "On the second. Trattoria Dell'Arte"

She is on her feet now, knotting a long orange scarf that looks homemade and intentionally potholed, then tapping his numbers into her cell phone as fast as he dictates. "And next time you won't be tempted to bring along any estranged relatives of mine, right?"

"No, I promise. Just me."

"So no mediating?"

"I swear. And why would I include her when she's had you to herself for twenty-some-odd years?"

She smiles. "Because you don't hold grudges?" She doesn't wait for an answer but asks if he'll at least let her pay the tip.

"You run. I've kept you too long. I'm fine here," he says, waving his hand over the table to mean Of course this is-and always will be-my treat.

She leans over and kisses one cheek. "Awfully glad to officially re-meet you," she says.

It is worse now when he's alone. He is every man he hates on Prime Time, 48 Hours, and CNN Reports-the absent father who surfaces decades after the hard work has been done and the tuition paid. Look what he's missed: twenty-four years of Thalia. He had rights. It didn't have to be the surgical separation that it was. But to a relatively unschooled bachelor father, the biweekly lunches and teas were ordeals: Thalia cried when she had to leave her mother and her turncoat h.o.m.ophobic nanny, whimpered at restaurants while the surrounding patrons glared. With no one's goodwill-not Denise's or her new husband's nor the little girl's herself-the outings grew further and further apart until they stopped.

Now what will he say when Thalia inevitably asks what made him disappear? Too bitter and too angry with your adulterous mother to be a man, especially with the courts hinting that I was something less than that? Your stepfather wanted to adopt you and the affidavits all made the same argument: that the inconsistent presence of a man, a virtual stranger with an unconventional lifestyle, was confusing to the minor child.

Precisely because he doesn't like to lie and is a very poor dissembler, he avoids Denise. "Sorry I missed you again," he tells her answering machine, returning her calls at an hour he thinks she will be out. Denise doesn't take the hint and keeps trying to enlist him for her morning walk. He tries "cold coming on" and "waiting for the boiler service guy." After more than a week of white lies, he is out of excuses. He agrees to accompany her-in fact, in one hour. Since their detente, she has been overconfident and unceremonious, and he realizes that she has placed him under her girlfriend banner. The phone rings twenty seconds after he hangs up, and it is she again. He doesn't answer, quite sure that she wants to know if he's figured out why Thalia looks so familiar. But she's not calling about that; instead she's complimenting their new, comfortable, remarkably honest friends.h.i.+p. "And since I know you're standing there listening, I'll end with, How did I ever let all these years go by without mending fences?"

He resists the impulse to lunge at the phone while she's on the line and purge some of the old bile. Don't be so coy. I always hated that in you. And furthermore, just because I agree to take a walk doesn't mean we've mended fences.

But he doesn't pick up. He erases her words after replaying only their first sprightly syllables. He will be a neutral party for some greater good, the one ahead that he hasn't quite imagined yet.

As soon as she spots him, Denise yells across Fifth Avenue, "I've decided to get a job." When he reaches her side, she tells him she's been researching careers online. Did he know there was a whole world of jobs out there that she thinks she'd be very good at? At the top of her list, well, not exactly a career but a one-p.r.o.nged plan of action: to get her real estate license so that she can sell her apartment herself-how hard can that be?-and divide the gigantic commission with the listing broker. She can take courses at the New York Real Estate Inst.i.tute; she likes the look of the place, likes its slogan, Profit Through Knowledge, and likes its location on the north side of Macy's. What does he think of that?

They walk east, then turn south on Madison, her daily route. "It's not a job you can jump into," he tells her. "It's an attractive field, and it would be overrun if it didn't involve several big hurdles."

She slows down as they pa.s.s a shop window filled with cashmere and stops fully in the next doorway to gaze at the bejeweled shoes on display. "I used to shop here," she says. "I'd try on pair after pair and wouldn't even ask the price"

"Are we walking or shopping?" he calls back to her.

She sighs and follows. "I know it's not a job I can jump into. I know it involves courses and exams and a license. Is that so beyond my reach? Because you certainly sound dubious."

"Because you're counting on that license to sell your own apartment, and one doesn't get a real estate license overnight."

Denise is shaking her head vigorously. "I can stall the evil stepsons. I'll plead widow's mourning period or lead paint removal or chronic fatigue syndrome. They're in no hurry, believe me, with the market out of whack."

On every block she nods to fellow walkers, all of whom, he is quite sure, are noticing and evaluating the new widow's companion. "What else are you thinking about as a career path?" he asks.

"You know," she confides, and slips her arm through his as they pa.s.s two muzzled German shepherds on leashes, "don't laugh. But I think it would be fun to be one of those greeters in a nice restaurant."

"Do you mean a hostess?"

"What I'm picturing is one of those cozy restaurants where the owner's wife greets you at the door, welcomes you warmly, and hands the menus to a waiter who then leads you to your table. You and I both know that in this city there are plenty of restaurateurs who don't have wives."

He says, "You know, of course, that managers and owners hire-if they can get away with it-the youngest, most attractive, most buxom woman who applies for the job."

"That doesn't intimidate me! I'm thinking of a place with an older clientele. A bistro, probably French. Probably in my own neighborhood." She waves to a pa.s.serby, a tiny elderly woman swaddled in a fur coat. "She's ninety if she's a day," Denise whispers. "So's the coat."

How petty she is, he thinks, and therefore scolds, "It isn't like having guests in your house who arrive at seven-thirty and leave by ten. You'd be on your feet for an entire s.h.i.+ft. I think after one night it would lose its l.u.s.ter."

"Why are you taking a tone with me? I know that jobs involve work and not flitting in and out like a volunteer"

"Good."

She points to a coffee shop across the street and asks if they should reward themselves with a cappuccino.

"Reward ourselves for what?"

"Walking this far in the cold. And you walked across the park, so you're even more deserving."

He says, "Let's keep going. It makes more sense to have that on the way back."

"You've gotten bossier in addition to being more patronizing," she says rather cheerfully. She speeds up and begins pumping her elbows in a power-walk impersonation. "C'mon," she says. "It burns more calories." She stops for a Don't Walk signal at the corner of East 64th. "What would be your idea of a Denisecompatible job?" she asks him. "And don't say bank teller or nanny or dog walker or taxi driver."

He says, "I can just see you behind the wheel of a gypsy cab."

She leads him across Madison, heading east. "I pick up my lunch on Lex," she explains.

"Have you acquired any hobbies?" he asks. "Hopefully one that could convert into a paying job."

"I wish docent paid. I'd spend a different afternoon in each museum. Another thought I had was decorator."

"For which you'd need a license. And experience." And not ten beige rooms utterly devoid of personality.

"I'm getting offended" she says. "I don't hear one single note of confidence in your voice. Is this how you'd talk to a son or daughter who was shopping around for a new career? Wouldn't you say, 'What are your strengths? Let's look in the cla.s.sifieds. Let's give you one of those skills a.s.sessment tests'?"

Shouldn't the word daughter remind Denise of her own child? He doesn't bring Thalia up because the reunion is still too thrilling and too sacred to be uncorked. "Now, now," he says. "I'm playing devil's advocate."

"I'm sure all of these people heading for the nearest subway work in offices," Denise says with a sweep of her arm. Do they know something I don't know? And did they start off with more credentials than I have?"

"Can you touch-type?" he asks.

Denise stops and lets her jaw drop theatrically. "Can you see me as someone's secretary? Answering a phone? Taking shorthand? Emptying coffee grounds?"

"Then don't ask my advice! It's not an unreasonable idea. There are receptionist jobs that amount to being a greeter in an outer office. Always nicely dressed. Gracious. Keeping your shoes on under your desk."

"I'm mildly intrigued," she says.

"Then read the want ads. Make some phone calls. Charm some HR people."

"Is this wishful thinking? That I can dress up and sit at a beautiful desk in an atrium with a gorgeous arrangement of flowers-you've seen those giant, hotel-lobby-sized ones with birds of paradise and hydrangeas-and greet clients when they get off the elevator? Or that jobs like this exist at all nowadays? Don't companies want armed guards?"

"We used a headhunter who specialized in law-firm hires. I can look her up. There's bound to be firms who'd welcome someone with social skills and maturity-"

"Maturity! That's what I'm up against: age discrimination! You know where I'll end up? Waitressing at one of these places where they brag about their elderly help, and their nametags say how long they've worked there. I saw that in a Beverly Hills delicatessen once: 'Dottie, forty-five years.' 'Pauline, thirty-three years.' No, thank you."

"Would you consider sales?"

Denise recoils. She stomps right on Lexington and picks up speed.

"I was thinking of a place like Bergdorf's or Bendel's," he offers.

"Well, I certainly know my way around those places-"

"But?"

She stops, strikes a pose, imaginary c.o.c.ktail in hand. "'Oh, what do I do, attractive single man whom I've just struck up a conversation with at a dinner party? I work at Saks. No, no, not Goldman Sachs. The other one, the flags.h.i.+p store on Fifth. I sell pocketbooks and occasionally fill in at costume jewelry. I wrap your purchases in tissue and then I run your credit card. Fulfilling? No. But I do get an employee discount. And what did I do before that? Nothing, actually. I had a grant from the husband foundation. How about you?'"

Henry smiles. Had he ever noticed a talent for showmans.h.i.+p in the young Denise? He doesn't think so. Certainly there were good looks, a flattering gaze, and small talk that bordered on the charming. He asks, "Were you this entertaining in the past?"

Denise grins. "I must have been. Because you know who inherited my sense of humor?"

He does know but doesn't answer.

"Thalia. She's funny in the way I'm funny: not joke telling, but just-what would you call it?-putting a story across."

This would be the time to ask if Thalia is putting that ability to good use, but he is saved by the sudden appearance of particularly big and beautiful artichoke hearts attached to their stems marinating in a cafe window. Denise gasps. "I must have one of those," she says. "That'll be my dinner, with a cold gla.s.s of something crisp and white."

"That's not enough for dinner," says Henry.

"Then my lunch," says Denise, "which I'll eat the minute I get home."

He follows her inside and overrides her when she tells the man behind the takeout counter, "One of those artichokes in the window."

"We'll take six," says Henry. "Four for her and two for me." His billfold is already in his hand. Denise is protesting but not strenuously.

"He feels sorry for me," she tells the man behind the counter. "My husband died and took all the money with him."

The man smiles uncertainly. After all, who would say such a thing if it weren't a joke?

"I'm the ex," Henry volunteers, then wonders what's gotten into him.

4. Bygones.

BECAUSE HE'S BEEN seeing Sheri Abrams, PhD, for decades, the reference to Denise Krouch requires no biographical footnote. Henry's divorce was the very catapult that landed him in this black Eames chair twenty-four years before, opposite the then newly minted clinical psychologist, chosen purely on the basis of Upper West Side geography. Her leafy office is untended and book lined, radiator clanging, tribal kilims on two walls, a four-minute walk from West 75th Street. He brings lattes for himself and Sheri-first-name basis from the beginning-and a gourmet peanut b.u.t.ter biscuit for her standard poodle, the third identical dusty black dog in his tenure. Their sessions have evolved into conversational sparring between opinionated friends. Sheri-and this is why he'd never consider psychoa.n.a.lysis-talks back, advises, and editorializes. They discuss movies, plays, op-ed pieces, and the openings and closings of restaurants on the West Side. She discharges Henry every few seasons, p.r.o.nouncing him over the hump and better adjusted than he knows. Yes, she always replies wearily; yes, we could meet for coffee or lunch, but after that, naturally, I'd have to refer you to another therapist. Accordingly, he is careful not to chat when they find themselves waiting in the same lines at Zabar's. After a few months, with or without a setback, he feels that something is missing. Most recently, it was Celeste's diagnosis, and now, on the heels of that loss, this: His longtime nemesis is filling his voice mail with messages. And her lovely, bighearted daughter! Could he even explain to Sheri without embarra.s.sing himself what one lunch has meant to him?

"When did you and Denise start talking again?" Sheri asks, frowning.

"About six weeks ago. I sent her a note of condolence when her husband died."

"Which husband? I've lost count."

"Her third."

"Magnanimous of you."

"I wrote a note, nothing profound, the usual sorry for your loss. She wrote back sounding a little desperate. So I called."

She says evenly, "I see. You picked up the phone and called your ex-wife."

"Yes, I did." He pops the plastic lid off his latte and says quietly, "I was curious."

"Curiosity is good," she says with so little conviction that he laughs.

She asks what is so amusing, and he mimics her "curiosity is good" with a more p.r.o.nounced strangulation of the syllables.