“Won’t you tell me?” I ask, stroking the sweat-soaked skin of his back. “I want to understand. If this,” I gesture between us, “is truly something that matters to you, then you can’t leave me in the dark.”
He’s silent for so long that I believe he’s fallen asleep. But his sex-roughened voice interrupts the quiet.
“Four old-moneyed families sent their sons to Harvard. My father was one of them. Richard’s father, Edward Howe, was another. The two others aren’t important for this story. They are friends, business partners. When Papa Howe’s son Richard needs a job, he asked my dad for a favor. But Richard’s expensive lifestyle—and I don’t know if it was drugs, gambling, shitty investment decisions or prostitutes or what—leads him to embezzle money.
“My father covers it up, but then the market crashes and he’s leveraged to shit. The embezzlement is discovered and the blame is pinned on Dad. Howe won’t come forward. My dad has a heart attack, which results in us losing all of our possessions from foreclosure and bankruptcy. My mom is unable to hold her head up and even if she could she didn’t have the money to play. She takes us to New Jersey, where she hooks up with a gambler. He gets her addicted and soon . . .” his voice trails off.
“Like Malcolm’s mother,” I say softly.
“You know, then?”
I nod. “Yeah, for a while. I mean, that’s why he deals and I guess is in with the other stuff. He’s always bailing her out, but the addiction is too strong.”
“My mother was never meant to have to support herself. Addictions use you up fast. She was doing. . . stuff . . . to get money. Anything.” His voice is strained. “I was ashamed of her. Pretended I didn’t know her. Then I hated her. Finally . . . I felt relief, and that was the most guilt-inducing emotion of all.”
Curling my body around him, I stroke every inch of his body I can reach, as if to protect him from his memories.
He burrows his forehead into the side of my neck. His voice is muffled but his words are clear. “She got arrested for solicitation when I was fifteen. By that time I was working, hustling on the boardwalk and then taking every cent I had and playing poker in the casinos. I easily passed for twenty-one because of my size, my scruff. I was earning money, not as fast as I’d like and not in as big amounts as I’d want, but I’d had to lay low, not draw attention to myself.
“I was saving money, socking it away, thinking that I’d buy us a nice beach house and send my mom to an expensive clinic and it’d all be good. But it was too late. She didn’t last more than a night on the inside. She asked me to bring her something, a Hermes scarf my dad had given her on their fifteenth wedding anniversary. Like a dumbshit, I brought it. She kissed me and then I left. Later I learned she’d bribed a guard with sex to let her bring the scarf into her cell.”
He didn’t have to finish.
“I’m so so sorry.” I choke back the tears, knowing he won’t welcome them.
“Yeah, me too,” he sighs heavily and then, to my surprise, he turns into my embrace and allows me to give him comfort.
Chapter 29
SEEING ME WITH IAN AGAIN ONLY renews Rich’s pursuit. He sends me text messages which I have voice transcribed or Ian will read to me. Afterward, the muscle in his jaw clicks. And invariably he feels the need to touch me, usually someplace very intimate.
But other than this texting game I’m playing with Rich, which hasn’t progressed beyond mild flirtation, nothing truly scandalous, my life is pretty good.
Mom is doing really well after her last chemo treatment, but her doctor has advised her against going out too frequently. Her immune system is very low and he says that even a cold could be dangerous. Ian orders dinner from Le Cirque to be delivered to Central Towers in lieu of going out.
“Tiny says your parents have passed.”
“Yes. My father died of a heart attack when I was thirteen and my mother passed away when I was fifteen.”
“I’m so sorry. You were required to assume responsibility far too early.”
“It’s what made me,” Ian replies, shrugging as if having to spend the latter part of his teen years on his own was normal and easy.
“I hope you won’t take it wrong, but I’d like to give you a bit of advice. Not about Tiny, of course. I wouldn’t presume to go there. But life advice.”
“Sure,” he squeezes my hand to let me know that the inquisition and the advice don’t bother him.
“Life is fleeting, ephemeral almost. Don’t waste a minute, even a second, on anything that’s not important. And if you do have something important, do everything to hang on to it. Don’t assume that tomorrow will bring you something better. Treasure the now.”
“I will, Sophie. Thank you for caring enough to share with me.”
She flushes with pleasure at the compliment, and I glow inside at how he understands that it is because she loves me—and perhaps because she is beginning to care for him—that she is brave enough to voice her concerns.
On the Sunday before her chemo day, I take her to the Frick Museum. She says she wants to spend time with me. It is our favorite museum, and not because on Sundays they have a policy of “paying what you wish.” Today I drop in a fifty to cover all the other visits when we paid nothing. The Frick is a treasure chest of a museum, only two floors with everything from Fragonard—my mother’s favorite—to Whistler. We walk around the museum, arms clasped around each other, and end our tour in the atrium.
The fountain is working, the water quietly gurgling over the stone bowls and into the pool below. The foliage helps to soften the stone walls and the tall pillars. The atmosphere and the glass ceiling are so calming that the stone benches actually feel comfortable despite their hard surfaces.
“It’s hard to believe someone lived in this place. Can you even imagine having a reflecting pool in your living room?”
“I can’t imagine the upkeep.”
Then we smile at each other because this is the same conversation we have at the end of every visit.
“I’m so glad that you have Ian,” she says.
“I’m not sure that I have him so much as I’m being dragged behind one of his fancy cars as he speeds toward some destination only he knows.”
“I’ll tell you one thing I’ve learned in the last three years, and that is you need to seize opportunities for happiness when they present themselves to you. Don’t close this one out. Give him a chance.” She squeezes my hands and glances out the window that shows the tops of the trees of Central Park. “I don't want you to end up alone.”