Child's Play

by Danielle Steel

  She called her mother and grandmother before they left for Maine, and told them they could reach her on her cellphone, if they needed to, although cell service was spotty, and there was no phone in the house they rented, which was one of the things they loved about it. No Internet for two weeks. And no TV. They could read and talk to each other at night, or play cards, or Scrabble. It was the perfect vacation for both of them.

  Tammy thought her mother sounded tense when she talked to her. She had for several weeks, but she didn’t know what it was about. Kate hadn’t shared Claire’s news yet, nor had she. Claire said she wanted to wait until after the first trimester, when she knew everything was fine, and then she was going to tell Anthony and Tammy, sometime around their mother’s birthday. Kate had asked her not to do it that night, so she could enjoy her birthday without drama. She said that sharing Claire’s shocking news of the baby would spoil the birthday for her, which upset Claire all over again. Claire was about to go to Aspen for three weeks with Reed, and was looking forward to it.

  Kate spent two weeks with Bart at Shelter Island every summer. He rented a house there for two months, and invited his children to visit in July if they wanted to. He invited friends to come in August. Kate played hostess for him, and enjoyed it. They had to take a ferry to get there. She liked his friends who came on weekends, and the time they spent there alone. She hadn’t told him about Claire’s baby yet either. She was too embarrassed to do so. It felt like a double failure to her. On Claire’s part to fly in the face of the rules of society, and on her part, to have failed to teach her what the rules were. Having a baby out of wedlock was not good news to Kate or anything she was proud of. It had taken all the pleasure out of having a first grandchild, now it was something she dreaded, and wanted to hide as long as she could, even from Anthony and Tammy. But the secret would be out soon, when the baby started to show, probably by October.

  Kate wished Tammy a good trip to Maine when she called, and told her to be careful. She thought it was dangerous for her to go alone. What if a bear came out of the woods, or her canoe or kayak flipped over.

  “I’ll be fine,” Tammy said cheerily. “Have fun in Shelter Island with Bart.” But Kate knew there was a falseness to it this year. He had no idea what was troubling her or how upset she was and she was too ashamed to tell him, which said a lot about their relationship. There was a basic lack of honesty there, because they weren’t close enough for her to confide in him, which was their unspoken agreement and the way they wanted it. It kept everything superficial. But they had a good time together, and she was looking forward to the two weeks with him, away from all her troubles in New York.

  Margaret wasn’t going anywhere except to a friend’s in Southampton for a long weekend. She was going to visit another friend in Palm Beach in the fall, when she preferred to travel.

  And Anthony was back to spending weekends in Bronxville with Amanda and her parents. He found the sound of the crickets deafening, and the heat oppressive. They had the cake and wine tasting for the wedding scheduled while they were there. He didn’t care about either one. Amanda cried all day when he said he thought the cake tasted like toothpaste. It was from the best wedding-cake baker in New York, and she couldn’t believe he’d said that.

  It was a relief for Anthony to get back to the city every Monday and go back to work. It made him think again about what his grandmother had said about living for thirty or forty years with Amanda. It looked like a long lonely stretch of road to him. But maybe it would be better when they had children. Maybe Amanda was right about that. He was trying hard not to think of Alicia, and the more he tried, the more he thought about her. He wondered where she was, and if she was in the city. There wasn’t much modeling work in the summer, and she was on vacation from Hunter until September when she’d pick up her final eight credits. He reached for his cellphone to call her more than once, but knew he couldn’t. He had changed gyms after the breakup, so he no longer ran into her. He spent most of the time on weekends in Bronxville in the pool, or lying in the sun, while Amanda and her mother met with the tentmaker and the wedding planner, and her father played golf. It was the longest summer of Anthony’s life.

  Chapter 8

  By the time Kate’s birthday rolled around, right after Labor Day, she was in better spirits after two weeks in Shelter Island with Bart. She never told him about Claire being pregnant. She tried to put it out of her mind entirely and succeeded some of the time. At other times, it was much on her mind, but she never told him. There was nothing she could do about it anyway, or so her mother kept reminding her. And at Margaret’s suggestion, she had invited a few of her own friends to Shelter Island too. It gave her a chance to see them since most of the time she was too busy working to see friends. Bart left for Hong Kong and Beijing immediately after the vacation on a trip for a Senate Finance subcommittee.

  Relations were still chilly between Claire and her mother, but Kate had had a nice time with Bart in Shelter Island in spite of the heartaches she didn’t share with him. He never suspected the grief she was concealing.

  As soon as she got back, Kate had a big case with one of their major clients, which had heated up and was eating up her time, so she wasn’t able to think of anything else. It was a blessing.

  Tammy had had a terrific vacation in Maine, and was gearing up for fashion week in Paris in two weeks. She invited her grandmother to go with her, but Margaret said she loved September in New York, and was going to Palm Beach at the end of the month. They were all busy. They all had lots to tell each other when they met at Kate’s for her birthday dinner, which she had catered by a new Thai restaurant. Margaret thought that Anthony looked gaunt, but Amanda was radiant as the wedding drew closer. She told Kate all the latest details before dinner.

  Margaret was in good spirits and happy to see her grandchildren at the dinner at Kate’s. Amanda commented somewhat tactlessly that Claire looked like she’d put on weight over the summer but it suited her. Claire hadn’t brought Reed with her. She had come alone, and the minute Amanda commented on her weight, Kate and Margaret exchanged pointed looks across the table, and Tammy caught it. Claire looked uncomfortable for a minute, but she had passed the three-month mark, and had just had a sonogram that morning, and was told everything was fine.

  She then did exactly what her mother had asked her not to do. She looked straight at Amanda and smiled at her.

  “Well, there’s a reason for it,” she said happily. “I’m having a baby.” There was total silence at the table for a minute as all of the young people stared at Claire in amazement.

  “Are you serious?” Amanda asked her, looking panicked. “Are you getting married before we are?” She looked as though she was going to cry if Anthony’s sister stole their thunder.

  “I’m not getting married at all. We don’t need to. We’re happy just as we are, and now we’ll have a baby.” Claire acted as though they’d been married for years, and this had been a long awaited event, instead of a shocker in a now five-month-old relationship.

  “Wow,” Anthony said, not sure what else to say, as he watched his mother’s face turn to stone, and Tammy exchanged a look with her grandmother.

  “I thought we agreed we weren’t going to talk about it tonight,” Kate said to her youngest daughter, who pretended not to hear her.

  “Are you okay with that, the baby, I mean, if they’re not married?” Amanda asked her future mother-in-law. Anthony kicked her under the table, and she looked at him in surprise. “What? I can’t talk about it? Claire brought it up,” she said, defending herself as Anthony groaned. He could see a tornado heading toward them, and he hated confrontation, especially among his female relatives. It never turned out well.

  “No, Mom’s not happy about it,” Claire answered for Kate. “She’s furious with me in fact. She thinks it’s shocking.”

  “My parents would too,” Amanda said innocently, as A
nthony closed his eyes. “My father would kill me. And my mother would probably cry for a year.”

  “Reed and I don’t think marriage is necessary,” Claire said pointedly with an edge to her voice.

  “Is he willing to marry you?” Amanda continued to pursue it despite scowls of warning from her fiancé. “If he is, I’d marry him if I were you. Why expose yourself to all the nasty things people will say?” Amanda suggested. No one else said a word.

  “He’s willing, but I don’t want to. I don’t want to get married because we ‘have’ to, and we don’t care what people will say.” Kate was looking sick by then, and pushed her dinner away, as Tammy watched her and felt sorry for her. It was easy to see how upset she was and what a blow it was to her. She was furious with her sister for bringing it up tonight at their mother’s birthday. It also explained why Kate had seemed so stressed recently. Tammy had wondered why.

  “I’m sorry, Mom,” Tammy said softly, and Kate looked at her with tears in her eyes.

  “Thank you. I never realized how liberal your sister is, and how modern,” she said quietly. And rebellious, she didn’t add, but she thought it. “The news will be out pretty soon when it starts to show. I haven’t told anyone yet.”

  “We’ve told a few friends, and we’ll start telling everyone in the next few weeks when we know what sex it is,” Claire said blithely.

  “Do they care at your law firm?” Tammy asked her, mature, and practical, and always careful about her job. “A lot of companies wouldn’t like it.”

  “I haven’t told them yet. But Reed is one of their biggest clients. How mad could they get?” She was cocky with her response, and sensing that her news wasn’t being entirely well received, even by her siblings, Claire had adopted the same aggressive tone she had been using recently with her mother.

  “I’m not sure if I should congratulate you, or sympathize with Mom,” Tammy said quietly.

  “I don’t see why you don’t marry him,” Anthony said, looking stunned by the whole thing. “What are you trying to prove by not getting married? How cool you are? Who cares? Why don’t you just go down to city hall and get married?” He wished he and Amanda could do that, instead of being a part of the circus Amanda and her parents were planning. “Is Reed as opposed to marriage as you are?”

  “He’s fine either way,” she said, looking annoyed at her brother.

  “I think he’d actually prefer to get married,” Kate chimed in. “He asked her to, and she refused.” Kate had the same devastated look that came into her eyes whenever the subject came up. “I think a lot of it is delayed teenage rebellion,” she said, looking at her youngest daughter.

  “That’s a nasty thing to say,” Claire spat back at her mother.

  “It’s a nasty thing to do, depriving a baby of legally married parents.” The birthday was a lost cause after that, and Kate stunned them all with her own story from her youth, of her first marriage. There was dead silence at the table again after that.

  “Why didn’t you ever tell us?” Tammy was the first to ask her, shocked at how little they knew about their mother.

  “I didn’t think it was important for you to know. It all happened before you were born. But maybe you should know that even parents make mistakes, sometimes very big ones. It was a sad story.”

  “You really don’t know what happened to the guy after he went to prison? Couldn’t you have found out?” Anthony said, visibly upset. It had been a distressing evening.

  “I guess I could have, but we hardly knew each other, which sounds strange since I was married to him, and we almost had a baby. But when he got out of prison seven years later, I was married to your father, and two of you had already been born. I didn’t really want to make contact with him again. I wanted to try to forget it. A baby and a child had died and a marriage had ended. I didn’t want to revisit it, and I was happy with your dad.” She glanced at Margaret then, who was giving her a stern look, and Kate sighed, as she gazed around the table at her children and Amanda, who was shocked after Kate’s confession. “I think we can pretty much forget about my birthday after all this, but as long as Claire has gotten us started on a night of confessions, there’s something else your grandmother thinks I should tell you. She thought I should tell you about the marriage that was annulled so you’d know that I’ve made some mistakes too, and she was right. The other story I’m going to share with you isn’t really my mistake, but I suppose you have a right to know. If your father had lived, you would have known anyway. I’ve protected his memory for nineteen years, but he was human too.

  “About a year before he died, he fell in love with someone else. I never knew her, but I was told she was a nice woman. He met her in Washington and fell in love with her. She worked in his congressional office. He asked me for a divorce shortly before the helicopter crash. He wanted to marry her, and I assume he would have. He loved you all very much, but he was very definite about getting out of our marriage, and I wouldn’t have stopped him if that was what he wanted. You can’t keep someone hostage, even if you love them. So I had agreed to the divorce. He had already seen a lawyer and was planning to remarry.” The silence after that was deafening, and there were tears rolling down Anthony’s cheeks when she was finished. He walked around the table, put his arms around his mother, and cried, without saying a word. It was the death of his illusions about his father, which was why Kate had never told them. She only hoped that her mother was right that they should know.

  “Why didn’t you ever tell us?” Tammy asked her, and Kate looked at her sadly. She had lost Tom twice, once when he told her he was divorcing her, and the second time a few weeks later with the crash. She was devastated both times for different reasons. And in the end, the good memories had lasted longer than the bad ones. But there was always the knowledge that he would have divorced her if he’d lived, which cast a shadow on how she felt about him.

  “I didn’t want you to think less of him. He was very nice about it, but he wanted out. It didn’t matter anymore after he died. You didn’t need to know and you were young. I didn’t see why I should tell you, but Grandma always thought I should once you grew up. I hope she’s right.” Anthony had gone back to his seat by then, looking crushed. “He was a wonderful father and that would never have changed, and a terrific husband for fourteen years, until he wanted out. Sometimes that’s all you get.”

  “But you always made him sound like a hero to us,” Tammy said. Claire hadn’t said a word, she didn’t remember her father very clearly, but Tammy had been thirteen when he died, and a divorce would have seemed like a tragedy to her, even if his new wife was nice.

  “He was a hero, to his country, to all of you, to me for a long time. But he was a human being. People change their minds, they fall in and out of love, good and bad things happen to them, they make mistakes, sometimes they hurt the people they love. It doesn’t make them monsters. It makes them real. I still miss your father and I still love him, even though we would have been divorced if he’d survived. I still remember the good times, and we had a lot of them. And he gave me the three of you. I’ll always be grateful to him for that.”

  “After everything Mom’s been through, you have to make an ass of yourself having a baby out of wedlock? Is that really necessary?” Anthony said angrily to Claire, and her grandmother stepped in on her behalf.

  “People have a right to make choices, Anthony, whether others approve or not. Maybe you’ll make choices the rest of us won’t like one day. I don’t agree with Claire, but she has a right to do what she believes in.”

  “She believes in being a pain in the ass to Mom. That’s what this is all about. She’s not fifteen, for chrissake. Why can’t she get married and have a baby like everyone else?”

  “She doesn’t want to. She’s not committing a crime. She’s making a choice. There’s a difference. She’s not doing it to hurt anyone. She believes in wh
at she’s doing, whether we like it or not. And I think that’s what your mother is telling you about your dad. He made a tough choice, wanting a divorce. But he believed in it. It doesn’t make him a bad man, or a bad father. It makes him human.”

  “It would have been a rotten thing to do to Mom,” Anthony said fiercely. He had been ten when his father died, and a divorce would have had a huge impact on him too.

  “True,” his grandmother said to him, “but these are the chances we take when we love people. Not every story has a happy ending, and you can’t always predict the way it will turn out. Sometimes there are some bad surprises in our lives.”

  “Thank you, Grandma,” Claire said softly, for coming to her defense earlier.

  “You’ve certainly given us all a lot to think about,” Tammy said to her mother. “I’m not sure yet what the message is here, maybe to be honest with each other and ourselves. You didn’t have to cover up for Dad for all these years. You didn’t owe him that. And maybe the real message is to forgive each other for our differences and our mistakes.” She looked at her younger sister when she said it. “I think you and Reed should get married too, but I’ll still support you if you don’t. You can’t get married just to please Mom, although I can’t figure out how you could grow up in this house with all of us, and turn out to be so unconventional.”

  “Maybe it’s because I grew up with all of you,” Claire said clearly, visibly enjoying her new role as rebel. She’d never been this oppositional or outspoken before. “Everyone in this family is so perfect all the time. The best schools, the best jobs, the best father and mother, and some of that turns out to be bullshit. Mom got pregnant by mistake at nineteen, Dad must have cheated on her and fell in love with someone else. I don’t want to do what all of you do, just because I’m expected to. I’d rather kill myself than have a big wedding like Anthony and Amanda. Reed and I just want to live together, have our baby, and be happy. Half the people who get married end up divorced anyway, so why bother? Mom and Dad would have been divorced if the helicopter hadn’t crashed.” And then she turned to her mother. “Is that why you never wanted to get married again? I always thought it was because you were so in love with Dad.”