by Warren Adler
“How would you characterize your son’s marriage, Mrs. Waters?”
She glanced at Charlie, then re-crossed her legs in the opposite direction. For some reason, Molly found the question had taken her by surprise, although she had known it was coming. In fact, she had gone over it in her mind dozens of times.
“He was away a lot,” she said. It was not exactly the answer she had prepared.
“Supporting his family,” Charlie interjected.
“He asked me the question, Charlie,” she rebuked, shooting him an angry glance. “You promised.”
“I’m cool,” he said, showing both palms. “I won’t butt in.”
“But when he did come home, he seemed happy at first but then became moody and morose. Before you knew it, he was off again.”
“Because she didn’t make him happy . . .” Charlie interrupted. Molly looked at him sternly. “Sorry,” he said to the lawyer.
“She hated the idea of his going. She tried everything to stop him. Until finally I guess she just became resigned. I felt sorry for her and tried to fill in the gaps. We had her over every Sunday. Sometimes for the whole weekend. And I would call her three or four times a week.” From the corner of her eye, she could see Charlie and sense his attempt at self-control. They had been discussing this topic for years, and their perceptions were still miles apart. Yet, even now, she could not bring herself to reveal what she had chosen to keep buried.
Even while she answered the lawyer’s questions with what she hoped were precision and clarity, she sensed that it could never be the whole truth. Beneath the surface of her careful answers, other thoughts were running on a parallel track. Not thoughts, really. A memory that could be reproduced only in perfect fidelity, too painful to be exposed to a stranger’s interpretation.
Chuck had come by himself to Molly’s house. The timing had surprised her. She had just come from school. Charlie would not be home for another two hours. What had occurred to her then was that rarely, perhaps never since he was twelve or thirteen, had she and Chuck ever been exclusively together. Not in quite this way, where he had actually sought her out. She had made him a mug of coffee, and they had sat at the kitchen table.
He was twenty-five by then, filled out, his skin weathered and tanned, giving his beauty a harder edge than she remembered. His hands were rough and callused, and sun wrinkles had begun to be visible along the temples, beside his cobalt eyes. Her eyes. Nonetheless, she could still see the baby in the man, and if he had allowed it, she could easily have curled him in her arms and laid his head against her breast. His macho standoffishness had only secretly increased her yearning for demonstrative affection.
He had been home for nearly two weeks and was to leave in a few more days, and she could sense clearly the restlessness in his taut body.
“Is the baby okay?”
“Fine.”
“Frances?”
“Fine.”
They went through the amenities with unusual awkwardness, and after a while he pushed the coffee mug away, stood up, walked to the refrigerator, and took out a beer. He was silent for a long time.
“What is it, Chuck?”
She eschewed the usual clichés about a mother knowing. She had known for years, not quite certain what she knew, except that somehow her child was not what he seemed.
“I’ve been trying to figure it out, Mom,” he had said. Not responding, she let the silence draw him out. “I don’t like coming home. I’m not sure why.”
“I don’t need a ton of bricks to fall on my head to see that.”
“It’s not Frances,” he added hastily. “It’s me. When I’m away, I like the memory of her and Tray. I really have a sense of feeling about them. But when I’m home, it’s gone. I don’t know why. I mean I really feel for them when I’m away.” He upended the beer can. His Adam’s apple worked up and down his neck.
“Us, too?”
“In a way, yes.”
She had shrugged.
“That’s the kind of thing you wouldn’t reveal unless it was the absolute truth,” she had told him.
“I’ve talked about this to the other guys. Some of them feel the same way. I couldn’t tell this to Dad. I don’t know why. Maybe I’d be ashamed. But I’m happy out there working those rigs.” Pausing, he snapped his fingers. “The beat of it, the whole rhythm of it. The hard physical work, the danger, the freedom.”
In the ensuing silence, she had questioned herself and Charlie. How had they made him like this? Their little family had always seemed loving, was still loving. Would she now have to spend a lifetime retracing her life whenever she thought about Chuck? Was it the “manliness” that Charlie had instilled, the initiation rites in some secret society from which females were forever barred?
“There are a lot of men like me, Mom. I’m not as different as you think. In our hearts, maybe, we’re family men. But not in action.” He got up and took another beer. “God, I hate to tell you this. When we work, we work hard. And we play hard.” He took a deep swig of the beer and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. The gesture seemed to illustrate his revelation. He was, indeed, an undomesticated man.
“You don’t have to say this, Chuck.”
“I’ve been to Hong Kong and Sydney three times this year. It’s part of it. The playing. I’m not out there for the money, Mom. Hell, I blow a lot of it.” He had offered a shy, crinkly smile. “On women. I don’t think I can ever settle down again. This life isn’t for me, Mom. I’ve tried to explain this to Frances.”
“About the women?”
“Never that. About the way I feel.”
“And her reaction?”
“It makes her unhappy.”
“Can you blame her?”
“She says she loves me. I guess in a way I love her. But from a distance. That’s the worst part. When I’m with her, I feel nothing.”
“Poor thing. Has she asked for a divorce?”
“No. Maybe she thinks it will all go away.”
“And you? What will you do about it?”
For a long time, he didn’t respond, finishing his beer.
“What is there to do? I live my life the way I want. Maybe I stick with it so I can have a place to come home to from time to time. Who knows?”
“What about Tray?”
“He’s one helluva kid.”
“And you’re his father.”
“I know, Mom.” He had looked out the window into the yard. His eyes seemed to turn inward, glaze over. “Who would think I would turn out like this? I feel bad about what it might be doing to others, but I really don’t feel like a bad person. You know what I mean?”
She had watched him carefully as he talked, trying to see what was beyond the words, the hidden man. Then she realized that he was hiding nothing, that what he was giving her was the most accurate picture of himself that he could articulate. What you see is what you get, he seemed to be telling her. It troubled her to learn how far he was from her own image of him. So that business of a mother truly knowing her child was just another myth, she thought.
“Dad would probably think I’m a bum.”
“No—he wouldn’t,” she had protested. “Definitely not.” She wasn’t sure. Charlie might actually be envious of Chuck’s freedom, but Charlie had never shirked responsibility.
“So let’s keep it between ourselves, Mom.”
Molly nodded her consent.
She had been true to her promise. Would Charlie be jealous? Was Chuck saying something that men only told men? She had not wished to find the answer to that and therefore continued to say nothing. But that did not preclude her from offering an interpretation based on what she knew.
She had answered all the lawyer’s questions from that perspective, regardless of how Charlie fumed beside her. The inescapable conclusion by any independent observer was that her son’s marriage had not been a happy one.
“Did they fight?” the lawyer asked.
“I never heard them.”
“Was she unfaithful?”
“No. I doubt it.”
“I wouldn’t be so sure,” Charlie muttered.
“That’s not fair, Charlie,” Molly interjected. “She was a good girl in that respect. It’s wrong to make such an accusation.”
“Considering what I know now, I wouldn’t put anything past her,” Charlie persisted.
But when he was questioned by the lawyer, he did not refute Molly’s assessment of Frances’s unhappiness.
“Maybe she was unhappy. I’m not saying no. A happy man doesn’t stray from the nest, either. If she was that unhappy, she should have asked him for a divorce. In marriage there are always problems.” He looked sheepishly toward Molly. Their marriage wasn’t perfect, but it was better than most. Come on, Charlie, she begged him silently. We’re as good as you can get. They were friends and still lovers and he was being a damned macho liar. But still, she wouldn’t tell him that.
After more questions, the lawyer inspected their faces, his large brown eyes as intense as spotlights.
“The picture I get is of a marriage barely held together. About the only real common denominator is the child. Any judge will see that. So why deny it? That fact is that, whatever the marriage was like, it’s still not totally relevant. Your relationship with her was a good one, wasn’t it?”
“As good as any,” Molly said. “We never really had arguments. Maybe mild disagreements. And we spent time with her and Tray on weekends.”
“She just didn’t like being alone,” Charlie said.
“No woman likes that,” Molly snapped. “You men out there playing with your toys. Your special games.” She caught herself up short. No, she never did like that.
“And the child? Always a good relationship with the boy?”
“Not just good,” Molly said, as if to make up for her previous outburst. “Wonderful.” There was more to it than just being with the boy, filling time, even in a loving way. Wasn’t he also getting the benefit of their experience in life, the gift of wisdom that only a gray head and an unselfish loving heart could convey? Surely there was a benefit to the boy in being exposed to living ties with the past? Quality time was what they gave, Molly thought, reviewing the ways in which they had spent it with Tray. It was a loss for the child as well.
“And being deprived of that relationship has been traumatic?”
It came as a kind of general question, but it instantly confirmed her suspicion that the benefits of grandparenting on the child would be difficult, if not impossible, to prove, no less defend. The lawyer looked pointedly at Charlie.
“You’ve been very depressed about this separation, especially since it comes at a time of comparative idleness. Haven’t you?”
“I don’t know what you mean by that,” Charlie said helplessly.
“I mean it’s had a devastating effect on both of you, especially you, Mr. Waters.”
“We were pretty close,” Charlie mumbled defensively. He hated to show any signs of weakness. “I don’t see what that has to do with it.”
The lawyer was leading him now.
“What I want to establish is not only the effect on the child, but on you as well. The deprivation of the loving relationship with your grandchild has also had a profound and debilitating effect on you.” Charlie squirmed in his seat. He looked at Molly and seemed uncertain about a response. “Well, has it, or hasn’t it?” Forte pressed him. “Why would you be here otherwise?”
“I guess you have a point.”
“Have you had trouble sleeping? Have you been irritable, nervous, or depressed? Has it interfered with your well-being, your physical health, your mental capacity?”
“I don’t see what that has to do with it.” Again, Charlie glanced helplessly toward Molly. “What about Tray?” he snarled. “How has it hurt Tray to be away from us? I saw him. He definitely wasn’t the same boy I said good-bye to two years ago.”
Molly could see that the lawyer had taken this unsubtle shifting of the spotlight to Tray as a kind of affirmative answer to his questions. She could see immediately the problems that they would have to face in court. How could the benefit derived by Tray from his grandparents’ company be adequately explained through lawyers, with their trick questions and procedures?
“Like what?” the lawyer asked, accepting the shift.
“Like he wasn’t himself.”
“In his attitude toward you?”
“Like he was frightened.”
“As if you had been painted to be someone unsavory? A bad influence?”
“No. Not like that.”
“As if he didn’t know you?”
“Not that either. It was as if—as if he saw me as a stranger.” Charlie nodded vigorously. “That’s it. Like I was a stranger.”
Molly felt uncomfortable with that analysis, but she held her peace.
“I was already feeling lousy. And on top of that they threatened to call the cops if I came around again. It was pretty terrible.”
“Who threatened?”
“Frances did.” He grimaced and shook his head. “I think she got a little frightened. I must have been in a state.”
“He had a very bad reaction to the experience,” Molly said, also remembering how she had found him on that day he had visited Crisfield.
She had worked late, and when she came home, he was sitting in the dark in the living room, his coat still on. She had put on the light and he had tried to hide it with his arms, but in the brief flash she had seen him and, in his face, the etched pain, the eyes puffy with tears, helpless in his despair.
She looked at Charlie to see how far she should go. He had turned pale, and she could see the protest in his eyes.
It would humiliate him to hear it said aloud, she knew, the way she found him in the den, with the loaded gun on his lap.
The fabric of his manhood had been unceremoniously unraveled, and he was momentarily disoriented, his identity challenged. He had lost most of the things that defined him as a man, his work, his son, his grandson. His collapse had seemed total, and it panicked her momentarily, since his stability and manhood were also the bedrock of her own life. She had had little choice but to go back with him to helpless babyhood and play the mother as he sobbed away the substance of his life.
He had clung to her like a helpless infant, sputtering out his confessions of despair, the failure of his aspirations, the overwhelming wave of events that had brought him down. She had held him in her arms for days, it seemed, until finally she had entered the cage with him and slowly led him out. Now her fear was that he might become suspicious that this revelation of his weakness and vulnerability had actually diminished him in her eyes. More than ever, lately, she had made an effort to stroke his sense of manhood, wondering if her ministrations were transparent. Above all, she did not want him to feel dependent on her strength, or challenged by it.
“I don’t see what that has to do with it,” he had said a few moments ago. She clearly understood the coded message to her.
“It would have a bad effect on anybody,” said Molly.
“It was one lousy birthday, I can tell you,” Charlie said, somewhat relieved. The lawyer did not pursue the issue further, choosing instead to break for lunch.
They went up the elevator to a dining club on the penthouse floor, with high windows that offered a spectacular view of the harbor and surrounding skyline. It was obviously a place of privilege, Molly observed, an enclave for the power elite that ran the city. It was both impressive and awesome, and she felt out of place and intimidated, feelings mirrored by Charlie, who looked forlorn and uncomfortable. The opulence of the room and the apparent arrogance and self-confidence of the diners only made his personal sense of failure more acute.
“Drink?” Forte asked after they were seated at one of the better tables alongside the window.
“A beer,” Charlie said.
“Make it two.” She looked toward Charlie and winked. Mostly to comfort him. In this place, they
were as good as aliens.
“Campari and soda for me,” Forte told the gray-haired, black waiter.
“Nice place,” Charlie said after a long, awkward silence while all three studied the menu.
“Not bad,” Forte said. “And you can’t beat the crab cakes.”
The drinks came, and they placed their order, but they had barely had their first sips when a large man with a floppy bow tie and round steel-rimmed glasses came by and shook Forte’s hand.
“Looks like we got another one, Bob,” the big man said.
“Looks like it.” He looked nervously at Molly and Charlie.
“Always a pleasure to lock horns with you downtown hotshots.”
“You guys in the suburbs are the ones with the horns,” he smiled thinly. “By the way, I’d like you to meet—”
“You playing Saturday?”
Forte nodded.
“He’s a scratch golfer. We’re a perfect pair. I’ve got a ten handicap.”
Ignoring the banter, Forte cleared his throat.
“This is Charles and Molly Waters. Meet Henry Peck, a worthy opponent.”
The name meant nothing to Molly, who shook the man’s hand when her turn came.
“He’s representing your daughter-in-law and her husband,” Forte said. If he was discomfited, it didn’t show. But Molly felt strange.
Peck was polite, made no references to the case, and went away with nods and smiles. When their silence became awkward, Forte broke the ice.
“He’s one shrewd bastard, that one.”
“But you’re friendly,” Charlie said, his response predictable. Molly had held herself back from offering the same comment.
“We’re just professionals,” Forte said patiently. “One thing has nothing to do with the other.”
Charlie drank a gulp of beer.
“Doesn’t seem right somehow,” he said. “I mean, you’re opponents.”
“So are boxers. Many of them are friends or acquaintances. In the ring, they’re out to kill each other. Same with us.”
Molly knew what Charlie was thinking. They hadn’t, after all, had much experience with lawyers. The situation came as a shock, to her as well, to see how impersonal and unemotional it was for them. How can they possibly be touched by our sense of outrage? she thought.
