Tell Me When It Hurts

by Christine Whitehead

  He looked up from his plate to see Archer looking quizzically at him. He waved a hand. “I know, I know. It sounds selfish, even to me, but frankly, I was selfish. I was young and ambitious, knew where I wanted to go, and didn’t want any detours to my plan. My parents never had more than necessities. We ate out at a good restaurant maybe once a year, if that. I wanted to have money and success and a penthouse on Fifth Avenue by the time I was thirty-five, not a house in the burbs with a Volvo wagon in the driveway.”

  “Hmm, I thought that’s what Harvard guys were supposed to do: marry a smart but conventional girl and raise the next generation of exceptionally brilliant overachievers to start the whole thing over again.”

  Connor grimaced. “Some do, but it sure as hell felt to me like it would be a death sentence. At least, that’s how I felt then. But anyway, Sarah got pregnant, and she knew I wasn’t cut out to be Ozzie Nelson. She did want that house and the picket fence, and the husband coming through the door at six every night, saying, ‘Honey, I’m home.’ Even if I’d been of a mind to get married, it wouldn’t have been to someone like Sarah.”

  Archer interrupted. “And just what, pray tell, was so unmarriageable about poor Sarah?”

  Connor sat back, and his smile bordered on sardonic. “Ah, well, here it is, since you asked. I’ve always been attracted to difficult, complex women who have lots of their own things going on and not much time or patience for me. You see, it creates great angst and makes my ultimate failure preordained, so I never have to deal with a real relationship. It works for me.”

  Archer was watching him, head tilted, an amused look in her eyes. “Go on. I’m still waiting to hear how you screwed this up so badly that you’ve never met your own daughter.”

  “Yeah, that’s coming. Well, we agreed I would help Sarah financially, and I did. When I moved to New York, she stayed in Chicago. Next thing I knew, I got a little card and photo in the mail of Lauren—that’s my daughter. Born in Chicago on October 1, 1992. I still have that picture.” Connor pulled out his wallet and dug out a tattered photo of a baby in pink, peeking out of a frilly bonnet. He handed it to Archer.

  “She’s adorable,” said Archer, reaching for her glasses again. “Do you write to her or anything? Any more recent photos?”

  “You’d think so, wouldn’t you?” Connor said with a shake of his head. “About a year after Lauren was born, Sarah got married and wanted her new husband to adopt Lauren. There was a lot of legal stuff, and I didn’t like the idea. Sarah was gentle about the whole thing but pretty firm. She felt the adoption would be the best thing for Lauren.

  “I couldn’t deny her that. Even I knew I was just being selfish on that one. I didn’t want to be a father to Lauren, but I wanted to keep this guy, this Donald Giordano, from taking on the job. So finally, I agreed as long as I could still contact Lauren.

  “So I send a monthly check, something at Christmas, and little gifts when I travel. And that’s it. I have a daughter named Lauren Giordano, who doesn’t know me from the postman. And no, I don’t have any more recent pictures, because apparently Donald prefers it that way.” He finished with a rueful smile after slapping out the name.

  Archer shook her head, put down her wineglass, and leaned forward. “Well, McCall, I’ll tell you a little secret: you’ve got to get to know that girl. She needs you, and you’ll regret it forever if you don’t. Even if you’re not in her life day-to-day, she wonders. Don’t kid yourself that this Donald is enough for her. He may be a terrific guy and a great father, but she wonders, and she needs to know why you left her. Till then, it’ll torture her.”

  Connor looked at her, now his turn to be amused. “Please, don’t hold back. Stop sugarcoating it and just say what you really think.”

  “Yeah, I know. I’m opinionated. Sorry. But seriously, you have to do this.” She looked intense and beautiful, her green eyes steady, that luxuriant auburn hair framing her face.

  He hesitated. “I’m afraid.”

  “Afraid of what?”

  “That it’s too late,” Connor said. Then, noticing her still-questioning look, he added, “You know how you forget someone’s name, and then, for whatever reason, you don’t ask right away? And then so much time goes by that it’s weird to ask. And then, even later, it’s just an embarrassment and you can’t ask, because they’ll know that all the times you’ve met, you never knew who they were. Well, magnify that feeling, and the magnitude of your little faux pas, oh . . . say, about a billionfold. Well, I feel like each year that’s gone by has made it harder to try to introduce myself. And by now, it might mess her up for me to enter her life. You know, that’s a possibility, too.”

  “Well, you could ask Sarah. She sounds grounded and fair.”

  “She is. I don’t know. Sometimes I’m just dying to know about Lauren, you know—how she’s doing, what she looks like, what she likes to do. But I suspect she’s done okay without me so far.”

  “And what about you? How have you done so far without her?”

  CHAPTER 9

  The next evening, Connor showed up at the cabin at dinnertime with a chicken, a box of rice, and a bundle of crisp asparagus in a yellow plastic grocery bag. He knocked on the door. No answer. He knocked again with more vigor.

  “Is it you again?”

  “Yup. Please try to control your eagerness.”

  He heard movement inside the cabin, and in a few seconds, Archer opened the door. She was still leaning on the cane, with Hadley peeking out behind her. She looked surprised but not displeased. She was wearing a long faded denim skirt with a cream-colored Irish cable-knit sweater. Her hair was pulled back with a tortoiseshell barrette, and she was barefoot, her pale ankle still wrapped neatly in white gauze. She cocked her head and stared at him. “Lost, are we? Look, Wyoming’s out thataway.” She pointed in the direction of the setting sun. “You can make it by sundown if you hurry, cowboy.” She smiled, though, and unlatched the screen door.

  “Most amusing”

  Archer opened the door and motioned him in, and he set the yellow bag on the counter. After pulling out the contents, he took off his jacket and tossed it on the arm of the sofa.

  He took over the kitchen. Chopping, braising, stirring, tasting, seasoning, he checked the recipe, then deviated from it, all while listening to Frank Sinatra croon away about the lady being a tramp. Sometimes he sang along off-key for a few bars.

  For a few minutes Archer sat on her chair near the fire, reading National Geographic. Then she moved to a chair in the kitchen, where she could watch and talk while he worked.

  “Don’t add salt to the rice,” Archer called from her seat. “Oh, and cook the asparagus standing up in the extra coffeepot, over there near the sink—it stays crisper.

  Connor shot her a sidelong glance. “Are you always so, uh, instructive?” he asked as he added herbs to the rice.

  “Pretty much.”

  “I see.” He paused and tested the rice. “It’s okay, though. I’m pretty good at taking direction from women—I’ve had a lot of practice.”

  “Really? Do you want to elaborate on that, McCall?”

  “No, not at the moment,” he said over his shoulder. “I need to keep my last shred of mystery to hold your interest a few days longer after last night’s seriously excessive true confession. Hope I didn’t bore you too badly.”

  “No, I found it interesting, actually,” she said, then paused. “I . . . I had a nice time.”

  Connor nodded and said, “Yeah, me, too.”

  A few minutes later, the meal was served. They ate silently for a few moments; then Archer looked up, remembering a stray thought. “So, did you ever get that penthouse on Fifth Avenue?” She got up and limped to the sink to get a glass of water.

  “Hey, I would have gotten that for you.”

  “Don’t worry. I’m from a long line of ‘don’t baby it’ Yankees, at least on my father’s side.” She limped back with the glass. “So . . . ?”

  “You don’t forget a
whole lot, do you? That was from last night’s tragic discourse.”

  “Nope, I never forget anything—mind like a steel trap. I’m one of those complex, difficult women you find so irresistible.”

  He chuckled. “So you do understand the principle of a joke.”

  “Of course I do. I’m just selective,” Archer said. “So, did you?”

  Connor sighed. “I was hoping you’d forget about my saga. How come you’re going to know my whole story after three dinners, and I know nothing about you?”

  Archer shrugged. “There’s not that much to know about me. And don’t change the subject. Did you ever get your penthouse?”

  “Yes. It’s where I lived when it all caved in, so to speak. I sold it to get the Wyoming ranch.”

  Archer waved her hand for him to continue.

  Connor paused, recalling the year of his professional downfall. At forty-three years old and at the height of his career, he had thought he was happy. Yet, when he sat alone that Christmas Eve in his designer-decorated Fifth Avenue co-op, he’d wondered. People were hurrying for trains home or celebrating with family and friends down below in Manhattan’s restaurants. Yet there he was, looking out over Central Park without even a Christmas tree. He’d always thought he’d have to be dead not to put up a Christmas tree, but . . . well, who had time for Christmas?

  “Hello?” said Archer.

  He came up from the pit of memory. “Oh, right. Okay, my illustrious career, such as it was, came to a crashing halt in 1994. I was working for North American Financial, the largest real estate management firm on the East Coast. The real estate market took a really bad dive in 1988, and then in ’94 the other shoe dropped. Everyone from middle management up was let go, including yours truly. As part of the top management, I carried the stench of North American’s failure. Companies that had once begged me to work for them were now cold, to put it mildly.”

  “That hurts.”

  “It did and it didn’t. I hadn’t been really happy for years. This just forced me to do something about it. I missed the big income and the perks, but I had enough money. When you come from modest beginnings, you learn to save—or at least I did. I didn’t have enough to stay in a New York penthouse indefinitely, but I had enough so my next meal wasn’t a worry. I just had to decide what my next step was.”

  Connor paused as he buttered the last piece of bread and took a bite. “First thing I did was get this big map of the United States and set it out on my kitchen table. For four months, that thing sat there next to a few travel books. I studied that map and those books like I used to study the Dow Jones averages. I read everything, cross-referenced towns and local economies, checked property values, and basically put together a grid comparing the three or four locales that came up as my finalists.

  “After that, it was almost a toss of the dice, and I finally decided on Wyoming because it was so darn beautiful. Well, there it is, I thought. Just like the Dow Jones: forty percent logic and sixty percent emotion. I sold my Beemer, bought a pickup, and headed out. And that was the end of the penthouse. Once I bought the ranch, I was about as far from Fifth Avenue as you can get in the continental forty-nine.”

  “But it was good in the long run, right? You got off the speeding train?” Archer asked, leaning forward with her arms resting on the table.

  “Well, I got six of the things I love most in the world, so I guess it was good,” replied Connor, dabbing at his mouth with his big yellow napkin.

  Archer cocked her head. “Those things being . . . ?”

  “Millie, Alice, and the city girls.”

  “The city girls? Assuming they’re not four hookers from Laramie, they are . . . ?”

  “My sheepdogs. My first purchase after the ranch and Millie. They’re Great Pyrenees, and I’ve only lost two sheep to coyotes since I started up, which is unheard of. Most ranchers lose one percent of their herd yearly to local varmints. Dallas, Savannah, Boston, and Tallahassee, I call them.”

  “Ergo, the city girls. Cute,” commented Archer. “How about Millie? Did you ride as a kid?”

  “Yeah, right. As if the McCalls had access to a stable.” Connor smiled at the impossibility of it. “No, I started riding when I was fifteen. I worked at that berry farm I told you about. It was just north of Boston. They kept six or seven horses just for fun. I worked there every summer through high school, and it became almost a second home to me.

  “Mrs. Rose, the owner, treated me like family. She let me ride anytime I wanted. I had a favorite—Sabrina—and I rode her every free minute. Man, I loved that horse. Pretty little gray mare. For whatever reason, I loved riding and everything about horses. My father thought it was stupid—you know, that I would do that when I could be playing baseball. No chip off the old block. Another disappointment for him. But anyway, that’s how I started.”

  Connor stopped and took a sip of his wine, feeling a bit melancholy at the mention of Mrs. Rose’s farm. “Anyway, when I moved to Wyoming, I got Millie from the rancher next door. He was trimming down his herd and had too many horses. She was only five at the time, and I loved her sweetness, I really did, and she adjusted to the ranch like she’d always been there. After working cattle, she probably found the sheep pretty easy. They don’t kick or charge at you and are pretty docile compared to an angry steer. Yeah, old Millie and I bonded, and the rest is history.”

  Archer nodded. “I know what that’s like. And Alice?”

  “Alice. Alice is the love of my life—to date, anyway. She’d give her life for me without blinking, and I just might do the same. I never had a dog as a kid. Never had a dog when I was moving and traveling, and now I have this canine partner who lets me control things—and God knows, I’m controlling—but who’s always interested in what I have to say, is always loyal and accepting of me without wanting to change me, and loves me unconditionally. It doesn’t get much better than that, does it?”

  Archer looked at him and said quietly, “No, it doesn’t.”

  CHAPTER 10

  By the fourth night, when Archer knew that help was not strictly essential, Connor showed up with fresh flounder, two potatoes, broccoli, and an apple pie. Archer devoured her share.

  “Soon you’ll be sprinting again,” Connor said as they sat down at the table, plates in hand. “You and that chubby Lab of yours.”

  “Hey, that’s not chub—she’s got big bones.”

  “Hah! I’ve heard that one before.”

  Hadley lay flat on the floor next to Archer’s chair, as if attempting to conceal her “chub,” tail thumping, eyes cast upward.

  As Archer took her first sip of crisp white Chardonnay, she leaned forward and looked at Connor, eyes narrowing. “So tell me, McCall, are you just showing up here to get free use of my major appliances, or what?”

  Connor smiled. “Well, that was the second draw, I must admit. The first was that cordial welcome you gave me. Yeah, that first chat we had at your back door—actually, through your back door, since you never did open it—made me feel real warm and fuzzy all over. I was drawn back here like a moth to a flame. Yup, I knew I’d come to the right place to regroup.” He masked his grin by taking another bite of flounder.

  “Very funny. I get it. But you know, your style could use some work. That ‘Aw, shucks, ma’am, howdy neighbor’ thing was kind of hokey, you know. I don’t get any company up here, and for all I knew, you were some freakoid escapee from an asylum for the criminally insane.”

  “Jesus, I looked that bad?”

  Archer stopped eating and peered at him longer than necessary. “Well, now that you mention it, you do have a kind of crazed look in your eyes. In fact, you sort of remind me of that guy—”

  “Okay, okay. But don’t you get lonely up here?”

  “Nope,” she lied. As she spoke, she remembered dinner parties at the long claw-footed dining table in West Hartford, friends laughing and glasses clinking. She remembered setting the table, picking just the right tablecloth and napkins for the occasio
n, the right flowers. She remembered the hugs at the end of the evening, and lovemaking with Adam after the dishes were done.

  “So, are you ever going to call me by my Christian name?”

  Archer looked at him. “Hm-m, I don’t know, McCall. It’s an old habit. I call a fair number of the men in my life by their last names. Think of it as a term of endearment.” She tossed a napkin at him. He caught it and laughed.

  In reality, her defenses had crumbled under the onslaught of his disarming presence. Fighting against his entreaties was like warding off a friendly golden retriever who, despite repeated stern rebukes, refused to take offense and go away. She liked the way he told a story straight, even when it cast him in a bad light. She liked his self-effacing jokes and the way he stopped to stroke Hadley just because she was there.

  Archer had to admit, a man who kept a scrapbook with a picture of his boyhood horse, who read about father-daughter relationships though he’d never met his daughter, and who listened to Enya had to have something going for him. If this Wyoming sheep rancher turned out to be an ax murderer, so be it. There were worse things in life than being killed by an ax murderer posing as a Wyoming sheep rancher.

  * * *

  After the fourth evening, getting together for dinner was part of their day. When Archer got back on her routine of errands to the store and fetching the mail, she’d look at her watch as the afternoon shadows lengthened. Even her weekly trips to the movie theater had become the two-o’clock show instead of the four thirty show—it seemed important to be home for dinner.