Temptation

by Douglas Kennedy

  I laughed – both at the splendid impertinence of the comment and at her extraordinary resilience. Eight freakish months had gone by – yet here we were again, father and daughter. As far as she was concerned, nothing had changed.

  ‘The present’s in the car. I’ll give it to you later.’

  ‘At the hotel?’

  ‘Yes – at the hotel.’

  ‘The same hotel we stayed in once – up in the sky?’

  ‘No – not that hotel, Caitlin.’

  ‘Doesn’t your friend like you anymore?’

  I stared at her, bedazzled. She remembered everything. Every detail of every weekend we spent together.

  ‘It’s a very long story, Caitlin.’

  ‘Will you tell it to me?’

  But before I could find a way of answering that little question, I heard Lucy’s voice.

  ‘Hello, David.’

  I stood up, still holding Caitlin’s hand. ‘Hi.’

  An awkward silence. How can you exchange pleasantries after all that enmity, all that horrible legal stupidity, all that useless damage?

  But I decided I should make an effort, so I said, ‘You look well.’

  ‘So do you.’

  Another awkward silence.

  A man emerged from the rear of the house and came into the doorframe where Lucy was standing. He was tall, lanky, in his early forties, dressed conservatively in that standard issue WASP weekend uniform: a button down blue shirt, tan Shetland sweater, khakis, boat shoes. He put his arm around Lucy’s shoulder. I tried not to flinch.

  ‘David, this is my friend, Peter Harrington.’

  ‘Nice to finally meet you, David,’ he said, extending his hand. I took it, thinking: at least he didn’t say, ‘. . . and I’ve heard so much about you.’

  ‘Nice to meet you too,’ I said.

  ‘Can we go, Daddy?’ Caitlin asked.

  ‘Fine by me.’ I turned back to Lucy. ‘Six o’clock on Sunday.’

  She nodded, and we left.

  On the drive back into San Francisco, Caitlin said:

  ‘Mummy’s going to marry Peter.’

  ‘Ah,’ I said. ‘And what do you think about that?’

  ‘I want to be the bridesmaid.’

  ‘I’m sure that can be arranged. Do you know what Peter does?’

  ‘He runs a church.’

  ‘Really?’ I said, mildly alarmed. ‘What kind of church?’

  ‘A nice church.’

  ‘Do you remember the name of it?’

  ‘Uni . . . uni . . . ’

  ‘Unitarian, maybe?’

  ‘That’s it. Unitarian. Funny word.’

  Well, at least, as religions go, it was civilized.

  ‘Peter’s very nice,’ Caitlin added.

  ‘I’m glad.’

  ‘And he told Mommy that you should be allowed to see me again.’

  ‘And how did you know that?’

  ‘Because I was in the next room, playing, when he said it. Did Mommy stop you from seeing me?’

  I stared out at the lights of the bay.

  ‘No,’ I said.

  ‘That’s the truth?’

  Caitlin, you don’t need to hear the truth.

  ‘Yes, sweetheart. That’s the absolute truth. I was away, working.’

  ‘But you’ll never be away that long again, will you?’

  ‘Never.’

  She extended her tiny hand. ‘Deal?’ she asked.

  I grinned. ‘Since when did you start working in Hollywood?’

  She ignored the wisecrack and extended the hand further.

  ‘Deal, Daddy?’

  I took her hand and shook it.

  ‘Deal.’

  The weekend passed in a delightful blur. And then we were back in front of Lucy’s house at six pm, Sunday. When the door opened, Caitlin ran to hug her mother, then turned back to me and gave me a big wet kiss on the cheek and said, ‘See you in two weeks, Daddy.’ Then she charged inside, clutching the assorted Barbies and other useless plastic objects I’d bought her over the weekend. Lucy and I suddenly found ourselves alone on the doorstep, facing into another awkward silence.

  ‘Good time?’ Lucy asked me.

  ‘Wonderful.’

  ‘I’m glad.’

  Silence.

  ‘Well then . . . ’ I said, backing off.

  ‘Okay,’ Lucy said. ‘Bye, now.’

  ‘See you in two weeks.’

  ‘Fine.’

  Then I nodded and turned to leave.

  ‘David,’ she said, making me turn around.

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘I just wanted to say . . . I’m glad things seem to have worked out for you, professionally speaking.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘It must have been awful.’

  ‘It was.’

  Silence. Then she said, ‘I also want you to know something. My lawyer told me that, when everything went wrong, you lost all your money . . . ’

  ‘That’s true. I kind of got wiped out for a while.’

  ‘But you still managed to meet our maintenance every month.’

  ‘Had to be done.’

  ‘But you were broke.’

  ‘Had to be done.’

  Silence.

  ‘I was impressed, David.’

  ‘Thanks,’ I said. Then, once again, we fell into constrained silence. So I said goodnight, and walked back to my car and drove to the airport, and took the flight back to Los Angeles, and got up the next morning, and went to work, and made lots of ‘creative decisions,’ and took lots of phone calls, and had lunch with Brad, and found three hours in the afternoon to stare into a computer screen, and manipulated my characters into something approaching life, and actually ended up working on until eight, and closed up the empty office myself, and picked up some take-out sushi on the way home, and ate the sushi and drank a beer while watching the last two quarters of a Lakers game, and got into bed with the new Walter Mosley novel, and slept a reasonably sound seven hours, and got up, and began the entire process all over again.

  Somewhere in the middle of all that routine, the reflection did dawn: everything you wanted restored has been restored. But with that knowledge came another realization:

  You’re alone now.

  Yes, there were the collegial pleasures of work. And yes, there were the two weekends a month that I was granted access to my daughter. But beyond that . . .

  What? There was no family expecting me at home come night. Another man was already playing day-to-day Daddy for my daughter. And though my professional standing had been resurrected, I now knew that success only carried you as far as the next success. Which, in turn, only transported you to . . .

  Where exactly? What was the ultimate destination? That was the most puzzling thing about all this. You could spend years struggling to get somewhere. But when you finally did – when everything fell into your lap and you procured what you’d so craved – you were suddenly confronted with a strange truth: had you really arrived anywhere? Or were you simply at a way-station, en route to an illusory destination? A place which vanished from view the moment you were no longer considered touched by success.

  How can you ever reach a terminus that doesn’t exist?

  And if there was a scrap of insight I had picked up along the way, it was this: what we’re all pursuing is some sort of desperate self-validation. But that’s only found through those who’ve been dumb enough to love you . . . or whom you’ve managed to love.

  Like Martha.

  For the first month, I left her a phone message every other day. I tried a daily e-mail. Eventually I took the hint, and dropped all further attempts at contact. Even though I thought about her constantly – like a dull, but persistent ache that simply wouldn’t go away.

  Until, one Friday, around two months after our last meeting, a small package arrived in the mail. When I opened it, I found a rectangular object, wrapped in gift paper. There was also a letter-sized envelope. I opened it. I read:


  Dearest David

  Of course I should have answered all your calls, and all your e-mails. But . . . I’m here, in Chicago, with Philip. I’m here with him because, in the first instance, he did as I asked – and, from what I’ve read in the papers, your career seems more than somewhat back together again. And I’m here because, as I think you know, I’m now producing the movie you wrote. But I’m also here because, quite simply, he begged me to stay. I’m certain that sounds absurd: Philip Fleck – Mr $20 Billion – begging anyone for anything. But it’s true. He pleaded with me to give him another chance. He said he couldn’t bear the idea of losing me and his child. And he uttered that time-honored entreaty: ‘I’ll change.’

  Why did he do this? I’m not sure. Has he changed? Well, at least we’re talking again and sharing a bed . . . which is an improvement. And he seems reasonably excited about the prospect of fatherhood . . . though the movie is naturally in the forefront of his mind right now. Anyway, for the moment, we’re in a relatively decent place. I can’t predict if this will last or if he’ll revert to his introverted ways, and I’ll finally reach the point of no return.

  What I do know is this: you have taken up residence inside my head and won’t go away. Which is wonderful and sad . . . but there you go. Then again, I am a desperate romantic . . . married to a desperate unromantic. But say I had run off with you? A desperate romantic involved with an even more desperate romantic? No way. Especially since desperate romantics always pine for what they don’t have. But once they have it . . . ?

  And maybe that’s why I couldn’t call you back, couldn’t answer your letters. Because it would have been such high drama. But when the high drama ended . . . then what? Would we have stared at each other (as you said you sometimes stared at Sally) and wondered: what was the point? Or, perhaps, we would have lived happily ever after. That’s the gamble – and we’re always itching to take it . . . because we need the crisis, the drama, the sense of danger. Just as we always fear the crisis, the drama, the sense of danger. I think it’s called: never knowing what we want.

  So there’s a part of me that wants you. Just as there’s a part of me that fears you. And meanwhile, I’ve made my decision: I’m staying put with Mr Fleck, and hoping for the best. Because the bump in my belly is now quite a significant one, and I don’t want to be on my own in the world when he-or-she arrives, and because I did/maybe still do love his-or-her very strange father, and I wish this was your child, but it isn’t, and life is all about timing, and ours didn’t work out, and . . .

  Well, you get my rambling point.

  Here’s a little ditty by our favorite poet, on the same topic (only in a far more succinct style than yours truly):

  This is the Hour of Lead

  Remembered, if outlived,

  As freezing persons, recollect the snow

  First – Chill – then Stupor – then the letting go –

  I hope you’re letting go, David.

  And as soon as you’ve finished reading this letter, do me a favor. Don’t brood about it. Don’t imagine what could have been. Just go back to work.

  With love

  Martha

  I didn’t immediately follow her last directive. Because first I opened the wrapped present – and found myself staring down at an 1891 First Edition of Poems of Emily Dickinson, published by the Robert Brothers of Boston. I held the book in my hands, marvelling at its compact elegance, its venerable heft, its aura of permanence – even though, like everything, it too would eventually crumble. Then I glanced upwards and caught sight of myself in the flat black screen of my laptop: a middle aged man who, unlike the book he was now holding, would definitely not be here in one hundred and eleven years’ time.

  And then something else crossed my mind – a request made to me by Caitlin when I was visiting her last week. As I tucked her into bed in our hotel room, she asked me for a bedtime story. Specifically, The Three Little Pigs. But with a proviso:

  ‘Daddy,’ she asked, ‘can you tell the story without the Big Bad Wolf?’

  I considered this for a moment, wondering how I could make it work:

  ‘Let’s see now . . . there’s a house made of straw. There’s a house made of sticks. There’s a house made of bricks. What happens next? Do they form a residents’ association? Sorry, sweetheart, the story doesn’t really work without the Big Bad Wolf.’

  Why doesn’t it work? Because all stories are about crisis. Yours. Mine. The guy sitting opposite you on the train as you read this. Everything’s narrative, after all. And all narrative – all storytelling – confronts a basic truth. We need crisis: the anguish, the longing, the sense of possibility, the fear of failure, the pining for the life we imagine ourselves wanting, the despair for the life we have. Crisis somehow lets us believe that we are important; that everything isn’t just of the moment; that, somehow, we can transcend insignificance. More than that, crisis makes us realize that, like it or not, we are always shadowed by the Big Bad Wolf. The danger that lurks behind everything. The danger we do to ourselves.

  But who, ultimately, is the mastermind of our crisis? Who is the controlling hand? To some, it’s God. To others, the state. Then again, it might be the person you want to blame for all your griefs: your husband, your mother, your boss. Or maybe – just maybe – it’s yourself.

  That’s what I still couldn’t figure out about everything that had recently happened to me. Yes, there was a bad guy in the story – someone who set me up, smashed me down, and then put me all back together again. And yes, I knew the name of this man. But . . . and it’s a big but . . . might he have been me?

  I glanced again at the blackened screen. Within it, the outline of my face was framed against the inky darkness. What a phantom-like silhouette. What a spectral portrait. And it struck me that, from the moment man could see his own reflected image, he was wracked with all the usual cavernous ruminations that creep up on us daily: who am I in all this . . . and does it even matter?

  And then, as now, he could find no answers. Except perhaps, the one I was currently telling myself:

  Forget about pondering all such impossible questions. Forget about the futility of everything. And don’t imagine what might have been. Just get on with it. Because what else can you do? There is only one remedy. Go back to work.

  This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

  Epub ISBN: 9781407009575

  Version 1.0

  www.randomhouse.co.uk

  Reissued by Arrow Books 2010

  6 8 10 9 7 5

  Copyright © Douglas Kennedy 2006

  Douglas Kennedy has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work

  This book is a work of fiction. Any resemblance between these fictional characters and actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  First published in Great Britain in 2006 by Hutchinson

  First published in paperback in 2007 by Arrow Books

  This edition published in 2010 by

  Arrow Books

  Random House, 20 Vauxhall Bridge Road,

  London SW1V 2SA

  Addresses for companies within The Random House Group Limited can be found at: www.randomhouse.co.uk/offices.htm

  The Random House Group Limited Reg. No. 954009

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

  ISBN 9780099469261

 

 

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