‘He’s your son,’ Gabby says simply. ‘You’re
supposed
to feel that way. That’s what parenthood is. It’s utterly selfless. You put your own thoughts and feelings and desires aside, without even being aware of doing it, and you put your children first.’
‘So what do we do now? How do we do this? I have to be a part of his life, but I don’t want to get in the way of yours, or do anything that would make you uncomfortable.’
Gabby stops and turns to him, tears in her eyes. ‘Thank you. Thank you for saying that.’
‘Gabby,
I didn’t expect this. But now that he’s here, I couldn’t hope for a better mother for my son. I know you’re an amazing mother, and I know how much you do for your kids. I don’t want to do anything other than be there for Henry when he needs me. Listen, your mom is awesome, and I love that she invited me for dinner, but I don’t know that I should stay. I was thinking that maybe, if I go back to the hotel this evening, I could change my flights and stick around for a few days. I could spend time with Henry, and you and I could perhaps figure out some kind of schedule. You know, I could fly over here a couple of times a month to see him, or something.’
‘That sounds perfect,’ Gabby says. And it does.
‘Are you nearly ready?’ Trish calls out from the bathroom, where she is finishing putting on her make-up, while Elliott sifts through the handful of clothes he now keeps in her closet.
This is all moving very fast. A little too fast, he thinks, pulling out another new shirt Trish had insisted on buying him. He looks at himself in the mirror, not quite recognizing the man who stares back at him.
It isn’t that Trish is trying to change him, she teased him; she is just trying to gently propel him from eighteenth-century New England wasp to a modern man.
She has bought him Italian suede driving loafers to replace his old loafers; deck shoes from France; fine cashmere shirts; Ermenegildo Zegna jeans, which, he had to admit, did fit him beautifully.
‘See how elegant you are now?’ she said in the dressing room of the store, where she insisted he came out to show her every new outfit.
‘But I can’t let you buy this for me,’ he said, fishing in his wallet for his credit card, terrified of the thousands of dollars this little spree was going to cost, but feeling like he’d travelled too far down the road to get out of it now.
‘Absolutely
not!’ Trish insisted, before leaning forward and whispering how much net profit her company made the previous year. Elliott put his wallet back in his pocket as she instructed the sales assistant to put the bill on the house account.
Tonight they are having dinner with friends of Trish’s, friends she has been anxious for him to meet. Jennifer and Colin. He is a hedge fund something, and she is an aspiring photographer and fellow yoga-addict – she and Trish do yoga together several times a week.
Elliott hardly ever went out for dinner when he was with Gabby. It was a rare treat when they did, but they were far more likely to cook dinner themselves, have people over, or go to other friends’ houses.
He had no idea, prior to dating Trish, that there is a whole other world that exists in this town: a world where couples get together to ‘couple date’. They dress up in their finest clothes and go to the newest restaurants, striding through with an air of authority, if only because they are the most beautiful people in the room, the people everyone else in there watches with envy.
He has had, now, a number of these evenings with Trish, as she brings him deeper into her world. They have eaten at all the trendiest restaurants in the area, which stretches over three towns. She has worn one of a never-ending selection of chiffon tops, long chunky necklaces, high platform heels that make her almost as tall as he is.
She
looks gorgeous. Exquisite. Together, with his new, fashionable wardrobe, they look gorgeous. Exquisite.
Yet it all feels like so much effort for so little return.
Tonight, as he walks into the bathroom and sees Trish in yet another diaphanous top, large diamond hoops in her ears, skin-tight trousers and high silver pumps – ridiculous, given the snow outside – he is hit with a sense of dread.
He doesn’t want to sip a cocktail in a trendy restaurant and think of things to say to a man with whom he has nothing in common, while the women chatter animatedly between themselves. He doesn’t want to pretend to be interested in sports, which he couldn’t care less about, or ask questions about derivatives, and acquisitions, and futures, none of which he understands, nor wants to understand.
He doesn’t want to have yet another conversation about house values, or the new mansions going up, or how much value for money there is in town now, and how, if they had spare cash, they should really be buying up the tear-downs and rebuilding for under two hundred a square foot.
Trish is wonderful, but her lifestyle is tiring. Elliott is longing for a home-cooked meal. Trish is an amazing cook, but it is all about show; she cooks only if she entertains, or seduces. The rest of the time she expects to go out, or, perhaps, at a push, get takeout sushi.
And the house is so damned quiet. The children, Madison, Greyson, Bradley and Skylar, are usually down
in their basement kingdom, playing Xbox or watching TV. He hears them laughing and shouting when they are with their friends, but around him they are the most well-mannered children Elliott has ever encountered. He misses the squabbling and fighting of his girls. He even misses their screaming and chasing each other through the house, flinging accusations of having stolen clothes, or hairbrushes, or make-up.
Trish has said he must make himself at home, but how is he supposed to make himself at home when it doesn’t
feel
like home? Where are the piles of papers and magazines next to the computer in the kitchen? Where are the shoes and boots, kicked off and left strewn about the mud-room floor? Where is the clutter, the art, the knick-knacks you have collected over the years that tell the story of your life?
The objects in Trish’s house have all been bought since she renovated a year ago, and chosen to match the rest of the decor. What little clutter there might be is swept away by Ester, then artfully arranged in panelled closets you would never know existed.
Elliott looks at the soap dish, thinking of the soap dish in his old bathroom, at Gabby’s house. The soap was green, and there was always mushed-up green slush at the bottom of the bowl. The soap dish would never stay clean for longer than one use. Once you picked up the soap, it was all over. Here, the soap is white, and however much you use it, there is never residue left in
the bowl. He walks over to the sink and picks up the soap, looking at the dry, shiny dish.
Trish finishes pushing bangles onto her wrist before swivelling and watching him finger the dish, her eyebrows raised. ‘What are you doing?’
He shakes his head. ‘Nothing.’
‘How do I look?’ she asks, knowing she looks beautiful.
‘Perfect.’ He sees her face fall. ‘Beautiful. Stunning.’
She smiles as she approaches him for a kiss. ‘You look very handsome too,’ she says, admiring the shirt which she bought to turn him into the man she needs him to be in order to go out with him.
The evening is exactly as Elliott expects. Every head turns to inspect them as they walk in, and of course they should, for Trish is now, certainly amongst their age group, the most famous woman in town. Regularly profiled in magazine articles, written about in the papers, she is the woman everyone wants to be seen with.
And she wants Elliott. Which should make him the happiest man in the world. What must it say about Elliott that this beautiful, accomplished woman, this woman who could, let’s face it, have pretty much any man she could want, has chosen Elliott? How lucky he must be. He can see it in the faces of the people as they walk through the restaurants, the cocktail receptions.
They scan Trish first, checking out her clothes, her
jewellery – she is famous for her sense of style – before their eyes alight on Elliott. Ah. This must be her partner. What kind of a man is it that Trish would choose?
Sometimes he wishes he could pull Trish away from all this. Away from this house, this world, these places where she feels pressure to see and be seen, to dress and act and look the part.
A cottage in the country would be perfect. Perhaps they could live somewhere remote by the ocean. A place where neither of them had to dress up, where they could wear shorts and flip-flops all summer, wrap up in fleece and down when the weather got cold.
They could cook together over a big range in the kitchen, and their children – in the fantasy all the children would be there together, both hers and his – would run through the house squabbling, as he and Trish laughed about how wonderful it was to have this chaotic blended family.
‘How about we go to the country?’ he says to Trish on the way home after he has lied and said how much he liked her friends. ‘A friend of mine has a place in Vermont that he barely uses, and he loves friends going to stay. I thought perhaps you and I could go up there one weekend. Maybe take the kids.’
‘What kind of a place?’ Trish asks.
‘It’s wonderful.’ He remembers the times he and Gabby took the kids. ‘It’s a big, sprawling farmhouse. Not fancy, very basic, but comfortable. There are big squishy sofas and huge fireplaces, plus board games
going back centuries. It’s on a large pond with a swimming deck, and it’s just the most peaceful place on earth. It’s really a place where you get back to your roots.’
‘I’m not sure I’d ever get my kids in a swimming pond,’ Trish says with a laugh. ‘I’m afraid they’re chlorine addicts. I took them to a hotel in Greece that had a salt-water pool and they were horrified.’
‘I can understand them not liking salt water in a pool, but this is a beautiful clear-water pond. They’d love it.’
‘With green slimy things underneath them?’ She looks at him doubtfully. ‘I’m not so sure.’
Elliott remembers going one summer when Olivia and Alanna were much younger, and they spent hours throwing themselves off the swimming deck, shrieking with laughter.
The four of them took the kayaks onto the lake, saying they were going on a bear hunt, whipping the girls into a frenzy of excitement and fear. Everything was quiet, when the air was suddenly filled with a deafening snap of branches and the girls shrieked with terror. It was probably, almost certainly, a deer, but to this day, whenever they talk about it, it was the day they got away from the bear.
They have been to the farm a few times in winter. Before the girls were born Gabby used to enjoy skiing – her enthusiasm for it had been kindled by school trips to Austria and Switzerland, when she spent much of her time either mooning over the ski instructors or desperately trying to impress them.
But
at the farm Elliott would take the girls to the local ski mountain while Gabby stayed home and made huge pots of soup, stews, warming casseroles. One night she produced fondue, proudly drawing out the fondue pot she had discovered nestling in the back of the cobwebby pantry, and they sat by the fire skewering chunks of baguette and swirling them around the melted and very garlicky Gruyère and Emmental.
The house is dusty and basic, lived-in and loved. It is a house that holds nothing but happy memories for Elliott, a house in which he wants to create new memories with Trish. A house in which, surely, Trish will be able to let down her guard and be her true, natural self.
‘When you say the word “basic”,’ Trish says slowly, ‘what does that mean?’
He describes the house in more detail, trying to impart the magic of the property, the surrounding woods, the beauty.
‘I don’t know.’ She shakes her head. ‘If we’re going to do Vermont, I’m thinking Twin Farms.’
‘Twin Farms?’
‘Oh it’s
fabulous
!’ she says with a smile. ‘
That’s
what we’ll do! I’ll book Twin Farms for the weekend. It’s the most fantastic, quiet, beautiful, luxurious place in the world. You’ll go nuts! What a great idea!’ She draws out her iPhone to punch in a note to herself to have her assistant book Twin Farms, while Elliott stares stonily ahead.
That is not what he had in mind at all.
He
can’t shake the feeling of things not being right. It isn’t that this relationship isn’t working – he is determined to make this work with Trish – but he is aware that he is being shoehorned into a life, a lifestyle, into which he doesn’t quite fit, and he isn’t sure what to do about it. The deeper into their relationship he goes, the stronger the feeling he has that he is trying to be something he is not.
Elliott has never been a man who has been unsure of himself. He has always known exactly who he is, where he is going, and what he has wanted. Yet here he is, nearing fifty, for the first time in his life feeling uncomfortable in his skin. It is a new feeling, and not one he enjoys.
Pulling into the driveway at Trish’s, he doesn’t make a move to get out of the car.
‘Are you coming?’ Her door already open, Trish is about to get out, pausing only when she sees Elliott is not moving.
‘You know,’ he says, ‘I realize I have a very early start tomorrow, and I need some equipment I’ve left at home. I think I’m going to go home now so I won’t have to stop off in the morning.’ He looks at her. ‘Is that okay?’
‘Of course,’ she replies brightly, and he thinks again how much he loves this aspect of her: that she is never jealous, nor insecure; that she never thinks his desire to go home means he doesn’t want to be with her.
Even when that is the case.
He
doesn’t go home, though. He drives around town for a while, then down to the sea. He parks his car and sits on the low stone wall by the beach and looks out towards Long Island, where the lights from the lighthouse glitter on the black water. He wishes he smoked. Now would be a perfect time for a cigarette, but he has never indulged in that particular habit.
Back in the car, he drives aimlessly, until he finds himself drawing up outside the house that was once his. He smiles at the only light left on, in Alanna’s room. She is too old to be scared of the dark, and allows her light to be turned off by her parents when they say goodnight, but always climbs out of bed when she knows they are safely in their bedroom to turn her light back on.
The privet in front is overgrown and straggly. He is tempted to creep into the garage for the clippers and prune it right now, as a surprise, for it has always been his job, and Gabby has enough to do with the new baby.
He doesn’t. He sits in his car, staring at his house, thinking of his old life, trying not to compare old and new, until there is nothing else to do but drive back to his new life.