"What does that mean?"
"Let her contact you when she's ready."
Denise's glance goes up the townhouse facade to higher stories and back down to street level. "How long has this been going on?"
"Since I found her."
"Did you hire a detective?"
Henry says, "That is so ... you. So overdramatized. No, I did
not
hire a detective. I just used common sense."
"I ask because she doesn't have a real phone. It isn't like the old days when you could call Information."
Henry still doesn't like to discuss his unearthing of Thalia at Salon Gerard. His discomfort, he is quite sure, stems from shame over never asking the charming coat-check girl her name or engaging her in conversation or possibly ever meeting her glance.
"Did she call you?" Denise persists. "Which wouldn't surprise me. The only father she's ever known is dead—"
"Only father she's ever known? Is that what you said? Do you have no filter? No censor? Do you not understand that I was her father, and I'd still be her father if it weren't for the rupture that you and your late, litigious husband inflicted?"
"Okay," says Denise. "I'll be your punching bag. I'm everyone's punching bag. My big mouth gets me in trouble every time I open it. So what are you saying? Leave the premises? Never darken my doorway and take your stupid cupcakes with you? Because really what I'm guilty of is bad judgment. You're right. No filter. Guilty as charged. But I don't think that in a world filled with terrorists and beheaders and child predators that my crimes are really so unforgivable."
Henry knows this. He knows that Denise's newly widowed heart is more or less in the right place. This is why he is keeping Thalia to himself—because Denise in her own annoying and logorrheic fashion is a decent enough, forgivable mother, especially in her remorseful and reduced circumstances.
She points to the box she left on the steps. "Don't you find it a little scary that I arrived here with three cupcakes? As if I knew on some extrasensory level that I was buying one for each of us? And now that I think of it, Thalia would go straight for the one with pink frosting."
He says, "I'd like some time alone with her. I'm getting to know her. Her moving in here was one big leap of faith for both of us. I'm not going to be her mother. I'm like a long-lost uncle who wishes her well and wants to help in any way he can. I think you owe me that much."
The rims of Denise's eyes are red and she is fishing in her pocket for a tissue. Henry knows he is supposed to feel sympathy and ask what's wrong. He lets her sniffle for another minute before asking, "Did I do this?"
"Yes, you did. And I'd like to point out: You were never like this."
"Like what?"
"Mean. And what's the right word? I want to say
selfish,
but maybe it's something closer to
what's good for Henry is what's good for the Krouches,
who—I'd like to point out—he hasn't seen in a quarter of a century, and now he's asking for custody."
Henry smiles. He repeats the word
custody.
He opens the box and peels the paper off the sole chocolate cupcake, without asking Denise if he's appropriating the one she wanted for herself.
A
T THE UNGODLY HOUR OF 11:45 P.M.
Philip phones the number Thalia has supplied. His call wakes Henry, triggering a jolt of parental panic. "Archer here," he barks.
There is music in the background and confusion in the caller's voice:
Wrong number? Trying to reach Thalia. Krouch?
"It's Henry Archer, from the apartment above."
"Right, right. I remember. Is she there?"
He repeats, "I'm upstairs. You called my number."
"Sorry, you're breaking up. Let me move." Henry hears Philip fielding greetings from passersby as the music recedes, and then the sounds of traffic. "There. Better. You were saying?"
"I'm Thalia's upstairs ... stepfather. She gave you my number in lieu of hers because of that matter requiring confidentiality."
Except for horns and sirens, there is silence at the other end.
"She has no phone downstairs," he tries. "Not a landline, anyway."
"Fine. I totally get it."
Now Henry has mishandled his job and whatever social nuance he was supposed to convey. "She only has one number, her mobile, and in another week it could be awkward," he tries.
Philip says, "Way too complicated, man. But thanks."
Henry dresses quickly in the shirt and trousers he'd worn earlier and makes his way downstairs, cell phone in his hand, down the passageway newly lit by a hundred-watt bulb, and listens at Thalia's kitchen door. When he hears David Letterman, then applause, then the band striking up, he activates what is now newly designated Speed Dial One.
"Henry?" Thalia answers just as he's about to give up. "Sorry. Couldn't find the phone."
"Sorry to intrude, but your moving man just called."
"Philip?"
"A few minutes ago. There was music in the background, so he must have been at work."
"Wait. I'm hearing you in stereo. Are you downstairs?"
Before he can answer, the door opens to reveal Thalia in an oversized bathrobe, faded periwinkle, so woolly and unglamorous that he laughs. Behind her the kitchen is more cheerful by electric light than what the northern alleyway exposure affords by day. A new potted plant, its leaves the shape of elephant ears, sits on the scarred circle of wood that is her kitchen table.
"Tea?" she asks.
He says no, couldn't impose; bad manners to drop in, and very bad precedent.
"Please shut up," she says cheerfully. "Earl Grey or tuttifrutti?"
"Earl Grey. If you're sure." He points to the plant. "Have I seen that before?"
She plucks the card from its plastic perch and hands it to him. He reads aloud, "'Wishing you good luck and good times in your new home. In lieu of flowers, Leifs. Love, L.D.'"
"Get it?" Thalia asks. "Leifs? Leaves? Is that even a
pun?
"
"Paper trail," says Henry. "I think you can expect daily deliveries."
"Sad," she says.
As he watches her fill the kettle and set out mugs, he thinks:
Look at me in this domestic tableau, sitting on a bridge chair, chatting with a bathrobed, ponytailed daughter in a manner most fathers would take for granted.
"Well?" she asks from the stove. "I'm listening."
"Paper trail. If reporters start snooping about when this whole thing started—"
"Not that. The moving man. Let's have it."
How to begin? "I have no doubt his call was in regard to seeing you again—"
"But?"
"He was somewhat disconcerted at reaching me instead of you."
"But you explained, right?"
"I alluded to the upcoming job—"
"As in 'Call back in six months'?"
"It was a very brief conversation, and I'd been snoozing—"
"How did you leave it? That I'd call him?"
She is holding up a mug and a teacup for his consideration. Henry points to the mug, which has ceramic feet and gesticulating arms. "If I were to be completely honest and lawyerly," he ventures, "I might ask at this juncture: Do you really want to get involved with someone new right now, especially someone who'd have to fly beneath the radar?"
"The bonus guy's
always
under the radar," Thalia says.
How much is polite to solicit and how much is not? Before he conjures the right line of inquiry, Thalia volunteers, "Okay, first: Relationships in multiples are all now history, so don't get nervous. Although it's really adorable that you are."
"How multiple?" asks Henry.
"No records broken: At the same time I was seeing Giovanni—
sort
of seeing—I was also with someone else."
"Someone at the salon?"
"Henry! How many straight hairdressers does one salon have? No, someone else. Remember? Alex? My roommate?"
"The undergraduate?"
"Exactly."
"You once said that you put the kibosh on that."
"Kibosh," she repeats. "I love that word. Do you know what language it is?"
"Not changing the subject, are we?"
Thalia asks, "How do I explain this? I wasn't dating two guys at once because you can't call what we do dating. We go out—to bars, to movies, to clubs. You get popcorn or nachos or a new friend on Facebook, but you don't get dinner and you don't get a boyfriend." She leaves the kitchen and returns with a fat hardcover dictionary, already open to a page displaying thumbnail photos of Khomeini and Khrushchev. "'Kibosh,'" she reads. "'Origin unknown.'"
The kettle hisses, then whistles. She returns to the stove and pours water into two mugs, narrating, "Always,
always
pour water over the tea bag. I learned this at my nanny's knee, her being British, of course, and Earl Grey–obsessed. If you do it the other way around, it doesn't infuse properly. Sugar? Honey? Anything?"
"No, thank you. Just sit."
She brings the mugs to the table, goes back for napkins, and when she returns asks, "Weren't we talking about Philip?"
"Alex," he says.
"Right. Alex. He was sure I was resisting because I'm eight years older, so he was devoting a lot of time to making his case for the younger man. He's very sweet. But this move came at a good time."
"But he's, essentially, at peace with the way it ended?"
"He'll get over it. I told him we'd meet in Madison Square Park at the Shake Shack on July Fourth in ten years. If neither one of us is in a relationship, we'll go to a hotel."
Henry laughs. "I thought you were going to say something delicate and romantic like, 'If neither of us is in a relationship, we'll go to City Hall and tie the knot."
"He's twenty. I was thinking
consolation prize hookup.
Besides, it won't happen."
"Because...?"
She dips her tea bag up and down a few times. "Well, I'll be thirty-nine in ten years. I'd like to think I'll be off the market by then." After a longer pause she asks, "So you think we really pissed Philip off?"
Henry says kindly, "Given the task ahead, I wouldn't pursue it."
Thalia says, "I'm not a kid. I've been at this for a long time. And it's not about his rather obvious outward charms. We talked a lot."
"You're putting a lot of stock in one morning's worth of loading and unloading."
"This is really all about the human condition: You're with one person and you're attracted to another. And sometimes you sense that it's not just some little tingle in your extremities but something bigger. Is a person—me, for example—supposed to ignore a possible big thing because I've accepted a six-month gig playing the phony fiancée? I think I can handle both."
"Okay. I'm not arguing with any of that. But I do have to ask: You decided this was worth the potential trouble from a few hours of watching a man lug your stuff into a moving van?"
"And drive it uptown. And lug it into its new home. A rather hot man, you might have noticed."
"Okay. Will concede hot."
"I'm actually putting a lot of stock in—you'll excuse the expression—love at first sight; well, something at first sight. I'm sure you've experienced that."
Todd comes to mind, and their handshake on Broadway. He knows he'll get to that but for now says, "I know something about love at first sight. Have we discussed that: your mother's taking up with Glenn Krouch after one dinner party ... what's that? Four courses? Two hours?"
"You and
I
have discussed it. My mother always prettied up how they met"" She rubs a leaf of her new plant, sticks the tip of her index finger into its pot, and pronounces it root-bound and too wet. "Interesting that you still talk about it in that way," she says.
"Which way?"
"Like you'd still be married to her if Glenn Krouch hadn't shown up."
"It's the principle," says Henry. "Some things are unforgivable, a violation of a trust that you entered into in good faith, even if the marriage was a bad idea in the first place."
Thalia leans closer and stares diagnostically.
"What?"
"I'm seeing something," she says. "Something new. Something that doesn't jibe with
unforgivable.
You're looking a little—
¿cómo se dice?
—happy."
"I might be a little happy. Don't want to jinx anything..."
"Out with it! It'll be fun. Look at us. Having tea at"—she glances around the clockless kitchen—"late into the night. It's like we're living in a dorm, in the best sense, I mean. In fact, this bathrobe is from that era."
"Okay," says Henry. "I might be feeling optimistic, socially speaking."
"I knew it! Who is he?"
"A blind date, believe it or not."
"Set up by...?"
He puts his mug down and says, "I don't see any reason to lie about this: He's an acquaintance of your mother's."
Thalia says, "Why would I mind that? She owes you, big-time. Do I know him?"
"Todd Weinreb."
"Well, good for her. A good deed at last. Is he fabulous?"
"There's only been one date and another upcoming, this Thursday. Plus a few conversations."
"Cute, I bet."
"Quite."
"Did you Google him?"
"No need. In the sense that he's not someone about whom articles would have been written."
Thalia says, "Fine. Absolutely. No need."
"He works at Gracious Home."
This is why he loves Thalia: Her response is backlit by an enthusiasm that even great acting talent couldn't manufacture. "Gracious Home! Which department?"
"Table tops," says Henry.
"Did he pick out my shelf paper?"
"He helped."
"Can I meet him? Is it too soon? I know it is, but it would be fabulous if we can sneak in a meeting before the Leif thing hits. Be honest. Say no. I'll completely understand."
Henry says, "Normally, it would be too soon. But given what's ahead—"
"Where and when? I could give you two a half-hour alone before I barge in."
"Not necessary. You and I can walk over together, or cab together. We haven't picked the restaurant yet. And I should check with Todd first."
"You know what this makes me think? That he must be great."
"Based on...?"
"Based on your knowing you can drag me along on a second date. I think that shows he has excellent family values."
He smiles. "Hard to say at this juncture."
"One possible hitch: Let's say I reach Philip, and Thursday's the best night for us to get together."
Now he must tell her what he hasn't fully confessed or aptly characterized: his mismanagement of the future boyfriend. He winces, then reports, "Philip didn't take kindly to your giving him my phone number in lieu of yours."
Thalia gets up from the table and opens a kitchen drawer, already a mess of papers and takeout menus. "My files," she explains.
"I tried to correct that impression," Henry continues. "But after all, what could I promise? That you'd go out on a date, or arrange a clandestine meeting in a parking garage? I didn't have that authority."
More searching produces a business card, black with silver engraving, which she slips into her bathrobe pocket.
"Is that his card?"
"His club." She pats the pocket. "Of course you are welcome to finish your tea, but I'm going to jump into the shower and head out."
"It's almost twelve-thirty. Don't you have work tomorrow?"
Thalia laughs. "I do. I'll pack fresh underwear." She pauses to say, "I'm teasing you! Stop worrying."
"How will you get there? Not by subway this time of night? Take a taxi. My treat." He reaches back into the pocket where his wallet would be if he hadn't left it upstairs.
"Don't be silly. I have money." She smiles. "Petty cash for moving extras.
Merci,
Estime International."
"Irony noted," says Henry.
She is pulling the rubber band out of her hair and tousling the new layers. "So you'll check with Todd about Thursday night?"
"First thing tomorrow."
"Great. I can't wait. More tea? I forgot to ask if you take lemon. Not that I have one."
"I'm all set," says Henry.
As soon as she's out of the kitchen, her baritone Henry impersonation reaches him: "Todd, I'd like you to meet my daughter, the hussy. She'll join us for dinner before she goes clubbing. No, not
every
night. But she's sowing her wild oats before her soul gets sold to the devil next week."
He chuckles, then calls back, "Okay. Point taken." Suddenly he is thinking of Celeste, how much she would have enjoyed the one-woman show that is Thalia. He rinses their two mugs and leaves through the kitchen door, up the secret staircase, and into bed. Due to baseline paternal worries about third rails, alcohol, drugs, unprotected sex, and breaches of contract, he takes a pill.