Эд Макбейн - Love, Dad

“Why?” she asked, suddenly panicked. “Are you about to—?”

“No, no...”

“Jamie, don’t walk out on me again. Please don’t do that.”

“No, that’s not...”

“You said you wanted to tell her.”

“Yes.”

“Then...”

“I want to leave her,” he said, and paused. “Joanna, I want to marry you.”

There was a long silence on the line.

“Joanna?”

“Is that a... a proposal?” she said.

“Yes, I think it’s a proposal.”

“Because... Jamie, please don’t fool around at two in the morning, okay? Because...”

“Joanna, will you marry me?”

“... because I cry very easily when people I love ask me to marry them.”

“Will you, Joanna?”

“Jamie, you don’t have to marry me, you don’t have to tell her, no one’s forcing you to...”

“It doesn’t make any sense this way, Joanna.”

“Jamie, darling...”

“I want to marry you, will you marry me?”

“Jamie, Jamie, please, I will cry.”

“Please say you’ll marry me.”

“Yes, Jamie, I’ll marry you. Jamie, do you mean it? Do you really...?”

“I mean it.”

“Jamie, you’re not going to call me in the morning and tell me...”

“No, I’m not going to do that.”

“Because then I’d shoot myself, or stick my head in the oven. So please don’t do that to me.”

“I won’t, darling, I promise.”

“Jamie, I love you.”

“I love you, too,” he said.

“What time will you be in on Monday?”

“I’m seeing Lew at ten. I should be through at eleven, eleven-thirty. Give me ten minutes after that.”

“Make it five.”

“I’ll make it three.”

“I love you,” she said again.

“I love you, too.”

“Call me tomorrow.”

“I will.”

“Sleep well, darling.”

“You, too,” he said.

He put the receiver back on the cradle. He took a deep breath, and rose from his chair at the desk. He was turning to walk toward the door when he saw Connie standing there in her nightgown. He did not know how long she’d been standing there, just inside the door, did not know how much, if any, of the conversation she’d overheard. As with most important events in his life, he had the feeling that this one, too, would happen by accident.

“Who was that?” she asked.

“A friend,” he said.

“A friend you call at two in the morning?”

“Yes,” he said.

“What friend?”

No more lies, he thought.

“A... woman I know,” he said.

“A woman you call ‘darling’?”

“Yes,” he said. “A woman I call ‘darling.’ ”

“Who? Diana Blair?”

“No,” he said, and shook his head wearily. “Not Diana Blair.”

“Then who? Tell me who she is. This woman you call ‘darling.’ ”

“Her name is Joanna Berkowitz.”

“Do I know her?”

“You’ve met her.”

“When? Joanna...? Oh. The Vineyard. The one in the gold top.”

“Yes.”

“But that was...”

“Yes.”

“Almost two years ago, wasn’t it? Wasn’t that the summer of...”

“Yes.”

“How old is she? She’s just a child, isn’t she? She can’t be much older than Lissie.”

“She’s twenty-six.”

“Twenty-six.”

“She’ll be twenty-seven in...”

“How long has this... did this start on the Vineyard?”

“Yes. Connie...”

“So what... so what does... what does... you said... I heard you say you... you... you loved her. You said you loved her. So what does... what do you plan to... what?”

“Yes, I do,” he said.

“Love her?”

“Yes.”

“Love her?”

“Yes.”

“Then what...? Jamie, what does... Jamie, what do you...?”

“I think we...”

“No.”

“Connie, I would...”

“No, don’t say it.”

“I would like a divorce.”

“No. The answer is no.”

“Connie...”

“No!”

“Connie, I want...”

“No, I’m not going to give you a divorce so you can run off with a... with a... girl who... who... you son of a bitch.”

“Connie...”

“No older than your daughter, you son of a...”

“She’s—”

“You son of a bitch.”

“Connie, please try to—”

“Get out,” she said.

“Connie—”

“Get out, you fucking son of a bitch.”

On the way from Logan International to the address she had given him in her last letter home, he kept remembering a springtime not too long ago, in 1968, several months after they’d moved into the Rutledge house. They had brought their big black tomcat with them when they moved from the city in December, and he’d run away while they were still unpacking the cartons. One weekend in March as Lissie, home from school, was telling them for the hundredth time how much she missed Midnight the cat, there was a sudden scratching at the back door, and there he was! Sitting there and meowing, just as if he’d never been gone for almost four months. “Well, now, hello,” Jamie had said, and Lissie had scooped poor bewildered Midnight up into her arms and danced around the kitchen with him and then called Scarlett Kreuger to tell her the cat was home, it was a miracle. He was killed the very next weekend, running across the road to escape a big Labrador who was chasing him. Lissie was back at Henderson by then, and her parents were afraid to tell her at first; it was Jamie who finally broke the news to her.

He was about to break the news to her now.

“You’re the one who left,” Connie had told him bitterly on the phone, “so you go tell your daughter.”

He paid the cabdriver and got out of the taxi. He was expecting worse, he supposed. The three-story house she was living in with Sparky was on a residential street lined with trees still bare from the onslaught of winter. A white picket fence surrounded the clapboard building, forsythia bushes tentatively budding against it, jonquils and crocuses timidly beginning to patch the brown lawn. He went to the front door and studied the name plates under the bell buttons. None for either a Croft or a Marshall. He rang the one marked SUPERINTENDENT, and a black woman answered the door and told him his daughter lived on the third floor, in apartment 3B. He climbed the stairs and knocked on the door. It was eleven o’clock in the morning, he hoped Sparky would not be there. He did not want to talk to her in Sparky’s presence.

She was wearing a long granny nightgown when she opened the door. Her hair was sleep-tousled. Her eyes blinked open wide the moment she saw him.

“Jesus!” she said. “Dad! What...?”

“Hello, darling,” he said, and stepped into the apartment, and hugged her. There was the aroma of stale marijuana in the air. The living room was modestly furnished with thrift-shop stuff. A psychedelic poster hung on the wall behind the couch. Beaded curtains separated the living room from the bedroom beyond, where he could see an unmade bed with no one in it. He hoped Sparky was already gone for the day.

“What are you doing in Boston?” she said. “You want some coffee? What time is it, anyway?”

“Eleven,” he said. “Where’s Sparky?”

“Must’ve left early,” she said, and shrugged. “Gee, Dad, this is really a surprise. Wow! I can’t get over it. Come on in the kitchen. Jesus,” she said.

There were dirty dishes in the kitchen sink. The refrigerator was a relic that had been painted white over its original baked enamel. She took a container of orange juice from it, and then poured a jelly glass half-full. “You want some of this?” she asked.