Chapter 7
After the holidays and being away in Paris, Charlotte was busy in the office when Robert called her to tell her about the TV series they were going to make based on her mother’s book.
She was still excited about it when her assistant told her there was an Andrew York on the phone for her.
She was happy to hear from him and told him about the deal.
“My father will be happy to hear it too,” he said warmly, and after a few minutes of easy exchanges, he invited Charlotte to dinner. He had told her he would call, and she was delighted to discover he meant it. He suggested a restaurant they both knew and liked in the city.
“I didn’t want to wait to see you until you came back to the farm again. It sounds like you have a busy life in the city.”
“I do, and my son hasn’t gone back to Stanford yet and I don’t want to miss the time with him. I don’t think he’ll be back here until next summer. He likes his freedom from maternal kibitzing on the West Coast.”
“I felt that way about my father too at that age. I took a class on Shakespeare at the University of Edinburgh one summer.”
“How was it?” she said, smiling.
“Cold and rainy, but I had a terrific time. I was wondering if I could entice you to a hockey game. I happen to have tickets for a game this weekend.” She was happy to hear from him, and she had told him on New Year’s Eve that she loved hockey, and so did he.
“That’s a fantastic offer,” she instantly enthused, and he was pleased.
When the day came, he picked her up at her apartment in Tribeca.
They were both dressed for the cold at the game, with down jackets and wool hats, and talked animatedly in the Uber all the way to Madison Square Garden.
They were rooting for opposing teams. Charlotte’s team won and she lorded it over him all the way to dinner.
He said he had some writing to do that week, and told her what the book was about over excellent pasta at Sant Ambroeus, which was her favorite restaurant.
Neither of her kids had been home when he picked her up, so Andy hadn’t met them yet, but he was looking forward to it.
He and Charlotte talked more seriously about the challenge of being both mother and father to them, since they’d been young when their father left, and he was never interested in them before that.
It had been hardest on her son, but Charlotte said he was a good kid and good student and had been forgiving of her mistakes.
“My daughter is less generous about it when I screw up, which I try not to do too often. It’s a lesson in humility, parenting teenage kids, and it flies by so fast. Julia only has another year of high school after this, and then she’ll be gone too,” she said wistfully.
Andy liked Charlotte’s exuberant, realistic, rough-and-tumble view of life.
She seemed to roll with the punches, enjoyed her business, and loved her kids.
And she was humble about her victories and mistakes.
The evening flew by, and he was sorry to drop her off at her apartment.
It had ended too quickly. There was always more to say.
“I hope you come back to the farm soon, although it’s a little bleak this time of year,” he admitted. “But it’s nice sitting by the fire on snowy days.”
“I’m actually coming out for the weekend with my sisters in a couple of weeks.
It’s my mother’s birthday, and it seemed like a good excuse to come back and spend time together.
You haven’t met my youngest sister yet. She’s having kind of a rough patch at the moment.
” Andy admired how close the sisters were.
They were an impressive group of women, all different, but Charlotte was the woman who had struck him as exceptional, and sexy and fun, the moment he met her.
His father had been intrigued but not surprised when Andy mentioned her to him in glowing terms. He had described her as brilliant and cool.
Spencer was amused. Felicia had always said that she wanted to introduce them, but that her oldest daughter was famously hard on men ever since her unhappy marriage and bitter divorce.
Andy didn’t report anything like it, and had enjoyed her a great deal.
Charlotte was smart and funny and fun, and Spencer wondered if she had mellowed with age.
She clearly hadn’t been rough on Andy. He sounded like a teenager when he talked about her.
Charlotte and Andy had lunch when he’d had to come to the city to do an errand for his father, and she showed him her offices at To Go and he was impressed.
They were in the heat of preparing their IPO, and she was obviously smart in business too, which was something he wasn’t good at.
He had spent his entire life in the literary world.
Andy had taught literature and creative writing before settling down to write full-time.
Charlotte left on the road show for her IPO after that, and wasn’t due back until her mother’s birthday weekend at the farm with her sisters.
Andy couldn’t wait to see her again, and he was busy himself, working on his book.
He had never felt as at ease with any woman.
He called her a couple of times while she was on the road, and she made him laugh with stories about the road show, which sounded arduous to him, but she said it was going well.
“I’m a lot better at business than I am at dating,” Charlotte said late one night, on the phone from Chicago. “I usually blow it on the first date, or screw it up totally on the second. I say all the wrong things, or hate their pets, or their children hate me.”
“I don’t have pets or kids,” Andy pointed out to her, “so that’s a plus. Actually, I think you’ve done pretty well so far.”
“We’ve only had two dates,” she reminded him, “so I’m still within my norms. And I haven’t cooked for you yet. That usually takes care of it, if I haven’t said anything sufficiently offensive about the guy’s mother.”
“I don’t have a mother either, so we’re good. I do like to eat though, but I can cook, so you get a pass on that. We might actually make it to date three or four before you screw it up completely. I take it phone calls don’t count.”
“Not really. I can usually get through a phone call,” she said cheerfully, undaunted by her poor dating record, about which she made jokes and clearly had no remorse.
“How do you account for your poor dating record?” he asked.
“I think I hated men for about a decade after my miserable marriage and shitful divorce. I’m the only woman I know who paid spousal support, which he spent on all his nineteen-year-old girlfriends.
But what really bothered me was that he was such a lousy father and never showed up for his kids.
He was always too busy doing something else.
It taught them to deal with disappointment at an early age, but it was painful to watch.
I hated him after that, and took it out on any guy brave enough to ask me on a date.
I punished them severely for everything he did wrong.
And then the poor guy died and it seemed a little too rude to speak ill of the dead, and my children’s father, so I argued with my mother all the time instead, on any subject.
The poor woman was a saint. It’s a wonder she didn’t cut me out of her will.
I would have deserved it. I was just angry, at everything, and for some reason, when I turned forty, I ran out of steam, and I was having so much fun with my business, I stopped being pissed at everything else.
” She had interesting insights into herself, which he respected and enjoyed.
“It’s weird. I’ve been mellower in my forties too.” He was forty-seven, but didn’t look it or act it. He had an upbeat innocence and boyish quality that she loved.
“I used to complain all the time, but I even started to bore myself,” she said, and he laughed.
“Maybe you came along at the right time. I might even make it to five dates with you.” And then she grew serious for a minute.
“It really ripped my heart out when Mom was killed. I finally got how precious life is, and how unpredictable and how short it can be. I thought she’d be around forever and I could make up to her later for what a pain in the ass I was for so many years.
And now she’s gone and I can’t make it up to her.
” Andy could hear that she was crying when she said it.
“She told me how brilliant you are, and how smart in business, and what a good mother. She never said you were a pain in the ass,” he said gently, “she said you were ‘spirited.’ ”
“That translates to ‘pain in the ass.’ Look it up in the dictionary. It’s an official description.
She always forgave me. I try to be like her with my kids.
But she was better at it. They adored her.
Losing her has been hard on them too. She was their only living grandparent.
Now all they have is me, and I’m not nearly in the same leagues of parenting as she was. Maybe I’ll get there someday.”
“It sounds like you’re doing a good job to me.”
“They’re still alive and aren’t serial killers and haven’t been to jail, so I guess we’re holding our own.
” He loved talking to her and hearing what she had to say.
He couldn’t wait for her to come back from her trip, but he didn’t say it.
He didn’t want to sound like a jerk, or desperate.
But house-sitting for his father’s house was solitary and lonely.
He had thought it would be good for his writing, but he was discovering it was bad for his spirits.
Charlotte had livened things up immensely, and he wanted to go to another hockey game with her, and he could think of a dozen other things he wanted to do with her.
He couldn’t wait for her to come back to the farm with her sisters.
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