Chapter 12
O ona’s first day back in New York, after a fitful sleep and two more calls from Ashley telling her how glad he was that she was back in the States, was a litany of calls she had intended to make for months and was ready to face now.
She called Gail to tell her she was home, and they promised each other to have lunch as soon as it seemed reasonable and safe, after Oona had a Covid test, and Gail said she’d have one too.
She had called Will the night before, and texted Meghan to tell her she was home.
She called her lawyer and explained the situation to him and told him she wanted a divorce, as clean and as civil as possible.
He suggested that it could get complicated over jointly owned property, and suggested that she and Charles discuss it, to see how they wanted to handle it.
Oona was planning to go out to East Hampton to see the house there that weekend.
It had stood empty for nearly a year, with her handyman checking on it once a week.
She hadn’t been there since November, and she wanted to see how she felt about it now.
She and Charles had too many memories there, happy summers they had spent there with the children when they were small.
She wasn’t sure she wanted to be there anymore.
She was prepared to sell it if Charles was willing, and it should bring a decent amount for each of them.
Real estate prices had increased dramatically since they had bought it twenty years before—but had dropped somewhat during the pandemic—when Meghan was two and Will was four.
It had been the perfect second home for them then, in East Hampton, which had gained immensely in popularity since.
It wasn’t a fancy house, but it was a great house for a family with children, and they had maintained it in good condition, and the handyman said it had survived the previous winter without damage or incident. She wanted to see it before she asked Charles to sell it, or offered to sell her half to him. She wanted a last look before she gave it up, to make sure it was what she wanted to do.
She called three headhunters she knew and asked them to put her on their books for an editorial job in publishing.
She wasn’t expecting to find a job as the head of a house—a senior management position would be satisfactory, or even one as a senior editor where she would work remotely.
She didn’t have a salary in mind and preferred to leave it open and see what she was offered.
All three headhunters she called said much the same thing, that jobs were scarce right now, and that many people in publishing were being laid off.
It seemed logical that people would be buying more books in the pandemic, but all of the publishing houses had been shaken by having to close their offices indefinitely, and not knowing how long it would go on, so they were letting people go rather than keep a heavy staff on their payroll.
Companies were looking for ways to trim things down and reduce their overhead.
And everyone was working remotely, like Gail.
Office buildings all over New York were standing empty, unable to be occupied safely, with small offices, shared spaces, and elevators in which only a few people could ride at the same time, due to Covid, with hundreds or even thousands of people in the building needing to use them.
No one had been able to figure it out yet, so entire companies were being run from home.
Commercial real estate was facing its worst crisis in the history of the city, and none of the health issues had been solved.
The calls weren’t encouraging, and she called Gail again after the last one.
“Wow, it’s worse than I thought.
I called the three best headhunters I know—I used to hire from them—and they all said that no one is hiring right now.
They’re still laying people off because the pandemic is lasting longer than they expected, and all the big firms are leaving the buildings empty and making no plans to go back until sometime next year.”
“That’s what I’ve heard too, but they must need some jobs filled.
They can’t run their businesses with a skeleton staff, and some people must be getting hired.
You’ll find something, Oona.
It may take some time.”
“I wonder if it’s like this in every city in the country.”
“Any city with buildings like ours will be in the same boat,”
Gail said matter-of-factly, and Oona wondered if she would find anything at all.
They chatted for a few minutes and hung up.
Oona looked through the bills that Bertie had been sending her in France.
Oona had forwarded some to Charles in Argentina, like the ones for membership fees at the many clubs he belonged to that were doing him no good now.
He had dropped a number of them, keeping others he knew he’d want to use when he got home.
Some of them were closed for now, if they were unable to comply with the constantly changing health rules that made using gyms and sports facilities impossible, and their indoor dining rooms were closed too.
Gatherings and social events were not allowed.
And many of the club members were older and preferred to stay home or at their country properties and estates.
Oona called the bank and transferred some funds.
Charles had been wiring her money monthly in France, to help her when she lost her job, but she hadn’t spent much while she was there, other than for food and rent, which he hadn’t complained about.
He was responsible about their money and had always been generous with her.
And they had enough savings to be comfortable.
He had invested their funds well, although Oona didn’t like depending on him, and liked having her own money.
She missed her salary, and the severance had run out.
Within a few months, she would start to feel the pinch of not having a job to pay for the occasional luxuries she indulged in.
She intended to be careful now.
She wondered if he was supporting Roberto, although she knew that it was none of her business, but she was curious about their arrangement, and the role Charles played in his life, as responsible husband or generous lover, or if they shared expenses as she and Charles had.
They had rarely had disagreements over money, and she wondered if they would now, when they divided things up.
Ashley was still working.
Oona sat at her desk and paid bills that night and for a few minutes it felt as though she had never left.
It was an odd sensation.
When her cell phone rang she expected it to be Ashley, when he finished his scenes for the day, and she was surprised to see Charles’s number appear.
She picked it up, and for a few seconds there was silence on the line, and then she heard a wrenching sob.
She wasn’t even sure if it was him, and she was suddenly afraid that Roberto was using Charles’s phone and something had happened to Charles.
She prayed it wasn’t so, and the voice at the other end continued to cry as her heart pounded, and then at last she heard Charles’s voice.
“Oh my God, what’s wrong...Charles, are you all right?”
He could barely speak coherently, as she tried to calm him and speak soothingly.
And he finally composed himself enough to talk.
“It’s Roberto.
He caught a cold a few days ago, and he had a terrible sore throat.
I was worried it was Covid, and he insisted it wasn’t.
He said he gets bad colds and always winds up with strep throat.
I got him to take a test, and he was positive.
That was only two days ago, and he spiked a terrible fever that night.
He had a hundred and five temperature when I got him to the hospital the next morning.
That was yesterday.
He couldn’t breathe and they intubated him immediately, and he just got steadily worse.
We spent a weekend in Rio de Janeiro ten days ago, and he must have gotten it then.
We ate out a lot, and he has a lot of friends there, and no one was wearing masks.
They put him in a coma last night in order to administer different meds, but he died two hours ago.
Oonie, I can’t believe it. He’s gone. He was thirty-four years old and he was in perfect health. He’d had asthma as a child, and he must have had weak lungs as a result. His parents live in Uruguay, and they’re coming here to get his body and take him home to bury him. They can’t even hold a funeral for him. It’s not allowed during Covid—only his parents and spouse are allowed at the burial.”
“That would be you,”
she said gently.
He was so distraught she was sorry for him.
He had truly loved Roberto and was decimated by his death.
“His parents didn’t know he was gay.
They think I’m just his boss and a friend.
I can’t tell them now—Roberto wouldn’t want that.
They’re fairly old and they wouldn’t understand.
It’s not fair to upset them more than they are.
I can’t believe this has happened.”
He started crying again and it took him several minutes to regain his composure.
“I have to quarantine now for a few days, and as soon as I get a negative test, I’m coming home,”
he said.
She hoped he meant New York and not the apartment, but she felt cruel saying it in the condition he was in.
“I told his parents I would empty his apartment and send everything to them.
They can’t come to New York with the borders closed.
I can’t believe this happened.
He was fine five days ago.
We played tennis, and the next day he got sick.”
Oona told him again how sorry she was, and to call her if he needed anything.
And since he would be clearing Roberto’s apartment in New York, she assumed he would stay there.
She told Ashley about it that night, and called Charles the next day to make sure he was all right.
He sounded calmer than he had the day before, but he was in deep grief.
Roberto’s parents had just taken him a few hours before.
And Charles was at serious risk now to catch Covid himself.
“I have to quarantine for five days before I can take a test.
I’ll fly home as soon as I get the result, if it’s negative.
I already have a reservation for the flight.
I can’t stay here now.
Roberto’s brother is emptying his apartment.
I’m staying at a hotel.
I had to get all my things out before the family arrived.
His brother doesn’t know either, but I think he might have guessed.
They’re all heartbroken over him.
He was the youngest child, and apparently a wonderful son.
He was such a good person,”
he said, and Oona felt strange listening to him—it was a clear view of how much Charles had loved Roberto.
She felt like a voyeur listening to him, but he needed to talk to someone, and she was the closest person to him after Roberto.
She listened to him for half an hour, and he promised to let her know when he got the result of the Covid test.
She dreaded the possibility that he had it, and hoped he didn’t.
It would be too cruel if he got sick now too.
She was at her desk, thinking about him, when the phone rang again.
It was Will this time.
“You sound very serious,”
Will said.
He sounded like he was in good spirits, and she hated to spoil it, but at least his father was okay for now.
And Will had no attachment to Roberto, never having met him.
He had refused to, as had Meghan, out of loyalty to their mother, despite their father’s offers to introduce them, and assurances that Roberto was a lovely person, and not responsible for the demise of Charles and Oona’s marriage, which their children did not believe.
“I was just talking to your father,”
she said to explain her somber tone.
“Is he okay?”
No one was exempt from the risks now, and life could change in an instant, as it just had for Charles and Roberto.
“Yes, he’s fine,”
she confirmed.
“But Roberto died yesterday of Covid.
Your father is very upset, understandably.
Roberto was young and healthy, and apparently they went to Brazil for a weekend, saw a lot of friends, and they think Roberto got it there.”
“And Dad doesn’t have it?”
“Not so far.
He’s in quarantine for five days, and then he’ll get a test.
If it’s negative, he can fly home.
He’s terribly shaken by what happened, and so quickly.
From what I can tell, Roberto was only sick for a few days.”
“That does sound awful,”
Will conceded.
“But I have some good news for you.”
He paused for a dramatic moment, and Oona hoped he wasn’t calling to tell her he’d gotten engaged.
He was much too young to consider marriage, even with a long engagement.
Heather was more the right age, although she was young too.
Will was only twenty-four, soon to turn twenty-five, but still a long way off from an ideal time to get married.
“Heather and I got married today,”
he said in a jubilant tone.
He sounded almost giddy, and for an instant Oona felt like she might faint, but she didn’t.
“Is she pregnant?”
Oona blurted out and wished she hadn’t.
The words just shot out of her by reflex.
“No, she’s not.”
Will sounded annoyed.
“We just didn’t want to wait any longer.
We know what we’re doing and what we want.
And everything’s so crazy with the pandemic.
City Hall is closed, but we got the license online, and Heather has a friend who got ordained online last year, to marry a friend, so she called him and he agreed to marry us.
We did it in Golden Gate Park, and it was perfect.
It was just what we wanted.”
He sounded jubilant, and so young and na?ve to Oona.
She liked Heather, but Will was too young to get married, in his mother’s opinion.
“Why didn’t you wait until your father and I and Meghan could be there?”
It seemed to Oona like a brutal rejection of his family.
“Because then Heather’s whole huge family would want to come, her parents and grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, and all her siblings.
And that isn’t what we wanted.
We wanted to keep it small and private and just the two of us.
Aren’t you going to congratulate me, Mom?”
he asked her, and she had to dredge up from somewhere the semblance of excitement and parental delight, when in fact she was heartbroken that he had done it without her and the rest of their family present—and just the way he had done it proved to her that he was young and impulsive and immature and didn’t think things through.
She was almost angry, but didn’t dare show it.
He passed the phone to Heather, who was euphoric.
They acted as though they had invented marriage, and Oona didn’t know what more to say to them.
She couldn’t tell them the truth.
She thought Heather had manipulated him into it, but whatever the reason or how they had done it, it felt like a disaster to her, and she was sure the marriage wouldn’t last.
Heather was a very sweet girl, but she could have waited another five or six years to get married.
They were both young enough to have waited.
Oona wished they hadn’t done it, but it was too late now.
The die had been cast, the wedding was unfortunately legal, and all Oona had to do now was pretend to be happy for them.
She started to cry as soon as they hung up.
She couldn’t believe he had done such a stupid thing.
He hardly knew Heather, and he had cheated his mother out of being able to attend her only son’s wedding.
She felt genuine loss over it, and couldn’t stop crying.
Ashley called her soon after and could tell she was upset.
She was still reeling from the news.
He had called her a few hours before, and nothing was wrong then, but it was now.
“Will just called me,”
she said in a funereal tone.
“Is he okay?”
These days, you never knew—people got sick so quickly, like Roberto.
“He’s healthy, if that’s what you mean, other than that he is stupid and besotted and immature.
He got married in Golden Gate Park today, without his family present, by some friend of Heather’s who got ordained online.
It wasn’t even a proper wedding, just the two of them.
He couldn’t wait a few weeks until I got out there, if that was what he was going to do?”
She was angry and upset and heartbroken all at once, as Ashley tried to console her and calm her down.
He knew how much she loved her children, and fully understood how crushed she would be to miss the wedding of either one.
It made her feel like a failure as a mother that her son had gone to great lengths to get married without her there to see it, hug him, and wish him well.
“Would you have tried to talk him out of it if you’d been there?”
he asked her gently.
“Yes,”
she said without hesitating.
“That’s why he didn’t wait.
For whatever reason, he wanted to do it now, even without your permission.
Is it possible that she’s pregnant?”
“That was the first thing I asked him, and he said no,”
she said, and blew her nose.
Nothing had been easy since she’d gotten back to New York.
There were no jobs, Roberto had died so Charles was upset and returning, and now Will had married so absurdly young and who knew if Heather was the right girl and whether the marriage would last.
And Oona was missing Ashley.
He was the one calm, constant, stable force in her life.
She’d had so many doubts about him because he was a star, but she always seemed to be able to rely on him to be there for her and say the right thing.
He was mature beyond his years, and eight years between them was beginning to seem like not such an insurmountable obstacle after all.
He was a responsible adult.
“I know it’s hard, but I think you have to be supportive of him now.
He’s not going to get it annulled.
He did it, and you don’t want to damage the relationship you have with him.
Particularly if it doesn’t work out.
Then he’ll need you more than ever, and if you alienate him now, he won’t want to come to you afterward.
It will mean you were right, which will be hard for him for a long time.
As painful as it is for you, you need to embrace it, for as long as it lasts.
And if it doesn’t, then to help him pick up the pieces when it falls apart.”
“She’s a perfectly nice girl,”
Oona conceded, “and we had a nice time with her when she came to France with him before the pandemic started, but who knows if she’s the right one for the rest of his life.
That is such a huge decision and it’s so easy to get it wrong.”
She certainly had, she knew now.
“Maybe they’ll get it right,”
he said, trying to cheer her, although he agreed with her, having married too young himself and made a mistake.
“And if they don’t make it, you’ll be there, and he’ll learn a big lesson and do better next time.
He’ll be more mature then.
And maybe she’s good for him now.”
“I hope so,”
she said wanly, feeling overwhelmed by circumstances.
Everything was so difficult.
She wanted Meghan to come home from Africa before January, and she wouldn’t do that either, and clearly, Will had lost his mind.
Oona was still vastly upset when Charles called her a week later.
Will had told her he called his father too, but Charles was too upset about Roberto to discuss Will’s marriage with him.
And he didn’t want to talk to Oona about it either.
Charles called her again the following week.
“How are you?”
she asked him sympathetically.
He sounded better, but still very sad, understandably.
And at least he hadn’t caught Covid from Roberto.
“About the same.
I still can’t believe it happened.
I just wanted to let you know that I got a negative test again,”
he confirmed.
“I don’t have Covid, remarkably, as we were together all the time.
I’m flying home tomorrow.
I’ll be landing late.
I didn’t want to scare you and make you think I was a burglar.
I’ll just let myself in.
Don’t wait up for me.”
Oona felt like she’d been shot when she heard what he said.
“Why would I think I’m being burglarized?”
she said, hoping she had misunderstood him.
He couldn’t have meant what he said.
“I thought that if you hear someone walk in, in the middle of the night, it might frighten you,”
he explained.
“You’re not planning to stay here, are you?”
she asked, shocked.
“Well, yes, I don’t want to stay at Roberto’s.
I’ll pack it up for his parents, but I don’t want to stay there.
I thought I’d stay at the apartment.
Technically, I still live there and we’re still married.”
“You’ve been living with someone else for eleven months.
You can’t just waltz back in here now because he’s dead.
I’m sorry to be so blunt, but you could have asked me.”
She hadn’t intended to tell him over the phone, but she had no choice.
“I called a lawyer when I got home.
I want a divorce, Charles,”
she said quietly.
“Now? With Roberto gone? I want to stay home for a while before we do anything radical.
You’ve waited this long.
And Roberto’s death changes everything.”
She couldn’t believe what she was hearing.
And once again, it was all about him, just as it had been when he left her to stay with Roberto before they went to Buenos Aires together.
“No, it doesn’t ‘change everything.’ I’m sure it does for you, but it doesn’t for me.
You left for some very strong reasons after falling in love with someone else, who just happened to be a man.
But man or woman, you left me.
It’s taken me a year to adjust to it.
Now you can’t just conveniently move back in because your boyfriend died.
I’m very sorry that he did, but you killed our marriage for me.
You shattered my faith in the human race for a while, and in myself.
You can’t come back here.
There is nothing for you to come home to.
Our marriage is over—you don’t live here anymore.”
“If nothing else, we own the apartment jointly.
We can discuss the rest when I get home.”
He sounded cold, and she was angry at how presumptuous he was, and entitled.
“There is nothing to discuss.
Our marriage is over for me.
You killed it, and I don’t want to bring it back from the dead.
I understand that you need to mourn, and I’m sorry this is terrible for you.
But you can’t stay in this apartment as long as I’m living here.”
“Oona, I want to come back to you.
I love you—I always have.
I need to get over Roberto, but I think we can work out our differences and make this work again.”
She couldn’t believe what she was hearing.
“There’s nothing to work out.
You’re gay, and I’m not.”
“My relationship with Roberto was an aberration.
It won’t happen again.
You and I lived together before.”
“Supposedly, you didn’t know you were gay then, and neither did I.
Now we do.
And you have to live with the choices you made, even though Roberto isn’t coming home with you.
You’ll have to stay somewhere else.”
He had never heard her sound that way before.
It was obvious that she meant it, and he was shocked.
How could she not let him stay at the apartment, after what he had just been through? It didn’t make sense to him, but it did to her.
He didn’t want to stay at a hotel, and the rest of his things were still at the apartment.
He wrote her a text, asking her to reconsider before he flew home the next day, and she responded with the single word “No”
and then turned off her phone.
She was still fuming when she went to bed that night, thinking of his absolute and complete selfishness, wanting to stay with her and even talk about their getting their marriage fixed, and living a lie again.
It was beyond belief, and on the heels of Will telling her that he had gotten married in such a stupid way.
She finally fell asleep, just before morning came, exhausted by two of the three men in her life.
At least Ashley was a reasonable person and he loved her, and she loved him.