32. “Sunday”
“SUNDAY”
Idrove down to the city Saturday afternoon to pick up Caleb.
He was on the curb of his mother’s building at three with his backpack over one shoulder and a small wrapped package in his hand and a face I had not seen on him before.
The face was the face of a sixteen-year-old who had been told he was going to be at his father’s family Sunday dinner for the first time as an actual member of the family and who was working very hard to look as if he were not nervous about it.
He got into the passenger seat.
“Hi, Dad.”
“Hi, kid.”
“What is in the package, Caleb.”
“Mom sent it. She says it is for Eden.”
I glanced at it. He set it on the dashboard. He did not look at it.
“Did she say what it was.”
“She said it is a gift for Eden. She said you would understand.”
I drove.
We took the Merritt.
Caleb drove for half of it. He had his learner’s permit. He had been driving most of the time we drove together for the last six months. I trusted him. He drove well. He drove the way I had taught him.
He did not talk for the first thirty miles.
Around the New Canaan exit he said: “Dad.”
“Yes.”
“How am I supposed to act tonight.”
“Like yourself.”
“Dad.”
“Caleb. The whole point of you being there is that you are part of the family. Be part of the family. Eat the prime rib. Talk to the senator about your soccer season. Help Mrs. Harris clear plates when she stands up. Sit beside Aspen during the cobbler. Aspen is the easiest of the three sisters. Sloane is harder. Hadley will charm you because Hadley charms everyone but you are sixteen and she is twenty-five so do not let her.”
“I will not let her.”
“Good.”
“Dad.”
“Yes.”
“Are you going to ask Eden tonight.”
“I am.”
“In front of everybody.”
“After dinner. The boathouse.”
“Where you took her the first night.”
“Yes.”
He drove for another mile in silence.
Then he said: “She is going to say yes.”
“Yes.”
“Just so you know. So you are not nervous about that part.”
“I will try.”
“She is going to say yes, Dad. Stop being nervous about that part. Be nervous about the part after, where you have to actually be married. That is the harder part.”
I looked at him.
He kept his eyes on the road.
He was sixteen years old.
He was going to be a better lawyer than I was.
We pulled off the Merritt at five forty.
The trees on the back roads were full red now.
Late October. The reds had deepened. The maples on the road to the compound were the color of arterial blood.
The white pines at the gateposts were the only green thing left.
The mailbox at the end of the drive had a small wreath on it that Mrs. Harris had put up that morning.
I drove up the long curve of the drive.
The house came into view.
The house had every light on.
I had not seen the house with every light on at six p.m. since Eve was alive.
I sat for a second with my hands on the wheel.
Caleb did not say anything. He had figured out what I was looking at.
We arrived at the compound at six.
Mrs. Harris was on the porch. She came down the steps with her arms open. She kissed me on the cheek. She held Caleb’s face in both her hands the way she had held mine for thirty years and she said: “You came.”
“I came.”
“Good. Inside. Your father is in the library at the piano. Eden is in the kitchen with your sister. Sloane is in the dining room setting the table. Senator is on the porch with Cole. Aspen has not yet arrived.”
“Aspen is late.”
“Aspen is always late. Aspen is going to be late because Hawk is going to drive her over, and they are going to argue the entire drive over about something neither one of them can tell you the actual subject of.”
I grinned at her.
She winked.
I did not play the piano. Hawk did.
Hawk had arrived ahead of Aspen, having driven over alone, and he was at the piano playing the same Chopin I always played badly.
He was playing it almost well. Caleb stood in the doorway of the library with his backpack still over his shoulder and watched Hawk play for a count of ten with the expression of a sixteen-year-old who was making a very small mental note about a man he had been watching at Sunday dinners since he was nine.
Aspen arrived at six twenty in Hawk’s pickup truck.
She was driving.
Hawk was in the passenger seat.
The two of them came up the porch steps together with sawdust on her sweater and grease on his hand and an argument visibly continuing about the wrong angle of a downstairs joist at the lake house, and Mrs. Harris, who was at the door, smiled at me without moving any other part of her face.
Dinner was at seven oh four.
Mrs. Harris had outdone herself even by Mrs. Harris standards. The prime rib was the prime rib. The potatoes were the potatoes. The Brussels sprouts had bacon. The bread was warm. The wine was a Bordeaux I had not seen Chip open in fifteen years.
The table was full.
Chip at the head. Eden to his right. Me beside her.
Caleb beside me. Aspen across from Caleb because she was the easiest. Hawk across from me.
Sterling beside Hawk. Hadley beside Sterling because she had asked, with a very small smile, to be seated there.
Cole beside Hadley. Sloane beside Cole, where Sloane always sat.
Knox at the foot of the table because Knox was Knox.
Killian. Maxwell. Roland. My brother Beau.
Foster was not there. Foster did not do Sundays unless something was happening.
Nothing was happening.
Foster was at home.
I had been at this table four hundred times.
I had been at this table beside this woman for one of them, three weeks ago, on the night Chip had stood at the head and toasted us both with his bourbon raised and the boys had raised their glasses one at a time and the whole table had gone up around me without a word.
This was the second time.
It was easier than the first.
It was easier because Caleb was beside me and Caleb belonged at this table now in a way he had not belonged before.
It was easier because Eden’s hand was on my thigh and her thumb was tracing a small circle there and she did it without thinking.
It was easier because Mrs. Harris had brought out the wine and the smell of the meat was the smell of every Sunday I had spent in this room for twenty years.
The conversation at dinner was the easy conversation.
Knox told a story about a deal he was about to close.
Sterling told a story about a patient. Cole told a story about a flight he had taken into a small airfield in Vermont in the rain.
Hawk and Aspen argued mildly about whether a contractor he had hired in Hartford was charging him too much.
Sloane laughed at something Hadley said.
Mrs. Harris brought out the cobbler at eight forty.
Caleb had been talking to my brother for an hour about whether he should apply early to Yale.
Eden’s hand was on my thigh under the table.
She did not need to put it there. She did it because she could.
I covered her hand with mine. I held it. I did not let go.
After dinner, the boys went to the library.
The poker would not start for another forty minutes — there was always a settling time after Sunday dinner before the cards came out.
Mrs. Harris was clearing the plates with Sloane and Aspen.
The senator was at the head of the table with his bourbon and Caleb beside him talking about a college essay topic.
I leaned over to Eden.
“Walk with me.”
She looked at me.
She looked at the small wrapped package on the sideboard from Caleb’s mother. She looked at the kitchen, where Mrs. Harris was at the sink. She looked at her father at the head of the table.
She looked at me.
“All right.”
I held her chair.
I took her coat off the hook in the hall. I helped her into it. I took my own. We slipped out the back through the kitchen, past Mrs. Harris, who did not turn from the sink and did not pretend not to know.
The boathouse was lit.
Of course it was lit. The senator had told Mrs. Harris that we were going to walk down.
Mrs. Harris had told Phil. Phil had gone down at six and had turned on the small string of lights along the dock and had set out the two old Adirondack chairs from the boathouse porch and had built a small fire in the brick pit at the end of the dock that Phil had built himself in 2012.
The Sound was dark.
The sky was clear.
There was a moon at three-quarter on the eastern horizon and the small low silver light on the water that the moon made.
We walked down to the dock.
I sat her in one of the chairs.
I sat in the other.
I did not speak.
She looked at the water.
She looked at the fire.
She did not look at me.
After a long moment she said: “Atlas.”
“Yes.”
“You have a small box in your pocket.”
“Yes.”
“You did not need to do this in the boathouse.”
“I know.”
“You did it because of the first time.”
“Yes.”
“I am not going to say no, Atlas. You can stop being nervous.”
“I am not nervous.”
“You are. I can hear it in the way you are holding the air in.”
I laughed.
I let the air out.
I reached into the inside pocket of my jacket. I pulled out the small box. I opened it.
Inside was a ring.
A vintage ring. An old emerald cut. Platinum. Smaller than the one Tristan had bought her — much smaller. Older. The kind of ring that had been worn for sixty years and had been removed for the first time the day a jeweler in midtown had cleaned it for me and put it in a velvet box.
It had been my mother’s.
I had not told Eden it was my mother’s. I had not yet shown her the photograph of my mother wearing it. I had been carrying it in the inside pocket of my jacket for three weeks waiting for the right moment.
The right moment was now.
“Eden.”
“Yes.”
“I am not asking you for anything you do not already have. I just want it on the record.”
“Atlas.”
“Will you marry me.”
She looked at the ring.
She looked at me.
She did not say anything for a long moment.
Then she said: “Yes.”
She held out her left hand.
I took the ring out of the box. I slid it onto her finger. It fit. Of course it fit. I had given the jeweler the measurement Mrs. Harris had taken off Eden’s hand a month before, on a Sunday afternoon, with a piece of cotton string, and had passed to Chip in a sealed envelope.
She stood up.
She came to me. She sat down in my lap in the Adirondack chair on the dock. She put her arms around my neck. She put her forehead against mine.
We stayed like that for a long time.
The moon climbed.
The fire burned down. The string of lights on the dock did the small slow swaying thing they did when the wind off the Sound came up.
“Atlas.”
“Yes.”
“Caleb is on the porch.”
I looked.
Caleb was on the porch. He was in his coat. He had a cup of cocoa Mrs. Harris had made him. He was waving.
I waved back.
He turned away with the small private satisfied wave of a sixteen-year-old who had not wanted to interrupt and had also not been able to stop himself from looking.
“Atlas.”
“Yes.”
“Can I tell your father.”
“No.”
“Atlas.”
“You cannot tell him because he already knows.”
“What.”
“He bought the ring. It was my mother’s.
He pulled it from her safety deposit box at the bank in Hartford three weeks ago.
He had it cleaned. He gave it to me at his office in DC the next day.
He put it in my hand and he closed my fingers over it and he said: this was your mother’s. She would have liked Eden. Use it.”
“Atlas.”
“He bought the ring. He bought the moment. He bought the dock lights. He bought the cobbler. He has been waiting for me to do this for at least six weeks.”
She started to laugh.
She started to laugh and she could not stop.
She laughed against my throat for a full minute.
She laughed like a woman who had figured out she had been the only person in a room who had not yet been told a thing the rest of the room had been working on for weeks.
I held her.
I let her laugh.
I laughed too.
Up at the porch, Caleb went inside.
The compound was a small island of warm yellow light in the dark. The library window was lit. The kitchen window was lit. The small lamp Mrs. Harris kept on in the dining room until midnight was lit.
The boys were inside.
The poker was about to start.
Mrs. Harris was wiping the counters.
The senator was at his sideboard pouring three bourbons because he knew the three of us would be back inside in twenty minutes.
Eden looked up at the house.
She looked at me.
“Take me home,” she said.
“This is home, Eden.”
“I know. Take me up to the house.”
I did.
I took her up to the house in the dark with my arm around her waist and her ring catching the moonlight, and we walked up the lawn the way her mother and her father had walked up the lawn for thirty years, and Caleb met us at the door, and Mrs. Harris took our coats, and the senator handed us each a bourbon and he did not say a single word about the ring on her finger because he had decided to let her tell him.
She told him.
He smiled.
He raised his bourbon to me. I raised mine.
The library went quiet for one second and then it did not.
The boys had figured it out before we walked in.
They had been pretending they had not. They raised their glasses around the room.
Knox was the first. Hawk was the second.
Sterling was the third. The whole circle.
Eden took the ring off her hand and held it up to the firelight for them to see, and the diamond caught the light, and for one long moment the whole room went still around it.
Then Knox let out a whoop that Mrs. Harris was going to hear about for a week.
The poker game started twenty minutes late that night.
Nobody minded.