6. Callum
— ? —
Callum
My mother chooses the Bellcliff Club because my mother always chooses places where I cannot make a scene.
The dining room is exactly as it’s been for a hundred years - white tablecloths, crystal chandeliers, portraits of dead men who made their fortunes exploiting people and then donated just enough to charities to feel good about themselves.
The staff know my name. They knew my father’s name.
They’ll know my grandchildren’s names, if I ever have grandchildren, which according to every piece of small talk I’ve endured in the past decade is very much in question.
Adelaide Lippitt is already seated when I arrive, which means she got here early to establish position. She’s good at that. She’s good at everything that requires strategy and nothing that requires warmth.
“Callum.” She offers her cheek for the kiss I’m expected to give. “You look tired.”
“Thank you for noticing.”
“Sit. I’ve already ordered for you.”
Of course she has.
I sit. A waiter materializes with water, wine, a basket of bread I won’t eat. My mother butters a slice with surgical precision, her movements economical and controlled.
“I heard you’ve hired someone new for Olivia,” she says.
“Word travels fast.”
“Word always travels, darling. That’s why we must be careful about what we let it carry.” She takes a bite of bread, chews, swallows. “A girl from nowhere, I’m told. No references. No family. No training.”
“She handled Olivia’s episode last week. Calmed her down in eleven minutes.”
“And this qualifies her to raise a Lippitt?”
“She’s not raising anyone. She’s a nanny.”
My mother smiles. It’s the smile I remember from childhood, the one that always preceded lessons I didn’t want to learn.
“Speaking of raising.” She slides something across the table. A newspaper, folded to the society page. My own face stares up at me from the newsprint.
STILL WAITING: The Bachelor Heir Who Won’t Grow Up.
I don’t need to read the article. I already know what it says - the same thing every article about me says.
The women I’ve been photographed with, none of whom lasted longer than a season.
The persistent bachelorhood that gossip columns find alternately romantic and suspicious.
The child I’m raising alone, the questions no one can answer, the implications that follow me like a shadow.
“You have a daughter with no mother,” my mother says, buttering another piece of bread like we’re discussing the weather, “and a name with no future. Do you know what people say about a man like you?”
“I’ve never cared what people say.”
“Then you’re a fool, which I raised you better than.” She sets down the knife. Her eyes meet mine, and there’s nothing warm in them. “They say something is wrong with him, Callum. They said it before you brought that child home, and they say it louder now.”
The waiter returns with appetizers. We both smile. He leaves. The smiles disappear.
“You’ve made yourself a curiosity,” Adelaide continues. “I’ve spent forty years building the thing you’re embarrassing.”
“The thing being the Lippitt name?”
“The thing being everything. The name, the position, the legacy. Do you think this family got where it is by letting its heirs become tabloid fodder?” She takes a sip of wine, delicate, controlled.
“You have responsibilities. To the name, to the family, to the child you chose to adopt for reasons you’ve never adequately explained. ”
“I don’t owe you an explanation.”
“You owe me an heir. A legitimate one. A family that doesn’t make people whisper.” She smiles at someone across the room, a society matron in pearls, and keeps the smile on while she continues to cut me open. “A wife fixes this. A wife with the right last name fixes all of it.”
She reaches into her purse and produces a list. Of course she has a list. My mother has lists for everything - dinner parties, charitable donations, the strategic alliances she calls friendships.
Genevieve Ricci is at the top.
“Genevieve is accomplished,” Adelaide says. “Her family owns half the waterfront. She’s never had a scandal and she’s never had an original thought, which makes her extremely suitable. She would make an excellent mother for Olivia.”
“Olivia has a nanny.”
“Olivia has a revolving door. A nanny is not a mother. A wife - the right wife - would give that child stability.”
“The right wife according to whom?”
“According to everyone who matters.” Adelaide folds the list and slides it toward me. “Think about it. I’m not asking you to decide today. Just think.”
The lunch continues. Courses appear and disappear. My mother talks about charity events and real estate values and the Pembertons’ new yacht. I nod in the right places and say the expected things and count the minutes until I can leave.
When I finally escape into the parking lot, I don’t go to my car.
I stand there in the afternoon light, looking up at the club’s facade, thinking about everything she said and everything she didn’t. A wife. A legitimate family. The right last name.
My mother wants me to solve a problem with a transaction. She wants me to buy respectability the way she’s bought everything else - with contracts and calculations and the careful arrangement of people into positions that serve her purposes.
The thing is, she’s not wrong about the problem.
I’ve watched the same thing my daughter watches - the way people look at us, the way they talk about us, the questions they ask that aren’t really questions.
A single father, no mother anywhere, no marriage in sight, no explanation offered.
I’ve felt the weight of it for six years.
I’ve told myself I don’t care, that their opinions don’t matter, that Olivia and I are enough.
But Olivia asked a stranger last night if her father loves her.
Olivia isn’t sure.
And maybe - maybe - that uncertainty has something to do with the way I’ve structured this life. A house with no mother in it. A family that isn’t quite a family. A father who keeps showing up but never quite stays.
The sun is setting by the time I drive home.
I don’t go inside.
I sit in the car in the driveway and I look up at the house - at the lit window on the second floor, where a woman I hired a week ago is reading my daughter a fourth story she doesn’t have to read.
Through the glass I can see them, shadows against the warm light, Olivia curled against Nichole’s side like she’s found the one safe place in the whole cold house.
My mother wants a wife.
I don’t believe in marriage. I’ve never seen one that wasn’t a business arrangement wearing a dress - my own parents’ certainly was.
My father tolerated my mother. My mother managed my father.
They stood next to each other at parties and slept in separate bedrooms and called it a partnership because calling it what it really was would have required more honesty than either of them possessed.
But if marriage is just a business arrangement, then why not make one honestly?
Why not find someone who needs something I have and offer a trade?
I think about the woman on the staircase last night. The tears she tried to hide. The number she didn’t want to say. The way she looked at me when I didn’t flinch at it, like she was seeing something she didn’t expect.
I think about my daughter’s hand in hers.
I think about eleven minutes on a marble floor, and a voice saying I’m not going anywhere while you do it.
My mother wants a wife. The papers want a wife. My daughter wants someone who stays.
And there’s a woman in that house who needs money I would never notice missing, for a brother she loves enough to sit on a servants’ staircase and cry over.
I get out of the car.
Nichole is at the bottom of the stairs when I walk in, Olivia asleep against her shoulder. She’s humming something - a lullaby, maybe, or just a rhythm to keep the child settled. When she sees me, she stops.
“Eight o’clock,” I say. “In the study.”
“Did something happen?”
“No.” I meet her eyes, and I let her see that I mean it. “I’ve thought it through now, and you’re going to hate me.”
She doesn’t look away. She doesn’t flinch.
“Most people do,” she says.
“Not like this.”
I climb the stairs past her, past the sleeping child I love more than anything, past the woman I’m about to make an offer I can never take back.