Chapter 1 #4
The rest of the dinner passed uneventfully, and after dinner someone sat down at the piano and they all gathered in the living room and sang Christmas carols.
It was a bittersweet evening for John, and made him wish that Helen were there, or at least Gabby, and he had to go home alone.
He didn’t want to be rude to Isabelle, so he stayed to the bitter end, and found himself at the coatrack with Lillith and helped her into her coat.
“Are you here by yourself?” he asked her, and she looked embarrassed.
“Yes, I am.”
“Can I give you a lift home? I have a driver downstairs.” He was just being friendly and felt fatherly toward her.
“It’s all right, I was going to call an Uber,” she said, as they got into the elevator together. Others were lingering to say goodbye to Isabelle, and John and Lillith already had.
“It’s too late for you to go home alone,” he said, as he would have to Gabby.
She hesitated when they got to his car with the driver parked out front.
He opened the door for her. “I won’t bite, I promise.
I have a daughter older than you,” and she suspected he was older than her father.
She got into the car with him and asked him about Gabby.
“She’s an orthopedic surgeon in Aspen, and a ski fanatic.
She loves it there.” They talked about St. Barth then.
Lillith lived in the East Eighties, and when they got to her building, she gave him a warm smile.
“Thank you for taking me home, that was nice of you. It’s always a little scary late at night,” she admitted.
She seemed wistful and he thought of the father helicopter skiing and the mother having twins in L.A.
, and he remembered what Isabelle had said about her screwed-up family.
There was something that seemed lonely and vulnerable about her, although she was beautiful, and he couldn’t imagine why she was alone.
She got out and waved as she walked into her building, and Sam took John back downtown.
He had enjoyed talking to Lillith at dinner and in the car.
It took the sting out of going home alone to an empty, dark apartment.
—
All the lights were off when he got home.
He lit two lamps in the living room, took his coat off, and sat down and thought about the evening.
It had been easier than he expected in some ways, and harder in others.
He and Helen always talked about the parties they went to when they got home.
She always said it was half the fun of it, and the silence in the apartment seemed like a sad way to end the evening.
He thought of how beautiful Isabelle looked, and how much like Helen.
They had similar styles, and liked many of the same designers.
Isabelle had taken good care of him all evening, and been very attentive.
She was almost like a sister to him now.
He wondered what it would be like to have a daughter like Lillith, bubbly and friendly, and cheerful in spite of what was obviously not an easy family situation.
Gabby had been angry at John since her teens, and was always accusing him of something.
Lillith didn’t seem bitter about her relationship with her parents, which surprised him.
She said she had fallen through the cracks in the divorce, and seemed to accept it as inevitable, with a father who chased young women and a mother with a new younger husband and now a high-risk pregnancy.
There was no place for Lillith. She said they didn’t even have a room for her in their homes, and she had to make do on couches and in guest rooms. They made it clear that there was no space for her in their family anymore.
She seemed to accept it. John had a moment of wanting to protect her, as Isabelle obviously did.
But she was an adult with a job and a life, and was moving forward on her own.
John was sure that some handsome young guy would scoop her up and have a romance with her.
Girls as pretty as she was didn’t stay alone for long.
He was sorry that Gabby hadn’t found a serious partner yet.
She was more interested in her work than in romance, and she had always said she would never marry.
She didn’t want a man like her father. She’d rather be alone than marry a man like him.
Helen told him that Gabby had dated a few doctors, but no one she was madly in love with.
He supposed he wouldn’t be privy to her love life now, without Helen to tell him about it.
Gabby said nothing of her personal life when she spoke to him. He was an outsider.
John was surprised to notice on the clock on his bed table that it was one-thirty in the morning.
The party had gone later than he expected, and he thought of Lillith again as he got into bed.
He wondered what it would be like to date a girl her age.
He couldn’t imagine. He felt foolish at the thought of it.
He told himself that he had been mostly faithful to Helen during their marriage, with some slips over the years, all one-night stands when he was out of town on business.
He had never seen the women again. They were in their forties and fifties, closer to his own age, and most of them were married.
It was purely physical, at business events, when everyone had had a lot to drink.
Helen had never suspected it, and he had never confessed.
Gabby had seen him once with a woman, when he was in San Francisco, closing a deal, and she was at Stanford and having dinner in town with friends.
It was sheer coincidence when they ran into each other at a restaurant.
She had accused him later of cheating on her mother, and he had told her truthfully that the woman he was dining with was one of his attorneys for the deal.
He didn’t tell her they had spent the night together afterward.
Gabby didn’t want to hurt her mother and never told her, but she had treated her father with contempt after that, and it was no mystery to him why.
He lay in bed that night, thinking of the carol singing and standing near the piano with Lillith close to him.
She had a sweet, pure voice that had blended well with his deeper one, and then he laughed at himself.
There is no fool like an old fool, he thought.
Lillith existed in another universe, thirty-nine years away from his, and she would have laughed at him if he had asked her out to dinner.
He turned his thoughts to Isabelle then and how beautiful she looked in the silver dress, and so much like Helen, and he fell asleep.