Chapter 15 #2
“On the first Friday of December,” he said, “I kissed a woman under that mistletoe. In front of all of you. In front of my wife.” He didn’t look away from the front row.
“That was mine. Everything that came after it was mine. The statement that called it misrepresented. The plan. Standing up on Channel 6 and telling this city things that were never mine to tell. All of it. The shame of it is mine. None of it, not one piece of it, belongs to my wife.”
Caroline couldn’t see. Her eyes had filled so badly that the tree and the clock and her husband’s face had all gone into gold smears.
“And I want to say one more thing,” Connor said, “in front of the people from the newspaper.”
He looked up at the balcony.
“This is the last time I will ever speak about my marriage in public,” he said. “Not today, not next year, not ever. I won’t give interviews about it. I won’t answer questions about it. It isn’t mine to talk about. It never was. It’s hers.”
The reporter in the puffy jacket opened his mouth.
Connor looked at him. The reporter closed his mouth again.
Then Connor looked back down at the front row, at Caroline, one more time.
“Caroline,” he said.
It was the first time he had said her name all morning. He didn’t say it into the microphone. He stepped out from behind the long table, away from the microphone, and said it in his own voice across the marble floor. But the atrium was so quiet that everyone heard it anyway.
“The store was always yours,” he said. “It was yours before I ever walked into that alley. And the choice is yours too. It always was.” His voice cracked, and he let it.
“If Boston is what you want, then I want you to take it. I want you to go and be extraordinary. You don’t owe this store anything.
You don’t owe me anything. You don’t owe anybody here anything at all. ”
He stood there on the marble in his dark suit, a few feet from the gold star, and looked at her.
“That’s all,” he said. “Thank you.”
He walked back to the table and took the leather folder from Ira Goldfarb and set it down in front of Richard Hadley, open, with a pen on top of it.
Then Connor Bradshaw stepped away from the chairman’s seat.
He didn’t sit back down. He walked down the side aisle, past the rows of staff in their folding chairs, and he went all the way to the back of the atrium, and he stood against the wall beside Jamal, with his hands folded in front of him, like anybody else.
* * *
For a long moment, nobody did anything.
Then her father picked up the pen.
His hand was shaking so badly that Caroline could see it from the front row. He looked down at the papers in the folder. He looked up at the brass clock his grandfather had bought. He looked at his daughter.
He signed.
And from three rows back, Patricia Bradshaw stood up.
She did it slowly, straight-backed, with her gloves in one hand. She stood up alone in the middle of two hundred seated people and clapped. She clapped slowly and loudly, and she did not look at her son at the back of the room. She looked at Caroline.
Homer stood up next. Then the gift-wrap ladies. Then Luz, beside Caroline, who stood up so fast her chair fell over. Then Stephanie, who said, very loudly, “Oh, hell,” and stood up too, and clapped with tears running down her face.
And then the whole atrium was on its feet.
It was not the wild, weeping applause of the Carols. It was not the slow, hard applause of the day of the cue sheet. It was something else. It was two hundred people who worked in this building every day, standing up for the woman who had carried it.
Caroline couldn’t stand. Her legs wouldn’t do it. She sat in her folding chair in the front row with both hands over her face while the atrium roared around her.
When she finally lowered her hands, she turned and looked for him.
He was still standing against the back wall. He was not clapping. He was not smiling. He was not looking up at the balcony, or at the cameras, or at anyone else. He was just looking at her across the whole room, the way he’d looked at her from the top of the ladder ten years ago.
He didn’t come forward. He didn’t wave. He didn’t make a single move toward her.
After a moment, he turned and went out the Walnut Street side door into the cold.
* * *
On the fourth of January, a Sunday, Caroline went to the townhouse on Rittenhouse Square to get the rest of her things.
She had texted him the day before. I need to come by the house tomorrow and pack. Is ten okay?
He had written back one word. Yes.
When she climbed the front steps at ten, the door was unlocked. She let herself in.
The house was very quiet. The cedar garland was gone from the banister. The grandfather clock was ticking in the living room. And in the front hall, lined up neatly against the wall, were four empty suitcases, and a stack of flattened moving boxes, and a roll of tape.
Connor came out of the kitchen with two cups of coffee.
He was in jeans and an old gray sweater. He had not shaved. He held one of the cups out to her, and she took it. Oat milk. Of course.
“I didn’t pack anything,” he said. “I didn’t want to touch your things. I just got the boxes.”
“Thank you.”
“I’ll carry. Just tell me what goes.”
So they packed.
She did the closet, and he carried. She did her side of the bathroom, and he carried.
She stood in front of the gowns for a long time, the ones he had bought, and in the end she took two of them, because they were beautiful and she had loved them and it was stupid to leave them behind out of spite.
He didn’t say anything about it. He folded them into tissue paper, very carefully, the way he’d seen her do at the scarf counter, and laid them in a suitcase.
In the living room she stopped in front of the grandfather clock.
“I’m not taking that,” she said.
“You bought it.”
“It doesn’t go in a Back Bay apartment.” She touched the wood. “It goes here.”
He nodded, and didn’t say anything, and carried the next box down.
By two o’clock, the car was full.
* * *
He drove her to 30th Street Station.
They didn’t talk much in the car. The streets were gray and wet, and the snow had turned to slush in the gutters, and the Schuylkill was the color of iron.
He parked in the short-term lot and took out a luggage cart and loaded all four suitcases on it himself.
He pushed it through the big station, under the huge old ceiling and the angel statue, past the departure board clicking over, all the way to the escalator for the Boston train.
Her train was at three-ten.
At the top of the escalator, the platform was cold and gray and full of people going back to work after the holidays.
The train was already in. Connor pushed the cart to the door of her car and lifted each suitcase up the steps and onto the luggage rack himself, one at a time.
It took four trips. Then he came back down onto the platform and stood in front of her.
“That’s all of them,” he said.
“Thank you.”
They stood there. A conductor walked past calling Boston, all aboard for Boston. A little boy went by with a balloon.
“Call your father when you get in,” Connor said. “He’ll worry. He’ll pretend he isn’t worrying.”
“I will.”
“And Luz.”
“I know.”
She waited. She didn’t know what she was waiting for. She stood on the platform in her old wool coat and the red scarf, and she looked at her husband, and she waited for him to say don’t go. Or I’ll call you. Or can I come see you. Or anything.
“Will you call?” she said. It came out before she could stop it.
Connor looked at her for a long moment.
“No,” he said gently. “I won’t call. If you want to talk to me, you call. Whenever you want. Or never.” He put his hands in the pockets of his peacoat. “It’s yours, Caroline. I meant that.”
The conductor called again.
Caroline stepped up onto the train. She turned around on the top step.
He did not reach for her. He did not kiss her. He stood on the cold platform with his hands in his pockets and looked up at her, and his face was very calm, and she could see exactly how much it cost him. He was letting her.
“Go be extraordinary,” he said.
The doors closed.
She found her seat by the window. She sat down. The train shuddered and moved, slowly, and the platform slid backward past the glass.
He was still standing there.
He didn’t wave. He didn’t walk alongside the train.
He stood exactly where she had left him, with his hands in the pockets of the old navy peacoat, and he watched the train go.
She pressed her hand against the cold window and watched him get smaller.
He did not move. She kept her eyes on the platform until the train came around the long curve out of the station and he was gone, and there was only the gray river, and the city, and the long tracks going north.