Carole sat on the piano bench beside her son Chris, a study in genetic diversity. She was petite, shapely, with green eyes and blond hair. He is tall, lanky, with blue eyes and black hair—a bobcat to a great heron. Chad, the lion in this menagerie, blond, built of a linebacker (he was), roared in and told Carole he had invited a couple to dinner.
“Forty-five minutes is the warning I get?”
“I called, you were on the phone, I texted, ignored, obviously. I bought steaks and warned them it was impromptu.”
“Tell me about them. Who am I impressing? Or not.”
“The woman I’m negotiating the law firm merger with and her husband. I had planned on Bavette’s Bar and Boeuf, but her husband is with her this time. So, trying to be gracious, I…”
“Bought steaks.”
Chad shrugged.
“You forget, I’ve met this woman. Her name is Diane O’Brien. She was here three months ago. What about him?”
“And she talks about how much she enjoyed it.” Chad put his arms around Carole. She shrank away. “We want to wrap up the merger on this visit.”
“A spur-of-the-moment dinner will make a difference?”
“I’m sure it will.”
“Her husband?”
“His name is David, and he’s in the insurance business.”
An hour later, Diane O’Brien, a woman with a mane of red hair, walked in with David, a man classically tall, dark, and handsome, with light blue eyes. When introduced, Carole smiled, “Nice to meet you, Daniel… sorry, David.” She blushed.
David took her hand and cushioned it for a moment. “How lovely to meet you. Diane told me how much she enjoyed spending time with you.”
Gracious as always, thought Carole.
With his back to their spouses, he released her hand with a slight caress and a wink. A flirt, still.
“And I brought some wine I thought you might enjoy.” The exact wine, Chateaux Gloria, they drank at their last dinner. Carole thought she would drop the bottle.
Carole and David were both in the catastrophic insurance business. Curiously, to their partners, they’d never met, they said.
“You must have. How many people are there in that field? Those conferences you used to go to, Carole?” Chad said.
Carole and David feigned ignorance. “We must cover different stuff.” Carole turned to David, “What line are you in?”
“Water, whatever nasty things water can do.”
“That explains it. I do fire—forests, houses, tall buildings.”
Diane spread her arms, “So cozy, folks tonight we feature fire and water for your entertainment.”
When a gangly young boy loped in from the kitchen, Carole said, “Meet our son Chris, home from school, and the creator of tonight’s vanilla yoghurt dessert.”
At dinner, Diane sat next to Chris. “I never asked your father, but now that I’m at the source . . .” She wanted to know where he was going to school, Juilliard, hard to get into, what he was studying, piano, the audition was long and grueling, by heart, Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, and Chopin sonatas, did he like New York City, the only place to be.
“Will you play something for us after dinner?”
Chris bowed.
“It’s not clear where his genius comes from,” Chad said. “He has it, no doubt. No one in our families, as far back as we can trace . . .”
Carole threw a glance at Chad, then cut in to ask Diane and David about their daughters.
“Elizabeth, a psychologist at Washington University, has a book coming out in the fall on how good people turn evil. Her sister, a biologist, just moved and now lives nearby. That’s why I came to Chicago with Diane this trip,” David said.
When they got up from the table, Chad knocked his wine glass over. “Go ahead, I’ll clean up, go listen to Chris.” Chad had dropped a pan in the kitchen earlier, and now the glass. She wondered why he was so clumsy tonight.
* * *
Chad deliberately had next-to-nothing in his glass when he toppled it. He’d catch hell if he stained Carole’s good tablecloth. He overheard Chris playing a waltz. He knew the waltz but not by whom, but recognised Scott Joplin. Chad carefully wrapped his glass, David’s and Chris’ in separate paper towels and slipped them in the back of the tool drawer. By the time Chris got to Rocket Man, Chad had joined the group.
* * *
As Carole tucked the blanket around her, Chad said, “Did you see Chris and David?”
“What about them?”
“They resemble one another so much that they could be related. Long, narrow nose, black hair, and that little head movement.”
“Little head movement?”
“You didn’t notice, while Chris was playing? I caught the end of it.”
“No.”
“Come on, Carole, tell me you didn’t see something?”
“Okay, I did. They look alike. I always thought, and told you, if you’d remember, Chris’ dark hair from is my black Irish ancestors and my eyes are green, his are blue, and green and blue are from the same gene pool, okay? Head movements, head shoovements, they were moving to the music. If you had any rhythm . . .”
“So, you agree, thank you.”
“Now, can we go to sleep?” Carole yawned. “I’m testifying at a hearing first thing in the morning. Those wildfires in California.”
Carole did not go to sleep. She knew what Chad was talking about. Based on appearance, David and Chris could be father and son. She lay in bed and tried to recall each encounter with David over those six months 20 years ago —where, how, and when it might have happened. Her attempt at a detailed recollection was sidetracked by memories of his hands and his lips on her body. David Notte had been an exciting lover.
* * *
Chad had not slept well either, though he lay very still. He thought he saw an opportunity and wanted to be very careful. Before his meeting with Diane the next morning, Chad visited a firm he used in his work as defense attorney. Diane walked into his conference room on the 20th floor of the Sherman Building on West Wacker to iron out the details of the merger. “Thanks for the evening. Your son’s concert was a lovely way to end it. You must be terribly proud. How old is he?”
“Nineteen. He started when he was four.”
“Must be a thrill to have such talent in the family.”
“It is weird how much he resembles your husband.”
“I think David is handsome, as is Chris, other than both having black hair and blue eyes, I don’t know.”
“From across the room, I could swear they were related.”
Diane gave him a what-are-you-talking-about look.
“You’re right,” Chad said, “What am I thinking?” To change the subject and bring himself down, he said, “Can I get you some coffee?”
“No. Thanks.”
“Okay, to business, managing partner position.”
They worked through different scenarios over the course of an hour or so and decided to rotate the position. Diane would take the first two years.
* * *
Carole might have done nothing about David, allowed the past fancy to be just that, but Chad had been absent, preoccupied, a snoring log in bed the last year. And the memories as she tried to go to sleep the previous evening left her, “unsettled” might be the word. More than “unsettled,” “hungry” would be more apt. She had gone a year without love and knew a good lover was nearby. She recalled that Diane had stayed at Palmer House, änd so she called David there. “You’re looking very sexy for a man of sixty.”
“You crossed your legs during Chris’s concert, and I nearly leapt over the piano. We did well, considering,” he said.
“Chad is suspicious. Your resemblance to Chris. You didn’t see it?”
“I wasn’t looking at him.”
“Chad noticed you have some of the same gestures—the way you cock your head when you’re listening to someone, the way you tug your right ear. And, Chris looks more like you than Chad.”
“What are you telling me?”
“That night on the beach in Corpus was, if I recall, a bit unplanned.”
“Well, Chris and I won’t be side by side again for comparison. To switch the subject, what’s the possibility of seeing you?”
Carole laughed, “Nothing’s impossible.”
“In hope, I booked a room at the Whitehall. If I’ve calculated right, you’d be well wide of Chad’s office on the way.”
“You were always a good planner in strange cities.”
For Carole, their afternoon passed in warm remembrance of the first time with David at a convention in New Orleans. They sat next to one another at the session on hurricanes. Bored by the Saffir-Simpson Wind Scale, the Enhanced Fujita Scale and TRMM microwave imagers, they left for a drink. Dinner at Antoine’s followed. She was shy, seven years younger. He was outgoing, jokey, and found an appreciative audience. Back at the hotel, she said, “That was fun. Tomorrow night? A jazz club?”
They found one another the next morning at the coffee and beignet station, before sitting through the sessions on earthquakes, volcanoes, epidemics, floods, and fires, passing notes and whispering quips. They skipped the afternoon sessions and took a paddle boat up the river to a plantation, sitting on the front porch of a mansion, drinking Pimm’s Cups. That evening, David found a small out-of-the-way jazz club, promised by the concierge to be free of out-of-towners.
It happened naturally, they thought, even later, after dinner, while listening to the quartet, their hands touched and didn’t let go. And when they danced, their bodies’ magnets pulled them together and separated with difficulty when the music ended.
Back at the hotel, they went to their rooms. Twenty minutes later, he knocked at her door. The following two nights passed quickly. Though older, David was less experienced than Carole. His delight added zest to hers.
Once every couple of months, they managed to have business in the same city and stay at the same hotel. What did Carole and David find they hadn’t known? A lightness, a playfulness, skin chemistry, a freedom to experiment. After all, this was not real, this was not going to last, nothing was going to come of it. There was never a suggestion, inkling, whisper that they’d leave their husband and wife. They felt like innocents at play. It didn’t cross their minds that other people were involved. It ended when she moved into management, Chris arrived, and her life was filled with a baby, a new job, and Chad became the bright new litigation partner in his firm. Carole and Chad were well into six figures by their early 30s.
* * *
Carole called David the next morning. “DNA reared its ugly head last night. Chris came home full of enthusiasm for 23 and me. Chad jumped on board. No way to avoid it, so I agreed.”
“You have a warped sense of humor.”
“I’m serious.”
“Why is Chris so big on it?” David asked.
“One of his classmates texted him. Blonde as Chris is dark, turned out his friend is one-third Incan. He’s going to Cusco for the summer.” Carole explained how she hijacked the operation by scaring Chad and Chris about privacy. “I control the link with 23andMe.”
“And what are you doing today?” David asked.
Carole thought for a moment. Yesterday afternoon was wonderful. She had nearly forgotten what it was like to be loved so physically. “Okay, but we have to make it short today.”
“We can try.”
David opened the door to the hotel room for Carole. Two hours later, they took the elevator to the lobby to put her in a cab. The elevator doors opened with David and Carole arm-in-arm, her head on his shoulder. Chris was in the lobby bar sipping a soda. Abruptly, they tried to separate. Their choreography was unpracticed.
“Hi, Mom. Hi, Mr. Notte.”
The fumble for seats in a booth ended up with David and Carole on one side and Chris on the other. Chris looked at his mother, then at David, then back at his mother. “The other night, I saw the way you guys acted toward one another. Mom’s never awkward with people. My gut told me Mom knew you and was uncomfortable seeing you.”
“You’re right, Chris, we knew one another some 20 years ago.”
“The way you came out of the elevator. It seems like maybe it was more than knew?”
“Well, maybe.”
“And the other night, I heard Mom and Dad arguing about Mr. Notte and me. So, I had a hunch.”
Carole told Chris that she and David met at a business conference about the time they both were going through rough patches in their marriages. They found sympathetic shoulders. Over a period of months, they met a few more times. But until dinner the other night, they hadn’t seen one another or talked for 20 years.
Chris sat back. He put his hands over his face for a long minute, shook his head, like wind sweeping a fog, sat up, and leaned toward David. “Are you my real father?”
David looked at Carole, then at Chris. “No, Chris, I am not, I am sure of it.”
“I had to ask.”
“We look alike, and you don’t look like your folks, I understand.”
“I’ve got to run now, nice to see you again, I have a call with my recital group.” Chris knocked over the chair. “See you later, Mom.” Then, he shakily went out the door.
David looked at Carole, “I’m not sure, but he has to be.”
“Thank you, David, for that gift and for the last two days.”
“A memory to treasure.” “Un ricordo da custodire.”
* * *
In the afternoon, David and Diane headed out to visit their daughter Sarah in Elmhurst. Diane said she had settled the merger issues with Chad. Announcement tomorrow morning. She and David will be home in Cleveland in the evening.
They found Sarah in a row of brick townhouses bordering a creek. She opened the door and was crushed by her father. She, like all of David’s children, was tall, dark and blue-eyed. “And this is my roommate, Laurie Walsh.”
“Congratulations, how soon and who’s the lucky man?”
“He’s older, late 40s, gentle, kind, takes care of me. He insists I take a year off after the baby is born.”
“Where did you find this guy?”
“A fluke really,” Laurie said. “The first night here, I stopped in the hotel bar. The only empty stool was next to him. We started talking. It rocketed from there.”
“What does he do?” Diane asked.
“He’s a hotshot lawyer in the city, in court all the time, a criminal defence lawyer. Apparently, he’s one of the best and cleverest, in a good sense, I mean.”
“Does he have a name? I might know him,” Diane said.
“Chad Rossiter.”
“No! Chad Rossiter? You’re not serious? We had dinner with Chad two nights ago.”Diane jumped up. “I’ve got to make a call.” She ran into the kitchen.
* * *
“Chad, this is Diane. The merger is off.”
“What?”
“Off. Non-disclosure of material facts. An impending divorce by the senior partner will impact your firm’s equity and impair the performance of the litigation team.”
“Who have you been talking to?”
“A very credible source. Laurie Walsh, my daughter’s roommate.”
“True, Laurie and I will be married soon. Not true there will be an impact on the firm’s equity, or on the performance of the litigation team. The divorce will not be contested.”
“And why not?”
“I have proof Chris is not my son.”
“Something recent?”
“No, Laurie and I were waiting until this merger was settled so we could take a nice honeymoon.” Chad was not going to hint to Diane about the DNA he obtained off the glasses at dinner only two nights earlier. He clearly did not want the Managing Partner in the newly merged firm to be facing a troubled marriage.
“Congratulations on the marriage and the baby.”
“Thank you, and Diane, only Carole will know about Chris.”
“I understand.”
* * *
That morning, Carole stayed in the hotel bar when David left to see his daughter. She ordered a martini. Sitting in the booth, she thought about 20 years earlier, the afternoons she and David skipped conference sessions and roamed local art galleries, the check-in calls with Chad, the dinners with David, the hotel rooms with David, the playfulness of their lovemaking, the innocence of it, the ease of it.
She thought about Chris and a sense of emptiness crept into her. Chris at ten, when Chad made it clear that his son shared neither his aggressiveness nor did he remotely resemble him. She cocooned Chris at boarding school and summer music camps, at the cost of not seeing him grow from a child to a young man. And it will probably be the same in the future. He’ll go back to Juilliard and his music will shield him. And she won’t know him.
But now that the law firm merger discussions were over, she’ll have Chad back. She’ll have to work at it. Maybe a vacation to the Highlands of Scotland this summer will be the start of their future together, recreating the past when they hiked the Andes and the Alps. The two of them.
