“Why did you cheat on him?” Carver said.
Her face fell. She looked down, then sighed. “It was a very long time ago. I don’t have many excuses for that girl.”
“Thatgirlwas thirty.”
“And how wise do you feel, at thirty-six?” Nora retorted. “What did you get up to last night while your wife slept alone upstairs?”
Carver’s cheeks burned. “At least there aren’t any children involved.”
“So is that why you’ve put off having them?”
“You do not have the right to be the asshole here,” he snapped. “Not in this conversation. And you basically just said as much.”
“Fine, then go back to asking me questions. You baited me, honey, you know you did.”
“You don’t have to take the bait, but whatever. What did he think of me?”
Nora broke into a smile. “He thought you were wonderful,” she said.
A pleasant warm knot formed in Carver’s chest and crowded into his throat.
“He felt we were doing an excellent job with you,” she said. “Truthfully, I think he was almost relieved it happened the way it did, especially after his diagnosis became terminal. Even if he and Rachel had been able to conceive, he wouldn’t have been able to spend much time with that kid, with his schedule. I don’t think he wanted to be a dad as much as he felt a cultural obligation to reproduce. Your father, on the other hand, always really wanted to be a dad.”
Now Carver was irritated with his biological father for what sounded like a kind of deadbeatism. He had acted as an unwitting cuckoo bird and laid an egg in Doug’s nest, and Doug had loved but deeply resented his innocent cuckoo bird child.
“You sure this guy couldn’t have spent time with his kids?” Carver said. “He was able to spend time with you and Chip.”
“Oh, did Chip give you that story?” Nora said with some irritation. “Isaac barely saw him. Maybe once or twice in passing. I’m not some whoring boozehound.”
“Once or twice would be enough to remember. Kids are sensitive to things before they understand them.”
“Fine, it’s entirely possible that Chip remembers seeing him once. The reason I spent time with Isaac is we still lived in the city then, and your father was traveling for work a lot. Isaac worked in the neighborhood and lived down the street, and he started coming over — as a friend — just to keep me company. He was going through a divorce at the time, and I was alone with Chip for months on end. I’d work all day, come home and relieve the nanny, and parent him by myself.”
She was trying to get him to feel sympathy for her, but he refused to do so right now. He was starting to better understand why Chip was the way he was, though. “A lot of people go through that with no nanny and no affair,” he pointed out.
“Well, then they’re more noble and worthy than I am, Carver.”
“Am I like him? Do you see him in me?”
“Of course I do,” Nora said, to his relief. “I told you you’re both runners. You like to stay fit and well-groomed the way he did, you’re intense and driven and smart in the way he was. Like you, he could be almost monomaniacal. He was very steady, though — he never blew up. When he got angry it was a cold anger.”
“He kind of sounds like an asshole.”
“Oh, God, I don’t mean to give you that impression at all. He was sweet and generous and funny, everyone liked him. His colleagues said his bedside manner was lovely. He would never lose his temper with a patient, he just abhorred incompetence. We had that in common.”
This had gone on long enough. Carver was starting to feel a pang of disloyalty in his gut. “I want to go talk to Dad now,” he said.
“Please don’t make him talk to you about Isaac.”
“I won’t, Jesus. I just want to talk to him about how he feels.”
“Honey, you’ll just make him uncomfortable. He’s not good at those kinds of conversations.”
“Tough shit, I’m calling the shots tonight.” He clapped his hands to his thighs and stood.
Nora looked up at him, bleary-eyed. “So?” she said. “What are you thinking right now?”
“Don’t worry about it,” Carver said, and left the room.
