“Are we going to see Pops and Nanny soon?”
“Yes, baby, we’ll be in New Orleans for three or four days, then we’ll go to Miami. I don’t know if Pops will be there, but Nanny will.”
“Why isn’t Pops there so much?”
“I never told you this before, but I think you’re old enough now to understand. Pops and Nanny haven’t always been together. There was a time when I was a girl—more than ten years, in fact—when they were each married to another person.”
“Who were they married to?”
“Nanny’s husband was a man named Tim O’Malley. His family was in the trucking business in Chicago. Pops married a woman named Sally Price, and they lived in Kansas City. I used to go down on the train and visit them there. This was from when I was the age you are now until I went away to college.”
“Why did they marry other people?”
“In those days Pops was a traveling salesman for a shoe company, and Kansas City was part of his territory. Sally was a girlfriend of his for a couple of years before Pops and Nanny got divorced. When he decided to spend more time with Sally than with Nanny, my mother divorced him and she married O’Malley, who’d always liked her.”
“So O’Malley was like your other father.”
“In a way, but we were never close. I lived most of the time at boarding school, Our Lady of Angelic Desire, so I didn’t really see him so much. He died suddenly of a heart attack ten years to the day after he and your grandmother were married.”
“How did she and Pops get back together?”
“Pops had divorced Sally two years before O’Malley’s death and moved back to Illinois. He always loved my mother and would stand across the street sometimes to watch her come out of our house and get in her car and drive away. Pops wanted Nanny back, and after O’Malley was gone, she agreed to remarry him.”
“I bet you were happy.”
“No, I wasn’t particularly happy, because I didn’t completely understand why Pops had left in the first place. O’Malley was nothing special to me, and he wasn’t as smart or funny or handsome as my father, but my mother blamed Pops for their separation and I guess I took her side, right or wrong. I don’t feel the same way now. It’s difficult to know what really goes on between people in a marriage, and I don’t think anyone other than those two people can understand, including their children.”
“What about you and Dad?”
“What about us, Roy?”
“You’re divorced but you’re still friends, aren’t you?”
“Oh, yes, baby, your dad and I are very good friends. We’re better friends now than when we were married.”
“And you both love me.”
“Of course, baby. Both your dad and I would do anything for you.”
“It’s okay with me that you and Dad don’t live together, but sometimes I get afraid that I won’t see him anymore.”
“You can see your dad whenever you like. When we get to the hotel in New Orleans, we’ll call him, okay? I think he’s in Las Vegas now. Maybe he can come to see us before he goes back to Chicago.”
“Yeah, Mom, let’s call him. Remember the last time we were with him in New Orleans and he ate too many oysters and got so sick?”
“We’ll make sure he doesn’t eat oysters this time, don’t worry. Try to sleep a little now, baby. I’ll wake you up when we get there.”