For the next three days Mike buried himself in work. They finished with Margaret Van Buren’s addition and kitchen renovation on Monday and then moved to the next jobsite, the one in Newton—The Urn Lady. Dotty Conasta was retired and very old (“Seriously, when you babysat Moses, was he a bad kid?” Bill always asked her); borderline senile (she repeated the same stories about her late husband Stan over and over again); and clearly lonely (she followed them room to room). Normally having a customer hovering around them every second sent Mike over the edge; but listening to Dotty was a welcome distraction from the constant, grinding process of sifting and sorting thoughts about his mother, about Lou and Jess and the newest addition, this guy Jean Paul.
After they kicked off from work, he would go home with Bill and drown himself in the chaos of Bill’s house. Movement was important. Constant movement would exhaust him, so he helped Patty clear the table and clean the dishes, helped bathe the kids—a major project with the twins, who liked to get into splashing fights. He helped Paula with her homework and invited her on walks with the dog. They talked about nonsense stuff really—why TV shows totally sucked now, why boys were so confusing, why tennis rocked. At night he’d head downstairs to Bill’s basement office and go over estimates or watch ESPN, MTV, whatever Bill wanted to watch, Mike forcing himself to stay up as long as possible before heading upstairs to sleep. Bill knew what was going on and didn’t ask any questions.
Then Nancy Childs called.
“I have a lead but my French is a little rusty,” she said, and then, as if reading his mind, added, “Yes, some of us Revere girls actually took a foreign language other than Spanish.”
“What’d you find out?”
“Let me get everything together first and then I’ll tell you. The reason I’m calling is that I was thinking of getting Sam involved in this since she speaks fluent frog. You okay with that?”
He was. Sam knew everything anyway.
It was during these stretches of quiet, usually when he was in bed, that he would start to wonder exactly what Nancy had uncovered. And the stuff about Jess was chewing its way through him. The pictures floated through his thoughts from one moment to the next, and sometimes he would pick up the phone and start dialing Jess’s number and then hang up, usually before a first ring. Did he want the truth? Or was he looking for a whipping post? He wasn’t sure.
Friday afternoon came and Mike made a promise to himself that he was going to enjoy the evening with Sam. No talk of Lou or Jess, none of it.
He owned one suit, black, perfect for both weddings and funerals. After he finished dressing, he came downstairs into Bill’s kitchen and saw the twins sitting at the table, the two of them dressed in shirts and shorts and slurping grape popsicles that dripped over their hands and plates.
Bill whistled. “Looking good, Louis.”
“Feeling good,Todd.”
The phone rang. “Slap a Zima in your hand and you’re good to go,” Bill said as he jogged down the hallway to retrieve the cordless from the family room.
Grace popped the popsicle out of her mouth. Her lips and tongue were purple.
“Are you getting married?”
“No,” Mike said. “I’m just going out to eat.”
“In a suit?”
“It’s a very nice restaurant.”
“Daddy doesn’t wear suits to restaurants.”
“This is true.”
“Mommy said Daddy’s got bad table manners.”
“That is very true.”
“Is Daddy going with you?”
“No, I’m going with a friend of mine.”
“A girl?”
Mike nodded as he searched for his car keys in the mess of newspapers and coloring books piled high on top of the island table.
Grace said, “Your tie is ugly.”
“You think?”
“Daddy has a better one. With Snoopy on it. Girls like Snoopy.” Grace turned to Emma:“It’s in Daddy’s closet. Go get it.”
This time, Emma did what she was asked and scurried off.
“You should bring her flowers,” Grace said. “Girls like flowers. Mommy likes flowers but says Daddy never brings her enough and when he does they’re the wrong kind.”
Mike found his keys. “Hey sweets?”
“Yes Uncle Michael?”
“Don’t ever change.” Smiling, he planted a kiss on her forehead.
Grace smiled back. “Girls like it when you share popsicles too.”
Traffic on Route 1 South was a mess. Mike forgot this was late Friday afternoon—rush hour—and just as many people were anxious to leave the city as they were to get in. He sat in his truck, bumper to bumper with everyone else, inching forward toward the tolls for the Tobin Bridge.
A plane had taken off, and as Mike watched it climb in the air above the skyscrapers of downtown Boston, he thought of Jess again, thought about how she, like his mother, had packed up her life and flown away to leave their problems. Only that wasn’t true. You never really left your problems; you just moved them to another place. Fly halfway around the world and you were still who you were. Yet it amazed him how many people packed up and left everything they knew, tried rooting themselves in some new location, thinking they would be someone other than themselves. Like Jess with her clothes. Maybe dressing the part was the key. And buy yourself some distance. And time. Yes. Time and distance could make you forget anything, even a son or a daughter. Just ask my mother, Mike thought. Just ask my ex-wife.
Dinner was a three-hour production that ended with a bill that cost more than his monthly truck payment. When they stepped back outside, it was dark, the evening air cool and charged with an almost electrical current of excitement, the pure joy that comes from being able to be outside after enduring another horrendous New England winter.
“You really should have let me split the bill with you,” Sam said as she wrapped around her shoulders some piece of fabric that was a cross between a scarf and a cape. She wore black high-heels and a stunning black dress that had a slit that ran all the way up her right thigh.
“I said I’d take you out anyplace you wanted. That was the deal.”
“I know, but to get you all dressed up—and to a gourmet restaurant, no less. Michael Sullivan, you positively shocked me.”
“I’m trying to branch out as I approach middle age.”
“So are you ready to go dancing?”
Mike scratched the corner of his mouth.
“The look on your face is priceless,” Sam said. “I was just teasing. I couldn’t go dancing in these shoes. They’re killing me.”
“Let’s take a cab.”
“And waste a night like this? No way.”
She led him down Newbury Street, Boston’s equivalent of Rodeo Drive. It was after nine and the street was jammed with traffic, the sidewalks crowded with young people who looked very serious, acting like they were on their way to important places. Watching some of these couples got him to thinking of the pictures of Jean Paul and his mother—his new and improved mother in the pictures.
“You remember that time we went to Marty’s Crab?” Sam said.
Mike smiled. It took two hours to drive to this shack in the middle of some neighborhood in Ogunquit, Maine. To date, it was the best seafood he had ever had.
“We had some great times,” Sam said.
“That we did. That we did.”
“So why’d it end?” Sam smiling even after she said it.
Mike shoved his hands in his pockets, jingling his change and car keys as he looked down the street.
“I’m just curious,” Sam said. “I promise I won’t beat you up.”
“You promise?”
“Pinkie swear.”
“Well, if it’s a pinkie swear.” His eyes bounced from the ever-present lights of downtown Boston to the traffic wrapping its way around the Public Garden on Arlington. “The truth,” he said, “was that I was scared. You were going to college and onto greater things, and I was going back to what was familiar and safe. What can I say? I was nineteen and stupid.”
They crossed the street and entered the Public Garden, walking past the bronze statue of Paul Revere riding his horse.
Sam said, “How are you doing with everything that happened this week? You didn’t say much at dinner.”
“I’m to the point where I’m sick of hearing myself talk.”
“Talking’s good.”
“Not when you’re dumping your problems all over the other person. It’s nice to hear someone else talk about their life for a change.”
“You’re not dumping on me, and, for the record, the other night when you came by? I was glad.”
They walked across the bridge overlooking the lagoon. Below, on the dock where the swan boats were chained up, a little girl was pointing to the real swans and saying something to her father. Mike felt his stomach clench, his breath hitching in his throat.
“Nancy called me while I was stuck in traffic,” he said. “The address that was on the letter belongs to a café in Paris, only my mother never worked there—at least, not under the name Mary Sullivan. Nancy said you were the one who called and spoke to the owner.”
Sam nodded. So she knew about the café having been owned and operated by the same family for two generations, the family having also branched out and built two very successful restaurants in the same area, none of which Mary Sullivan had worked in—at least under the name Mary Sullivan. It was possible that she was going by another name when she arrived in Paris,maybe even had legally changed it for fear of Lou finding her.
Mike had now caught his mother in two lies: about paying for the tuition at St. Stephen’s and working at the café.
Mike said, “What else do you know?”
“Just the restaurant stuff.”
Mike took a moment and sorted through what Nancy had told him.
“Jean Paul Latiere is still alive. He’s still the owner and operator of his father’s paper company, Latiere Paper. He’s fifty-eight, same age as my mother, and he still lives on the island of—I forget the name.”
“Île St-Louis.”
“That’s it. Jean Paul’s been married only once. He married a woman named Margot Paradis about two years before my mother married Lou. Then Jean Paul divorced Paradis in November of 1977—that’s about a year after my mother moved there. He never remarried. No kids either.”
Sam didn’t say anything, already knowing of Lou’s comment about Jean Paul not wanting children.
“This guy seems to be constantly on the move,” Mike continued. “He has multiple phone numbers. Nancy finally managed to get him on the phone by pretending to be the vice president of some big-name paper company here in the U.S. You mind if I smoke?”
“Just as long as you share.”
“You smoke?”
“I quit four years ago, but I like to dabble every now and then.”
Mike pulled out his pack, lit hers first and then his.
“So back to Nancy,” he said after a moment. “She didn’t ask him anything about Mary Sullivan. She thought I might want to, you know, talk to Jean Paul directly myself. He speaks very good English.”
They walked past the bronze ducks that Sarah thought came alive at night and stopped at the intersection of Beacon Street and Charles, Sam grabbing his arm as they darted across the street and then releasing it when they reached the sidewalk.
Sam said, “Are you thinking of calling him?”
“Jean Paul?”
Sam nodded.
“I’ve got to do something else first.”
“Jess,” Sam said.
“I thought I could walk away from it.”
“It’s a hard thing to walk away from.” Sam paused, and then said, “When are you going?”
“Tomorrow morning. I called Jess and asked her if she was going to be around.”
“What did she say when you told her you were coming out to New York?”
“I told her I was coming out there for a couple of days with this friend of mine, Bam-Bam, and wanted to get together and talk. We’re meeting for lunch.”
Sam nodded, seemed to be considering a thought.
“You need anything, you call.”
“I will.” Mike saw the sign for Mt. Vernon, turned right and headed up her street. He got about six steps before Sam called for him.
“Where are you going?” She stood at the corner, in the shadows next to the liquor store.
“I thought I was walking you home.”
“Grandpa, it’s nine-thirty. Are you tired—or are you afraid of breaking curfew at the nursing home?”
“They let us stay out till eleven these days. And no, I’m not tired.”
Mike walked up to her, holding her eyes in his own for a moment. Those old feelings he had for her were still there—dented and bruised and maybe a little different from all this time apart, but they were definitely still there. And Sam knew it too. He could tell by the way she stared back at him now.
“Sam said,—You want to go home?”
“Not really. You?”
“Not really.”
“Any ideas? And please, no dancing.”
“I was thinking of cannolis.”
“I haven’t had a good cannoli in a long time.”
“Then you’re in luck. I know this great spot in the North End. You in?”
“I’m in.”
They walked down Charles Street, Sam slipping her arm through his.