She noticed there were some things on the bench—the one she had occupied the last time. A bag containing something and two Starbucks cups. It made her smile. He shouldn’t have known that Starbucks would make her happy.
She cleared her throat. He turned toward her with a smile, shoving a handful of dead leaves and buds in his pocket.
“Hi,” he said. “I brought you a mocha with whipped cream.”
Perfect! Of course. “That’s very thoughtful,” she said, just standing there, feeling awkward.
“And something else,” he said, lifting the bag.
“Oh, why did you do that? You shouldn’t be giving me things. You should sit and relax and enjoy the flowers. And you were tidying up.”
“I’m always grooming plants. Maybe it’s a nervous habit.” He pulled a handful of dried leaves and small sticks from his pocket, dumping them in the trash can. He handed her the bag. Inside was a book. Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience.
“This is great!” she said. “I actually went looking for this book! But I didn’t ask for it, just looked in the psychology section.”
“I had to find it at the used bookstore...”
“Did it change your life?”
“No, but it was enlightening.”
She sat down on the bench, looking through the book. He handed her a coffee and stood at the other end of the bench. “I guess it didn’t make your wife any happier,” she said.
“No,” he answered with a laugh. “She has always wanted something more. Something else. Listen, full disclosure, my wife and I are separated. We’ve been living apart for six months. We’re getting divorced.”
“Ah,” Lauren said. “And you’re getting back in the game.”
He looked stricken. “No! I mean, that has nothing to do with you! I’m not looking for anything. You’re a complete surprise. I might’ve done this even if—” He shook his head, looking embarrassed. “You just seem like a very nice person, that’s all. And you complimented my flowers. This divorce—it’s long overdue. It’s not our first separation. And no, I haven’t been known to mess around on the side. I have a couple of sons. Stepsons, actually. I wanted to keep their lives stable for as long as possible. They’re seventeen and twenty. I think they understand we should be divorced and that I’ll always have a home for them. If they don’t know they can count on me by now, they never will. I’m not going anyplace.”
“And their mother?” she asked.
“She loves them, of course,” he said. “Maybe because they’re boys, they’re closer to me. Or maybe it’s because their mother is hard to please.”
“Oh God,” she said. “It is not a good thing that we have this in common.”
“You’re separated?”
“Not yet,” she said, hesitantly. “I have a difficult situation. I’m not ready to talk about it. But can you tell me about yours? Unless it’s too...” She shrugged.
He settled in, sitting on the bench with his coffee. “Okay, I’ll give you the short version. I’ve been married twelve years. We lived together first. The boys were four and seven when we met. They have two different fathers. Disinterested fathers. Pamela wasn’t married to either of them. They hardly came around and when they did, they took only their son, not his brother. That just didn’t make any sense to me. They’re adults. Don’t they realize little boys would be upset by that? Feel left out? Have self-confidence issues? So if I knew one or the other was coming to get his son I tried to have something planned for the one left behind. It didn’t take much—just a little extra time to throw the ball around or play a video game. Just attention, that’s all.”
“That’s so...nice,” she said.
“No it’s not,” he said, almost irritably. “It’s what an adult should do. It just makes sense. Doesn’t it?”
“What did their mother say? About one son being left behind?”
“She was in conflict with their fathers over lots of things, so it was one more thing. But that didn’t matter to me. Mike and Drew were little kids. They had enough trouble, you know? The school was saying Drew had learning disabilities and they tried to pin ADHD on Mike because he was restless. He was restless because he was a boy with a lot of energy who was kind of bored with school. Pamela would get mad, which didn’t seem to resolve anything so I started going to some of these meetings at the school with her and we worked out programs for them. Pretty soon I was going to the meetings alone.” He stopped and ran a hand around the back of his neck. “On our good days, she was very grateful I was willing to take them on. On our bad days she accused me of thinking I was their father and she reminded me I had no authority.”
“I’m sorry,” Lauren said.
“Drew graduates with honors in a few weeks,” he said with a smile. “So much for his learning disability. Mike’s in college with a nice GPA. He’s got a great girlfriend, plays baseball, has lots of friends. Wants to be an architect,” he added with a proud but shy smile.
“When did you know?” she asked. He gave her a perplexed look. “When did you know the marriage wouldn’t last?”
“Almost right away,” he said. “Within a couple of years. But I wasn’t giving up. The guys... They might have two different fathers but they were going to have one stepfather. We did fine. We managed. I might still be managing but Pamela wanted to leave and I didn’t put up a fight. At all.” He laughed uncomfortably. “Then she wanted to come back and I said, no.”
“I guess you’re done,” Lauren said.
“My mother says I’m a peacekeeper. She didn’t consider it a compliment.”
“Shame on her,” Lauren said. “We could use a little more compromise and cooperation in this world!”
“Spoken like a true peacekeeper,” he said. “As military ordnance, a Peacekeeper is a land-based ICBM. A nuclear missile. Maybe all those people who take us for granted should look out.”
“Indeed,” she said, smiling in spite of herself.
Then they both burst into laughter.
“How long have you been friends with Sylvie Emerson?” Beau asked.
“I’m not so sure we’re really friends,” she said. “We know each other because of our husbands. I’m sure we like each other. We run into each other at fund-raisers and social events. We’re friendly, that’s all. My husband served on the foundation board of directors for a few years and got cozy with a lot of Andy’s friends. It’s not that he’s passionate about the cause. He’s passionate about being connected and about Andy’s billions and influence, though what he hopes to do with either is beyond me. That’s why I run into Sylvie a lot—Brad hangs close. He would deny that, by the way. I’ll be surprised if she calls me for that lunch date—she’s very busy. But let me tell you something. What I know of the Emersons is they’re both sincerely good, generous people. Sylvie has mentioned that of all the work their foundation is able to do, she’s partial to the scholarship fund. She and her husband might not have identical priorities, I’m not well acquainted with Andy, but Sylvie has told me more than once—we have to feed and educate the next generation, that’s the only way we leave the world better than we found it.”
“I wonder if they even realize how great a gift that is—giving an education. I don’t know about you, but my family wasn’t exactly fixed to send me to college.”
“Nor was mine,” she said. “I grew up poor.”
“What’s poor?” he asked, raising an eyebrow.
“I have a younger sister, Beth. Three years younger. When she was a baby our father went out for the proverbial pack of cigarettes and never came home. My mom worked two jobs the whole time we were growing up. My grandparents were alive and lived nearby, thank God. They helped. They watched us so she could work and probably chipped in when rent was late or the car broke down.”
He smiled. “I have a large extended family. The six of us—my mom, dad, brother, two sisters and I lived in an old garage my parents converted into a small house. My mom still lives in that house, but I don’t know how long that’s going to last—she’s getting a little feeble. My dad was a janitor, my mom served lunch at the junior high and cleaned houses. We got jobs as soon as we were old enough. But my folks, under-educated themselves, pushed us to get decent grades even though they couldn’t help us with homework. We did our best. We might’ve been competing with the cousins a little bit.”
“Nothing like a little healthy competition,” she said. “Did you know you were poor?”
“Sure, to some extent. But we had a big family on that land. A couple of aunts and uncles, grandparents, cousins. Sometimes it got crowded. But if the heat went out in winter there were plenty of people to keep warm with. Heat in summer—no relief.” He drank a little of his coffee. “We didn’t have any extras, but it wasn’t a bad way to grow up. Thing about it was we might’ve been poor but we were never poor alone.”
“Can I ask you a personal question?”
“You can always ask, Lauren...”
“How do you think your life’s going to change, getting divorced? Does this begin a whole new adventure of some kind?”
“Adventure?” he asked. “God no. My life doesn’t have to change. I love my life today. I have work that makes people happy, good friends, amazing family. I have enough predictability every day so that it’s not very often that something throws me off balance. I sleep well. My blood pressure is good. I don’t know if I could have a better life. I just don’t want it to change back.”
She was quiet for a long moment. Finally she said, “Life must have been difficult... Before...”