Freedom [247]
“Yep.”
“And this is not nagging, this is just a request for information: did you tell Mom you’re married?”
“Dad, I’m working on it,” Joey said with a tightening of his jaw. “Let me do this my way, OK?”
Walter had always liked Connie (had even, secretly, rather liked Connie’s mother, for how she’d flirted with him). She was wearing perilously high heels and heavy eye shadow for the occasion; she was still young enough to be trying to look much older. At La Chaumière, he observed with swelling heart how tenderly attentive Joey was to her, leaning over to read her menu with her and coordinate their selections, and how Connie, since Joey wasn’t of legal age, declined Walter’s offer of a cocktail and ordered a Diet Coke for herself. They had a tacit trusting way with each other, a way that reminded Walter of his and Patty’s way when they were very young, the way of a couple united as a front against the world; his eyes misted up at the sight of their wedding bands. Lalitha, ill at ease, trying to distance herself from the young people and align herself with a man nearly twice her age, ordered a martini and proceeded to fill the conversational vacuum with talk of Free Space and the world population crisis, to which Joey and Connie listened with the exquisite courtesy of a couple secure in their two-person world. Although Lalitha avoided proprietary references to Walter, he had no doubt that Joey knew that she was more than simply his assistant. As he drank his third beer of the evening, he became more and more ashamed of what he’d done and more and more grateful to Joey for being so cool about it. Nothing had enraged him more about Joey, over the years, than his shell of coolness; and now, how glad of it he was! His son had won that war, and he was glad of it.
“So Richard’s still working with you guys?” Joey said.
“Um, yes,” Lalitha said. “Yes, he’s being very helpful. In fact, he just told me the White Stripes might help us with our big event in August.”
Joey, as he frowned and considered this, took care not to look at Walter.
“We should go to that event,” Connie said to Joey. “Is it OK if we come?” she asked Walter.
“Of course it’s OK,” he said, forcing a smile. “Should be a lot of fun.”
“I like the White Stripes a lot,” she declared happily, in her subtextless way.
“I like you a lot,” Walter said. “I’m really glad you’re part of our family. I’m really glad you’re here tonight.”
“I’m happy to be here, too.”
Joey didn’t seem to mind this sentimental talk, but his thoughts were clearly elsewhere. On Richard, on his mother, on the family disaster that was unfolding. And there was nothing Walter could say to make it any easier for him.
“I can’t do it,” Walter told Lalitha when they’d returned, by themselves, to the mansion. “I can’t have that asshole involved anymore.”
“We already had this discussion,” she said, walking briskly down the corridor to the kitchen. “We already resolved this.”
“Well, we need to have it again,” he said, pursuing her.
“No, we don’t. Did you see how Connie’s face lit up when I mentioned the White Stripes? Who else can get us talent like that? We made our decision, it was a good one, and I really don’t need to hear how jealous you are of the person your wife had sex with. I’m tired, and I drank too much, and I need to go to bed now.”
“He was my best friend,” Walter murmured.
“I don’t care. I really don’t, Walter. I know you think I’m just another young person, but in fact I’m older than your children, I’m almost twenty-eight. I knew it was a mistake to fall in love with you. I knew you weren’t ready, and now I’m in love with you, and all you can still think about is her.”
“I think about you constantly. I depend on you so much.”
“You have sex with me because I want you and you can. But everybody’s world still revolves around your wife. What is so special about her, I will never understand. She spends her whole life upsetting other people. And I just need a little break from it, so I can get some sleep. So maybe