Freedom [248]
“What did I say?” he pleaded. “I thought we were having a nice birthday.”
“I’m tired. It was a tiring evening. I’ll see you in the morning.”
They parted without a kiss. On his home phone he found a message from Jessica, timed carefully while he was out to dinner, wishing him a happy birthday. “I’m sorry I haven’t returned your messages,” she said, “I’ve just been really busy and not sure what I wanted to say. But I was thinking of you today, and I hope you had a nice day. Maybe we can talk sometime, although I’m not sure when I’m going to have a chance.”
Click.
It was a relief, for the next week, to sleep by himself. To be in a room still full of Patty’s clothes and books and pictures, to learn to steel himself against her. During the daytime, there was plenty of deferred office work to do: land-management structures to be organized in Colombia and West Virginia, a media counteroffensive to be launched, fresh donors to be sought. Walter had even thought it might be possible to take a break from sex with Lalitha, but their daily propinquity made it not possible—they needed and needed. He did, however, repair to his own bed for sleep.
The night before they flew to West Virginia, he was packing his overnight bag and got a call from Joey, who reported that he’d decided not to blow the whistle on LBI and Kenny Bartles. “They’re disgusting,” he said. “But my friend Jonathan keeps saying I’d only be hurting myself if I went public. So I’m thinking I’ll just give the extra money away. It’ll spare me a lot of taxes at least. But I wanted to make sure you still think it’s OK.”
“It’s fine, Joey,” Walter said. “It’s fine with me. I know how ambitious you are, I know how hard it must be to give away all that money. That’s a lot to do right there.”
“Well, it’s not like I’m behind on the deal. I’m just not ahead. And now Connie can go back to school, so that’s good. I’m thinking of taking a year off to work and let her catch up with me.”
“That’s great. It’s great to see the two of you taking care of each other like that. Was there anything else?”
“Well, only that I saw Mom.”
Walter was still holding two neckties, a red one and a green one, that he’d been trying to choose between. The choice, he realized, was not particularly consequential. “You did?” he said, choosing the green one. “Where? In Alexandria?”
“No, in New York.”
“So she’s in New York.”
“Well, actually, Jersey City,” Joey said.
Walter’s chest tightened and stayed tightened.
“Yeah, Connie and I wanted to tell her in person. You know, about being married. And it wasn’t so bad actually. She was actually fairly nice to Connie. You know, still patronizing, and sort of fake, the way she kept laughing, but not mean. I guess she’s distracted with a lot of other things. Anyway, we thought it went pretty well. At least Connie thought so. I thought it was kind of ehhnh. But I wanted you to know she knows, so, I don’t know, if you ever talk to her, you don’t have to keep it secret anymore.”
Walter looked at his left hand, which had turned white and looked very bare without its wedding ring. “She’s staying with Richard,” he managed to say.
“Um, yeah, I guess, for the moment,” Joey said. “Was I not supposed to say that?”
“Was he there? When you were there?”
“Yeah, actually. He was. And it was fun for Connie, because she’s fairly into his music. He let her see his guitars and everything. I don’t know if I told you she’s thinking of learning guitar. She’s got a really pretty singing voice.”
Where exactly Walter had thought Patty was staying he couldn’t have said. With her friend Cathy Schmidt, with one of her other old teammates, maybe with Jessica, conceivably even with her parents. But having heard her proclaim so righteously that everything was over between her and Richard, he hadn’t imagined for one second that she might be in Jersey City.
“Dad?”
“What.”
“Well, I know it’s weird, OK? The whole thing is very weird. But you’ve got a girlfriend, too, right? So, like, that’s it, right? Things