The Last Time They Met_ A Novel - Anita Shreve [20]
—If you want to talk about your daughter, Linda said, understanding the risk of her invitation, I’d love to hear about her.
He sighed. Actually, it would be a relief. That’s one of the problems with not being with the mother of the child. There’s no one to bring her alive. There was Rich, but we’ve exhausted his memories.
Linda moved away, on the pretense of crossing her legs.
—But what’s to tell? Thomas seemed defeated before he’d even begun.
She looked at his long back, the shirt disappearing into the crescent of his belt. For a moment, she longed to run her nails along the cloth, up and down his spine. She knew for a certainty that he would groan with pleasure, unable to help himself. Possibly he would bend his head forward, an invitation to scratch the top of his backbone. Knowledge of another’s physical pleasure never went away.
Thomas put his leg down and reached into a back pocket. He pulled out a leather wallet, worn pale at the seams.
—This is Billie.
Linda took the picture from him and studied it. Dark curls spilled across a face. Navy irises, as large as marbles, lay cosseted between extravagant and glossy lashes. A pink mouth, neither smiling nor frowning (though the head was tilted warily or fetchingly — it was hard to tell), had perfect shape. The skin was luminous, a pink blush in the plump cheeks. Not credible if seen in a painting, but in this photograph one had to believe in it. How had the picture not burned a hole through the worn leather of its case?
She glanced at Thomas, reassessing him. That Thomas was in the girl could not be denied, even though the father’s beauty had been something quite different. Curiosity, bordering on a kind of jealousy, took hold of her as she tried to imagine the mother: Jean, her name was. Thomas’s first wife, Regina, a woman she herself had once known, had been large and voluptuous, heavy with her sensuality, but somehow not a threat. Never a threat.
Linda shook her head. That she should be jealous of a woman who had lost everything.
—That was taken in the backyard of our apartment in Cambridge. Thomas was seemingly unable to look at the picture himself, though its worn edges spoke of many viewings.
Thomas glanced over at her, then quickly away, as if it were she who now needed the privacy. The cheeseburgers arrived, monumental irrelevance. She handed the photograph back to Thomas.
—She was very bright, Thomas said. Well, all parents say that, don’t they. And maybe they’re right. Compared to us, I mean.
Linda’s appetite was gone. The cheeseburgers seemed obscene in their lakes of grease, soaking into the paper plates.
—She could be stubborn. Jesus, could she be stubborn. Thomas smiled at a memory he did not divulge. And oddly brave. She wouldn’t cry when hurt. Though she could certainly whine when she wanted something.
—They all do.
Thomas ate his cheeseburger, holding his tie as he did so. Well, he’d have to eat, wouldn’t he? Linda thought. Otherwise, he’d have starved to death years ago. He glanced at her untouched plate, but said nothing.
—She was a good little athlete, Thomas said. I used to take a plastic lawn chair and sit and watch her T-ball games. Most of the kids would be in the outfield picking dandelions. Some would just sit down. He laughed.
Linda smiled. I remember those. Someone would hit a ball to the outfield and all the kids would run to get it.
—They say it would have lasted less than a minute. The drowning. A child gulps in water more quickly than an adult. And it was always possible she was knocked unconscious. I’ve spent years praying for that. That it was a blow and not a drowning. Amazing, isn’t it? Hundreds of hours of prayer just to spare her that one minute.
Not amazing, Linda thought. She’d have done the same.
—It’s awful to think I’m letting go, he said. And I am. I don’t remember