Fear Hope and Bread Pudding Page 3

  “Don’t go too crazy. We still have to get it all home.”

  Grace wasn’t due in until Christmas Eve night. Despite his continued insistence that she wouldn’t show, Cole went out of his way to prepare for her. He spent hours agonizing over her gifts, finally settling on a cashmere shawl and some shockingly expensive jewelry. I’d expected him to be nervous about seeing her, maybe even angry at my father for inviting her, but as I watched him pick out the necklace and bracelet and matching earrings on the evening of the twenty-third, I realized he was cautiously optimistic. He hid it well beneath a layer of disinterest, but it was there nonetheless. It was like waiting for word from Thomas, fear and hope equally weighted against each other, two sides of the same coin. I pictured it being flipped into the air, turning over and over as it traveled up to the peak of its arc, then falling back down. It spun in the void, alternately flashing bright anticipation and a dark warning of disappointment. Which side would land facing up was anybody’s guess.

  Cole waited for a phone call all through the morning of the twenty-fourth. As the seconds turned to minutes and the minutes to hours, his control began to slip. He fidgeted and went about the condo rearranging the Christmas decorations as if they somehow held the key. He checked the clock often. He was like a kid waiting in line to see Santa even though he was terrified of facing him.

  “She should have called to cancel by now,” he told me in a whisper as we cleared the table after dinner. I couldn’t tell which side of the coin was flashing at that moment.

  The ring of my father’s cell phone reached us from the other room. His words were muffled as he answered, but a minute later, he came into the kitchen to make his report. “Her plane has landed. She’s waiting for her luggage. She figures she’ll be here in about forty minutes.”

  “Oh,” Cole said. Nothing more. He sounded small and lost, disarmingly childlike. He began to wring his hands, looking around the room for something to occupy him. He had far too much nervous energy. Either he could give it rein and drive us all crazy, or I could try to distract him. Sex wasn’t going to work, partly because my dad was standing in the room with us, but mostly because it would take far more time than we had to get him to relax enough to enjoy it. Instead, I poured him a glass of wine.

  “Go sit down,” I said. “I’ll take care of the dishes.”

  When I was finished, I found Cole sitting on the couch with an open book in his hand. It didn’t take me long to realize he wasn’t actually reading it. He wasn’t turning pages. He was simply staring at the words. I suspected it was easier than staring at the clock. My dad was flipping through the channels on TV, undoubtedly searching for something in English.

  I sat next to Cole and put my arm around him. I tried to pull him toward me, to urge him to let go and relax against me, but he wasn’t having any of it. He stayed rigid against the arm of the couch, so I settled for rubbing my hand up his back.

  “Do you need anything?”

  “Stop making a fuss, Jonny. I’m fine.”

  An absolute lie, but I wasn’t surprised. I kept rubbing his back until he gave up the pretense of reading. He closed his eyes. His shoulders slumped. Nothing more than that, but it was the closest I’d get to surrender for now.

  “I haven’t seen her in six years,” he said at last.

  It probably felt like an eternity. I kissed his temple. I searched for something to say, but I had no idea what he needed to hear. That it would be fine? Except maybe it wouldn’t be. That I loved him no matter what? He knew that already.

  The doorbell rang. Cole glared at my dad. My dad stared back at him, a silent challenge in his eyes. It annoyed me, so I solved the problem by answering the door myself.

  I’d never seen so much as a picture of Grace. My mental image of her had been of the ultimate stereotypical rich bitch—tall and regal and stunning, platinum blonde hair and eyes that flashed disdain.

  I was wrong on every count.

  She was older than I expected. Cole and I were both closer to forty than thirty, and yet somehow, my mental image of Grace had always been of a woman not quite fifty. I realized with a shock that she was of course closer to my father’s age, probably almost sixty, although she still looked damn good for her age.

  My next surprise was how very much she resembled her son. Or how much he resembled her. They had the same caramel skin, the same cinnamon hair, the same slim build, and most striking of all, the exact same eyes—not only the color, or the shape, but also the same mingled sense of dread and excitement.

  “Hello,” she said. “You must be Jon.”

  She held her hand out to me, and I shook it. She was wearing soft leather gloves that probably did very little to stave off Germany’s frigid temperatures. I eyed the well-tailored coat she wore, and the jewelry that flashed at her ears. Her hair was pulled back into a tight knot, and I could see that her diamond earrings were too large to be tasteful. It was with a sense of vindication that I realized there was one thing I’d been right about—she cared a great deal about her appearance and about the luxuries her son’s money could buy.

  “I am,” I said. “It’s nice to finally meet you.” It was a platitude, and it came out with an edge, a bit too much of an emphasis on the word “finally.” Her smile faltered. I wasn’t sure if I felt guilty or smug.

  I stepped aside to allow her in. Her smile was broad and genuine as she shook my father’s hand, and then she turned to Cole.

  He stood completely still, his expression unreadable. She stared back with the same lack of visible emotion. Six years, and it was immediately clear that neither of them knew how to behave.

  She broke the silence first by stepping toward him, her arms out as if to hug him. “Cole, honey. I’m so happy to see you. It’s been too long.”

  He stopped her short by taking a step backward, away from her intended embrace. He took her hand instead. “Six years. I’m surprised you made it at all.”

  She blinked. I couldn’t tell if she was fighting tears or searching for a barb to throw back at him.

  “Never mind,” he said. He squeezed her hand and stepped forward to kiss her cheek. They were about the same height, albeit only because she was wearing low heels. “I’m sure you’re exhausted from the trip,” he said, letting her go. “You should sit down. George, will you get her bags? Jonny, take her coat. I’ll get you a glass of wine, Mother. I assume you’d prefer white?”

  “Whatever you have open is fine.” She perched on the edge of a chair as if she expected to have to run for the exit at any moment.

  “How was your flight?” my father asked.

  “Fine, thanks.” She smiled nervously at him. Cole had once hinted that she’d had plastic surgery, but her face didn’t have the stretched-plastic appearance of some celebrities. Nor did she have the overly plump lips I’d come to associate with collagen injections. If she’d had work done, it had been done tastefully and in moderation. “Has your stay been nice so far?”

  She asked the question of my father, but he looked pointedly at me. It was like when I was a kid and my Great Uncle Henry had visited and my father had scolded me to be nice and talk to him even though he smelled like mothballs and had underarm hair that was so long it often stuck out of his shirt sleeves. I couldn’t quite manage to smile, but I tried to force my face into a friendly expression. “It’s been good. The markets are wonderful. Have you seen them?”

  She shook her head, but her attention wasn’t on me. Cole had come back in from the kitchen with a glass of wine in his hand, and her eyes immediately locked on him. “No, although I’ve heard about them. Cole and his father came here for Christmas once, didn’t you?”

  He held the wine out to her. Not a glass of the red, which we’d been drinking. He’d opened a bottle of white for her. “We probably did.”

  She took the glass. Her gaze never left his face. “You must have been about twelve.”

  He turned away from her to join me on the couch. “I’m sure I don’t remember.”
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  Of course he remembered. How could he not? “Weren’t you with them?” I asked Grace.

  She tilted the wine to her lips, apparently debating her answer as she sipped. When she spoke, it wasn’t to me. She seemed to be addressing the glass in her hand. “I don’t believe I was invited, but Cole talked of nothing else the next time I saw him.”

  “It was nothing,” Cole said. “I barely even remember it.”

  “Of course,” she said.

  They both looked away, up to the corners of the rooms, as if they might find an answer there, or an escape. As if there might be directions as to how they should each behave. The air felt heavy and oppressive—not with anger, as I’d anticipated, but with the grief of unhealed wounds and unspoken apologies. It was painful to watch them. I turned to my father and saw my own bewilderment mirrored back at me.

  “There must be something on TV,” I said. Even if it was in German, at least we’d have something to focus on.

  I was already counting the days until this visit was over.

  Chapter Four

  CHRISTMAS morning, I left Cole sleeping in bed and went for a run. There were very few people on the streets so early. The market was empty and silent. The sky was overcast, the air damp and heavy and bitterly cold, making strange, glowing halos around every light. It was like looking at the world through a soft-focus lens. The bare trees seemed ethereal, somehow taunting me with the knowledge that nothing today would be what it should.

  The night before had been mercifully short. Grace had been overtaken by jet lag within the hour and had gone to bed. I’d dutifully followed my father to midnight mass at a local church, even though we couldn’t understand what was being said. By the time we’d come home, Cole had been sound asleep.

  I considered the coming day with trepidation. I wasn’t sure what to expect. I also wasn’t sure how I felt about Grace. She wasn’t the vile bitch I’d envisioned, but she was still the woman who hadn’t managed to attend our wedding or join us for Cole’s birthday, even when we were in the same city.

  By the time I got back to the condo, I was freezing, despite a long and brisk jog. I found Cole emerging from the shower. He smiled wickedly at me and tossed his towel aside.

  “Perfect timing, love.”

  I didn’t even manage to undress all the way. I lifted him onto the bathroom counter, pushed my jogging pants down while he fumbled with the lube, and then his legs were wrapped around my waist, his body tight and warm around my cock. The room was still filled with steam. His skin felt feverishly hot against mine, and the smell of strawberries was everywhere. We made love with the quiet furtiveness of youth, half giggling, half desperate, strangely aware of my father’s and his mother’s presence somewhere in the house. I wondered afterward if it would be the same way when we became parents.

  By the time I emerged from our room, having showered and put on real clothes, everybody else was up and dressed. My father and I were both wearing jeans, but Grace wore a wool pantsuit and had her hair pulled back again into its tight knot. She looked as though she was attending a social event rather than a comfortable holiday with family.

  Cole was planning an enormous meal for midday, so we had only pastries and coffee for breakfast. Grace, my father, and I sat around the kitchen table. Cole was already busy preparing food, although I suspected it had more to do with burning nervous energy than because anything needed to be done.

  “Come sit down with us,” Grace said to him when he started dicing up celery.

  “I’d rather finish this now.”

  She sighed. “I don’t know why you’re going to so much trouble. Certainly you could have had it catered, or paid somebody to do the cooking.”

  There was the slightest hitch to his movements, a half second of hesitation as his knife came down on the cutting board, but he didn’t speak. It was my father who answered Grace.

  “He likes to cook,” he said. It wasn’t a reprimand so much as a fond statement about his son-in-law. “Leave him alone.”

  Grace turned her head quickly away. It was a strange, jerking motion that was somehow familiar. “It just seems like an awful lot of trouble.”

  Eventually we wandered into the living room to open gifts. We took turns, opening them one at a time to make it last as long as we could. I wondered what it would be like in the future. Would we have a child to tear through the presents? Would we have a chance to assemble toys in the night and to stuff stockings? Cole tried hard to be bright and cheery, but I could see how it weighed on him. I saw his smile falter when he thought nobody was looking. Whether my father and Grace knew what was going through his head, I didn’t know, but they seemed to sense that something was wrong. There was an undeniably mournful undertone to the day.

  We were scheduled to be in Munich until the New Year, and apparently Cole hadn’t wanted us to be bored. Most of our presents from him consisted of tickets: a day trip to Salzburg, ski passes for both Alpspitze and Zugspitze, and tickets to a symphony. It had probably cost him a ridiculous amount of money, but I was relieved to find we wouldn’t be spending the entire week sitting in the condo with nothing to say.

  Cole’s mother smiled graciously when she opened her gifts, but I sensed she was disappointed. The things Cole had chosen for her were expensive but subtle, and I suspected they weren’t quite her taste. She’d brought candies for my father, and a pair of leather gloves much like the ones she’d been wearing when she arrived. There was also one large box from her addressed to both Cole and I.

  “I hope you like it,” she said with absolute sincerity. Judging by the glint of hope in her eyes, she’d put a great deal of thought into the gift. I handed it to Cole to open.

  Cole was never one to rip into a present, and this time was no different. He untied the ribbon and laid it aside. He carefully located the pieces of tape and then folded the paper properly out of the way. He took the lid off of the box.

  Then he froze, staring down into it. For the barest of seconds, he forgot to keep his mask in place. I saw what he really felt, and it was nothing but overwhelming sadness.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  He blinked and his moment of transparency was over. He managed to smile at his mother, although his expression was as unreadable as ever. “It’s lovely,” he said. “Thank you.”

  The hope in her eyes turned to disappointment. “You don’t like it?”

  “Don’t be silly, Mother. Of course I do.” He set the box aside and started to stand up. “I need to check on dinner—”

  Whatever it was, it had upset him so much that he was making an excuse to leave the room. I reached over and took his hand before he could bolt. He sat back down but refused to look at either me or his mother. Grace bit her lip and stared down at her lap. My father raised his eyebrows at me, mutely asking the obvious question. I let go of Cole and pulled the box toward me to see what was inside.

  It was full of baby things—a couple of blankets, a stuffed dog, several sleepers, and a pair of booties—all in gender-neutral colors, all undoubtedly of the highest quality. I glanced up at her in surprise. “How did you know?”

  “Your father told me.”

  I turned to my father for confirmation. He shrugged. “I didn’t think it was a secret.”

  No, it wasn’t a secret. Not necessarily. But it was a definite sore spot for Cole. Her intentions had been good, but she’d unknowingly hit him where he was most vulnerable. I reached out to take his hand again, but he pulled away. “It’s fine,” he said, more to me than to her. “Stop acting as if I’m going to fall apart at the drop of a hat. I’m not as fragile as you think.”

  He couldn’t bring himself to lash out at his mother, so he’d snapped at me instead. I accepted it, because anything else would make it harder for him. He stood up and went into the kitchen, leaving the rest of us in awkward silence. I still didn’t necessarily like Grace, but I felt compelled to try to explain. “I’m sorry,” I said to her. “The thing is—”

  “Don
’t worry about it.” She began gathering her gifts, packing them together into one box. It gave her an excuse to avoid meeting my eyes. “It’s nothing, really. It was just something I picked up in the airport anyway. It doesn’t matter a bit.”

  I looked at the gifts again. I was no expert on baby items, but I’d been in plenty of airports, and I was pretty sure nothing here had come from one. I glanced up at her again, but she was still doing her best not to make eye contact with either my father or me. She took her small bundle of gifts down the hall to her room.

  “Wow,” my dad said quietly. “That was uncomfortable.”

  “No kidding.” I couldn’t help but feel that the entire mess was his fault. He was the one who’d insisted on inviting her. He was the one who’d divulged our plans to adopt. “Why did you have to tell her?”

  He was unfazed by my anger. “It seemed like the thing to do. I suppose I should have warned her that it was such a touchy subject—”

  “A ‘touchy subject’?” My voice was getting louder, but I couldn’t help it. “Is that how you see it? You think he’s being unreasonable?”

  “Jon.” My father’s voice was steady, his gaze level on mine. “Is picking a fight with me really going to make this situation any better?”

  I sighed in frustration. “No.” Although admitting it only annoyed me more.

  “I didn’t think so.” He pointed toward the kitchen. “I think he needs you right now.”

  “I know.” But I wasn’t ready to deal with it yet. I put my head in my hands and counted to ten. I thought about Cole’s words. I’m not as fragile as you think. No, he wasn’t fragile, but his hold on hope was tenuous at the moment, and I knew how desperately he needed it. And no matter how he tried to pretend he could handle anything on his own, eventually he’d turn to me. Whenever that happened, I had to be ready.

  I took a deep breath, stood up, and headed for the kitchen.

  “Jon?” my dad said when I was halfway across the room.

  “Yeah?”

  “Thanks for the watch.”