“Ma—Robin!” I said.
“Well, he was.”
Albert chuckled. “Robin isn’t wrong. Tippi Hedren might agree with her. But of course you can be a real jerk and still make great art.”
“Sure. But I think it creeps into your art. Art is intentionally showing your ass.” Mary fiddled with the built-in ashtray, sticking her finger in it from the underside. “If you’ve got poison in you, the art will show it, eventually.”
There was a pause as Albert pursed his lips, considering this. Finally he said, “Well, I suppose every generation must hate the previous generation. It’s a measure of growth.”
She smacked him gently on the arm. “Aw, Albert, we don’t hate you! We just want you to tip your waitresses nicer.”
The owner reappeared, followed by the waitress from before, bearing mustard-yellow plates with salmon covered in sliced lemons and parsley for Albert and Mary, and a Cobb salad for me.
“You know,” Albert said, pointing his fork at Mary, “you remind me of your father.”
I made a little noise, like a sneeze. Mary kicked me harshly under the table and I exhaled in surprise.
“Thank you,” she said at the same time. “Wow, that really means a lot. Is it my chin? I feel like he had a really distinctive chin.”
Albert pulled his fork out of his mouth; I heard the tines against his teeth. “Not that. Your sense of humor. He was a funny man.”
“No, he wasn’t,” I said, jerking my chair back several inches to avoid Mary’s shoe. Robbed of a target, she was forced by momentum down into her seat, as if several vertebrae had liquefied. Then she had to drag herself back up again, pretending nonchalance.
“You don’t think so?” Albert squinted at me. “I guess not so much when he was sick. But before that, he was like Robin. Quick, you know.”
“What a compliment,” Mary said, adjusting the top of her dress, which had lost its grip during her abrupt descent into her chair. “I really appreciate hearing that from someone who knew him so well.”
“He wasn’t like that,” I said. “Not with us. Not at home.”
Mary glared at me; Albert patted his mouth with a napkin. “I’m sorry to hear that,” Albert said at last. “It’s too bad you only had so many years with him when he was well. I knew him for almost thirty years. We were very good friends, your dad and I.”
I didn’t reply.
“Tell me more about him,” Mary said, leaning toward Albert. “How did you meet him?”
“How did I meet him?” He took a sip of his wine and coughed. “Actually, we were coworkers. At Hogarth and Wyeth.”
“When was that?”
“The late seventies, I think. I hated him at first—he stole my girl.”
“He didn’t!”
Albert shook his head. “Of course he did. You knew him. He was competitive. I was dating one of the secretaries. A nice girl—a little meek, I thought. Well, not too meek, because she two-timed us for a while. All at the same office! We were in meetings together and we didn’t know about it. She let slip to him eventually, or he got it out of her that she was seeing other men, and she came to me one evening and said, ‘Warren told me that I must choose between you two, and I’m afraid our time together has come to an end.’ So formal. So I didn’t like him very much for a little while. But I figured I couldn’t hold a grudge, because the guy married her. I certainly hadn’t had any intention of marrying her. I thought, Good on her!”
“Wait, when did he marry her?” Mary asked. “That wasn’t how he met Mom.”
“No, this was Yvonne. They were together for five years or so, and then they got divorced. I don’t know what it was all about, exactly. He never liked to talk of it. But my personal thinking is that it was about you two.”
“But we didn’t exist,” I said.
Albert took another bite of fish and said through it, “He wanted children. I think that’s part of why he married Yvonne. She was very young when they married, twenty-one or so. But they never had any. I didn’t ask, but…” He shrugged. “Five years seems about right. You can’t try much harder than that.”
I stared at my plate. I hadn’t eaten any of my salad.
I felt Mary’s eyes on me. “Did you know?” she asked. “About Yvonne?”
I shook my head.
I’d spent years with him in that house as he died. I was the only person who’d stuck around—the only one who’d showed up for him. Illness had given us time together that we’d never had before, long stretches of boredom that invited conversation. One night Rocky was on TV. He’d muted it, looked over at me—said, I should have married someone like you, Leslie. I was in love with your mother, but she was too fragile. I should have seen that. Should’ve looked for someone with a spine.
But he’d looked before. It wasn’t just Christine who had failed him. Yvonne had failed too.
Why hadn’t he told me that?
Albert and Mary had gone back to eating while I’d been lost in thought. They were almost done, wearing identical expressions of polite regret: how sad your father never told you, but you can’t change the past, what’s done is done, etc. I picked up my wineglass and set it back down again.
“Why didn’t he just leave everything to me?” I felt weightless again, as I had this morning. My ears ached.
Mary swallowed quickly and said, “Let’s talk about that some other time. Leslie, will you come to the bathroom with me?”
Albert wouldn’t look at me.
“I was the one who was there. She ran away.” I watched the top of his head as he examined the edge of the table. “Why would he put this clause in there, that we had to be here together to receive the money? Why wouldn’t he just leave it all to me?”
Albert sighed and put down his fork. “It’s not an unusual situation for a decedent to leave his estate in the hands of his attorney, rather than burden a family member with the role of executor. You have a baby, a full-time job…it was a good thing he did, not to put this all on your shoulders.”
“That’s not what I asked.” My tongue felt swollen. “Why did we both have to be here? Why not just mail her the check and be done with it?”
Mary put her hand over mine. I felt her fingernails dig into my palm. “He was sick, Leslie.”
“I know he was sick.” I jerked my hand away and sat on it, flexing my fingers uncomfortably beneath my thigh. “I took care of him. He could barely eat. He could barely move or speak. He slept all the time. It spread to his lungs. He coughed up solids. I cleaned it out of the carpet. I helped him go to the bathroom and shower and brush his teeth. So…” I turned to Albert. “So I am just…just asking you. Why did he want her here now?”