“So you really did break your ankle, not just a figure of speech.” He sounded surprised again.
“The real deal. Fortunately it’s my left leg so I can drive, or I wouldn’t have been able to make the trip. Not right now anyway.”
“See you at eight.” He hung up a minute later and sat staring into space at his desk for several minutes. He wasn’t sure if her sudden reappearance was providential, or just a quirk of fate. Her refusal to move to California with him had ended the relationship, but there had been nothing about her he didn’t like. They had just come to a fork in the road and gone separate ways. Now suddenly she was back. And he remembered all too clearly everything he’d felt for her then. But twenty-six years was a long time.
* * *
—
Maddie was wearing black slacks and a white silk blouse when he came to pick her up promptly at eight. As soon as she saw the black Ferrari, she smiled, pulled up her pants leg, and waved her cast at him from the distance, and he laughed as she headed toward the car.
“I’d have recognized you anyway, you know. You haven’t changed a bit,” he said, looking at her warmly.
“Have you had your eyes checked lately?” she said, smiling at him as he gazed at her for a long time, drinking her in, and then kissed her on the cheek. He had changed very little, except for the gray hair, but his face was the same. She knew he was fifty-nine, and he was trim and in good shape, as he always had been in the past.
He drove her to L’Espalier, one of the best restaurants in Boston. The headwaiter knew him and led them to a quiet corner table. She noticed that he was wearing a perfectly tailored suit and a navy blue Hermès tie with a white shirt. He was very elegant, and more polished than he had been at thirty-one when they met. His hair was immaculately trimmed, he had a smooth shave, and he was wearing a gold Patek Philippe watch on his wrist. He had all the trappings of a wealthy, successful man. He had gotten where he wanted to be, but she could see that his eyes were sad as he ordered a martini for himself and a glass of champagne for her.
“So where do we start?” he asked her.
“Anywhere you like.”
“Did you ever remarry?” She shook her head. “Why not?”
“Too ornery, I guess.” He laughed at her answer as he sipped his martini, after they’d toasted each other, and he’d said, “To old times.”
“Too busy, more likely.”
“That too. You work hard for a long time, and pass on things you tell yourself you’ll do later, and then one day you wake up, and it seems too late to do them. I bought a wonderful old firehouse in the West Village in New York fifteen years ago, and I live there. I’m happy, but I miss my kids.”
“I do too now that they’re in college.”
“When did you get married?” She was curious about that. Right after her, or a few years later? In California or Boston?
“About two years after we broke up. I worked in Palo Alto for about a year and a half, and got a better offer in Boston. I met my wife the week I moved here. She was in law school. She’s an environmental lawyer, and loves what she does. We had two kids, a boy and a girl. We did everything by the book. Her father was in biotech venture capital, he was the head of the firm I went to work for. I married the boss’s daughter and moved ahead very quickly, and ten years ago I went out on my own. It’s worked out pretty well,” he said modestly. He had never been one to brag, but she could see the evidence of his success.
“And?” There was a hitch in there somewhere, she could hear it in his voice and see it in his eyes. Even after all these years, she still knew how to read him. He had always been transparent in some ways. He didn’t look like a happy man.
“You know me too well. Everything was fine for the first five years, the honeymoon phase, and then it got rocky after the second baby. We reached a crisis point. The crux of it was that neither of us were sure why I married her. Was it because of who her father was, or for her? I was so desperate to get ahead as a VC that I probably would have married her no matter what, and she knew it. She wasn’t sure if I was in love with her, and to be honest, neither was I. It never really worked after that. We were thinking about splitting up, and her father called me in. They’re an old Boston family and no one has ever gotten divorced. He told me that as long as I stayed with Elizabeth, everything would be fine. If I left her, he would see to it that my career in venture capital would be dead and buried. I believed him. So I stayed. Neither of us is sure why I married her, but we both know for certain why I stayed married to her. The marriage has been dead ever since. We go our separate ways, which is easier now that the kids are away at school. She’s always very pleasant, we’re extremely polite and considerate of each other. But there’s no love there, and maybe there never was. Whatever we had twenty-four years ago when we married has been over for a long time.
“I was seeing someone else for a while, discreetly, but that got complicated. She’s married too, my partner’s wife. And he and I were good friends.” Maddie cringed as he said it. It was a rotten thing to do to his partner and his wife. Bob had made a lot of bad choices and, in essence, he had sold out, and paid a high price for it. He had led a loveless life for a long time, married to a woman he didn’t love, staying with her to protect his career, and cheating on his wife and his friend and partner. There was very little honesty about his life, except his unhappiness, which showed in the sorrow in his eyes. Part of him was dead, an important part. His integrity, and his heart.
“I’m sorry to hear all that,” she said, and meant it. “You deserve better.”
“I made a choice. I wanted to play with the big boys so badly, and I don’t regret it. I shouldn’t have married Elizabeth, but if I hadn’t, I wouldn’t have what I do today.”
“Is it worth it?” she asked, sad for him.
“Sometimes. You steal a little happiness here and there and it works,” which meant he cheated on her all the time. Maddie hated the choices he had made, for his sake, and his wife couldn’t have been happy either. She had also paid a high price for a bright, handsome husband whom her father had threatened into staying with her. There couldn’t be much joy in that. Maddie’s life was a whole lot simpler, maybe lonely at times now without the kids, but it was honest and clean. Bob lived in a world of subterfuge, lies, false pretenses, and expensive trades, his happiness for a big career. The Ferrari and the gold watch didn’t seem worth it to Maddie, and she was sure they had an impressive house. He had mentioned a boat and a plane. But his children had grown up in a loveless home. She couldn’t help wondering if there was any part of Bob’s heart still intact, or if it had been dead for years. It made her glad for the choice she’d made not to follow him to California with her kids. If he was willing to make such dangerous compromises for his career, who knew what he would have done with her, when better opportunities arose, like Elizabeth and her father’s firm in Boston. He might have dumped Maddie, and she suspected he would have. Anything was possible with someone as ambitious as he was. He had sold out in a major way, and there was no one left inside him. He was a hollow shell.