“Excellent.” Archie turned to cross the street. He pulled open the door of the café and said, “By the way, our whole family should be bowing our heads in shame for letting Lydia bully you like that yesterday.” He held the door for her. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s OK,” said Nina. “Is Lydia always like that?”
“Aggressive and ridiculous?” He laughed. “Yeah, pretty much. She’s not mellowing with age, that’s for sure.”
They sat down at the same table.
Vanessa wasn’t working that day, but Nina waved at Andi, another waitress she liked a lot. Andi grinned at her and brought over a menu.
“You don’t need this, obviously, as you probably know it better than I do, but maybe your friend . . . ?”
“I think just coffee, thanks.” Archie was still finding it hard not to stare at Nina.
“Me too,” said Nina.
Archie cleared his throat. “You know, if things had been different, we would have grown up together. You’re only a couple of months younger than me. Why didn’t your mother want us to know each other?”
Nina was surprised. “I don’t think she thought about it that way, to be honest.” She shrugged. “It’s hard to know, with her; she’s not super forthcoming about her motivations. She said, when I asked her essentially the same thing, that she didn’t think your dad would have been a good father.”
“He was your dad, too.”
“So you all keep telling me. I’m not sure that simple biology makes someone a father, though. Don’t you have to do some actual fathering? I mean, yeah, he provided a sperm, but after that nothing. I always thought parenting was more active than that.”
Archie paused while Andi put down their coffees. “You said your mom was away a lot when you were a kid.”
“She still is.”
“But you consider her your mother, even though someone else did most of the mothering.”
“Yeah, true.” Nina shrugged. “I guess there are as many ways to mother someone as there are mothers. Mine wasn’t there physically, but she sent a lot of cool postcards.” The postcards had been a regular feature of Nina’s childhood she’d mostly forgotten. They would show up once or twice a month, with a brief message (You’d hate it here, or Everything smells of cheese, or Been throwing up for days, weather’s good, though), and signed Mum in big, loopy handwriting. Louise and she would examine the stamps, look at the photo, and stick the cards to the fridge. She wondered where they were now, then remembered she’d cut off all the stamps and given them to a fifteen-year-old boy she’d had a crush on. Epic fail in terms of dating strategy; he’d looked at her strangely, thanked her, and never spoken to her again, and now she couldn’t remember what she’d done with the cards themselves. She dragged her attention back to Archie.
“But your . . . our . . . father wasn’t even heard from until two weeks ago. For a serial cheater, he was a man of his word.” She smiled ruefully.
Archie didn’t. “I’m really struggling to get my head around it, but I’m also finding it hard to understand why I’m struggling to get my head around it, if you can follow that. He cheated on his first wife . . . Why would I think he wouldn’t cheat on my mother?”
Nina made a face. “Because he loved her?”
Archie shrugged. “I don’t think his cheating was actually anything to do with his wives, or how he felt about them. I think he liked other women and was selfish about it. We talked about it once, when I was older and about to get married myself. My wife is . . .” He blushed, suddenly. “Very beautiful, as you saw the other day. I was deeply in love with her when we got married, still am, actually. But my dad took me out to dinner and told me that I would cheat on her one day.”
“How did he know that?”
Archie’s mouth twisted. “He didn’t. He genuinely thought every husband cheated, maybe every wife, too. He said the lure of fresh flesh was too strong. He implied it was pointless to resist it.”
“That seems to be kind of an overstatement. What made him so certain?”
“I’m not sure. He had this central belief in the importance of sex, I think. He thought it was the driving force behind every great story, every great event.”
“You disagree?”
“I don’t know. I think it was his driving force.” Archie looked at her. “Mind you, he had lots of them: sex, women, cigarettes, money, booze. He drank a lot—you know that, right? He was an alcoholic. I didn’t realize it when I was a kid, but it was obvious looking back. He was very anxious in the mornings; he woke up shaking and would hide in the bathroom a lot. My mother said he had low blood sugar and would bring him orange juice and treat him like a baby.” He drank his coffee. “But actually, he was hungover, and waiting until he could get to the office and have a drink.”
“Great,” said Nina. “It’s probably just as well I don’t drink very much then.” A sudden flash of the kiss with Tom crossed her mind.
Archie nodded. “I think Becky and Katherine both stopped drinking pretty young; not sure about the others.” He finished his coffee and looked around for Andi. “It’s genetic, you know.”
Nina nodded. “And did you?”
Archie frowned. “Did I what?”
“Did you cheat? On your wife?”
He shook his head. “Not yet. But now that I know about you, I worry that it’s predetermined, like the drinking. If he couldn’t control himself, maybe it will be the same for me. I didn’t think so, but you kind of messed up a lot of what I took for granted.” He caught Andi’s eye and mimed a request for more coffee for both of them. “Sorry, I know it’s not your fault.”
Nina shrugged and pressed on. “But you thought he didn’t cheat on your mother. You thought there could be exceptions.”
“Yeah, because she died pretty young, right? I thought maybe he’d managed to keep it in his pants long enough. But he didn’t, not at all. He cheated on her with your mom, and who knows who else, and that was years before she got sick.”
“Yeah, but look at me. My mom can’t stay in one place for more than a month, and I’ve barely left the state. Just because he was a jerk doesn’t mean you have to be.”
“Maybe not.”
Nina tried changing the subject. “When is your baby due?”
“Next month.” He pulled out his phone and flipped through some photos. “This is my son, Henry, and there’s Becca.” The photo showed an adorable little boy with tiny glasses on, and the beautiful blond woman she’d seen at the lawyer’s office, both grinning at the camera like idiots.
“They look happy,” said Nina.
“They are,” replied Archie. “Long may they stay that way.” He put his phone away and rubbed his face with his hand. “Do you ever worry that you are going to mess things up?”
“What kind of things? I mean, yes, of course, all the time, but what specifically?”
“I worry I’m going to lose control of my life, that I’m going to make a massive mistake and it’s all going away. I don’t know why, but things have been hard, with Becca pregnant and Henry being only two and work . . .” He put his hands on the tabletop, but not quickly enough to prevent Nina from seeing that they were shaking.