Andrew caught his reflection in the revolving steel-framed doors of Finn Associates, then, as quick as lightning, the doors swiveled and he emerged inside the white lobby. The marble floors and black carpets were immaculate. A new painting framed in silver hung on the wall, covering up a large chunk of empty space over the sofas.
Other than that, not much had changed. Even the receptionist was the same.
“Mr. Smith,” he said, mouth open wide in surprise.
“I’m here to see Carl.” Andrew crossed his elbows over the desk.
“Do you have an appointment?”
“Yes.”
“OK, one minute, I’ll confirm he’s available.” He dialed Carl’s secretary. “Please go ahead, sir.”
Up Andrew went to the thirtieth floor. Carl’s office was to the right, behind a row of the other offices and meeting rooms. The carpet was burgundy instead of the oak it had been.
“Have a seat,” Carl said. He wore a conservative gray suit, and his feet tapped impatiently, waiting to get to action. That part of him hadn’t changed, apparently.
“What did you want to see me about?” Andrew opened, expecting the answer to be something related to his father’s company. Finn Associates was the only topic they had ever shared a mutual interest in.
“I wanted to have a chat with you.” Carl’s voice was almost even.
Andrew’s eyebrows climbed to his hairline. Okay, that was something new. A chat.
“Regarding what?”
“Regarding life in general. There are things I’ve been meaning to say to you for a long time.” Carl picked up the electronic cigarette lying next to his PC. The red light on it glowed before he spoke his next words. “I love you.”
Andrew waited to snap out of the dream. Waited for the alarm to ring. Waited for something to happen that would eject him out of this moment. In thirty-two years he had heard many unbelievable things, yet none of them could hold a candle to the confession Carl had just made.
The suffocating silence and faint vapor from the cigarette refused to go. Carl’s eyes skirted around him nervously.
“Did you join a cult? Or did you get diagnosed with cancer? Do you even know what you’re saying?”
Andrew couldn’t trust this sudden change of heart. There had to be a trigger. Cancer was plausible. Carl coughed too much these days. And with his smoking habit, it was a wonder he hadn’t been diagnosed with it before.
Carl dragged another stream of nicotine into his lungs, without responding.
“Why are you behaving so out of character? In thirty-two years, you’ve never once said you loved me. What’s changed now?”
“I have the courage now. The courage to admit that I was wrong.” Carl’s throat choked up. “I was wrong to have withheld affection so you could grow up strong. I was wrong to have questioned your commitment to your wife or her commitment to you. I want to apologize for those things.”
The mid-afternoon heat closed in on them, shuffling in through the blinds. It wasn’t the heat, but something else entirely that was making Andrew sweat.
“Is Finn in trouble?” Andrew asked.
“No, Finn is doing well. Better than well. We made a healthy profit this quarter. That’s good news in an economy like this.”
“So what’s happening? It’s cancer, isn’t it?”
Carl looked away. “I’ve had lung cancer for a while now. That’s why I switched to smoking e-cigarettes. But it’s nothing for you to worry about. There is still a lot of strength left in this old body.”
“You shouldn’t be smoking anything if you have lung cancer.” Andrew said.
“My lungs are already rotten. Being healthy now won’t make a difference.” There was marked dejection, almost hopelessness in that. But Carl sounded calm, like a man who knew death could come anytime.
“Being healthy at any age makes a difference.”
The old man took another inhale from the e-cigarette and drew out Andrew’s autobiography from his drawer and put it on the table face up. Andrew was surprised Carl had the book. “I read your book and I realized you had not written a single word about me.”
“You were not in my life long enough for me to write about anything about you. And I didn’t want you to sue me for defamation or exposing insider information on Finn.”
Carl’s face split into a rueful smile. “That’s how our relationship has always been, hasn’t it?”
The sound of footsteps outside his room interrupted their conversation. When the noise passed by, Andrew dug his spine closer into the back of his seat.
“Your apologies are too late and insufficient. I cannot even count the number of times you’ve tried to break and destroy whatever I was trying to do.” Despite the fact that Carl hadn’t said anything annoying, Andrew raised his voice.
“I was doing what I thought best for you. You were bullheaded and there was no way to convince you to see my point of view, so I had to make tough choices. You will understand when you become a father. And I hope you do become one. Someday.”
The word ‘father’ stabbed his heart like a pointed arrow. How was he going to become a father now? Ashley was gone from his grasp and with her his hopes for a family.
“Do you know what my ambition was when I was twenty?” Cark continued.
“Making boatloads of money?” Andrew guessed. He had never seen Carl talk of anything except the company, profits and returns.
“Building a family. Something I never had.”
Andrew’s grandparents had immigrated from Germany to the USA during the nineteen fifties. His grandmother had died of tuberculosis soon after arriving in New York, and his grandfather had died in an accident when Carl was fifteen, leaving his father to fend for himself.
Carl had started working at sixteen and founded Finn Associates with one of his co-workers at twenty-eight. Andrew had often tried to rationalize Carl’s actions through his difficult past.
“And something I never had, either,” Andrew reminded him.
“I’m sorry about that. I hope you have one in the future, though. With Ashley.”
Ashley’s name made his heart go blank. Fury at his own helplessness made him feel frustrated. The mere image of her lying in hospital, alone again, was indescribably painful.
“Maybe I can finally make you proud if I do.” He didn’t attempt to mask his anger, though Carl was not the reason for it this time. The anger inside him was because of his failure to meet Ashley yesterday.
“I was always proud of you. Since you started speaking at two, you’ve exceeded my expectations every single day.”
It felt surreal to hear the words. So surreal that it seemed out of place in the solemn reality of Carl’s office.
“You never showed it.” Despite his respect for Carl’s decision to apologize, he was still not ready to forgive. Himself or his father.
“You’re my son. I know you are better than me. I know you can do better than me. I wanted to push you to go beyond your boundaries. I wanted you to leave and build something on your own. I wanted you to have a wife who loves you and not your money. Despite my constant attempts to get you back into Finn, I would have been disappointed if you hadn’t started Dracosys and stuck with it. And I’m proud of you now. Of who you’ve become. You’ve become someone I could never be.”
Something tugged at Andrew’s tear ducts when those words sank in and soothed the deep-seated feelings of inadequacy from his adolescence.
Carl’s eyes remained steadfastly on him.
“I can’t forgive you for all you’ve done, Carl. Not so soon.” he said.
“I know. We are both too prideful to pardon so easily. I’m willing to wait. That day will come.”
His pen rolled over the edge of the table and plopped onto the carpet.
“Looks like your pen agrees too,” Andrew said.
Carl picked up the pen and put it back on the table. “I’d love to see you and Ashley for dinner this weekend, if you’re up to it.”
“We broke up.”
That wasn’t the whole truth. He hadn’t told her of the breakup yet. But when she woke up tomorrow morning and found him missing, she’d understand.
Bella had called him fifteen times over the last twelve hours, and he’d let every call go to the answering machine. What would he tell her? How would he explain his affliction to her? No explanation would be sufficient to reduce her dismay at his absence.
“Why? I thought you just got back together?” Carl set the cigarette on the table, and leaned in.
“Smith men can’t stick, it seems.” Andrew bit back the sarcastic laugh that should have accompanied that statement.
“Let me give you some advice. The reason Smith men can’t stick is because they haven’t yet perfected the art of sharing. In love, you will hurt and you will get hurt. But sharing and communicating keep hurts from becoming wounds.”
Andrew mulled over that piece of wisdom for a few seconds.
“For a man who’s never had a stable relationship, you give good advice, Dad.” It was the first time he’d called Carl Dad. It felt like something had mutated between them in the span of seconds.
“Failure is the real teacher, not success,” Carl said with a mysterious smile.
Actually, that smile wasn’t so mysterious.
It meant, Get the hell out of my office and apologize to your wife.
And that was precisely what Andrew was going to do.
***
Andrew looked at his shattered reflection in the mirror of his bathroom. The messed-up hair, reddish eyes and dark stubble showed a tortured soul deprived of sleep. It had been more than twenty-four hours since he had last shut his eyes.
His phone lay on the cabinet. He had mentally rehearsed and re-rehearsed what he was going to say. A splash of courage allowed him to finally make the dreaded call. He pressed the cold glass surface to his ear.
Every muscle in his body tightened, anticipating nothing but the worst as ring after ring rolled by.
A lot could happen over this phone call. They could break up, she could laugh, cry, shout or disbelieve him. He could lose her forever. Procrastination dictated that he took a nap before calling her—maybe she’d be in a better mood by then and maybe he’d feel less nervous if his eyelids were not threatening to drop any minute.
“Andrew? Where are you? I’ve been waiting for you since yesterday.”
Bella’s voice, rather than Ashley’s, greeted him.
“Can I talk to Ashley? How’s she doing?”
“She’s recovering. She had an appendectomy.” Murmuring in the vicinity distracted Bella momentarily. “She wants to talk to you.”
Saliva dried up in his mouth, as Bella’s voice was replaced by Ashley’s beautiful, husky one. “Andrew…”
It all came crashing down then. The practiced words flew out of his head, replaced by a no-holds-barred apology. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry I couldn’t be at the hospital this time again. I tried, but I couldn’t even get past the door. I’m sorry I keep disappointing you. I’m sorry I’m never there for you when you need me. If you want to break up, I’ll understand.”
“I’m not going to break up with you over this. And why are you being so emotional?” She laughed, like he had said something funny. “Don’t get wound up over nothing.”
“It’s not nothing. You don’t understand. I won’t be able to come at all. Not tomorrow, not the day after, not next month. I’ll never be there when you need me. I have a problem.”
Ashley wasn’t affected. “It’s okay. Seven years ago, I needed you. But I’m all right now. I can manage on my own. Bella’s here with me, anyway.”
“It’s not okay. It’s not something that will go away. I won’t be able to hold you the day you have a baby. I’ll never be able to hold my own child.”
“I thought you didn’t want to have kids?” she said.
He briefly wondered whether he should broach the subject of his illness at all. Steeling himself, he decided it was time he did.
“There is something I’ve been keeping from you.” Letting hot water run from the tap, he submerged his hands in the boiling spray to distract himself from the barrage of unwanted noise in his head. “Hospitals make me panic. Seeing blood makes my windpipe close up. I don’t know why it happens. It makes no sense. I can’t control it. I can’t make it go away. That’s why I had to leave you seven years ago. I recently started seeing someone about this, but I’m still not okay. I don’t know when I’ll be okay.”
“You never saw anyone about it before?” She was taking this better than he had imagined. There was no shock, surprise or hesitation. Only evenness.
“No, I thought it would go away. But it hasn’t gone. That’s why I don’t want to have children. I’ll never be able to be with them when they get hurt or fracture their arm the way Derek’s daughter did. I’d make a horrible father.”
“You’ll get better by then, Andrew. You will. And if you don’t… hey, I froze my eggs, remember?”
The warmth that spread through his heart had nothing to do with the water temperature. This woman could make the worst conversation of his life funny and easy. She was perfect.
“I love you.” Never had his eyes been so wet when he had said those words. “I love you so much that it amazes me. You amaze me every single day.”
“I love you too.” she said.
The only thing he wanted to do now was to hold her in his arms and keep holding her for the rest of eternity.
“I’ll be back home by Friday. You don’t have to come and you don’t have to feel guilty about it. I have friends who can look after me. It doesn’t always have to be you. Oh, I almost forgot. How was the book launch?” Her voice steadied the skittish allegro of his pulse. She sounded normal.
“I didn’t go.”
“Why not?”
“Bella called me about you. I couldn’t think about anything but you.”
She coughed. “A book launch without the author. That must have been unique.”
“I’m going to compensate for not being with you in hospital by taking care of you devotedly once you’re home. And call me anytime, babe. I can’t be the shoulder you can lean on, but I can be the ear that listens.”
“Right now, I need food more than shoulders or ears.”
He laughed.
“You need to be on a liquid diet for three more days, Ash,” Bella reminded her. “And the phone battery’s running out.”
“You heard that, Andrew. I’ll see you when I’m back.”
The call ended abruptly. Never had he felt better than he did now. Even his inhalations came easier.
Carl was right about one thing—sharing did lessen the pain. A lot.
***
Ashley arrived home with her hands splayed across Andrew’s shoulders. He had her waist in his grip and, using the other hand, he opened her front door. Though her stomach had been stitched up a mere five days ago, it had no trouble bursting into flames when his hand moved over it.
She shouldn’t be thinking about their physical attraction. They couldn’t act on it, not until the week after next. That was a depressing thought.
“Home, sweet home.” he said, sounding nowhere near as tortured and guilty as he had sounded the day he’d called her at the hospital and told her about his anxiety disorder. She was glad he’d told her, though. There were no more secrets between them now.
Andrew helped her sit on the couch. Then, his hand vanished from her body.
“I can walk on my own. And sit on my own too.”
Without her asking, he brought her a glass of water and then went out and returned with a bag from the car.
“What’s in that?”
“My stuff. I’m moving in with you for the week. To be your full-time caretaker.”
The implied domesticity of their sharing her house had her thoughts veering off to forbidden places. But a kiss on her head was all she got from him before he got out the vacuum cleaner and started sucking out all the dust from her carpet.
“I didn’t know you could vacuum.” she remarked, arching an eyebrow.
The noise of the vacuum cleaner buzzed in her ear. “Everybody knows how to vacuum.”
“I assumed that the son of a billionaire would have had maids to do the cleaning.”
“There are no maids in college dorms.”
So that was where he had stumbled upon the wonderful contraption that went by the name of a vacuum cleaner.
“Andrew, there are still things we need to talk about.” She had to strain to get her voice heard above the droning of the cleaner.
“Get well first.”
“I am well.” Just because she couldn’t go to work for another week didn’t mean she wasn’t well enough to talk and listen. “Sit with me, Andrew.”
The vacuum cleaner’s harsh sound muted.
“I want you to move in with me. I love you and I want to be with you.” she said.
“Think about it some more. Are you sure you want me so close so fast? Have you thought about the implications of what I told you earlier? Of my problems?” he asked.
“I have and they don’t bother me. We’ll get through it together. And if we haven’t changed our minds in seven years, I don’t think we will now. But I have a few rules this time.” She raised her legs to his lap.
“Rules?”
“Yes. You have to promise to do all the cooking, washing and laundry. At least for a year.”
He broke into a chuckle. “We hire a housekeeper for doing all that.”
“No, I have to see you do laundry with your own hands. I’m a sadist.” She folded her hands in front of her to assert her unchanging stance.
“Okay, fine. At least you let me off grocery shopping.” he said.
“I like your optimism.” She ran through his hair with her fingers.
“Is that the only rule?” he asked.
“I’m not easy to win over. I have one more—you have to spend at least an hour with me every day. And I want three kids, whenever you are ready to have them. No compromise on the number.”
“I’ll be spending more than an hour with you if we are planning to have three kids.” He slid her a saucy gaze. “I neglected you once. I won’t do it again. I didn’t know how much you meant to me back then. You’re my everything. From the moment I open my eyes until the time I fall asleep, I only have you in my thoughts. We’re made for each other. You’re still the one and will always be the one for me.”
“You’re still the one for me, too.” she said.
Then he transcended words when he put his lips over hers and reaffirmed her faith in the eccentric thing called love.
