“I didn’t think she wanted to see me.”
“She was dying, Dad. She wasn’t in the mood for a fight.”
“Well if she wasn’t in the mood for a fight, then I‘m sure she didn’t want to see me.”
Jake forced a small, brief smile. “Mom didn’t share your problems with me and she never uttered a bad word about you when I was around. She didn’t walk around singing your praises, but she never badmouthed you either.”
“She was a good woman.”
“The best.”
“You’re right. I should have come to see her.” Peter didn’t believe his own words, but hoped they would provide some comfort to his son.
The resemblance between father and son was unmistakable. The broad shoulders, the brown hair, the chiseled face. The smile. The walk. Jake was casually mesmerized, staring into the paternal mirror at what he expected to look like in another thirty years. He hoped he looked as good as the man in front of him when he reached his fifties. Genetics are a strange thing, he thought. And while he looked at his father, he felt nothing. Jake didn’t hold a grudge because his father was an alcoholic, workaholic, or womanizer. He may have been all of the above, but Jake didn’t know. And it is hard to be upset about something you don’t know or can’t remember. He wasn’t angry, hurt or disappointed—he wasn’t close enough to the man in front of him to have any of those emotions. Everything happens for a reason and Jake tried to leave the past in the past, a skill he learned from his mother. All Jake knew was that he could expect a hundred dollars for Christmas and another hundred for his birthday. The money arrived in generic cards, usually a week or two late, his father’s signature probably forged by a secretary.
But Jake did know that his father was successful, and if he hadn’t already known, the thousand-dollar suit his father was wearing would have been a clue. He knew his father ran a company or two and lived in a house with a pool. But the talk of private jets, beach houses in the Caribbean, and a garage full of German and Italian sports cars was hearsay. He knew his father had paid child support when his mother had requested it, but she had done her best to keep his money out of her life and the life of her son.
Peter looked at Jake, and as his son had looked at him and seen his own reflection, Peter saw images of himself as a young man. He remembered his son as an infant and had spotty recollections of his son’s pre-teen years, but he had missed most of the major milestones. He never met his son’s dates, never went on vacation together, missed his son’s all-star dominance as the pitcher of the year for the high school city champions, and passed on an invitation to his son’s college graduation in favor of a week in Fiji with some floozy whose name he had long since forgotten.
For the first time in his life he felt a fleeting moment of remorse. Then it was gone. Peter Winthrop was a user, always had been. It was a by-product of his upbringing and the neverending chase for more money, more toys, and more women. People were objects, to be used as objects and discarded once their usefulness was exhausted. He didn’t set out to act the way he acted, it was just the way he was. Like a leg-humping dog that is never reprimanded, he didn’t know any better. When he was younger, no one ever told him there was another way. As he got older, no one dared to.
He knew he was a shitty father, as his own father had been to him. There was nothing he could do to make amends for the past, and he didn’t even bother to hope to repair the relationship with his only child. All he could wish for was that his son would have a child of his own and break the vicious cycle of poor fathers that ran through the Winthrop family tree.
“Can I get you something to drink?” Jake asked, breaking the silence.
“No thanks. I have to get going.”
“Are you sure? You’re welcome to stay,” Jake said, assuming the role of the adult.
“No, I’m sure,” Peter replied. He reached into his wallet and pulled out a business card. He plucked a Waterford pen from his breast pocket and scribbled some numbers. “If there is anything you need, I’m a phone call away. Anything at all. You can reach me at any of those numbers, day or night.”
Jake stared at the card pinched between his father’s thumb and index finger. Behind his father’s shoulder, Uncle Steve looked on at the business-like exchange of information between a father and son acting like complete strangers.
Jake accepted the card, slipped it into his jacket pocket and said, “Thanks.”
As always, Peter concluded the business deal with a handshake. A hug was out of the question for both of them.
“Maybe we can catch a Redskins game this season? I have box seats,” Peter said, his mind already out the door.
“Yeah, maybe,” Jake replied. He knew better than to wait by the phone.
Uncle Steve followed Jake and his father to the door. Peter smiled to the room of strangers, raised his hand slightly in a half-attempt at a wave, and exited the house. He hopped into his two-seater German roadster and drove out of the lower-middle-class neighborhood. He felt better as he worked his way home, back to a residential area with a population in a much higher tax bracket. His kind of people. ***
The Day residence was a meticulously restored townhouse on the corner of P and Thirty-Fourth Streets in Georgetown. The renovated home with a historic lineage had been on the market for over a year when the senator and his better half offered $6.5 million. Papers were signed the following week and by the end of the month, the Days moved in. The garage stored a Mercedes S-class sedan and a Lexus SUV. A distant cousin of the senator’s wife, a Georgetown University graduate student, rented the small apartment on the second floor of the carriage house overlooking the heated pool.
Mrs. Day was cooking spaghetti, one of her many “specialties,” none of which challenged the professionally accessorized kitchen. She hired a chef with an impressive résumé who came twice a week to give the appliances a thorough running through. He made whatever was requested and ad-libbed a few other gourmet meals that he left covered in plastic wrap in the refrigerator. The ever-changing dietary whims of the senator’s wife kept the chef on his toes. She wasn’t picky by nature, and it wasn’t her fault that she was bossy and oversensitive. It was the third-trimester hormones.
The senator got out of the car and waved to his personal driver. Briefcase in hand, he stepped through the iron gate that enclosed the short brick walkway and made his way to the door. He passed through the small study, throwing his briefcase, the day’s Washington Post, and a stack of mail he brought home from work on the leather club chair in the corner. He followed his nose to the kitchen.
“Smells great.”
“You might want to wait until you taste it before you throw out too many compliments,” she replied.
The senator kissed her on the cheek and touched her protruding stomach.
“Any action today?” he asked, hand just above her stretched navel.
“No, he’s been quiet. Must not be in the mood to treat his mother’s bladder like a soccer ball.”
The senator bent over and put his ear on the top of the protruding mound. It was six weeks before the due date.
When dinner was finished, the senator cleared the table. The maid would take care of the dirty dishes and the laundry in the morning. Mrs. Day waddled upstairs for a shower.
The honorable senator from Massachusetts grabbed the paper and the mail off the chair in the study. He poured a double bourbon in a glass of the finest Austrian crystal and slipped out of his black Italian leather shoes. He flipped through the stack of mail he brought home and sorted the envelopes into three piles. The “must reads” went on his lap, a few letters from his constituents went on the corner of his desk, and the remainder went into the wastebasket.