“I'll bet it is. The relationship … the man I was involved with had two of them, and it was odd for me. I don't have children of my own, and it wasn't like Harry's kids, suddenly here were these two big people staring at me. It felt awfully strange.”
“Did you get attached to them?” He seemed intrigued by her and she was surprised at how easy it was to talk to him.
“Not really. There wasn't time. They lived in the East,” she remembered the rest of it, “for a while.”
He nodded, smiling at her. “You've certainly managed to keep your life simpler than the rest of us.” He laughed softly then. “I guess you don't drink rum.”
She laughed too. “Usually not, but I've managed to do a fair amount of damage to myself in other ways. I just don't have any children to show for it.”
“Are you sorry about that?”
“Nope.” It had taken thirty-three and a half years to say it honestly. “There are some things in this life that aren't for me, and children are one of them. Godmother is more my style.”
“I probably should have stuck to that myself, for Barb's sake, if no one else's. At least her mother is remarried now, so she has a real father figure to relate to for the eleven months I'm not around.”
“Doesn't that bother you?” She wondered if he felt possessive about the child. Drew had been very much so about his, especially Elizabeth.
But Jack shook his head. “I hardly know the kid. That's an awful thing to say, but it's true. Every year I get to know her again, and she leaves and when she comes back she's grown up by a year and changed all over again. It's kind of a fruitless venture, but maybe it does something for her. I don't know. I owe her that much. And I suspect that in a few years she'll tell me to go to hell, she has a boyfriend in Detroit and she's not coming out this year.”
“Maybe she'll bring him.” They both laughed.
“God help me. That's all I need. I feel the way you do, there are some things in this life I never want inflicted on me … malaria … typhoid … marriage … kids.…” She laughed at his honesty, it was certainly not a popular view or one that one could admit to most of the time, but he felt he could with her, and she with him.
“I agree with you. I really think it's impossible to do what you do well and give enough to relationships like that.”
“That sounds noble, my friend, but we both know that that has nothing to do with it. Honestly? I'm scared stiff, all I need is another Kate out from Detroit and crying all night because she has no friends out here … or some totally dependent woman with nothing to do all day except nag me at night, or decide after two years of marriage that half of the business Harry and I built is hers. He and I see too much of that as it is, and I just don't want any part of it.” He smiled at her. “And what are you scared of, my dear? Chilblains, childbirth? Giving up your career? Competition from a man?” He was surprisingly astute and she smiled appreciatively at him.
“Touche. All of the above. Maybe I'm afraid of jeopardizing what I've built, of getting hurt … I don't know. I think I had doubts about marriage years ago, although I didn't know it then. It's all my mother ever wanted for me, and I always wanted to say'ut wait … not yet … I've got all these other things to do first.’ It's like volunteering to have your head cut off, there's never really a good time.” He laughed, and she remembered Drew proposing to her in front of the fire one night, and then she forced it from her with a flash of pain. Most of the time the memories of him didn't hurt much now, but a few still did. And that one most of all, maybe because she felt he had made a fool of her. She had been willing to make an exception for him, she had accepted the proposal and then he had gone back to Eileen.… Jack was watching her as she frowned.
“No one is worth looking that sad for, Tana.”
She smiled at him. “Old, old memories.”
“Forget them, then. They won't hurt you anymore.”
There was something wonderfully easy and wise about the man, and she began going out with him almost without thinking about it. A movie, an early dinner, a walk on Union Street, a football game. He came and went, and became her friend, and it wasn't even remarkable when they finally went to bed with each other late that spring. They had known each other for five months by then, and it wasn't earth shattering, but it was comfortable. He was easy to be around, intelligent, and he had a wonderful understanding of what she did, a powerful respect for her job, they even shared a common best friend, and by summertime when his daughter came out, even that was comfortable. She was a sweet eleven-year-old child with big eyes and hands and feet and bright red hair, like an Irish setter puppy. They took her to Stinson Beach a few times, went on picnics with her. Tana didn't have much time—she was trying a big case just then— but it was all very pleasant, and they went up to Harry's place where Harry eyed them carefully, curious as to whether it was serious with them. But Averil didn't think it was and she was usually right. There was no fire, no passion, no intensity, but also no pain. It was comfortable, intelligent, amusing at times, and extremely satisfying in bed. And at the end of a year of going out with him, Tana could well imagine herself going out with Jack for the rest of her life. It was one of those relationships one saw between two people who had never married, and never wanted to, much to the chagrin of all their friends who had been in and out of divorce courts for years, one saw people like that eating in restaurants on Saturday nights, going on holidays, attending Christmas parties and gala events, and enjoying each other's company, and sooner or later they'd wind up in bed, and the next day the other one would go home to his or her own place, to find the towels exactly the way they wanted them, the bed undisturbed, the coffee pot in perfect readiness for their needs. It was so perfect for both of them that way, but they drove Harry nuts and that amused them too.
“I mean, look at you both, you're so goddamn complacent I could cry.” The three of them were having lunch, and neither Tana nor Jack looked concerned.
She looked up at Jack with a smile. “Hand him a handkerchief, sweetheart.”
“Nah, let him use his sleeve. He always does.”
“Don't you have any decency? What's wrong with you?”
They exchanged a bovine glance. “Just decadent, I guess.”
“Don't you want kids?”
“Haven't you ever heard of birth control?” Jack looked at him and Harry looked as though he wanted to scream as Tana laughed.
“Give it up, kid. You aren't gonna win this one with us. We're happy like this.”
“You've been dating for a year. What the hell does that mean to you both?”
“That we have a lot of stamina. I now know that he gets homicidal if anyone touches the sports section on Sundays and he hates classical music.”
“And that's it? How can you be so insensitive?”
“It comes naturally.” She smiled sweetly at her friend and Jack grinned at her.
“Face it, Harry, you're outnumbered, outclassed, outdone.” But when Tana turned thirty-five six months later, they surprised Harry after all.
“You're getting married?” Harry barely dared to breathe the words to Jack when he told him they were looking for a house, but Jack laughed at him.
“Hell no, you don't know your friend Tan if you think there's even a chance of that. We're thinking about living together.”
Harry spun his wheelchair around, glaring at Jack. “That's the most disgusting thing I've ever heard. I won't let you do that to her.”
Jack roared. “It was her idea, and besides—you and Ave did it.” His daughter had just gone home, and it had gotten very complicated going back and forth from his house to hers for a month. “Her place is too small for both of us, and so is mine. And I'd really like to live in Marin. Tana says she would too.”