The Wolves of Midwinter

7

HE DIDN’T CHECK his phone until he was on his way down the stairs. He had text messages from his mother, his father, and his brother all saying essentially “Call Celeste.”

What in the world could she possibly want?

An amazing sound greeted him when he headed for the kitchen, that of Felix and Margon obviously arguing. They were speaking that ancient tongue of theirs, and the argument was heated.

Reuben hesitated in the kitchen door long enough to confirm that they were really going at it, with Margon actually red in the face as he thundered under his breath at a plainly infuriated Felix.

Frightening. He had no idea what it meant, but he turned around and left. He’d never been able to bear it when Phil and Grace actually fought or, frankly, when any two people had a violent argument in his presence.

He went into the library, sat down at the desk, and punched in Celeste’s number, thinking angrily that she was the very last person in the world whose voice he wanted to hear. Maybe if he hadn’t been so damned afraid of arguments and raised voices, he would have rid himself of Celeste a long time ago and once and for all.

When the call went straight to voice mail, he said, “Reuben here. You want to talk?” and clicked off.

He looked up to see Felix standing there with a mug of coffee in his hand. Felix looked completely calm and collected now.

“For you,” he said, setting down the coffee. “Did you call your old ladylove?”

“Good heavens, she’s even reached out to you? What’s happening?”

“It’s important,” said Felix. “Critically important.”

“Someone’s died?”

“Exactly the opposite,” said Felix. He winked, and seemed unable to suppress a smile.

He was formally dressed as always, in a tailored wool coat and wool pants, with his dark hair neatly combed, as though ready for whatever the day would bring.

“This isn’t what you and Margon were arguing about, was it?” Reuben asked tentatively.

“Oh, no, not at all. Put that out of your mind. Let me deal with the inimitable Margon. Call Celeste, please.”

The phone rang and Reuben answered at once. As soon as Celeste spoke his name, he realized she’d been crying.

“What’s happened?” he asked, making it as sympathetic and kind as he could. “Celeste, tell me!”

“Well, you might have answered your phone, you know, Sunshine Boy,” she said. “I’ve been calling you for days.”

More and more people said this to him, and more and more he had to make guilty excuses, which just now he did not wish to do.

“I’m sorry, Celeste, what is it?”

“Well, in a way the crisis is over because I’ve made up my mind.”

“As to what especially?”

“As to marrying Mort,” she said. “Because no matter what you do, Sunshine Boy, in the ivory tower in which you live, your mother’s going to take the baby. That has pretty much settled it, that and my refusal to abort my firstborn even if it is the son of an airhead ne’er-do-well.”

He was too shocked to say a word. Something kindled in him, something so near to pure happiness he scarcely knew what it was, but he didn’t dare to hope, not yet.

She went on talking.

“I thought I was out of the woods. That’s why I didn’t even bother to tell you. Well, that was a false alarm. I wasn’t out of the woods. Fact is, I’m four months along now. And it is a boy, and he’s perfectly healthy.” She went on talking, about the wedding, and about how Mort was fine with it all, and how Grace was already applying to take off a year from the hospital to take care of the child. Grace was the most wonderful woman in the entire world to stop everything to do this, and Grace a brilliant surgeon, and Reuben would never really know how lucky he was to have a mother like Grace. Reuben didn’t appreciate anything, in fact, and he never had. That’s how he could ignore people’s phone messages and e-mails, and isolate himself in Northern California in a “mansion” as if the real world didn’t exist.… “You’re the most selfish, spoiled person I ever knew,” she said, her voice rising, “and frankly, you make me sick, the way everything just falls into your lap, the way this mansion up there just fell into your lap, the way no matter what happens somebody does your dirty work and cleans up your messes.…”

The torrent continued.

He realized he was staring at Felix, and Felix was looking at him with the usual protective affection as he waited without apology to hear what Reuben had to say.

“Celeste, I had no idea,” he said, breaking in on her suddenly.

“Well, of course not,” she said. “Neither did I. I was on the pill, for God’s sake. I thought I might be, right before you first went up there, and then as I said, I thought I wasn’t. And then, well, I had the sonogram yesterday. I wouldn’t have an abortion now even if you tried to push me into it. This baby’s coming into the world. Truth is, Sunshine Boy, I don’t much want to talk to you.” She rang off.

He put down the phone. He was staring at nothing, and thinking over a multitude of things, and that happiness was blazing now, making him positively giddy, and then he heard Felix’s voice, gentle and confiding.

“Reuben, don’t you see? This is the only normal human child you will have.”

He looked up at Felix. He was smiling foolishly, he knew it. He was almost laughing for pure happiness. But he was speechless.

The phone was ringing again, but he scarcely heard it. Images were cascading through his mind. And out of the chaos of his conflicting emotions a resolve had formed.

Felix answered the phone and held the receiver out to him. “Your mother.”

“Darling, I hope you’re happy with this. Listen, I’ve told her we’ll take care of everything. We’ll take the baby. I’ll take the baby. I’ll care for this baby.”

“Mom, I want my son,” he said. “I’m happy, Mom. I’m so happy, really, I can’t figure quite what to say. I tried to tell Celeste, but she wouldn’t listen. She didn’t want to listen. Mom, I am so happy. Dear God, I am so happy.”

Celeste’s stinging words were coming back to him, confusing him. What in the world had she meant by all that invective? It just didn’t matter, really. What mattered was the baby.

“I knew you would be, Reuben,” Grace was saying. “I knew you wouldn’t let us down. She had the appointment for the abortion when she told me! But I said, ‘Celeste, you can’t do this, please.’ She didn’t want to do it, Reuben. She wouldn’t have told anyone if she’d really wanted the abortion. We would never have known. She gave in right away. Look, Reuben, she’s just angry right now.”

“But Mom, I mean, I just don’t understand Celeste,” he said. “Let’s just do whatever we can to make her happy.”

“Well, we will, Reuben. But having a baby’s painful. She’s already requested a leave from the district attorney’s office and she’s talking about relocating in Southern California after this is over. Mort’s applying to UC Riverside for a job. And it looks good. And I’m talking about giving her whatever she needs to get settled there and start over again. You know, a house, a condo, whatever we can do. She’ll land on her feet, Reuben. But she’s mad. So let her be mad. And let’s be happy.”

“Mom, you’re not taking off from work for a year,” Reuben said. “You don’t have to.” He looked up at Felix. Felix nodded. “This boy is going to grow up here with his father. You’re not giving up your career for him, Mom. He’s coming here to live, and I’ll be bringing him down every weekend to see you, you understand? Why, the room right next to mine, it’s Laura’s office, but we’ll turn that into a nursery. There are plenty of rooms for Laura’s office. Laura’s going to be excited when I tell her this.”

His mother was crying. Phil came on the line and said, “Congratulations, son. I’m so happy for you. When you hold your firstborn in your arms, well, Reuben, that’s when you understand your own life for the first time. I know that sounds trite, but it’s true. You wait and see.”

“Thanks, Dad,” said Reuben. He was surprised at how glad he was to hear his father’s voice.

They went round and round for several minutes, and then Grace said she had to get off and call Jim. Jim was scared to death that Celeste would change her mind and call the abortion clinic again and she had to let Jim know everything was all right. Celeste was coming for lunch, and if Reuben called the florist on Columbus Avenue they could have flowers here by one o’clock. Would Reuben please do that?

Yes, he would do that, he said, he would do that right now.

“Look, Mom, I’m going to pay for everything,” Reuben said. “I’ll call Simon Oliver myself. Let me do this. Let me make the arrangements.”

“No, no, I’ll handle it,” said Grace. “Reuben, you’re our only child, really. Jim’s never going to be anything but a Catholic priest. He’ll never marry, or have children. I resigned myself to that a long time ago. And when we go, what’s ours is yours. It’s six of one, half dozen of another who pays Celeste on all this.”

Finally she rang off.

He called the florist immediately. “Just something big and beautiful and cheerful,” he told the guy. “Like this lady loves roses of all colors, but what have you got to make it look like spring?” He was looking at the gray light coming in the windows.

At last, he was able to pick up the mug of coffee, take a deep drink of it, and sit back in the chair and think. He really had no idea how Laura would take it, but she’d know as surely as he knew that what Felix had just said was true.

Fate had given him an extraordinary gift.

This was the only natural child to which he’d ever be a father in this world. It frightened him suddenly to realize this had almost not happened. But it had happened. He was going to be a father. He was going to “give” Grace and Phil a grandson and he would be a wholly human grandson who could grow up before their eyes. He didn’t know what the world had in store for him on that score, but this changed everything. He was grateful, grateful to whom he wasn’t sure—to God, to fate, to fortune—to Grace, who’d swayed Celeste, and to Celeste, who was giving him his baby, and to Celeste that she existed and to the Fates that he’d had what he had with her. And then the words ran out.

Felix stood with his back to the fire watching him. He was smiling, but his eyes were glazed and faintly red and he looked terribly sad, suddenly, his smile what people call philosophical.

“I’m happy for you,” he whispered. “So happy for you. I cannot say.”

“Good Lord,” Reuben said. “I’d give her everything I had in this world for that child. And she hates me.”

“She doesn’t hate you, son,” said Felix mildly. “She simply doesn’t love you, and never did, and she feels quite guilty and uncomfortable about it.”

“You think so?”

“Of course,” he said. “I knew the first time I encountered her and heard her endless speeches about your ‘charmed life’ and ‘irresponsible behavior’ and all her advice on how you ought to plan your entire existence.”

“Everybody knew it,” said Reuben. “Everybody. I was the only one who didn’t know it. But why were we ever engaged then?”

“Hard to say,” Felix answered. “But she does not want a child now and so she will sign the baby over to you, and I’d act on that promptly if I were you. And she will happily marry your best friend, Mort, of whom she is not mortally resentful apparently, and may perhaps have a child with him later on. She’s a practical woman, and she’s beautiful, and she’s very smart.”

“Yes to all of that,” said Reuben.

His mind was running with the most unexpected thoughts, thoughts of baby clothes, and cribs and nannies, and picture books, and soft fleeting images of a little boy seated in the window seat against the diamond-paned glass and him, Reuben, reading to that child from a book. Why, all Reuben’s favorite children’s books were still in the attic on Russian Hill, weren’t they, the lavishly illustrated Treasure Island and Kidnapped, and the venerable old poetry books from which Phil so loved to read.

Some hazy sense of the future emerged in which a boy was striding through the front door with a backpack full of textbooks, and then it seemed he was grown into a man. And the future shifted, clouded, became a fog in which Reuben would have to leave the warm circle of his family, and his son—have to, have to flee—unable any longer to disguise the fact that he wasn’t growing older, that nothing was changing in him—but then this boy, this young man, this son, would be with them, with Grace and Phil, and Jim, and with Celeste, too, and Mort perhaps, a part of them, after Reuben was gone.

He looked at the windows, and suddenly this little world he’d constructed collapsed. In his memory, he saw Marchent beyond the glass, and he was shuddering once again.

It seemed a long time passed in which Reuben sat there in silence, and Felix stood quietly by the fire.

“My boy,” said Felix softly. “I hate to intrude on your happiness just now, but I was wondering. Would you come along with me, perhaps, to the Nideck Cemetery? I thought you might want to come. I talked to our attorney this morning, you know, Arthur Hammermill. And well, it seems Marchent was indeed buried there.”

“Oh yes, I do want to go with you,” said Reuben. “But there’s something I must tell you first. I saw her again. It was last night.”

And slowly, methodically, he relived the chilling details.