Under the Influence (14 page)

“I'm sure you two will meet up before too long,” I said. “I just want to find the right moment.”

Hard to say what moment that would be.

U
sually Swift would be out in the pool house talking on the phone when I came over to Folger Lane to see Ava or to work (in secret, of course) on the birthday book. If he was around, he'd joke with me for a minute or two before disappearing. But the next time I saw him, a few days after Ollie's visit, he wanted to talk about my son.

“You've got a great kid there,” he told me.

“He loved hanging out with you,” I said.

“It's totally fucked up that his father took him away.” Swift was chewing on a turkey leg as he spoke. He ate like a caveman. No fork. “He won't admit it, but a boy that age needs his mom. As much as my ex-wife drove me crazy, I knew that when Cooper was a kid.”

“Believe me, my son's father is nothing like you,” I told him.

“Well, you're a great mom,” he said. “Ollie should get to spend a lot more time with you.”

It had seemed to me that the person my son wanted to spend time with that last weekend had been Swift. But that was still good news. So long as Ollie wanted to visit Swift and Ava's house, he'd want to visit me. So long as the Havillands were around, I had a family to offer him.

“So when are you going to get that boy back over here?” Swift said. “I miss him already.”

“I was thinking about trying to get some more time with Ollie over
summer vacation,” I told Swift. “But his father's not likely to be very supportive of that, and if he doesn't agree to it voluntarily, there's no way I can go back to court right now to force the issue. The legal aid lawyer I talked to last year still hasn't done one thing on my case.”

Not to mention, I said, I hardly had any time off all summer. In addition to the work I'd been doing for the Havillands, I'd taken on extra work, doing some low-paid catalog shoots down on the peninsula, which meant I'd hardly have any free time for being with Ollie. Never mind Elliot.

“Listen,” Ava said. “Oliver's happy over here. And Estella's always around. If you can just get your ex-husband to agree to let him spend a few weeks this summer with you, Swift and I are happy to have him come over here when you're working.”

I couldn't say anything. I was stunned by their generosity. I let myself imagine setting up an air mattress for him. The Legos back on the living room table. Popcorn on the couch.

“I'll teach him to swim,” Swift said. “We'll have that kid doing the butterfly by Labor Day.”

“I'll talk to his father,” I said.

I
called Dwight to ask if I could keep Ollie with me for a few weeks that summer. With less argument than I'd anticipated he agreed to a two-week visit, by far the longest amount of time I'd gotten to spend with my son since losing custody.

“If I hear one word about you drinking, we won't be doing this again,” he said.

I wanted to say something back, but I didn't. All that mattered was getting time with Ollie. I'd waited a long time for this.

Over the phone the next night, Ollie told me his plans for the visit. He was going to teach Rocco a trick, he said. And he was going to work on his swimming. That day he'd gone into the pool with Monkey Man, they'd decided to have a swim race on Labor Day weekend. Now, Ollie said, he could start training.

“Maybe if I'm in a good mood I'll give you a head start, buddy,” Swift had told him. “But I don't think you'll need one. You're a lot younger than me. Do you know how old I am?”

“Twenty-five?” Ollie had guessed. He was sketchy on ages of adults, but Swift really did act like a twenty-five-year-old.

It wasn't only Ollie who seemed excited about the summer plan. So was Swift. He had bought seats for a Giants game, and he was looking into how old a person had to be to go drive the Formula 4 go-karts he'd
seen at a track off of I-280, with an eye toward a field trip for himself and Ollie. Not only that: Cooper's old batting cage, which had sat neglected in the yard for close to ten years now, would be refurbished. Swift understood that I probably wouldn't want Ollie riding on the back of the motorcycle. But how would I feel about it if he got a sidecar? he asked me.

“I want to bring the kid to Tahoe,” Swift told Ava and me. “Take him out on the boat. The Donzi.”

I'd heard him mention the boat before. It had been a graduation gift to Cooper. A number of the photographs lining the walls of the house featured the two of them on a highly streamlined speedboat. Laughing, as always.

“We're not talking some old Boston Whaler,” Swift went on. “This baby's an original 1969 Donzi cigarette boat. Colin Farrell drove a Donzi in the
Miami Vice
movie. Think our boy Oliver might go for a ride in that one?”

“Let's not forget the point here, sweetheart,” Ava said, as Swift listed his many plans for things to do with my son that summer. “This is about Helen and Ollie getting to see more of each other. Not you getting a fresh chance to share all your toys with a little boy again.”

“I know, I know,” Swift said. “I'm just talking about all the stuff I'll do when Cooper and Virginia start popping out rug rats. This will be good practice.”

Hearing Swift say this, I felt a rush of gratitude and affection. As if it weren't enough that the Havillands had adopted me as they had, now they were including my son in that warm embrace. It might be true that I was using Swift and Ava as a way of getting Ollie to spend time with me, but if so, was that so terrible? We had to start somewhere.

“I'm not sure I feel old enough to be a grandfather,” Swift added. “Call me an uncle. A rich uncle.” He let loose his big crazy laugh. “We're going to have a ball.”

“Just keep in mind, darling,” said Ava, “this is supposed to be Helen's time with Oliver. Who knows, I might even like to see some of you myself this summer.”

“Which part of me were you planning to see?” he said.

T
he person whose name did not come up in our discussions of the summer activities was Elliot, whose existence remained unknown to my son and the object of a certain quiet but unmistakable judgment to my friends. With Ollie back at my apartment—for those two weeks, anyway—I'd have to curtail my new practice of spending two or three nights a week in Los Gatos with Elliot. But having that time with Ollie was a precious, long-awaited opportunity to rebuild our relationship. I would let nothing get in the way of that.

When I told Elliot I wouldn't be able to sleep over at his place anymore, once Ollie came to stay with me, he took the news with kindness, as usual. He was happy for me that I'd get to see more of my son. If things went well over the summer, who knew what might follow? As for the rest: We'd take things slowly. Once he and Ollie met, he knew things would work out.

“I know I'm a nerd,” he said. “But I think once we get to know each other he'll be able to tell that I mean well. And I care about him.”

I already had the inflatable bed, but with a longer visit approaching I bought a folding screen to give my son a little privacy and stocked up on his favorite cereal and Popsicles. Rather than subject Ollie to yet another uncomfortable transfer of his possessions, I bought a giant set of Legos and set the box on the living room table, along with a fresh box
of watercolor markers and (because the Havillands' pool would be a big part of his time that summer) a new pair of swim trunks. Nights now, counting down the days to picking Ollie up, I allowed myself to imagine us together again, finally. I would never let anything bad happen again. Nothing—not even this very good man I'd grown to care about—would get in the way of my time with my son.

I picked Ollie up at the end of June, two days after school got out. He was out in the yard waiting for me when I pulled up, and for the first time I could remember since the move to Walnut Creek, he was smiling. From inside the house, I could hear my ex-husband yelling. It sounded as though Jared had been giving him a hard time.

“He just spilled a box of cereal,” Ollie said. “You know how Dad gets.”

A few moments later Dwight came out to the driveway. As Ollie climbed into the car and started fiddling with the seat belt, my ex-husband leaned down and spoke in a low voice into my ear. “Just remember what I said about the drinking. One slip and it's over.”

He straightened up and turned his attention toward Ollie in the backseat. “Don't forget, son, if you have any problems, you can always give Cheri or me a call. Even if it's the middle of the night.” Then he stepped back from the car and waved, a tight smile on his face. From the doorway, I could see Cheri standing there, with Jared on her hip. No flicker of emotion there.

The moment we got to my apartment, Ollie wanted to go over to Monkey Man's house. Every day after that was the same. He liked Ava and he loved the dogs, but he was crazy about Swift. The first thing he said when he woke up in the morning was “When do we get to go see Monkey Man?”

I still had to work—though it never felt like work, helping Ava with the book project, and the best part was I could do this with my son nearby. Sometimes Swift went in the pool with him, but if not, Ollie would follow him around the house, stand watching his qigong lesson, or join in. If he got bored, he'd head outside with the dogs.

I worried sometimes that my son might overstay his welcome, become a nuisance to the Havillands, but Swift told me he loved having Ollie around. “This guy's my number-one sidekick,” Swift said as the two of them headed out to the pool. “After Ava, of course.”

Ava had taken to speaking of them as “the boys”—and pretty swiftly, they developed a routine together. Sometimes the two of them went on errands in Swift's Range Rover. Or they played air hockey. Swift was teaching Ollie how to play cards, and said he had a knack for bluffing. “You know the best way to get people to believe you when you're lying?” Swift said. “You fill in the fake part of your story with true stuff. Then they believe everything.”

He showed him how to read the NASDAQ, and to make it more interesting, bought him three shares of Berkshire Hathaway, so he could follow what was happening to his stock. He had done the same thing with Cooper, years before. Sometimes Ollie brought his Legos out to the pool house where Swift worked and lay on the floor for an hour or two, just building, while, in the back room, Ava and I laid out photographs for the book—now well along—or talked.

But the big thing was the pool. After all those years of being afraid of the water, Ollie couldn't get enough of swimming, so long as Monkey Man was with him. Within a week his skin had turned brown and I could see muscles developing in his formerly skinny shoulders.

As much as possible, I wanted to spend time with my son, too, of course—not only during the days at the Havillands' but back at our apartment together in the evening. And we were having good times there, too, though my work for Ava seemed to be occupying more and more time. Sometimes it would be seven or eight o'clock before we made it back to the apartment for Ollie's bath time and our book.

The project of cataloging Ava's entire art collection had been set aside for the time being, so Ava and I could direct the majority of our energies to the secret birthday book—
The Man and His Dogs
. And my job description appeared to have expanded. More and more often, Ava
was finding other tasks for me, little jobs she might once have assigned to Estella. She'd ask me to untangle a drawerful of necklaces or organize the perfume bottles on her vanity.

“Maybe Estella would like this job,” I said once. “Or if Estella's too busy, Carmen.”

“I used to ask Carmen to do things like this for me,” Ava said. “But I've got to be honest. I don't trust that girl anymore. One time when I came home, I found her coming out of the laundry room with a guilty look on her face. But the deal breaker for me had to do with Cooper.”

I asked what she meant.

“Back in high school, he earned this ring for rugby. The most valuable player. One day, a year or so after that, Carmen left her purse open on the table, and I saw it. That ring. She must have taken it.”

“What did you do?” I asked her.

“Reached in and took it back, naturally. We never told Cooper. It would have broken his heart. He was always so fond of Carmen.”

Ava told me that the additional work I did would free up more of her time. But more often than not, she'd end up sitting with me in the room where I worked, editing or arranging or organizing. I could hear my son and Swift outside splashing in the pool or hitting balls out by the batting cage. Ollie was so enthralled with Monkey Man that I started to worry that he and I weren't getting in as much time together on our own as I'd hoped for.

“I was thinking Ollie and I might take off a little early today,” I said one afternoon, a week or so into Ollie's time with me. “Maybe take our bikes out together.”

“I'm just so anxious about having the book ready for Swift's sixtieth,” Ava said. “And anyway, you don't need to worry about Ollie. He and Swift are having a great time. Swift's always been like the Pied Piper where kids are concerned. It's like he hypnotizes them. They'd follow him anywhere.”

Just then came the voice of my son, calling up from the pool house. “Hey, Mom. Monkey Man invited us for dinner. We can stay, right?”

“Of course,” I told him. What plans could I have more exciting than that?

A
s good as things had been with Elliot before the start of summer, I didn't think about him much once Ollie came back to stay with me. I was just so happy to have my son with me. And our days were filled with the Havillands. Things were going so well that Ollie had asked Dwight if he could stay another week, but the answer came back, no. Still, it was a good sign to know my son wanted to be with me. Even though I knew a big part of his reason was Swift.

Once and once only during that time, Ava asked me about Elliot. We were up in her office, looking through photographs for the commemorative birthday book.

“You still seeing that guy?” she said. “Evan? Irving? The accountant?”

“We haven't had a chance to get together since Ollie's been with me,” I told her. “But yes.”

“When I first got together with Swift, we couldn't be apart even for five minutes,” she said. “I'm thinking the sex is just average?”

I didn't really want to discuss it, but with Ava it was hard to say no. Elliot was a sweet lover, I told her—not wild or aggressive, and lacking a certain imagination, maybe, but slow and more tender than anyone I'd ever known. When I got out of the tub—I was thinking back to earlier times, before Ollie's arrival—he put lotion on my elbows and knees—a brand he'd sworn by all his life, he said, one that farmers used.

“Mmmm. Sounds wonderful,” Ava said. Dubiously.

It was true, I admitted: Elliot was not romantic in any of the ways people think of when they're talking about romance. But once, when I had three days off in a row, we had driven up to Humboldt County and camped in a secluded spot by a natural hot spring; he had brought along his telescope, and we studied the constellations. On the way home it had occurred to me that though he was not one of those people who knock you off your feet when you meet them, every time I saw him I cared about him a little more. But, I told her, I just didn't see how to have Elliot in my life as well as my son. And I wanted my son more than anything.

I never said I was in love with Elliot, or that I felt that kind of all-consuming hunger to be with him that Ava described having known with Swift. (And still did, apparently.) In fact, almost nothing in the way Ava would speak about how things were between herself and Swift bore any resemblance to what I would have said about Elliot and me. Things were just easy and comfortable with him. I felt happy when he was around, but hadn't missed him now that he wasn't. He was always kind to me. I trusted him completely—more than I trusted myself, possibly.

“Kind is good, I guess,” said Ava, with a certain hesitation in her voice. It was clear enough, without her saying more, that she expected more from a relationship than this.

As much as Swift alluded to how mind-blowing things were for the two of them, Ava never spoke of the particulars. They made no effort to conceal the books about tantric sex they kept around, or the erotic limited edition Hiroshige prints lining the second floor. But what actually went on between the two of them, and what was actually possible for Ava with her spinal cord injury, was a topic we never went to.

One night back at my apartment, I went online and googled
paraplegic sex,
which brought up all kinds of websites with information about catheters and positions for lovemaking in a wheelchair. Just doing that search left me feeling guilty, as if I had opened up the door to a room that should have stayed shut. Whenever Ava spoke of her intimate connection
to Swift, she was vague, saying only that what went on between the two of them was beyond anything most couples ever imagined.

“Swift and I have no secrets from each other,” she said. “It's like we're part of the same body. Maybe that's why I don't see it as a tragedy that I'm in this chair. He's not, and that makes me feel whole.”

Talking about Elliot, I said, “We're very different. But it feels good, having this very steady man at my side. I never had a partner before that I trusted this way.”

As always, when I spoke about Elliot, Ava's responses felt like damning with faint praise. “No doubt he's a really great guy,” she said. “Just make sure you're not in the market for a brother or a pal. Speaking purely for myself, of course, I'd rather have a passionate love affair.”

At the time, the idea of having a passionate love affair seemed inconceivable, anyway. Ava didn't have children, and maybe that was the difference between us. I had my boy back in my life. There wasn't room for much more than that.