The Numbers Game Read online

  He left Pennie to check on the boys, and suggested a card game between the four of them, but there were no takers. The kids were tired and everyone went to bed early, and so did Paul. He missed Olivia in his bed that night, but this was a sacred time, and he belonged to his children. It was important to him that everything go right.

  He made breakfast for them the next morning, and Pennie helped him, and warmed up a little. He made scrambled eggs and pancakes, and had bought their favorite batter and syrup. He was a good breakfast cook, although he couldn’t cook much else, except the simple things he had learned from Eileen, who was a fabulous cook, and took pride in what she made for them. She was a talented chef, and had taught Pennie a few of her tricks.

  After breakfast, they played around on their computers as they would have at home. Pennie washed and dried her hair and at noon Paul told them they were going to Serendipity for lunch. They loved that. He was thinking of taking them to a movie afterwards. They were catching the six o’clock train back to Greenwich. The visit had gone well so far. They took the subway to the restaurant, which was an adventure for them.

  They were given a big round table at the busy restaurant, with Tiffany lamps hanging over every table, and Pennie noticed that it was set for five. She assumed it was a mistake so she didn’t mention it. They ordered hot dogs and club sandwiches. The boys each ordered a banana split for dessert, Pennie ordered a frozen mochaccino, and Paul had a hot fudge sundae. They were known for their massive overindulgent desserts, which came in a bowl and were too much for anyone to finish. They chattered all through lunch, and were already excited about their costumes and plans for Halloween. Pennie said she was going to a party being given by one of the seniors. The conversation was lively as the desserts were set down, and a small redheaded young woman suddenly appeared at their table and smiled at them. Paul had meant to mention it a few minutes earlier and hadn’t gotten to it. They all stared at the petite redhead as she pulled up the fifth chair and sat down.

  “I’m sorry I’m late. The traffic was awful. Hi, I’m Olivia, and I’m happy to meet all of you.” The children stared at her and said nothing as Paul squirmed in his seat and tried to cover the awkward moment.

  “Olivia is a friend of mine, and I wanted to introduce you to her. She said she was going to be around today, and I asked her to join us.”

  “Without telling us?” Pennie fired at him, without acknowledging Olivia. The boys muttered embarrassed hellos and stared at their banana splits without touching them.

  “Would you like dessert?” Paul offered her, as they exchanged a look, and Olivia seemed confused.

  “No, I’m fine. I’ll have a bite of yours,” she said to Paul. It was an intimate gesture, which Pennie noticed immediately.

  Olivia did her best to make small talk with them, while Paul tried to compensate for his children’s silences, and the only people talking at the table were the two of them. The boys ate their banana splits without looking at her, and Pennie stared at her with a hostile expression and unconcealed fury at her father.

  “I don’t know why you didn’t tell us you invited a friend, Dad,” Pennie finally said to him, and Mark stepped into the breach, finally glancing at Olivia.

  “Is she your girlfriend, Dad?” He wanted to know. They all did. Pennie assumed she was.

  Paul felt like Judas denying Christ when he said she wasn’t. “We’re just good friends. We know each other through work. She has an art gallery online, and her mom is a famous movie star.” He was groping for reasons why he’d know her, and his children weren’t buying it.

  “How old are you?” Seth questioned her as they all stared at her, waiting for the answer. She had worn jeans and a red sweater and sneakers, and looked Pennie’s age at most.

  “I’m twenty-seven,” she said, smiling at them, but none of them smiled back.

  “Do you have a boyfriend?” Mark asked her, and Pennie answered for her before Olivia could.

  “Yes, our father. That’s why she came to meet us. He didn’t invite anyone else from ‘work,’ did he?” She had a point, and Paul didn’t deny it again. It was obvious that they fully understood the purpose of the meeting. They weren’t children to that degree, and he still didn’t know what Eileen had said. “We’re not stupid, or five years old, Dad. We get it,” Pennie said, and both boys nodded in agreement and continued to stare at Olivia. She was a beautiful girl. So far, her twenties had made no mark on her. “I think it was a rotten thing to do to Mom to have her here,” Pennie continued. “It makes it look to her like we’re part of whatever you’re doing here, and we’re not. You should have asked us how we felt about it. I wouldn’t have come if I’d known.” Olivia wanted to crawl under the table, but she thought Pennie was right. She shot Paul a look. He was mortified by Pennie’s comments and didn’t know how to respond.

  “Are we supposed to keep it a secret from Mom?” Mark asked innocently. It was a valid question.

  “Of course not. We don’t keep secrets.”

  “You do,” Pennie said under her breath, and pushed her almost untouched dessert away. The boys had devoured theirs. Nothing affected their appetites.

  “So can we tell Mom we saw her or not?” Seth questioned his father.

  “Not,” Mark answered for him. “She’ll just cry about it, and she’ll be mad at us.”

  “You can do whatever you like,” Paul said clearly. The meeting had gotten out of hand, but he wasn’t going to ask them to hide anything from their mother.

  “I’m sorry this has been awkward,” Olivia finally spoke up. “I know this must be hard for all of you. Your dad just left home a week ago, and now you’re meeting new friends in his other life without you. I’m happy I got to meet you, but I didn’t want to upset anyone. I just thought it would be fun. I’ve heard so much about you from your dad.” She said it warmly and with a sympathetic expression. The boys thought she was nice, but Pennie didn’t warm up for a second. She was furious with her father for the traitorous position he had put them in with their mother, without their knowledge or consent. He had dragged them into his new life, and his romance, and it was obvious to everyone that Olivia was his girlfriend. In other circumstances, far down the road, if the situation with their mother were clear, they might have liked her, but not this way. He had crammed her down their throats, and ambushed them.

  As soon as Olivia had spoken to them, she stood up with a warm smile and looked around the table. “Well, I just wanted to come by for a few minutes, I’ve got to leave now. Have a great time today.” She gave a little wave, which included Paul, didn’t kiss him goodbye, disappeared into the crowd in the restaurant, and was gone as suddenly as she had arrived. There was silence at the table as all three of his children stared at Paul, waiting for some explanation to justify what he’d done. But there was no making it all right for them, and he knew that now. He had made the introduction to Olivia badly and prematurely. He had been foolish and naïve to think they would enjoy meeting her just because he loved her.

  “How could you, Dad?” Pennie said, with eyes full of fury. “What can we say to Mom? That we had lunch with you and your girlfriend?”

  “You didn’t have lunch with her, she dropped by.” It was a lame excuse and he knew it.

  “It was all planned and you never told us, or asked us if we wanted to meet her. You made us betray Mom, and dragged us into whatever you have going on with her. It’s obvious what you’re doing. And you look old enough to be her father.” He had salt-and-pepper hair, and lines in his face, and Olivia looked like a child next to him, but that was beside the point. There was only a fourteen-year difference between them, not thirty.

  “I think we have to tell Mom,” Seth said honorably. He was the deep thinker among them. Mark was more happy-go-lucky.

  “I don’t see why. It’s just going to make her sad. I liked her. She’s really hot-looking. She’s nice,
Dad,” Mark said kindly.

  “You were rude to her,” Paul accused Pennie.

  “What do you expect, Dad? For us to welcome her with open arms, a week after you moved out?” His daughter was more sensible than he had been, and smarter. Olivia would have been too, if he’d listened to her.

  “Are you going to marry her?” Seth asked, shocked. It had just occurred to him that that might have been the purpose of the meeting.

  “Of course not,” Paul said rapidly. “We’re friends, we’ve gone out a few times. I like her. I’m not marrying anyone. I’m married to your mother.”

  “But you’re dating her?” Seth pursued it, and Paul didn’t answer. He felt cornered and he was not going to make it any worse than it already was. He could imagine how Olivia was feeling. The whole mission and its purpose had been aborted. He had wanted them to make friends, way too early.

  He signaled for the check and paid it, and they left the restaurant. Seth spoke up as soon as they reached the street.

  “Can we go home now? I have a lot of homework to do for Monday.”

  “Yeah, me too,” Mark added. The meeting with Olivia had been too emotionally charged for all of them, even Paul. Pennie looked like she was ready to run back to Greenwich.

  “I’ll look up the train schedule when we get back to the apartment. I’m sure there’s one before six o’clock, if that’s what you want to do.” He wasn’t going to force them to stay, on top of everything else. He sensed that he had some fence-mending to do with Olivia, after the awkward meeting.

  They took a cab back to his apartment and none of them said a word. Paul sat staring out the window, wondering how he could have misjudged the situation so badly. It had ruined the weekend for all of them, and was a harbinger of things to come. There were opposing teams now and they were on their mother’s. They saw her as the victim now that they knew he had a girlfriend.

  It was two-thirty when they got back to the apartment, and there was a three-forty-eight train. They could easily be on it. Pennie called their mother and she said she’d pick them up. They were packed in five minutes, and in a cab on the way to Grand Central Station ten minutes later. Paul saw them off and the boys waved at him when they left him. Pennie didn’t. She thanked him politely for the weekend, but she didn’t respond when he hugged her. He had crossed an important line for her, and she wasn’t ready to forgive him for it. And he’d been on thin ice with her before that.

  He walked through the station with his head down after he left them. He was bitterly upset about how he had handled the meeting. He hailed a cab and went straight to Olivia’s. He called her cellphone and she didn’t pick up, but he suspected she was there. The doorman buzzed her when he got there, and sent him up to her apartment. He didn’t have keys yet. She was waiting at the door when he got upstairs. She looked even angrier than Pennie had, the moment she saw him.

  “What the fuck was that?” were her first words to him. “How could you do that, and spring me on them? I thought you had at least warned them.” She went back into her apartment and he followed.

  “I was going to. The right moment never happened.”

  “So you let me walk into it blindly like an idiot and piss them all off? They’re going to hate me forever after that, and they probably would have anyway. But now we can be sure of it. You screwed everyone, Paul, them, me, your ex-wife. Even yourself.”

  “I know. I didn’t think it would be like that. I was sure they’d fall in love with you, like I did.”

  “Are you crazy? They’ve got divided loyalties. They don’t know anything about me, except now they can assume that I broke up their parents’ marriage, which I did. They’re going to blame me for your divorce forever. You told me the marriage was dead, but they don’t know that. It’s very much alive to them. I’m the interloper here, the intruder, the enemy. You put me in that position. You should have waited to introduce us, and you sure as hell should have warned them today, or even asked them if they wanted to meet me. Instead you cast me in the role of slut and home-wrecker. Shit, how do you expect that to play out after this?”

  “They’ll get over it. They’re kids,” he said, underestimating them again, but Olivia didn’t. She knew better.

  “They’re not five years old, as Pennie said. You can’t bullshit them, and you shouldn’t. Pennie is not a ‘kid,’ she’s almost a grown woman. She’s nearly eighteen, and she seems to know you have a girlfriend. And thanks for denying me entirely, by the way. If you couldn’t tell them I’m your girlfriend, I shouldn’t have met them.”

  “It’s too soon, I wanted to start gently.”

  “Well, you didn’t. The way you did it couldn’t have been much worse. And why are you here? Why aren’t you with them?”

  “They left early,” he said, looking remorseful. “Right after lunch. You’re right. I’m sorry. I screwed it all up. I was naïve about how they’d react.”

  “You were ridiculous to think you could pull that on them. I tried to warn you and you wouldn’t listen. Your kids are beautiful, by the way.”

  “They look like their mother. Pennie is the image of her.”

  “Seth looks just like you.” She smiled at him. She felt sorry for him. He had made a mess of the meeting, which would have been delicate anyway, and he had run roughshod over everyone’s feelings, including hers.

  She calmed down after that, and they talked quietly and went for a walk, but it was a warning to her that Paul didn’t know what he was doing. She was flattered that he had wanted her to meet his children, but if he handled the divorce as badly as he handled their meeting, they were in for some rough times ahead. She told Paul that she wasn’t eager to inherit a ready-made family of angry children who would hate her forever.

  “Are you saying I’m too old for you?” he asked her, worried.

  “No. I’m saying that your life is complicated, maybe more than you want to admit to me or yourself. This isn’t going to be easy. I’m twenty-seven. I don’t want to be in the middle of a big mess with a lot of drama. I love you, and I love being with you, but I’m scared about your kids. They’re real people with their own feelings and opinions, and they love their mother. I just got off on the wrong foot with them, with your help.” She was suddenly reminded of what her mother had said to her, that this wasn’t just about her and Paul, there were four other people involved, his wife and three children, and inevitably there were going to be casualties. It couldn’t be avoided, and was the nature of divorce. Olivia could see that now. She had gotten her first taste of it, and she didn’t like it. She didn’t want to hurt anyone, but she was going to, and already had. That hadn’t been clear to her before. His children hadn’t been real to her until she met them. Now they were. It was a sobering thought that made their relationship less fun and less appealing. There were strings attached, heavy ones, and live people. His children would be marked forever by the divorce and how he handled it. He had just bungled an important piece of it for her. It was a lot to think about. She was quiet when they got back to her apartment.

  They made love that afternoon, but she was pensive and quiet, and Paul was too. He couldn’t stop thinking about his children as he and Olivia lay in bed.

  Three hours later, Eileen called him on his cell. He was still in bed with Olivia, watching a movie by then. She was livid.

  “Do you have any idea how inappropriate it was to introduce our children, my children, to your girlfriend without my consent or theirs, a week after you left me? You haven’t even told me anything about her yet. Are you crazy, or just a total sonofabitch?” she screamed at him, and she wasn’t normally a screamer. “Where are your morals, your sense of decency? Who are you, Paul? And what kind of slut is she to be a party to this? Seth cried when he got home. He said you’re never coming back, she’s too young and beautiful and you’ll probably marry her. And Mark had a stomachache and went to bed. You tried to
drag them to your side, and make them betray me. I can tell you, all that’s going to do is turn them against you, and lose me as your ally forever. I guess our marriage really is over.” She didn’t sound sad about it, just angry, which made her feel better and him worse. He didn’t want the role of the bastard, but now he had it.

  “I told them I didn’t know if it was over or not. She left immediately when she saw how awkward it was and how uncomfortable they were. I don’t think she was there for more than ten minutes. I made a total mess of it. I agree with you, and I’m sorry. I should have asked you. I don’t know the ground rules here. I’ve never been in this situation before.”

  “Neither have I, but I never cheated on you, and I wouldn’t introduce our children to my boyfriend, if I had one, a week after we split up. You disrespected everyone, me, yourself, and our children.”

  “It won’t happen again, I promise. I’m sorry.” He sounded sincerely remorseful, but she hung up on him anyway. She had never done that before either. The lines had been drawn now, and Eileen realized he had obviously lost his mind over the girl he was sleeping with. Seth was probably right, he wouldn’t come back, and he’d marry her. She must be an idiot too, Eileen thought, to agree to meet them so soon. Or she was madly in love and as besotted as he was. Either way, Eileen knew now that she was fighting a losing battle to save their marriage. She had already lost him. It was why he’d been able to leave so easily and so quickly.

  * * *

  —

  She talked to Jane about it that night, and Jane advised her to call one of the lawyers she’d recommended. Eileen said she would. She had no other choice now. She wanted rules he had to live by. Everything had fallen apart so quickly, she still couldn’t get her mind around it. Their marriage had disintegrated. It had been rotting from the inside, like a house full of termites, until it collapsed into a pile of dust.