“Marissa is the mother.”
“Your old assistant? The one who charged your cameras? Oh my God.” Beautiful Marissa Delgado with the dark curly hair, olive skin, and the best eyebrows in LA who traveled with Casey for several years, flying all over the world on assignments for shelter magazines. I recalled he complained about her not being able to schlep as much gear as the guys, but the extra feminist credit he earned by hiring a woman as his first assistant was worth it. Plus, she spoke several languages, including Portuguese and Spanish, and that was a bonus. I believed him when he said she was a little over-the-top but clients loved her. Turns out he must have loved her a little, too.
About five years ago she quit as Casey’s assistant to focus on her own food photography. I’d spotted her credits in magazines and on websites. It never occurred to me that she could have quit for another reason other than bringing images of roasted grapes or blistered tomatoes to the Internet. Did I even know Marissa had kids? I don’t think so. She would show up at various work-related holiday gatherings over the years, barely making eye contact with me, saving all her energy for Casey or the other film and photo people in the room. That happened to me a lot with Casey’s artsy friends, being looked over as a “non-pro,” despite my museum job. I couldn’t hire them, so I wasn’t much use to them. Maybe the real reason she avoided me was because she was avoiding me. She had some nerve showing up at our house. But Casey had more nerve inviting her. “How great that she could find a sitter for your children when she came to the annual holiday open house. What the hell, Casey?”
“I’m sorry. Marissa and I are friends now, just co-parents, nothing more.”
Co-parents? The nausea was gone, and I was starting to shake with rage, furious at his casual tone, as if we had some sort of open marriage agreement and this was a natural by-product of that arrangement. Casey continued, “If you want to do this together, then we can. The five of us can become a blended family. You, me, Will and Oliver, Marissa. She’s fine with that. She thinks the more grown-ups in a child’s life the better.”
I didn’t believe him for a second. A man who wants to create a cohesive blended family doesn’t swing by his wife’s office on a Friday night to drop a bombshell and then head out of town for two weeks. He thought I was an idiot. Or worse, he thought that I was the same lost twenty-two-year-old that he’d married. “That sounds like great parenting advice from the woman who slept with her boss, bore his children, and then lied about it for five years. Yes, the two of you make quite a team. I hope you’re teaching Oliver and Will about your courage.” My volume was escalating. Could they hear me in the sculpture garden? “And now what do I do? Announce to everyone I know that, surprise, I’m stepmother to five-year-old twins fathered by my husband on the side. No big deal. Maybe we can get the New York Times to announce it for us in the Style section. You know how they do those follow-up stories called Ten Years Later? They’d love this. Me, you, your former assistant, the kids, Granny Suzi Clements. One big happy family.”
Casey seemed honestly shocked at my hostility. He started to back away. “Joan, please. I’m flying to Tokyo tonight, then on to Kyoto. I’ll be back a week from Sunday. Think about it. We could let Will and Oliver into our lives in a meaningful way.” He was back to his Dr. Phil script that Dave and Amy had probably written for him. “But if that’s not what you want, if you can’t let the boys into your life, then we’ll need to end our marriage. I’m forty years old, and I need to be a man. Oliver and Will are my priority.”
“Not me. Got it.”
“You have no idea what’s it’s like to look into their eyes.”
There was a large stone figure of Shiva from the eleventh century on a worktable next to my desk. I wanted to hurl it at his head. And so, that was it. We would end here, in the museum, where we started. What do you know? A cliché. “Please go.”
In the cocoon of my office, with a glass of wine poured from the leftovers of last week’s donor reception, I felt the anger fade to numbness, which dissipated to relief. Yes, I was relieved that Casey Harper wouldn’t be the father of my children. He didn’t deserve to be. He was a shadow of the man my father had been, a poor imitation and maybe I’d known that for a while. Honestly, I had. His defense that his deception was an attempt to protect me confirmed his character.
When my mother called me around six in the morning on September 11, 2001, and told me to turn on the TV, I had been sound asleep in my childhood bedroom in Pasadena. She was up in Ojai, at the weekend place, getting it ready for my father’s return from a summer in Maine. He’d been there for months, working on a commission for a wealthy Boston tech executive who wanted a Blakely on the property of his Camden house. I’d been my father’s research assistant on-site, having graduated from Smith that spring.
It was a fantastic summer, indulgent and invigorating. I was involved with my father’s work on a daily basis and was finally gaining some understanding of his process. I dove deep into his notebooks, the beginning of what he hoped would be a full catalog of his work given to a deserving museum, most likely the WAM, right here in his hometown. My mother seemed to finally let go of the idea that I would become a model and accepted that my path would be more traditional, like a curator or gallery owner. Maybe even a writer. And, best of all, I was a hostess at a local restaurant and had a fast and furious summer romance with a local chef who swept me off my feet with seafood crudo and blueberry pie. When Labor Day rolled around, the relationship ended with a friendly high five and a gift of plum jam from the kitchen. It was as perfect as a summer could be.
As fall approached, we all headed back to Southern California on different schedules. I was off to various spots in Europe and Turkey to study the emerging Byzantine art market in Asia on a Watson Fellowship, a topic I’d cooked up to spend some serious time traveling, first in Istanbul and Hong Kong and then six months in Paris on somebody else’s nickel. It was exactly what I’d planned during my junior year abroad with my friend Polly. At nineteen, we thought ourselves clever and sophisticated, gabbing endlessly over wine, bread, and fromage and acting like we’d invented Paris. Somehow, we’d return after graduation, we vowed. We’d share an apartment in Saint-Germain, trendier than our student dorm rooms. I’d conquer the art world and she’d write for Vogue. We cultivated an invincibility over the year that continued to strengthen during my final year at college as my plans fell into place. The world was our oyster. For a minute anyway.
My mother had moved on to the completion of my father’s important commission, the Wallace Aston Museum. In addition, she was putting together her first small show of local artists in Ojai, a new hot spot in the California art scene. My father was set to return that day, after spending the weekend on a spiritual retreat with old friends, an annual tradition on the anniversary of his sobriety.
He’d boarded American Airlines Flight 11 in Boston. On the phone that Tuesday morning, my mother’s voice registered pure terror, and when I saw the pictures of the North Tower, I understood why. “I think your father is on that plane,” she whispered.
And he had been.