The Love of Her Life

Kate walked home that night, the twenty-odd blocks that took her back to her mother and Oscar’s apartment, a feeling of slight unease hanging over her about the task that lay ahead, and the conversation she would have to have with her mother and stepfather. It was a milder March night than it had been thus far that year, and though it was dark, and the clocks wouldn’t go forward till Sunday, there was still a sense that spring was in the air. She walked up Broadway, following its slicing path through her beloved Manhattan. She didn’t try to think about anything, just walked her usual walk, drinking it all in. This was her home. Here she could walk the streets and be part of the glorious, jostling mass of humanity, anonymous even if she wore a pink wig and rode a giraffe. No one here cared, no one here recognized her, knew her. Here she bumped into no old school friends, ex-work colleagues, here she saw no ghosts getting in her way. Just the wide stretch of the road, leaving mid-town behind, heading up past the Lincoln Center, the lights getting dimmer, a little cosier, people out running, walking their dogs, living their lives in the thick of the metropolis – that was what she loved best about New York.

She knew she was nearly home when she got to Zabar’s. The huge, cheery, famous deli was as busy as ever. Families doing late-night shopping, solitary coffee drinkers hunched over a paper in the café. Warmth, light, colour, bursting out of every window and door. Kate stared in. They were advertising gefilte fish for Passover, only a few weeks away in mid-April. I’ll be back by then, she thought. Only a couple of weeks. Really, that’s all it is.

He’s going to be fine, she told herself, as the traffic purred beside her and she looked around wildly, wondering where she was for a moment. She thought about him for the moment, wondering with terrified fascination what it would be like to see him again. Her father, so tall, so commanding, so handsome and charismatic, always the centre of the room – what would he be like now, what would his life be like after this operation? What if the kidney didn’t work? How had it come to this, that she could push down the love she had for him, push it down so far inside her she had been able to pretend, for a while, that it was all OK?

But she knew the answer. She’d become an expert at the answer since she’d left London.

Deep inside her came a stabbing pain at the top of her breast bone. Kate gently rubbed her collarbone; her eyes filled with painful tears. But she could not cry, not here, not now. If she started, she might never stop. Come on, she told herself. She carried on walking, turned the corner.

I’ll go back, see Dad, make sure he’s OK, check on the flat, try and find a new tenant.

And I’ll see Zoe.

At the thought of seeing her best friend after all this time, the hairs on Kate’s neck stood up, and though the memory of what had happened still sliced at her she smiled, a small smile, until she realized she was grinning through the window at a rather bewildered old man with thick white hair, who was trying to read his paper in peace. Kate blushed, and hurried on.

It was Oscar’s sixtieth birthday in a few weeks’ time, and Venetia had given him his present – a brand-new baby grand piano – early, back in January. As Kate arrived at the apartment building, on the corner of Riverside Drive, the window of Venetia and Oscar’s apartment was open, and the sound of the piano came floating down to her on the sidewalk.

‘Hello there, Kate!’ Maurice the doorman called happily, opening the door for her into the small marbled foyer. He pushed the button for the elevator. Kate smiled at him, a little wearily.

‘How are you, Maurice?’ she said.

‘I’m just fine,’ said Maurice. ‘I’m pretty good. That spray you told me to get, for my back – well, I bought it yesterday, I meant to say. And it’s done a lot of good.’

‘Really?’ said Kate, pleased. ‘That’s great, Maurice. I’m so glad.’

‘I owe you Kate, that’s for sure. It just went away after I used that spray.’

Kate got into the lift. ‘Good-o. That’s brilliant.’

‘Hold the elevator!’ came a querulous voice, and Mrs Cohen, still elegant, tall, refined in a powder-blue suit, shuffled into the lobby. ‘Kate, dear, hold the elevator! Hello Maurice. Would you be a dear, and –’

‘I’ll get the bags from the cab,’ said Maurice, nodding. ‘You wait here.’

There were times when the geriatric street theatre of the apartment block made Kate’s day; there were other times when she would have given fifty dollars to see someone her own age in the lift. Just once. When they were installed in the lift, bags and all, and when Kate had helped Mrs Cohen to her door, and put her bags in her hallway, she climbed the last flight up to her mother’s apartment, hearing the sound of the piano again, as she reached the sixth floor.

Venetia was born to be a New Yorker; it was hard to believe she’d ever lived anywhere else. Of course, Kate could remember her in London, but it seemed rather unreal, now. The mother she’d had until the age of fourteen when, the day after Kate’s birthday, Venetia had left, was like a character Kate remembered watching in a film, not her actual, own mother. She had to remind herself that it was Venetia who’d picked her up from school every day, Venetia who’d smoothed her hair back when she’d been sick after some scrambled eggs when she was eight, Venetia who’d collected her from the Brownie camp in the New Forest a day early after Kate had cried all night for her. The idea that she and Kate’s father had lived together no longer had any substance. That Venetia had taken Kate to the Proms to watch Daniel play, had entertained myriad friends of Daniel’s in their cluttered basement in the tall house in Kentish Town, had wiped down tables, collected up wine bottles, fielded calls from agents and journalists and critics and young, lithe music students: that Venetia had long disappeared. She was a New Yorker now, and more importantly, Kate thought, she was the star of her own show.

Venetia and Oscar’s apartment was straight out of Annie Hall, from the framed Saul Steinberg prints and posters of the Guys and Dolls revival that Oscar had done a couple of years ago, to the copies of The New Yorker on the coffee table, and the view over Riverside Drive from the long, low room that served as sitting room, dining room, den and Oscar’s office (he worked at home mostly; he was an arranger, a composer, and a conductor).

There were also pictures of Kate in silver frames that she always found hugely embarrassing: her as a baby, sucking her toes, sitting on a lawn somewhere (Kate never knew where; there was no lawn in the Kentish Town house); smiling rather rigidly outside her college after getting her degree; with her mother, the first time she came to New York to visit, when Kate was fifteen, just after Venetia had married Oscar. And there was one she always wanted to take down, just because: Kate, beaming, holding the first issue of Venus, the magazine she’d worked on in London. There had been other photos, other remnants of Kate’s life. They had been taken down – no one wanted to see them, now.

As Kate opened the door to the apartment, a smell of onions, something warming, hit her. Her mother was in the tiny galley kitchen singing; ‘Some Enchanted Evening’ was being played in the long room.

‘Hi!’ she called, injecting a note of jollity into her voice. ‘Something smells nice.’

‘Hello darling!’ Venetia appeared in the corridor, wiping her hands on her apron. ‘I’m making risotto, it’s going to be lovely.’ She kissed her daughter. ‘Thanks for calling. It’ll be ready in about fifteen minutes. How was your day? Did you get hold of Betty? She rang earlier. She was wondering if you wanted to meet for a drink on Friday.’

Kate disentangled herself from her scarf, and from her mother, backing away towards the door to hang her things up. She pulled her long dark blonde hair out from her coat, and turned to her mother, chewing a lock of hair as she did.

‘I’m starving,’ she said indistinctly. ‘I’ll give her a call in a minute. Mum –’

Oscar called from the long room. ‘Hello, Katy! Come and say hi!’

Kate poked her head around the door. ‘Hi, Oscar,’ she said. ‘How was your day?’

‘Honey, I’m home!’ Oscar said joyously, launching into a ragtime version of ‘Luck Be A Lady’. ‘I’ve been home all day!’

Oscar made this joke roughly three times a week. Kate smiled affectionately at him.

‘What a lovely evening,’ she said, staring out over the Hudson, at the purple, grey sunset. ‘I had such a nice walk back.’

Oscar was only half listening. ‘That’s good, dear,’ he said. ‘Would you like a drink? Venetia, can I get you another drink, darling?’

Venetia appeared, carrying her gin and tonic. ‘I’m fine with this one, thanks, darling,’ she said, carelessly caressing the back of her husband’s neck as she passed by. ‘I’d better lay the table – darling, did I mention that I saw Kathy today? And she and Don can’t make it to your party?’

‘Dad’s ill,’ Kate said, suddenly. Her voice was louder than she’d meant. The room was suddenly deadly silent.

‘What?’ Venetia turned to look at her daughter. ‘What did you say?’

Kate gripped the side of the sofa. ‘Dad’s really ill. He’s had a kidney transplant. He’s in intensive care.’

‘Oh, my god,’ Oscar said, looking towards his wife. ‘That’s – well, that’s awful.’

‘I’m going home,’ said Kate. ‘On Saturday. To see him.’

‘Back to London?’ her mother said. Her face was white.

‘Yes,’ said Kate, shaking her head very slightly, willing her mother to do the right thing.

‘My god,’ said Oscar. He chewed at a cuticle, nervously. ‘Will he be – OK?’

‘Yes, yes,’ said Kate, wanting to reassure them. ‘I mean – it’s dangerous, but he’s very lucky. I hope so –’ She swallowed, as black dots danced in front of her eyes, and a wave of panic swept over her at the thought of it, her poor darling dad. ‘Yes, Lisa thinks he will be …’

Lisa’s name dropped like a stone between them. It was Venetia who broke the silence. ‘You’re going back Saturday? What time’s your flight?’

‘Nine. In the evening.’

‘Right.’ Venetia put her drink down; she patted her collar bone, her slim white fingers stroking her skin. ‘We’ll drive you. Oh, darling. How long are you going for?’

‘Two weeks, probably,’ said Kate, coming towards her. She wanted her reassurance, for her mother to tell her it was going to be OK, not just Dad, but everything to do with it. ‘I’ll be back for Oscar’s party, of course I will – I’m just going to make sure he’s OK.’

‘Course you do!’ said Venetia. She put her arm around her daughter, squeezed her shoulders. ‘Darling, it’s just – well. It’ll be hard for you. That’s all.’

There was silence again in the room, as Oscar looked from his wife to his stepdaughter. Kate gazed out of the window. The sunset was almost over; it was nearly dark.

‘Yep,’ Kate said. ‘It will be hard.’ It felt strange; it felt alien here, suddenly. She hated that feeling. ‘I had to go back sometime,’ she added, and Oscar nodded and sat back down at the piano. ‘Just wish it wasn’t for this, that’s all.’

CHAPTER TWO (#u1a88c0c4-05e2-5666-9ccb-685953012233)