Cat In A White Tie And Tails

Jon took a big belt of single malt, and closed his eyes momentarily. “Paying off your mother,” he told Matt, “paying for a two-flat for her and you and nothing more, was written off as a ‘bad investment.’ If you can turn the other cheek on that, I can’t. My parents were like a minor league version of the Kennedys under old Joe, the bootlegging womanizer. Men had to excel in power positions and the women didn’t count except as props.”

Matt sat silent. Temple saw the muscle flexing in his left jaw because she faced it and Jon didn’t.

“I’m not guilty,” Matt told his father, “of forgiveness and mercy toward your family any more than I’m guilty of rage and revenge. I’m just certain, lousy as my low-end so-called family situation was, I came out better than if I’d been condescended to and manipulated in the high-end success factory you were put through.”

Temple clapped softly.

“Yeah,” his father admitted, “I did it all by the family code after I got my ‘going rogue’ stage over. It’s golden and shiny on the outside, but hollow on the inside. I think I always missed the genuineness of my youthful patriotic instincts. My most treasured moments are the ones least plotted.”

“Not mine. What about your brother?” Matt asked. “Did he fit the family mold?”

“Just who is interviewing whom about who’s fit to marry into whose family?”

Matt shrugged, but smiled at that bit of humility. “I couldn’t defend my mother then. I can now. Or try at least.”

“I wish I could say that for my kids. They’ve all done ‘well,’ but … anyway, Philip and his wife weren’t able to have children. They put their spare time into charity work for kids. That seemed to bond them better than board dinners and corporate cocktail parties. It was an awful thing when Sarah died. Cancer. So … I’m shocked, but fine with what’s happened. The only mystery is why Mira is so freaked about it. That was thirty-five years ago.”

“Simple for guys,” Matt said. “You had an incandescent one-night stand to idealize.”

Jon’s inbred control shattered. “How did you know it was ‘incandescent’?”

“I’ll never tell,” Matt said, but Temple knew.

His mother had given him a new surname from a soaring Christmas carol, “O Holy Night,” also called in the lyrics, “O Night Divine.” She totally approved of Matt’s not getting his father’s ego or interest up by keeping this most personal of his mother’s secrets.

“The woman had to bear the consequences, as it’s so coyly put,” Matt went on, “and you can never imagine how hellish that was.” He took the gloves off. “You couldn’t have used a condom?”

His father’s ruddy middle-aged complexion reddened more. “Being prepared made the sin bigger.”

“I bet you got over that in the military.” It was Matt’s first slightly bitter remark.

Temple hadn’t thought of that, of Jonathan Winslow getting clued in to “protect himself” while Mira’s “lost” innocence was paid for again and again through the years.

“It was my first time too,” Jon muttered. “I was scared about what I’d done and where I was going … I had just turned eighteen and was trying to prove I wasn’t the kid my family thought I was, but I still was. As soon as I got back, I started looking for her.”

“She’d never be the same. She thought you were dead all those years. Then you were resurrected. She regrets every decision she made since that time. That’s why she refused to meet with you when I tried to arrange it. You were still dead to her. Now, if she marries your brother, there’ll be this bitter family secret with a walking, talking souvenir.

“Either of you told your brother?” Matt asked last.

“I don’t think so.”

“You don’t know so?” Matt sounded incredulous.

“Mira refused to meet me, remember. I know the restaurant where she works, of course, Polandia, because that’s where Philip met her. I don’t dare show up there, but I made it my business to know where she lives, her phone number. She doesn’t have e-mail.”

Matt shared his father’s disbelieving smile. “Without a kid at home she had no one to update her on new technology, including social networks. She’s living with a much hipper niece these days, so I’m guessing the e-mail will come. In her own good time.”

“Not Facebook,” Temple put in. “Too dangerous given the situation. It’s all about connections and Mira is still all about keeping connections apart.”

Jon sipped his drink. “I’m a married man, whether I still want to be or not. I’m just a hangover from the past, but I don’t see how frankness and ‘being open’ is going to resolve anything.”

“Did I say it would?” Matt said. “I’m not a miracle worker.”

“Trouble is,” Jon continued, “any … unfortunate bit of personal history goes viral in this Internet age. If I held out hope that ‘an honest mature discussion’ could do anyone any good, I’d get it out on the table between the three of us. But it wouldn’t stay discreet. You know that, Matt.” Jon’s forehead wrinkled. “This might blow up your career opportunity too.”

“Just what Temple was saying. That doesn’t worry me. Blowing up people’s lives does.”