The portrait, p.6
The Portrait, page 6
The housekeeper was happy to cook for him, but he enjoyed cooking for himself, or dining at any of the very good restaurants while he was there. There was a very active social life in the Hamptons, which ranged from casual to formal dinner parties, but Charlie usually kept to himself, enjoying the downtime and the long walks on the magnificent white sand beach that stretched for miles.
The house had a decidedly New England feel to it. It wasn’t showy, but it was solid, well kept, well laid out, and handsomely decorated in a restrained New England way. It reminded him of grand homes he had seen on Cape Cod when he was in college. It didn’t have the lavish flash more typical of California, or the grandeur of some of the older estates in Southampton. Charlie didn’t want to show off there, he just wanted to relax. He and Liam lived in shorts and T-shirts and bare feet. There was a large swimming pool the current owners had added when their parents died, and they were thinking of putting in a tennis court and had more than enough land to do it. The Hamptons were an interesting combination of beach and country. Most people seemed to treat the area as more of a country retreat, but what Charlie loved about it was the ocean. There were extensive lawns on the property, and Charlie frequently saw deer crossing them in broad daylight with their young. It was the only place where Charlie rested and felt at peace, other than on his sailboat. He loved working on his boat every year, and keeping it in perfect condition. He enjoyed maintaining it almost as much as sailing on it, which he usually did alone. He knew his neighbors, but didn’t socialize with them. He wasn’t part of the Hamptons social New York crowd. He remained an outsider and a visitor, and was content to do that. Entering the local social whirl would have been a burden and an intrusion he didn’t want to deal with. One of the things he loved about the Hamptons was that you could live life there however you wanted, quietly alone, or as part of all the social events that went on constantly. He could be himself there. And Liam enjoyed seeing that side of him, and sharing the rare downtime with his father. Charlie wasn’t stressed here, barely checked his emails, just enough to stay in touch with his office. He was fully accessible for emergencies, but he tried not to engage in July and August, and he and Liam had long talks about life as they lay in the sun on the deck, or looked up at the stars at night with a glass of wine. Charlie had always treated him like an adult, which Liam appreciated. They had a relationship of mutual respect.
They’d been there for a week when Liam cautiously told his father that he didn’t want to go back to Yale, or at least not yet. While exploring châteaux in France and famous castles in England, Liam had found that he was more fascin-ated by their gardens and parks and mazes than he was by the actual structures. For him, the gardens were living, breathing beings that grew and changed and evolved and combined historical designs with newer techniques. He had found a French school that taught landscape architecture, and he wanted to defer his graduate studies, to focus on that and study in France for a year. As he put it very modestly, he had discovered that he wanted to be a “gardener” when he grew up. It was a great deal more than that. Le Nôtre, the master designer of the gardens of Versailles, had even laid out parts of Washington, D.C., originally. Liam shared his dreams with his father, and Charlie didn’t want to disappoint him, although he wished that Liam had loftier aspirations than working on gardens.
Liam saw the opportunities as limitless, to work on parks, historical châteaux, and more modern outdoor spaces around museums, monuments, and even grand private estates. It could be as simple as a country cottage or something as major as Versailles, with a full range in between. Charlie was reminded of the times when he had tried to share his visions of the future with his father, and he had brutally crushed Charlie’s dreams and dismissed them. He didn’t want to do the same to Liam, and had to force himself to open his mind, broaden his view, give up his own aspir-ations for his son, and listen to what he wanted. Liam said he couldn’t discuss it with his mother, who only saw two templates for his future: law school or business school. No other options were acceptable to her, as Charlie knew. She had no imagination or tolerance for anything outside those fields, and thought that any other plan spelled disaster. Charlie wanted to respect who Liam was and what he wanted, even if it wasn’t what he had envisioned for him. He could still remember his father derisively calling him The Delivery Boy and The Fast Food King when he established his two startups. He was determined not to do the same, when Liam called himself a “simple gardener.” His dreams were far more sophisticated than that, and he had a real connection to the earth, the way Charlie did with business in a way his own father had never understood, nor tried to.
When Liam explained his plans to his father, he looked at him with hope in his eyes, and Charlie didn’t have the heart to dash it. His real goal for Liam was for him to be happy and fulfilled in his life, and if building magnificent gardens was his passion, who was he to belittle it or say he was wrong?
“I know it must sound crazy to you, Dad, and it’s about as far as you can get from what you and Mom do, in the world of finance and venture capital and startups, but it’s what I love.” He was so simple and direct as he said it, and so humble, that all of Charlie’s hesitations dissolved, and he smiled at his son.
“You have to do what you love, Liam. That’s where it has to start. I love the businesses I’ve been in. It’s a game I love, starting from nothing except some crazy idea and building something I can turn into a giant if I do it right and get lucky. Like you starting with a seed, and turning it into a garden like Versailles. It’s the same principle. And your mother has a real talent for venture capital. You have my blessing if you need it, to do whatever you have to do to get there. Don’t ever let anyone stand in the way of your dreams, not even your mom or me.
“You need that passion to have a worthwhile life. Don’t ever lose that, or let anyone talk you out of it. Fight for it if you have to. This is your life and no one else’s. Don’t let anyone spoil it for you, or stop you. That’s what my father tried to do. He tried to shame me out of my dreams. I didn’t let him, and it cost me his respect and my relationship with him. But I don’t regret it even today. I won’t ever do that to you. The price is too high, and no one wins. I lost a father and he lost a son that way. I won’t let that happen to us. So go for it, if building gardens is your passion and what turns you on. That’s a hell of a lot more noble than what I did—I turned delivering condoms and mattresses to my classmates into a major career. What you want to do is beautiful and could last for centuries. How could I say no to that?”
Liam looked ecstatic when his father said it, and deeply touched. As independent as he was, his father’s approval was important to him, and he knew he wouldn’t get it from his mother, who had no artistic or creative interest, and no ability to use her creativity except for money and deals. She was a genius with that, but gardens would be totally beyond her, and Charlie knew it too. Liam wouldn’t get the blessing he wanted from her, but what his father had just said to him was enough. Charlie had just given him wings to fly. It was what Charlie had always hoped to get from his father, and never did. He had only gotten his anger, disapproval, and harsh criticism. Liam deserved better than that, and so had Charlie at his age. He had had to fly against his father’s wishes and take to the skies alone. And even if earthbound himself, and limited in his knowledge of Liam’s chosen field, he wanted to give Liam a good send-off and wish him well.
The two men grew closer than they’d ever been in the time they spent together at the house in East Hampton. The pain in Liam’s ankle was easing, and he had gotten adept with the crutches. The only help Charlie provided was hanging out in the bathroom when Liam took a shower to make sure he didn’t fall, hopping on one leg with a plastic garbage bag protecting the injured one. Other than that, Liam managed fine, and peaceful nights, sleep, and the sea air did them both good. They cooked lobster together and made sumptuous dinners, and Charlie introduced Liam to some excellent wines. They were two men who loved and respected each other. One couldn’t ask more than that from father or son, and they both flourished in the warmth they shared as they bonded.
Liam had spoken to his mother, and was planning to spend a few days with her on his way home. She had a house full of guests in Aspen, all stars of the venture capital world like her. It was all she knew and they were the only kind of people she wanted to be with. It struck Charlie sometimes that in her own way, she was as limited as her banker father had been. They both had a specific relationship to money, and couldn’t see any other way of life as acceptable or of interest. It surprised Charlie because she could be very creative with some of her deals and how to make them work, but it extended no further than the boundaries she established, which were rigid and inflexible.
Even the startups Charlie had successfully established were too far outside the traditional box for her. She didn’t get it, and she had dismissed Charlie as a suitable partner because of it. He doubted that she would be any more indulgent with their son. He suspected that Faye would override Liam’s wishes and insist on law school or business school as she always did. Liam feared it too. He was planning to go forward anyway, but he was hoping for both his parents’ approval, out of respect for them. Charlie thought it was more than they deserved, since they had served their own interests for so long. Charlie was determined to honor Liam’s wishes, but knowing Faye, he doubted that she would agree. It was her way or the highway. Charlie wanted to apply a lighter hand and had offered his support. He had made the suggestion that Liam defer Yale for a year, rather than withdraw completely, in case he discovered that landscape architecture was less exciting than he thought. He advised him to keep his options open rather than close any doors, which Liam thought was wise, and agreed to do. He was grateful for his father’s advice.
Aside from their serious talks, they had fun together. They couldn’t pursue the sports they enjoyed, like tennis or biking or long walks on the beach, but they took drives in the area, cooked together, and went out for good meals. They played video games and Charlie was a grossly incompetent adversary, much to Liam’s delight, and Liam told him about some of the girls he had dated recently, none of them serious. They spoke openly on many subjects, which led Liam to venture onto a topic he had always wondered about and they had never discussed. It was an unspoken taboo. It came up one night, as they lay on the deck outside the living room, gazing at the stars.
“What went wrong with you and Mom? How did you end up so far apart?” Liam dared to ask him, and Charlie hesitated before he answered, pondering the reasons himself, while Liam worried he had gone too far and offended him, and had risked their recent closeness with the question.
“I’m not sure there is a simple answer to that,” Charlie finally said, glancing at Liam and then back up at the sky. There was a falling star at that exact moment, as there often was in the summer when he was there. He loved watching them as they free-fell through the heavens and disappeared. “My personal opinion is that marriage is a crapshoot at best. Whatever age you marry, twenty, thirty, forty, you don’t know who you’re going to be a decade later, or who your partner will be, what you’ll want, if you’ll still want the same things or something completely different. People don’t grow in the same way, like plants, I guess. If you’re lucky, you grow in the same direction as life bends you. If not, you end up going in opposite directions, and can’t even see each other anymore.
“For sure, we were too young. I don’t think either of us was thinking about marriage. We were both under a lot of pressure at Harvard, and trying to excel. We were both driven about our studies, and I think your mother went through some kind of rebellious stage. When I met her she was thirty-one, I was five years younger, and maybe turning thirty made her a little crazy for a minute. She had purple hair, and wore the shortest skirts I’d ever seen. She could drink any guy under the table, and still ace her exams the next day, while I had to struggle for good grades. I thought she was the coolest girl I had ever met, and the smartest. I loved how smart she was, and she was fun to be with. We went to Vegas on a lark. I won five thousand dollars playing craps, while she kept explaining the odds to me. She was good at that too. And I don’t even remember how we wound up at the Elvis Chapel, but we did. She was holding a bouquet of fake flowers, I was wearing a white rhinestone-studded Elvis cape—and I only remember that because we have a picture of it—and the next morning, I had the worst hangover of my life and a fake gold ring on my finger, and we were really married. We went to an oxygen bar for our hangovers and real life set in. The obvious moral of the story is that you don’t marry someone you barely know when you’re drunk off your ass. We talked about getting it annulled, and not even telling anyone we’d done it. But we were young and smart, we liked each other and had fun together, and by the time we landed in Boston, we decided to give it a shot, and exit quietly if it didn’t work. We said a year. We told our parents, which was a mistake, and they went nuts. We should have kept it to ourselves. It was bumpy while she finished law school and I got my MBA in the next few months. We were both beginning to think it wasn’t going to work, but we wanted to give it a fair chance after we graduated, and six months after my moment of glory in the Elvis cape, she found out she was pregnant, and we both decided to take it seriously. There was no way back at that point. Abortion and divorce were out of the question for both of us. So we were stuck, and you were the only sweet spot in the story.
“Her moment of rebellion passed, and she became pretty much who she is now. Driven, serious, conservative, brilliant at her job, passionate about her career, committed to excellence, with a lot of sharp edges. Life with two big careers and a child is serious stuff. Neither of us was ready for kids. We put all our energy into our careers and not our marriage. I’m sorry I didn’t spend more time with you. I regret that now. I’m not sure if Faye and I were too much alike or not enough alike. Her work means everything to her, as mine does to me too. She has one speed. I wanted more, and I don’t think she had it in her. I can’t tell you when it happened. Things like that happen over time, but one day about fifteen years later, we both knew it was over. There was nothing left. We agreed to stay together because we thought a divorce would be a mess. She said it would be ‘expensive and inconvenient,’ which is true, but it would have been the healthier choice. We told ourselves we were staying together for you, which sounds noble, but wasn’t true. We stayed because we were too lazy and scared to deal with our mistakes and face the unknown. You haven’t really been home in eight years, and we’re still there, like strangers under one roof, so there isn’t even a noble excuse for it anymore. I’m not sure why people stay together in circumstances like ours. Laziness, habit, fear of what’s out there, or what isn’t. The cost of tearing a life in half, and losing half of it. Maybe it’s all about the fear and loss. You forget that other people actually live together and love each other. You put up with not having human warmth and affection for so long that it begins to seem normal, not to have it, but it isn’t normal, it’s a terrible mistake and it’s sad, and a hard way to live.”
“I used to wonder,” Liam said, “why other people’s parents hugged and kissed and liked each other, and you and Mom didn’t. You never touched each other, you were hardly around at the same time, and you both looked miserable when you were together. I couldn’t understand why you were together. The divorced parents of my friends looked happier. I get it now. Marriage seems scary to me. How hard it must be to get it right, and to still love each other twenty years later.”
“You have to put energy and effort into it,” Charlie told him, “like watering a garden. We didn’t water the garden. We spent no time together. We were damn lucky with how you turned out, with so little time and effort on our part. That’s a tribute to you, not to us,” Charlie said, and Liam smiled. “And our careers are in great shape. The marriage probably never would have worked, but we didn’t do anything to help it. Life just doesn’t work that way,” he said realistically. “And I think your mom is comfortable the way it is now, with the trappings of marriage, and the appearance of it, without the burdens and responsibilities of a real marriage. We both gave up years ago. I guess that’s your answer. It was a long shot. It was a long shot in the beginning, and we gave up.”
Liam knew that—he had lived it and seen it firsthand. His friends had envied him the freedoms he had, but he knew he had grown up with two parents who didn’t love each other. It was like living in a concrete wasteland where nothing grew. He had spent all the time he could at his friends’ homes, basking in the warmth of their families, since he didn’t have his own. It had been enough to keep him going, and his own inner strength had gotten him through, but he didn’t want a marriage like his parents’ one day. Being alone seemed better to him than a life like theirs. His father had been honest with him, and didn’t dress it up, or give Faye and himself purer motives as an excuse.
“Do you think you and Mom would ever get divorced?” Liam asked the question he had wondered all his life. The icy chasm between his parents had existed for as long as he could remember. Not only did they not see each other, they didn’t like each other. Charlie hesitated for a moment before he answered.
“I don’t know. I think your mom is comfortable the way things are. And I’m used to it too. It takes a lot of guts to take everything apart and start over. And your mother wasn’t wrong when she said a divorce would be a huge financial mess.” They could afford to get divorced, but Charlie wasn’t sure that either of them wanted to. They were used to their life the way it was. It was predictable. There was nothing unknown to fear.
