More than that, I pray that they never question how fiercely I loved my husband and our lives together and the family we created. I made a mistake, but just as I knew I would never leave Graham, I always knew I would keep the baby—my Anne—as well as keep the truth from my husband, who I never meant to hurt. But during that time with Hutch—when I loved both men—I had so desperately needed to be seen. I felt invisible behind the curtains of marriage and motherhood and Hutch had seen me the way no one else had then, not even Graham.

  And I was terrified he would leave me, not for the infidelity, which I would have begged him to forgive me for, and I could have imagined he would over time, but for having another man’s baby. Although our marriage wasn’t perfect, it had endured, but I couldn’t imagine it remaining intact through a transgression that ruinous. And I wouldn’t have been able to bear subjecting my child to the rejection and resentment that surely Graham would have felt toward her, even if he denied it, or tried to convince me that he didn’t feel such things, and to masquerade as someone who didn’t.

  I’ve been thinking about God a lot lately, as you might imagine. I’m not afraid to die, I’m just not ready to go and I won’t be there to tell Anne about a secret she deserves to know or persuade Graham that I did the only thing that I was truly capable of, even if it hadn’t been the right thing, or the honest thing to do. God has been so good to my family—we have always been rich beyond measure in luck and love—and I pray that if His grace and blessings keep shining on them after I’m gone, those gifts will be compensation for my inability to make amends.

  Joan Katherine Hamilton Cavanaugh

  Beloved Wife and Mother

  June 24, 1940-March 23, 1989

  NEW YORK

  1964

  2

  The first time Hutch saw Joan was on a frigid, icy, unforgiving Wednesday in February at the D’Agostino’s around the corner from his grandmother’s apartment. They were both twenty-three.

  It’s no defense of any kind, he knew then, and he knew later, but she didn’t seem married. Hutch had graduated from Syracuse the previous spring and checking for a ring wasn’t a skill he had thought to develop. There wasn’t a need. Even though he had nothing at stake—not at the beginning—if he had the chance to do it all over again, he would have done things differently. This is a thought he’s had for decades, like an affliction that can never be completely cured. Mostly, but not entirely.

  Hutch and his grandmother, Margot, were very good friends. As the baby of the family, he remained her most devoted grandchild. All his siblings were married, and his brother and one sister had kids already, and his other sister was pregnant. Although his father had grown up in the apartment Margot still lived in, he and Hutch’s mother both were much more comfortable in Rye. They never said it out loud, but Hutch sensed he and his grandmother both thought his parents were provincial. They simply weren’t built for it, his mother never hesitated to explain in her recurring refrain: We love going into the city, but your father and I just aren’t built to live there. But Margot was—she and his grandfather had raised Hutch’s father and uncle there and had run their own business for forty years, a haberdashery that weathered the Depression because of the steadfastly loyal customers his grandparents cultivated. There was no home for Margot but the city.

  Hutch benefitted from his siblings breaking in his parents and learned from them what pitfalls to avoid and what he could reasonably expect them to approve of, so after he graduated from college Hutch asked his father to give him a job while he decided what he wanted to do with an economics degree. In the same conversation, he offered to pay rent to sleep in his childhood bedroom. They agreed he’d work four days a week at his father’s law office in White Plains. Hutch negotiated Wednesdays off to take a morning drawing class through the continuing education program at NYU. Hutch had minored in studio art because of the release valve the creativity provided, and how that offset the courses that required his mental immersion into the world of numbers and formulas. After graduation it remained a pursuit he wanted to return to. Those were the days Hutch visited Margot on the Upper East Side before taking the train home. He always called her after class let out to find out what the plan was. Some days they went out to lunch and on others they ate in her apartment.

  No matter what they decided, Hutch always stopped at D’Agostino’s beforehand to pick up flowers or dessert. Because of the terrible weather that afternoon, his grandmother told Hutch she would have lunch waiting on the table if he was sure he still wanted to join her, and to please be careful out in the snow and ice.

  This is what Hutch remembered. Walking toward the bakery, he turned the corner at the end of an aisle and almost collided with a woman looking down at her shopping list.

  “Sorry,” Hutch said. “I beg your pardon.”

  “No, pardon me,” the woman said. “Clearly I have to be as careful indoors as I do out in that mess.”

  She walked past him, and Hutch continued to the bakery and asked for a box of lady fingers.

  When Hutch got to the register, the same woman was ahead of him in line, and he was able to get a better look at her. From what he could see she seemed very pretty but was wearing an unexpected bulky men’s field coat, drab green, appropriate for the day but seemed like something she had borrowed from a stranger. While they waited, she twirled the ends of her dark blond hair that peeked out from a maroon knit cap. Their cashier was having trouble with the customer in front of the woman, a man who disagreed about what he was being charged for the roast he was buying, compared to what he said was advertised in the meat department. As a result, the cashier called for a manager to help handle the problem. The cashier was a meek woman, young, with hunched shoulders, who looked afraid to say anything to anyone. And the irate customer was a self-possessed older man in a suit and well-made overcoat who was having no trouble putting her in her place, only to find out that she hadn’t made a mistake, but the advertised price of the meat was in error.

  It was an uncomfortable exchange to witness: the sheepish cashier, the belligerent customer, the mediating manager. A long line had formed behind Hutch and the lines at all the registers were just as long with everyone in the neighborhood stocking up for the days of paralyzing, bad weather ahead. There was nothing to do but stand and wait until some resolution was reached and the man was on his way.

  The woman turned around and took a step closer toward Hutch. One of her eyes was blue, the other, green. “You would think he could wait and have a fit on a day when there isn’t a blizzard and there aren’t so many of us in a hurry to get home.” She didn’t quite whisper it, like she wanted the man ahead of her to hear, and she didn’t seem to recognize Hutch from their awkward exchange a few minutes earlier. “What a jerk.” She smiled at Hutch like they were in on a dare together.

  He was caught off guard and didn’t know how to respond. He thought of kidding her about watching where she was going, almost running into people the way she did, but couldn’t manage quickly enough on his feet. “Maybe he had a bad experience grocery shopping that he’s never gotten over.” He had spoken more quietly than she had and as soon as the words were out of his mouth, he wished he could take them back, but she laughed.

  “Maybe he’s a lonely man and this is the only chance he has to talk to people,” she said.

  “And this is how he always talks to people, which is why he’s alone,” Hutch said.

  “Exactly!” She nodded and laughed. “That would explain a lot.”

  “Next please, miss, you’re next!” The cashier called as Hutch watched the man walk toward the door of the store. The cashier waved the woman in front of him to unload her groceries.

  “Oh, gosh, sorry,” the woman said. Flustered, she stepped forward and emptied her basket on the conveyor belt and their line of shoppers advanced. “I’m sorry you had to deal with that clod. I was ready to say something to him then you called your manager. You shouldn’t have to deal with that.”

  Whether she was shaken by the man or moved by the kindness of this woman, the cashier’s eyes started to well up as she rang up the items and strived for composure. “Thank you for saying so,” she said. “I apologize for the inconvenience of having to wait.”

  The woman spoke to the cashier, but she turned and smiled at Hutch. “It was no problem. We had some fun at his expense, right?” She paid and picked up her bag. “Thank you. You have to feel sorry for someone like that. Someone so angry,” she said to the cashier. Then she looked at Hutch again. “Take care,” she said, and she walked away.

  It was only a few insignificant minutes of banter, but he was disappointed that it was over and that they couldn’t go on talking and standing in line longer. She was funny and pretty and somehow in that short time, over something as irrelevant as a boorish customer, it felt like they had connected. After the cashier rang up Hutch’s box of lady fingers, he left the store, and clutching the bag against his body, walked with his head bent against the snow and wind.

  Margot’s building was three long blocks from the market and when he got to the first curb and looked up, waiting for the light to change, he saw the woman—he saw her maroon hat—a block ahead of him. He crossed the street before the light changed and lengthened his stride as much as he could to close the lead she had on him, which was difficult on the slick sidewalk. He was getting closer, but before he could catch her, she turned and walked into his grandmother’s building—the very one where Hutch was headed—but by the time he walked into the lobby, it was empty.

  There was nothing for it. He could have asked his grandmother about the woman, but he didn’t want to regret initiating a subject she might then bring up every week. Did you find out who she was? She might ask, Your mystery lady? The question had the potential to be an unpleasant reminder that he’d lost the woman before he’d even had her. No, Gran, Hutch would have to say, The trail’s still cold. The futility of the imagined conversation sounded so clear, even in his head, there was no question that he was going to keep his mouth shut. While Hutch waited for the elevator, he examined the names on the mailboxes in the lobby wondering which one belonged to her. That afternoon when his grandmother asked him what was new, he only told her about what they were working on in class and gave the same report about his father’s office that he did every time she asked.

  Every Wednesday for the next two months he shopped at D’Ag’s, both before and after he visited Margot. If the woman lived in the same building, he was confident she had to return to her neighborhood grocery store to shop again, and soon. Unless she was a visitor, like Hutch was, and so would be there less frequently, if at all, and possibly never.

  He didn’t see her again until an afternoon in early April, when he was waiting for the elevator in his grandmother’s lobby. When it arrived and the doors opened, the woman walked out pushing a baby in a stroller. She smiled at him as she passed Hutch, but she didn’t say anything. He wondered, Why was she with a baby? Was the baby hers? Was she a nanny or babysitter? It threw him off; if she’d been alone, he would have tried to pick up where they’d left off months earlier, Hello again! From the line at D’Ags during that storm? You almost ran into me, remember? Instead, he was left with the same two options to answer these new questions: asking his grandmother or lurking in the market, hoping their paths would cross again. And for what? Another five minutes of clever chatter? She was just a girl and there were girls everywhere. He was delusional to think they needed to finish something that had been so superficial.

  It wasn’t until a month later, the first week in May, that he saw her again. Hutch and Margot had taken a walk in Central Park and were going back to her apartment; the woman was walking toward them, pushing the baby in the stroller again. The baby wore a yellow sunhat.

  “Hello, Margot,” she said to his grandmother, and then she smiled at Hutch. “We meet again.”

  This, he hadn’t expected.

  “How are you, Joan? This is my grandson, Peter,” his grandmother said.

  He extended his hand, and he and Joan shook. “It’s a pleasure to meet you,” he said. “Hutch. Everyone calls me Hutch. She’s the only one who calls me Peter, really.” He angled his head toward his grandmother.

  “Okay, Hutch. Likewise. It’s nice to put a name with the face.” Joan said to Margot, “We’ve seen each other in the neighborhood a few times.”

  That was the beginning of the beginning, while Hutch’s grandmother leaned over the stroller and cooed at the baby. “Hello, Ceci you sweet, sweet girl.” She reached down and squeezed the baby’s left foot. Ceci smiled. “Such a darling.” She stood up and touched Joan’s elbow. “And how are you doing?”

  “We’re having a good day so far,” Joan said. “Although most days I’m not really sure what I’m doing. It’s very often touch-and-go.” Her words contradicted her chirpy tone. She could have been reciting a nursery rhyme whose uplifting words had been replaced with desperate ones.

  “Oh, sweetheart, none of us did,” his grandmother said. “You figure it out, by the hour sometimes. She’s so happy, that’s how you can tell. That’s how you know you’re doing a good job. If you have a happy baby you’re doing things right.”

  So her name was Joan, and Ceci, the baby, was her baby.

  This conversation with his grandmother about motherhood was common ground for them, and a topic to which Hutch had nothing to contribute. Their commiserating made him invisible. After a few minutes, Hutch and Margot continued on their way back to her apartment while Joan pushed the stroller in the opposite direction, deeper into the park.

  “They’re such a nice couple.” His grandmother looked at him then, as if she’d made a discovery. “They’re about your age, I think. Her husband, Graham, he’s in law school. I should have you all over for lunch or something,” she said. “Help you make some friends in the city. They just live one floor up, on nine. Yes, I think you’d really hit it off with them.”

  So there it all was: everything he’d wanted to know, plus an opportunity, a way into these strangers’ lives—except now there wasn’t just Joan, the woman (and mother) whose identity he’d longed to discover, but also her baby, Ceci, and her husband, Graham, too. It wasn’t what Hutch had hoped for. He was relieved he’d never said anything to his grandmother.

  In that moment, like a reflex, he took his frustration out on his grandmother, who was blameless and kind. “Don’t go wasting your time on my social life Gran,” Hutch said, too sharply. “People don’t connect simply because they’re the same age. If you want us all over, I’ll come, of course, but please don’t work too hard. I have enough friends.”

  He wasn’t surprised she was quietly defensive. “I take care of my family, Peter. That’s not wasting my time. I have nice neighbors and I have a nice grandson who might benefit from a friendship with my nice neighbors. Suit yourself. Now you know where to find them.”

  Ultimately his grandmother dropped it, and chastened, Hutch didn’t say anything more either.

  That seemed to be the end of it until a week later, when Hutch was leaving Margot’s apartment. The elevator door opened, and Joan and Ceci were already inside.

  “Hello, Hutch,” Joan said. “How are you? I was thinking of asking your grandmother about you. Are you doing anything right now? Would you like to walk with us?”

  And that was the real beginning.

  If Hutch was looking for a friend, a young, married woman with a baby was hardly the best choice, but it always felt like Joan had pursued him instead of the other way around. And certainly it had to be that way, didn’t it? She was the married one, she had more to risk, to lose. And although Hutch should have had far better judgment, and much more restraint, he was no agent of morality. If she was unhappy in her marriage, that unhappiness preceded Hutch—that’s what he told himself. A happy marriage can’t be intruded on by a third party.

  And if he was being honest, that she might find him worthy of being unfaithful with transformed his sense of self-importance. His self-esteem, his whole regard for who he thought he was before, changed because of her. Maybe, because of Hutch, Joan saw her marriage as a mistake she could extract herself from. He wasn’t proud of what happened, but he never took it lightly.

  It didn’t happen according to his grandmother’s plan, but Hutch did become friends with her neighbor. Starting that first afternoon, they walked every Wednesday after he’d visited Margot, and except for Ceci, they may as well have been two single people alone together. Yet, when other people passed them, smiled and said hello, Hutch didn’t mind if they thought the three of them were a family.

  They each talked about their friends, then Joan’s four sisters, and Hutch’s brother and sisters, and their parents and college and the city and his drawing class at NYU. They didn’t talk about Graham or her marriage. Joan was a great reader and when she told him about The Group, a New York Times bestseller she was reading and loved and couldn’t put down, he said he’d get a copy so they could discuss it, and Joan laughed. After he’d bought the book and started reading it, he understood why she had laughed, but he was intrigued by the characters and the world they occupied. The people, the women in particular, Hutch realized, he knew nothing about. It was an eye-opener.

  At first, they arranged to meet at a specific bench in the park at three o’clock after Hutch’s visit with Margot, and walk from there. Hutch suggested it and Joan agreed. He needed the concrete break between the time he spent with Margot and the time he spent with Joan—they were such disparate visits that going from one to the other was disorienting and he needed a chance between them to switch roles. In the one he was a child, an adult child certainly, but still the child of his grandmother’s own child, and in the other he was a man who had befriended a married woman, but not her husband. He needed time between the two people, both of whom he was, and both of which were true, to metamorphose between them. To shift from Hutch the grandson, the boy, to Hutch, the suitor? The complication? He wasn’t sure what he was to Joan, but he was certainly a different version of himself when he was with her than when he was with his grandmother.

 

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