living room carpet of their new apartment.
– '-'-'RIGHT AFTER THEY moved in, Caroline got pregnant for the first time. Three weeks before the due date, they finished converting one bedroom into the baby's room – a room for a baby boy, as the tests had revealed – and filled it with toys and clothes and even painted stars on the ceiling above the crib. A week before she was due, Caroline doubled over with pain and Jack rushed her to the hospital. The baby was delivered by Cesarean and was stillborn. They grieved for months but they dealt with their loss by loving each other all the more and then Caroline was pregnant again. This time, two months into the pregnancy she began hemorrhaging and the baby had to be aborted.
A few days before their ninth anniversary, she announced to Jack that she was pregnant yet again. They took every possible precaution. She stayed away from the restaurant, didn't exercise the way she usually did at the gym, drank not a drop of alcohol, and went on a vegetarian diet. They had put off the opening of the Jack's in London because of the first two pregnancies, but they decided they couldn't delay any longer. The doctor suggested that flying was not in her or the baby's best interest, so for the first time she let Jack do most of the work and all of the traveling. He spent at least a week a month in England for several months, making sure it all went right while she rested and ate well and didn't drink in New York, making certain that all went right there. Since their very first date, they had spent nearly every minute together and Jack, to his surprise, found himself guiltily enjoying the separation. They spoke constantly and he filled her in on every business detail, but for the first time he understood that they now had secrets from each other. He could not possibly tell her everything he did and thought and he realized it was the same for her. Women flirted with him and came on to him and he enjoyed it. He went out with his male friends, too, at pubs and private gambling casinos in Mayfair, and he enjoyed that, too. He began to horde his little secrets and he wondered how that would affect his life with Caroline when he returned home. They were harmless, he decided, and would not affect it at all.
But Caroline's secrets were not as trivial. Right after the London opening, Jack came home and she told him that, once again, there would be no baby. She had gone into the hospital and now it was all over. She hadn't called him over there, hadn't wanted to tell him on the phone, not while he was overseeing everything. But this time was different. There were new complications: the doctor told her she could no longer have children.
She cried and they hugged and, as before, their wounds gradually healed. And, as before, as Caroline had said, the scars left them different people. Not better, not worse, just different.
– '-'-'ONE OF THE biggest differences was that they let Kid Demeter come into their lives.
It began the night of their tenth anniversary. They were home, just the two of them. Jack was going to cook and they were going to have a romantic evening, going to make love and try, as they often did now, not to think about the fact that they would never have a child. They were listening to Chet Baker in Paris. Jack would always remember that 'My Funny Valentine' was playing because it was Caroline's favorite song, and they were touching their champagne glasses in a toast when the phone rang. It was Dom, and as soon as Jack heard his voice he said, 'We're drinking champagne and whispering sweet nothings. When can you be here?' But when Dom was silent, Jack knew something was wrong, so then he just said, 'What is it?'
'It's Sal,' Dom said.
Jack put his champagne glass down and said, 'Shit.'
Sal Demeter worked for Dom, and had worked alongside Jack for years at the plant. When Jack was a teenager, Sal had always treated him like a man instead of a boy; he was the first one ever to take Jack out drinking and once let Jack, when he was fourteen, drive Sal's station wagon down an empty West Side Highway in the middle of the night. Sal was a hell of a guy. Huge, three hundred pounds, easy. An enormous belly that jutted way out in front of him. Hands that looked like ham hocks and arms that looked as if they could lift anything. That could lift anything. Not the brightest guy who ever lived, but kind and surprisingly gentle for such a giant of a man.
Dom told Jack that Sal had just finished work. He was walking across the floor, fiddling with the string on his apron, getting ready to yank it off, when he began staggering. The big man took three or four quick steps and fell to his knees. Remained there for another second or two, just long enough for people to start running over to him, then he toppled forward, twisting slightly to his side, and was dead. Sal wasn't quite forty-five and he'd left a wife and fourteen-year-old son and, Jack was certain, not much insurance money. The fourteen-year-old was George, but no one had called him that since, well, probably since he was three months old. Right from the start it was Kid. Kid Demeter.
It began with Dom and Jack helping him out. Jack, especially, and later Caroline, talked to the boy, eased him through the crisis of losing a father, and the bond formed easily and naturally. At first it was based on need – Jack's and Caroline's as well as Kid's – but it lasted because of genuine affection and, ultimately, love. They gave the boy money when he needed it. Gave him advice when he needed it, too, and he usually needed that more often than the money. Kid was a wise guy, a tough kid. Stubborn as hell, always in and out of trouble. But there was something about him that was more than just an iron-willed street kid. Kid wanted to make something of himself. Jack saw it in his eyes, recognized it because he knew he'd had that same look when he was young. Kid wanted out and up. Out of the life that had molded him and up to a new and different level. Jack and Caroline's level.
Jack took him to Knicks games, as Dom had taken Jack years before. Kid grew into a talented athlete, so Caroline went to Staten Island and talked to Kid's mother, explaining that they were willing to send him to a suburban prep school so he could play football. LuAnn Demeter agreed, saying she wanted whatever was best for her son, so off Kid went to Bay Shore, Long Island, and to Webster's Academy. Jack also arranged for Kid's best friend, Bryan Bishop, to get a scholarship there. Bryan was enormous; he didn't just look like an offensive lineman, he looked like an entire offensive line. He was also devoted to Kid; they seemed joined at the hip and had been since they were little boys. It had been Caroline's suggestion to try to keep them together. She thought it would make Kid's transition a little easier as he began his new life.
Jack and Dom would drive up to watch their football games – Kid used his toughness to quickly become a star quarterback; Bryan rapidly became one of the best blocking fullbacks in the state – and afterward they'd take both boys out for pizza or, if it was a weekend, into the city to Jack's for a steak. In his free time, Kid was always hanging out at their apartment or at the restaurant. Caroline brought out his soft side and to her he would confide his fears and his problems. These were the only times Kid let down his guard. It was as if he sensed that his presence seemed to salve the wounds that still pained her over her failed pregnancies. With Jack, he was always cocky and confident because that's the way he wanted Jack to see him. He worshiped them both. When Kid reached college age, he went to St. John's in Queens, Jack happily paying the tuition. It's not a loan, he told Kid, it's an investment. He meant an investment in Kid's future but he also meant more than that. When Kid was going on twenty-one and a junior – still a quarterback, still friends with Bryan, who was still blocking for him – Jack took Kid out to dinner after a game, just the two of them, and said that he and Caroline had begun talking about it and if Kid was interested, they'd like him to think about coming into the business with them. Kid was overwhelmed by the offer but only said, cockily, yeah, he just might be interested at that. Jack had wanted more of a response but he knew the boy well, knew how pleased he was. A couple of weeks later, after another game, it was dinner as usual with Dom and Kid and Bryan, and Bryan got Jack off to the side, told him that Kid had mentioned what Jack had said. Kid's friend said that he'd never seen Kid so excited or happy about anything in his whole life.
But Kid didn't come into the restaurant business.
And he didn't grow into the son that Jack and Caroline had not been able to conceive.
Instead, he disappeared.
He had been devastated by something that had happened near the end of his junior year. A teammate, Harvey Wiggins, someone Kid had been close to, had been seriously injured on the football field during a team practice. Harvey had come in hard on defense, trying for a sack on Kid, and he got blocked at the wrong angle. Kid heard the snap when Harvey's neck broke and he saw him flop to the ground, a quadriplegic now and forever. Caroline had spent many hours talking to Kid about the accident; for some reason Kid had assumed a strong sense of guilt and shame and she assured him that he was not to blame. 'People take risks,' she told him, over and over again. 'You can't protect everyone from what's nothing more than normal life.'
But Kid changed after that incident. He became more withdrawn, spoke mostly in monotones and seemed to have little energy. Jack sat him down, asked him if he'd started taking drugs, but Kid denied that. There was no denying that a wall had come up between them, though, and then he came to Jack and Caroline at the end of his junior year, told them he was dropping out of school. Kid was very evasive, almost seemed angry, and reverted to his younger, sullen ways.
