“Slowly. Very slowly. At my age it’s difficult to concentrate.”
“You’ve never had trouble concentrating before.”
“Yes, well, it was bound to happen sooner or later.”
Finally one of the waitresses appeared. She left menus, went away with Kerry’s order for a glass of Dry Creek Chardonnay. Cybil opened her menu immediately and gave it her full attention. Kerry didn’t touch hers.
I hate this, she thought. God, I hate this!
They sat like strangers for a length of time that seemed to stretch and expand. The restaurant was crowded; dining noises ebbed and flowed around them. She could feel the tension building, a headache beginning to pulse behind her eyes. Get with it, she thought. The longer you wait, the harder it’ll be.
Yes, all right, but not until the waitress comes back with the wine.
“I think I’ll have the Moroccan salad,” Cybil said.
“That sounds good.”
“Everything here is good. You haven’t even looked at your menu.”
“I’ve been here before, too, remember?”
Cybil sighed and sipped Chardonnay between pursed lips.
The waitress again, and none too soon. Cybil gave her order. Kerry said, “The same,” and reached for her glass. She had to resist the impulse to gulp half of the wine, settled for a large sip.
“Good, isn’t it?”
“Fine,” she said, and all of a sudden her mind seemed to go blank.
All morning she’d been framing and discarding ways to broach the subject to Cybil, eventually decided the direct approach was best. Not blunt, not emotional, just quietly reasonable. She’d worked out a nice little opening speech, silently rehearsed it a number of times-and now she couldn’t remember a word of it. She felt her face start to flush. The wine again, a larger swallow, but all that did was increase the heat until she was sure she was a bright moist red.
Cybil was watching her. “Go ahead and say it,” she said.
“Say what?”
“What you came to say. The reason for this lunch.”
Open door, unlocked by Cybil herself. But all Kerry could think of to say was, “Why do I have to have a reason to take you to lunch?”
“Kerry, I may be old, but I’m in full possession of my faculties. Something is bothering you-I could hear it in your voice when you called with the invitation. Something you feel more comfortable discussing in public. In order, I suppose, to avoid an emotional scene.”
“Yes, something’s bothering me. And you know what it is.”
“Why can’t you just let sleeping dogs lie?”
“Because I can’t. Not anymore.”
“Why not? Why is it so important to you?”
“For God’s sake, don’t you think I have a right to know?”
“If the circumstances were different, yes.”
“That’s an evasion,” Kerry said. “I won’t be put off this time-I mean it. If I can’t get the truth out of Bill, I’m going to get it from you. Right here and now.”
“You believe I’d confide in your husband but not you?”
“Well, he knows. He’s a good detective, he must have figured it out somehow. And then he confronted you and you told him the whole story. Is that the way it was?”
“Why don’t you ask him?”
“I have. He just keeps stonewalling. Did you swear him to secrecy? He’d never break a promise to you.”
“I didn’t swear him to secrecy.”
“All right, then, it was a joint decision. The two of you trying to protect me. Well, it’s misguided. I don’t need protecting, I need to know the truth. I’ve had all I can stand of secrets and lies.”
Cybil drained her glass before she said, “I’ve never lied to you, Kerry.”
“Not openly, maybe. Lies of omission are still lies.”
“Only if they stem from certain knowledge.”
“I don’t understand that.”
“You want to know the truth. But the fact is, I can’t tell you because I don’t know myself. Not beyond any doubt.”
“Another evasion.”
“No, it isn’t. Kerry…”
“You and Russ Dancer, dammit. You had an affair with him, didn’t you.”
“I did not. You know how I felt about the man.”
“Later, yes. Not how you felt about him during the war.”
“I tolerated him then. I hated him afterward.”
“After D-day.”
“After the war ended, yes.”
“Ivan was in Washington on D-day. Did you and Dancer celebrate together? Is that when you slept with him?”
“I would never have voluntarily slept with that man.”
“You had other affairs. With that pulp editor, Frank Colodny, for one.”
Cybil winced. “Mistakes, foolish youthful mistakes. But never with Dancer. Never.”
“Then why were you so upset by that envelope he left you when he died? What was in the letter he wrote you, what was in his unpublished manuscript? What’s the real significance of D-day?”
“It’s not what you think.”
“Isn’t it? Cybil, I can count to nine-I was born nine months after D-day. Was Ivan really my father? Or was it Russ Dancer?”
Out, now. All the way out into the open and lying there between them like the scab off an open wound. Cybil squeezed her eyes shut for three or four seconds. An expression of pain mixed with bitterness changed the shape of her face.
“No!” she said in a fierce whisper.
“But he could be, couldn’t he? That’s what you’ve been hiding, you and Bill, these past three months.”
“Ivan was your father. Ivan.”
“You want it to be Ivan, but you’re not one hundred percent positive.”
“Ivan, Ivan, Ivan!”
“But it could have been Dancer. I can see it in your face.” She caught Cybil’s hand, held it tight in both of hers. “Why won’t you admit it? Don’t you understand, I have to know! Today, now, right now!”
Her voice sounded strained, desperate, too-loud in her own ears. Cybil’s stare was not the only one directed at her; all the eyes made her shrink inside herself, her skin feel loose and prickly.
Cybil’s mouth moved; Kerry could barely hear the words. “Why? Why the sudden urgency?”
Lies of omission, secrets-she was as guilty of them as Cybil and Bill. Put an end to hers here and now. She’d known she might have to; it couldn’t be concealed much longer anyway. Come clean as she was making Cybil come clean.
“Medical reasons,” she said.
“I don’t… what do you mean?”
“If there’s any chance that Dancer was my father, it means my medical history might be different. Different inherited genes, good and bad. I have a doctor’s appointment later this afternoon-that’s why I have to know now.”
“… Doctor’s appointment?”
“With a surgeon. For a biopsy.”
“Oh my God!”
