NOW THE SURF IS RAGING OUTSIDE; I rush to shut the doors and windows to muffle it. Then I turn back to his bed.
“I don’t understand!” I pound the mattress, forcing him to stay awake, stay here. “The house in Darien was your idea. The children—our children! Why could they never keep your attention except to be criticized? You wounded them then, and you’re wounding them now. Forget about me. What about Jon? Land? Scott? The girls? Did you ever stop to think how they will react to this?”
“It has nothing to do with you, or them. You—you are my family. Our children are my heirs. The other women, I won’t say they meant nothing. But they aren’t you.”
“How old? How old are they?”
“I don’t know. Young. They are young—or they were, when we first met.”
“Younger than me?”
“Yes.”
“Is that why you chose them? Because they’re young—because they’re German?” I want to laugh; but it’s far too tragic. After all these years, it still comes back to this? A man who has spent over thirty years trying to change the notion that he’s a Nazi—having a secret German love nest? “Your own master race—I should have known! Was I not pure enough? Our children not good enough for you?”
“Anne, you’re hysterical.” Charles coughs, his entire body racked with the effort, and I hand him the water before the nurse stationed in the next room can hear. He sips, his Adam’s apple, so prominent now, sliding up and down, and when he waves his hand, I take the water away. “A man can still spread his seed, no matter his age. That’s all I did. I followed my instincts.”
“That’s such a typically male thing to say.”
“Are you telling me you were happy all those years? Are you telling me you never desired companionship when I was gone?”
Now he looks like the old Charles, the healthy, untouchable Charles; his gaze is clear and precise as it pierces right through me.
“I never wanted you to leave in the first place,” I reply truthfully, not flinching from his gaze, even as I ponder my own secret.
And wonder, for the first time, if he’s ever guessed it.