The Singles Game
Page 74

Charlie stared at the floor. ‘Dad, I’m sorry. I know this must be super-humiliating for you. I never meant … I didn’t think … Well, anyway. I’ve explained how the whole thing went down. I just wish it hadn’t happened at all.’
He walked over and sat beside her on the couch. ‘Sweetheart, I was going to say that you shouldn’t be so hard on yourself. Everyone makes mistakes. God knows I did.’
‘Oh, come on. I’ve googled you a thousand times. Aside from dating every female player in the top fifty, there’s nothing there. Clean as a whistle.’
Her father cleared his throat. He twisted his hands together and then, without looking at her, said, ‘I had an affair with a married woman once,’ he said quietly.
Charlie forced herself to remain completely still. She didn’t even take a breath.
‘I was twenty. A kid. An idiot. She was twenty-six and married to my friend’s coach, a much older guy – he was probably forty at the time. She was unhappy with him, of course. And we thought we were in love. I told myself I wasn’t doing anything wrong because I wasn’t married to anyone.’ He coughed. ‘Anyway. As you might imagine, it didn’t end well.’
‘What happened?’
Her father sighed. ‘We were caught together in Wimbledon Village. A borrowed apartment … Anyway, it was awful. Her husband went crazy, threatened to kill me and divorce her. Not quietly. The whole tour knew everything. It was all anyone could talk about for weeks. She never spoke to me again – they’re still married, by the way – and I felt like the biggest piece of shit ever to live. Probably, I imagine, a little how you’re feeling right now. But I’m telling you this, Charlie, so you know that I understand. I know what it’s like to be on the road day after day, in and out of anonymous hotels, grinding through practice after practice. And now, with Todd and your intensified training schedule? It’s a lot. So cut yourself a little slack. We all know you’re not some pot-smoking idiot, just like I wasn’t some asshole home-wrecker. We all screw up. We hopefully apologize and make it right, but life goes on.’ He nudged her chin up with his finger so she would meet his gaze. ‘Okay, kiddo? Can you do that for me?’
She reached up to kiss his cheek, feeling an intense wave of gratitude. ‘I’ll try. If you tell me where you’re going.’
‘Me? I have a date.’
He couldn’t have surprised her more if he’d announced he’d joined the CIA. Not that it was unreasonable – everyone knew he was hardly celibate when Charlie and Jake were traveling – but he never, ever went out with women when one of them was home. Or if he did, they never knew about it. Clearly this was something more substantial.
‘A date? Who’s the lucky lady?’
Her father coughed. ‘It’s, um, someone you know, actually.’
‘Someone I know?’
‘You probably haven’t seen her in a while. I hadn’t either. After your mother … It was too painful. But we’ve gotten—’ He coughed again. ‘We’ve gotten reacquainted lately.’
‘Reacquainted? So this is not a first date?’
‘No, this is not a first date. She’s, uh, an old friend.’
‘This is like a riddle, Dad. Are you going to tell me?’ But she suddenly knew. She didn’t know how, but she knew she was right. She could feel it.
As she watched his mouth form the words ‘It’s Eileen,’ she said it in her mind at the same time. Eileen. Of course it was. Her mind cycled backward, remembering the hints that had been there all along. The time when her father had told her that Amanda, Charlie’s oldest childhood friend, had met a guy and followed him to Australia. When Charlie asked how he knew such a juicy tidbit about someone she’d lost touch with forever ago, he’d murmured something about running into Eileen. When was that? Could that really have been almost a year ago? Longer? Or the time she was last home and having lunch with her father at the club and Howie had begun to ask after someone – a new friend – but Mr Silver had cut him off with that look. And what about the time earlier that year, on the anniversary of her mother’s death, when she and her father had visited the grave? Although they’d both gone together and Jake was out of town, there was a gorgeous peony arrangement resting in front of the gravestone and a carefully arranged handful of smooth river rocks – her mother’s favorite – resting on top. Mr Silver hadn’t seemed surprised when he brushed off Charlie’s questions. And of course there was Eileen’s unexpected appearance at Charlie’s exhibition match at UCLA. How had she been so clueless?
‘You’re dating Eileen? Mom’s Eileen?’
‘It’s complicated, Charlie. I know it sounds … strange, but some things are difficult to explain.’
‘Wow. I don’t know what to say. Just wow.’
Jake Tapper’s voice droned on in the background. Something about a sharp increase in oil prices and OPEC. Neither she nor her father looked at each other.
‘Charlie? There’s something else you should know. It’s more serious than that.’
‘More serious than what?’
‘We’re not just dating. We’re, uh, actually planning to marry.’
She had no idea why, but her very first thought, despite the fact that her own father was telling her he was marrying her dead mother’s best friend, was: Why is everyone in my life getting married? In quick succession she thought of the wedding – when it would be planned, how it would conflict with her schedule, what she would wear – and immediately considered the thought that Amanda and her little sister, Kate, would now be her stepsisters. Then she cycled to Jake. Had he known and not told her?
‘Charlie?’
She heard his voice somewhere in the background, but her mind was in overdrive, first considering all the possibilities and then feeling guilty for being so selfish.
‘Charlie? Can you say something?’
He sounded plaintive, nearly desperate for her approval, and Charlie knew that a kinder, more sensitive daughter would recognize his worry and try to set him at ease. Especially after how he’d just let her off the hook for her own epic mistake. After all, it wasn’t like her father was marrying some bimbo younger than his own daughter, a woman who would push for more children, or one of those hyper-controlling types who would try to micromanage all of them into a living hell. No. He was choosing to spend the rest of his years with someone Charlie knew to be kind and generous and filled with endless energy and concern for other people. A woman who had spent twenty-four months shuttling Charlie’s mom to chemo appointments and wig consultations and spirit-lifting shopping trips. Someone who had arranged a spontaneous long girls’ weekend in Barcelona because Mrs Silver had always dreamed of going, and who had worked out all the details of traveling internationally with a terminal illness. Eileen had driven Charlie to weekend tennis tournaments when her father had to work and her mother was too sick to get out of bed; she had tutored Jake, first when he fell behind in geometry and again in trig; she had often put the needs of her own children second in the weeks and months after Charlie’s mom had died in order to be a constant presence in the Silver home, cooking French toast and tuna casseroles and folding laundry and holding Charlie and Jake as they woke, weeping, in the middle of the night. She had been the closest thing to a mom they had in the darkest months, so why did it feel so strange that she would now be their stepmom? Most of all, why couldn’t Charlie set aside her own feelings for ten seconds and give her father the smile and hug he so obviously needed?