Another Love: Lost

"She's right, Rob," Georges said softly. "I had to forgive my ex before I could move on. It was as if I had to clean out the stuff from my first marriage, both the good and the bad, so Simone could move in. I won't pretend it was easy, but what I got in return made it all worth while." They exchanged another one of those looks, as their adorable baby slept in her father's arms.

"I'm not going to try to tell you what to do about Karen," Georges went on.

"Well, that puts you in a very small minority," I put in.

"That just makes him special," said his wife, smiling happily as she cuddled into him.

"Well, anyway, I just think you'll be better off forgiving them, whatever you decide. Then when you find your Simone, you'll be ready for her. We believe there's a Simone out there for you."

"Just for curiosity, Georges, if you were me, what would you do about Karen?"

"Divorce her," Simone stated emphatically, before her more deliberate husband could even draw breath. "Staying married after what she did to you is too much to ask of anyone. You should forgive her, and be kind to her, but divorce her and move on."

I looked a question at Georges.

"What she said," he answered with a smile and a shrug. I got the feeling he said that a lot, and didn't mind a bit. "Just don't tell her mother or her grandmother she said it." We laughed and talked easily of other things as we walked slowly back to the house. Before we went in the gate, Simone asked if we could stay in touch, so I gave her a card with my phone and e-mail.

It made a huge difference to know that Du Monte's own daughter and son-in-law thought he was in the wrong. I spent most of the rest of the day in my apartment, getting to know them and their children. Stephanie was fourteen going on twenty, dark hair cut short and dark eyes in a sweet, elfin face. Marie was the blonde of the group at twelve, more outgoing, bigger-boned and almost taller than her sister. Philippe and Andre were five and three; I got a lump in my throat as they reminded me of Kevin and Oscar at that age. It was odd: my nemesis' young namesake seemed especially intent on making me feel welcome and at home. We talked and played games until I was surprised to notice it was dinner time. I felt completely at ease with them, and they with me, for all we had just met. I couldn't help contrasting their openness with the guarded behavior of my sons ever since I returned from Iraq.

Karen approached me after dinner.

"You look happier today, Rob. I'm so glad you decided to relax and enjoy our family. Do you want to go upstairs and talk about it?" She kept her face and voice carefully neutral, without a hint of invitation.

"No, thanks," I answered. "I locked everyone out of the lab today, so they'll be eager to go early tomorrow. I need to be ready for them, so it's an early night for me."

"You'll come for Thanksgiving dinner tomorrow, I hope?"

I told her I would, then set off up the hill.

The children had been stuffed to the point of torpor, and had left the dining room to the adults. The table had been cleared and the wine poured after what I was sure was the biggest and best Thanksgiving dinner the house had ever known, even if it was Canadian. It seemed pleased, somehow: as if this was what it had been built for, to be stuffed to the rafters with celebrating family. The wonderful smells from dinner permeated the old place from kitchen to loft. Karen sat in smiling state at the head of the table, with Avril on her right and me on her left. The two of them seemed to have recovered their confidence after Saturday night's debacle. I couldn't help wondering what they had cooked up this time, and I was pretty sure it wasn't just dinner.

Grand-mère Sara-Marie sat at the foot of the table, looking every bit the matriarch. She rose and tapped her wine glass for attention. Everyone else at the table stood, so I did too.

"As you know, the Du Monte family always ends its celebrations with a series of toasts. Our first toast, as tradition demands, is to our hosts. Karen and Avril, we thank you for your generosity and hospitality. May you be repaid many times over. We drink to your good health, prosperity, and happiness, and long life to enjoy them!" There were cries of "Hear, hear!" and glasses clinking. I touched glasses with my wife and drank her health, and did the same for Avril. I did notice that I wasn't mentioned, despite the fact that I supplied the house and paid for the food.

"Our next toast, as tradition demands, is to the members of our family who could not join us here today. Whatever keeps them away from us, whether distance or pressures of work or other matters, they are still part of us as we celebrate. We drink to their health and good fortune, and may they join us again soon." This toast was drunk mostly in silence. This wasn't a bad tradition at all, I thought, and the old matriarch was handling it with a kind of old-world dignity that I couldn't help but admire.

"We have been fortunate that we have only lost one family member since last we were together, but that loss cuts deep." Sara-Marie paused, then continued. "A great man, an immense talent, a soul and heart larger than life, has been taken from us too soon. A great lover and a great artist, everything and everyone he touched was made more loving, more beautiful." Karen and Avril were looking tenderly at each other, tears in their eyes. I couldn't move; I just stood there as the anger built within me. "The world was the richer for his living, and is the poorer for his dying. We at this table, who knew and loved him, are desolate. We drink to the memory of..."

Sara-Marie was interrupted by a crash, as my glass shattered against the opposite dining room wall. Red wine ran down the wallpaper like a blood stain.

"That for Philippe Du Monte," I shouted. "May he rot in Hell!" I left the room and the house without a backward glance.

I turned off my phone as I stalked up the hill. I was as angry as I had ever been in my life. Somewhere in my mind, I knew Simone was right, and I would need to forgive him so I could move on. Still, hearing him touted as this wonderful man and watching his women (one of whom was once mine) remembering him fondly, was just too much.

The next night I faced the inevitable. I turned my phone back on and listened to the messages. There were messages from Karen and Avril, telling me how far out of line I was, how I had hurt them, and how I needed to apologize to poor Philippe's family, especially his mother. There was a message from Kevin, telling me he'd never been more ashamed of me in his life; Oscar just told me to stay away from him until I learned some manners. I guessed I wouldn't be getting that wedding invitation after all. I composed an e-mail response to all of them:

"To the family of Philippe Du Monte:

"I have no intention of apologizing for my behavior last night, which I believe was amply justified. Mrs. Du Monte's proposal to drink to the memory of my wife's lover in my wine, at my table, in my house, was the worst kind of insult. My reaction was mild compared to the provocation. I have nothing more to say on the subject."

There was also a message from Georges, asking me to call him, so he could fill me in on what happened after I left. It seems Sara-Marie repeated the whole toast again word for word, and drained her glass, as did all of those present except Simone and Georges. After which, everyone sat there gabbling about how awful I had been.

"Rob, I want to tell you that Simone and I both support you. She was sort of torn, after all he was her father, but that was just too much of an insult to be borne, and at your own table, too. Me, I would have strangled the old bird."

"Don't think that didn't cross my mind," I responded. We shared a chuckle.

"Listen, stay in touch, will you? Simone and I both would like that."

"Thanks, I will. I really appreciate that."

The next few weeks flew by. The redesigned engine took shape rapidly. Lisa and I didn't have time to go out to lunch any more, though I did fill her in on the Great Canadian Thanksgiving & Turkey Toast Fiasco. She, too, admired my self-restraint.

All seventeen of us were completely immersed in the project. I think our average workday was about fourteen hours. I was doing something I was good at, with good people who respected me, and I had very little time or desire to think about Karen. I was surprised to discover how easily I was getting used to living without her. Not that I didn't miss her: the little touches for no reason; another voice in the house besides mine, that sort of thing. Sometimes I missed her best-friendship, too, but then I remembered that someone else had been her best friend for the last twenty years.

It was the week before Thanksgiving, the American kind. The trees were bare now, the nights were long, and another Hudson Valley winter was rapidly approaching. Our engine was assembled, housed in her test frame. (I wasn't the one who had named her Persephone, but she was always a female to me.) We were madly testing components, making and running down check lists, and we hoped to actually light her up the next week. The test frame was built to handle 80,000 pounds of thrust, and we knew if we gave her full throttle, Persephone would test it to its limits.

The communication from the University president that she would visit the lab the next afternoon with members of the military project team was not good news. For one thing, we didn't want interruptions. Worse yet, we had no idea what she might say. All right, that's not quite true. I had an idea, I just hoped I was wrong.

I wasn't. The military team was highly pleased with our work, the University would get a bonus for finishing the grant project below budget, above specification, and ahead of schedule, but they were taking it back. Now. Military security manned the doors as she spoke; they would harvest and wipe all project data from our laptops and phones and terminate our building access as we left that day.

We sat in stunned silence. Lisa looked like she was near tears. I had never been one to question authority, but as I looked at the slumped shoulders and bowed heads of my team, I thought, at least I have to try. I stood.

"Madame President, and Sirs. The team you see before you has invested themselves completely in this project. When we discovered that a complex redesign was needed, the team invested even more. You know all this from the reports I sent you."

"We know you've all worked hard, McDonald. As I said, we'll see that your people are compensated. What is your point?"

"It's not about money, sir. This project is personal to us. You can't work this long, this intensely on something without that happening. She's part of our lives. She isn't just another project."

"She?" another officer interrupted.

"Yes, sir. Blame it on the Navy. Anyway, to have invested this much in her, and never even see her show what she can do, what we designed her for, it... Sir, is there any possible way that we could continue the work until she's ready to be lit up? Any way we could see her that first time? You can have security in here with us, whatever you need to do, but we've brought her this far. Please let us take her that last step. Let us dance with her for real, just once."

The officers huddled and discussed for about twenty minutes, and then gave us our wish. Security would be tight; laptops and devices used inside had to stay at the field house under lock and guard when we went home. That was all right with us; we all knew we weren't going home much for the next few days. Then the brass hats left, my crew gave me three rousing cheers, and we set to work. I made sure we introduced the security detail to the team members; I didn't want any us vs. them going on. An unanticipated result was that the security guys became infected with our enthusiasm. After a couple of days, they were as eager to see Persephone lit up as we were.

Tuesday before Thanksgiving was the big day. We spent the morning on last minute details and testing, and trying not to look nervous. I think we failed: I saw one of the security guys, who had to have been 6'6", 270, put a beefy arm around one of my skinny little geniuses' shoulders. "Don't you worry none," he said, in that deep, rumbling voice of his. "She'll fire all right. She'll do you proud."

At 1:16 pm, EST, she did just that. She roared into life, drowning out our cheers. We gradually ran her up to about half power, let her burn for a few minutes, measured the thrust at almost 40,000 pounds, then shut her down. She had used a touch more fuel than we'd anticipated, but that wasn't unusual in a brand new engine. Persephone was a real, live engine. She had spoken her first powerful words. And for that, she was no longer ours: now she belonged to others.

The rest was anticlimactic. We turned in our keys, badges and laptops, had our phones and tablets wiped, and left the old field house for the last time. There were a few tears, but not many. We were too tired. I was the last one out. The President was waiting for me. She thanked me, told me I was on paid leave for the rest of the semester (all of two weeks), and told me they needed me out of my apartment before Christmas.

My two great loves, my wife and my engine, now belonged to others. I felt as lonely and abandoned as I had been before I met Karen. I don't know what I would have done if it hadn't been for Lisa. She and some friends always volunteered at the Salvation Army on Thanksgiving Day, and she asked me to join them. We worked hard all day, and I gained the valuable perspective that as badly off as I felt, others had it far worse.

The next day it was decided that Lisa's and my apartments had suffered so much from our total neglect during the last several weeks that they should be completely cleaned. I was informed it would be a group project: me, Lisa, and her partner Jen. We had a great time: Jen wouldn't let us talk about jet engines or French-Canadian painters. The apartments looked pretty good when we were finished, too.

Saturday was my final lunch with Lisa as my PA. It was bittersweet: she had become a good friend as well as a supremely competent PA. She was excited; her relationship with Jen had lasted two months already, and seemed more solid by the day.

"That's because you were never around, you were always at the field house," I teased her. She laughed, then became serious.

"We've both changed a lot," she said. "I've become more stable, I think. We'll see how that works now that the engine project is over. And you've become better able to take care of yourself. I think I can even trust you on your own now."

I told Lisa she'd been a joy to work with and a great friend, and I would miss her and wished her well. She stood and looked at me speculatively for a moment.

"I never thought I'd say this, but if I were ever going to switch teams, it would be for you." She bent and kissed my forehead. "Stay in touch," she whispered, then turned and strode away on those long legs of hers, leaving me agape and speechless.

I had to decide on living quarters, and soon. Living alone might not be my first choice, but I knew now that I could do it. I also knew I couldn't survive living with Karen if she still loved Philippe absolutely, as Sara-Marie had said. We needed to talk. I was working up my nerve to call her, when I received another call.

Jim Leverett had been one of the officers on the Ike, and had gone into the private sector after the war. He'd heard I was somewhat at liberty after finishing a major project.

"Who told you that?" I asked.

"Oh, a little birdie."

"Ah, so military security is still..."

"Situation normal," he chuckled. "The same little birdie, who is quite impressed with you, I might add, told me you might be interested in a change of scene. Did you ever consider going private?"

"What about it?"

He'd been bumped up to management at GE Aviation in Cincinnati, and was charged with putting together a crack team for large jet engines. Leverett wanted me for sure, and if some of my geniuses had gotten jet engines into their blood, he'd like to have them, too.

"It's a big move. When do you need to know?"

"5 December."

"That's fast."

"We'd like you in place by the first of the year. Listen, give me your e-mail and I'll send you our proposal. That'll save time, and answer a lot of your questions."

I agreed, and sat back to think.

I'm a New Yorker, through and through. I've been a lot of places, but the Hudson Valley is just about my favorite in all the world. I would hate leaving here. The University had been fair with me, but I knew they would drop me in a heartbeat if it suited their interests, so I didn't feel any responsibility to them. Then there was the house. When we bought it, I'd thought of it as this huge ramshackle money pit, far larger than we'd ever need, and needing more work than we could possibly do. I bought it because it pleased Karen. Then we worked on it, invested in it, and made it our own. It wasn't her house any more, it was ours, as uniquely personal as anything else in our marriage. I can honestly say I had come to love it. Then, it had seemed happy to welcome Du Monte's family, just as Karen had been happy to welcome him into its master bedroom. Was there anything I loved that he hadn't stolen or defiled?

Engines. Jet engines. They'd taken Persephone away from me, but there were other engines. I began to think more positively of the GE offer. It would mean leaving much that I loved, but would also give me the chance to build new on things Du Monte had never touched. But first, I had to talk with Karen. I called her to set a time.

"You don't need an appointment, Rob. This is your house; I am your wife; you can come and talk any time."

"The last time I tried that, you told me it wasn't a good time. I don't want to risk interrupting you, and I'll need your full attention."

We settled on the next evening. I let myself in the front door. Karen was waiting for me; she led me to the small table in the back kitchen. Someone had removed most of the wine stain from the wallpaper, but I could still see where it had been. As we walked in silence past the clutter that would eventually become the Philippe Du Monte memorial exhibition, I tried to remember if there had ever been a time when Karen had been as invested in my work as she was now in his.

"Rob, it's been over three months now since you found out about Philippe and me," Karen began. "I told you, plainly and honestly, everything that happened, and how I felt about it all. I didn't hide anything from you. You're right, for twenty years before that, I lied, concealed, and deliberately deceived you. It hurts me when you think of it that way, because I did it out of love, to avoid hurting you, but I can understand how you feel.

"The point is, all of that is in the past. Nothing can be done about it now, so it's useless to dwell on it. We need to move on, to build a future. I love you, Rob, as I have for twenty-five years, and always will. You were my first love, and you'll be my last. You know what I want: I want you to come home to me, and I want us to grow old together. So it's up to you. Where do we stand?" I noticed she didn't ask what I wanted.

"Karen, when you told me about your affair, you described it as if it were a love story, a pretty romance. That's obviously how you still see it. What you don't see, or won't admit, is that when you started the love story with him, you ended the one with me. I believe you still love me, but the romance, the love story, is with him, not me, and it's been that way for twenty years."

"Rob, I keep telling you, that isn't true! He told me himself, after the first time we were together, that I should go back to my husband and make love to him. I did it, too. He never asked me to leave you. He wouldn't. He was my second love, all along."