Of course, with Eileen he dwelled on his kids. Andrea, the older, was born in 1992. She was a resident doctor at a hospital in northern Manhattan and lived alone in a walk-up even further to the north. His son, James, two years younger than his sister, was in his second year as an Assistant DA in New York County and living with his girlfriend, Jennie, another lawyer, in Brooklyn. “How they can afford it I don’t know,” he laughed. “For me,” he said after a sip of his Guinness, “the Chappaqua house may have gotten too big and too empty and I’m thinking of getting a condo in the City.”
“Did I mention that my Kerry lives at home?,” Eileen said, to which Tom replied with a mocking head-shake, “that ain’t happening with my kids. I’m lucky if one of them comes up once a month. They have their own lives now.”
“I’m not looking forward,” Eileen responded, “to when Kerry flies the coop. I know I embarrass her by having her live at home, as she did in college—Fordham—but she knows how much I need her. She’s very close to someone and there may be wedding bells in her future. I hope.” She was wary of saying that the “someone” was a woman.
Tom said he hoped his kids appreciated how he needed them. “But what are you gonna do?” Any Boston accent had been rubbed into a New York one. “Andrea’s too busy for anything serious. Yet busy as he is James is living with someone so there’s hope.”
Then for some reason he felt compelled to go deeper. Wendy, he softly said, died of breast cancer three years before. It wasn’t caught early enough and it was a long, difficult end. “I still wear the ring because I don’t have the heart to take it off. I twirl it now and then, and I know I don’t need it to remember her. It just makes me feel that I still have a part of her.” He paused, and Eileen reached for his hand. “Sorry,” he said, a bit choked up, “I don’t go there often. And I’m sorry I went there with you.”
“I’m glad you told me. I’m afraid my marriage ended well before I became a widow, and that’s as much my fault as anyone’s. Let’s leave it at that. It did, after all give me my Kerry.”
Tom signaled to the waitress and they quickly ordered some food, fish-and-chips for him and shepherd’s pie for her. Plus a glass of Chianti for him—”really, it won’t bother me”—and another club soda for her.
And they talked, eventually through coffee, of less-intense things as the dining room filled. Eileen got a text and after Tom said “take a look” she saw it was Kerry:
{Kerry: Mom, where are you? Do you know when you’re getting home? And will you need food?]
{Kerry: I’ve eaten.}
“Good God,” Eileen said, “it’s 7:20. That was Kerry wondering what ever became of me.”
{Eileen: I’m still alive. Finishing up. I’ll let you know what train I’ll be on in a minute.}
{Kerry: Are you alone?}
{Eileen: I’m with another banker from the conference. We had dinner.}
{Kerry: Okay, see you soon. You want me to pick you up at the station.}
{Eileen: No need. I’ll walk. I’ll text what train I make.}
{Kerry: CU soon.}
Heading Home
After splitting the bill, as they walked to Grand Central, Eileen said that she had a very nice time. “You know, I’d forgotten just how pleasant a quiet evening with a charming man can be.”
Not sure how to respond, Tom offered, “I’m a ‘charming man’ in your eyes then?”
“In anyone’s eyes, believe me. I do not want to scare you off. I would like to see you again, if you’d like to see me.”
Tom laughed. “I think we’re both a bit at sea here. I would like to see you again. May I call?”
“You may.”
They got to the stairs that led to Eileen’s platform. Though they were on the same Metro-North train-line, his train would not stop in Tuckahoe where she lived so she headed for her train first.
Then after pausing like two high-schoolers standing on the girl’s porch, Eileen and Tom gave each other a peck on the lips and Eileen rubbed Tom’s cheek and said good night and went to her train home. When she was on board waiting for its doors to close, she took out her phone and texted Kerry with when the train got to Tuckahoe.
Risk Assessment
His day job was assessing risk, and he was very good at it. Tom Doyle helped his bank avoid some of the catastrophic losses that tore through its competitors in 2008 and was well compensated for it. But this had nothing to do with risk assessment. This was, in a phrase that he would shutter to apply to other people’s money, “taking a flyer.” He was like someone who’d become enamored by some exotic financial instrument or high-tech start-up, lost to anything but the upside of Eileen.
Since Wendy died three years earlier, he was a frequent topic of discussion in certain parts of Chappaqua. The two were fixtures in the cocktail-party/family-barbeque/country-club-events sprinkled through the calendar. Wendy’s death had hit their social circle hard, and all of them were on the look-out for someone…not to replace Wendy because they all knew she was irreplaceable but to be with Tom going forward. And their efforts always failed. Whether it was Tom or the women with whom he was set up did not matter. Tom was good natured about it and good natured about the dates he was put into, but his friends and family realized that “she” would have to come to or be found by Tom and not be foisted on him.