“Not Dad?”
She shook her head.
“He’s my father, but he’s not my dad, you know?”
Frank nodded. He did.
“Peter calls her Mimi, which I think is—” Cleo mimed sticking her fingers down her throat.
Peter and Miriam were only passing through town for a couple of hours and had asked Cleo to meet them in midtown before they took a train up to New Haven, where Miriam, a healer and psychologist, was leading an inner child workshop as part of some corporate retreat.
It was Frank who had suggested they go to Grand Central Oyster Bar and insisted on taking a long lunch so he could join. He privately thought it was absurd that they couldn’t spare more than a few hours for Cleo, but he recognized that each family functioned with its own impenetrable logic, so he resisted the urge to say anything. By contrast, Cleo was surprised that they had made arrangements to see her at all. Most of the time her father was so wrapped up in his new family, he didn’t seem to remember he had a daughter at all.
“Our stop’s next,” Frank said. “Anything else I should know?”
“Let me think,” she said. “Peter says Humphrey is his son, but he’s not really. He was eight when my dad met Miriam, but he adopted him later. Humphrey won’t be there, but you’ll hear about him. He’s going to Cambridge next year and is amazing at sport. Everyone just loves Humphrey.”
She rolled her eyes and attempted a smile. Frank recognized within the forced casualness of the gesture a familiar attempt to dismiss years of resentment and hurt. He took her hand and looked earnestly into her eyes.
“I just have one question,” he said. “What kind of a person looks at a newborn baby and names him … Humphrey?”
Cleo laughed and shook her head.
“You haven’t met Miriam,” she said.
Cleo and Frank climbed the stairs from the subway’s fetid platform and emerged into the airy expanse of the station’s main concourse. They looked up at its famed celestial mural and smiled at each other in wordless recognition of their good fortune to live in this city. For even the most jaded New Yorker, it is hard to stand beneath the soaring robin’s-egg-blue ceiling of Grand Central, to tilt one’s face toward the golden constellations inscribed upon its vaulted dome, without feeling a tug of awe. On top of the information booth, the golden clock that had borne witness to so many millions of reunions and departures glowed warmly. Beside it, dressed in a tuxedo and a frothy white dress, a Japanese bride and groom were having their photos taken.
“You know,” said Frank. “We don’t have a single picture from our wedding.”
“Except the aura photos,” said Cleo.
“True.” He nodded. “You ever wish we’d done something like that?”
He gestured toward the couple. The groom had picked up the bride and was carrying her in his arms like an unwieldy baby, her voluminous tulle skirts partially eclipsing his face. Clenched between his teeth was a single red rose.
“I wouldn’t change a thing about what we did,” said Cleo.
Frank took her hand. “Me neither. But I was thinking we should do one traditional thing.”
“What?”
“Take a little honeymoon. You and me sunbathing in the South of France … What do you think?”
Cleo did a little skip beside him, swinging his hand in hers.
“I think, c’est cool mais c’est fous!” she said, and beamed at him.
The Oyster Bar was located on the lower level of the station, down two sets of wide marble steps. To reach it, they had to cross the whispering galley, a swooping archway of interlocking terra-cotta tiles meticulously laid in a herringbone pattern.
“Do you know about this?” asked Frank.
Cleo shook her head.
“If we stand in opposite corners, and I whisper something into the wall, you’ll be able to hear it. Something about the acoustics of the architecture means it carries. You wanna try it?”
They each went to a separate corner and leaned their bodies against the cool cavernous walls. The sounds of the station echoed around them. Frank was just about to whisper to Cleo that he loved her when he heard her voice reverberating through the tiles next to his ear.
“I haven’t told them we got married,” she whispered.
“You didn’t?” he whispered back.
“So don’t mention the wedding,” she whispered.
Frank turned to look at Cleo, whose back was still to him. She was wearing a long lemon silk dress that made her look like a bar of sunshine. He was crossing the walkway to speak to her when they heard the sound of Cleo’s name being called. Peter and Miriam were standing in front of the restaurant, waving at them.