From the beginning, he’d been attracted to her toughness, and even now he admired no one as much as he admired her. His Italian mother had been prone to rages, and his Jewish father had been soft-spoken and muddleheaded. They had been barely middle-class, and he and his sister had never had the things they wanted. His parents died before his first divorce from Kate, a kindhearted WASP who felt at best neutral about sex, and his second marriage to Carla, a mean beauty from Venezuela who cuckolded him with his business partner. A few years shy of seventy, he wondered what they would have made of number three, his Korean wife—the retail tycoon.
True to her word, Sabine had become indispensable to his well-being. She bought him vitamins. Every morning, she snipped squares of wheatgrass they grew in a long flat pan on the sill of their sunny kitchen window. They were Park Avenue farmers, he joked. She fed the clippings into a juicer, then served him a double shot, resulting in grassy burps for the rest of the morning. His cardiologist was delighted—Isaac had shed forty pounds, his blood pressure medication was no longer necessary, and his sexual vigor was excellent. Yet he felt deprived.
Semiretired, Isaac worked only four hours a day, and he had a great deal of time to think. And in his leisure, he thought about love. In the pursuit of his ambition, he had neglected Kate; and after he became rich, he’d sported Carla around like a fine race car; and with Sabine, he saw that he did not know how to love her because she did not show him any need. Sabine was an ideal partner, and he’d never leave her, but Isaac found himself sleeping with other women. At sixty-seven years old, what he wanted more than anything was romance, and it flabbergasted him that this would never be possible with his wife. Sabine was incapable of loving him in the way he wanted to be loved—with a desperation or a sloppiness. He had married her because she would never fall apart, but he saw that all he wanted now was to care for a woman, and Sabine’s self-sufficiency made him obsolete.
Casey and Jay arrived.
Sabine kissed Casey, her left cheek and then her right, and then she kissed Jay. “My darlings, my darlings,” she said, her arms open like a conductor’s, her fingers spread apart.
Isaac hugged Casey. When he let her go, she took in the spectacular sight of the enormous white dogwood branches in Ching vases at the opposite ends of the room.
Sabine’s designer had recently made over the apartment. Long tailored sofas were upholstered in shades of white wool, and armchairs in oxblood velvets dotted the room like scarlet blooms over fresh snow. Their collection of ancient Chinese furniture was precious but inviting—the dark wood adding warmth to the cool Palladian-style interior. It was a room a person felt lucky to be invited to—this having been Sabine’s goal.
“Congratulations,” Isaac said.
“Thank you,” Jay said promptly, and Casey smiled at Isaac warmly.
“No ring?” Sabine glanced at Casey’s left hand.
“Later,” Casey said, thinking it was rude of her to ask. They were planning to choose it together next weekend.
“Soon,” Jay said.
Isaac went to the bar and brought them glasses of chilled Vouvray and for himself a glass of seltzer. The four of them raised their glasses. “To love,” Isaac said.
“And prosperity,” added Sabine.
The dinner was served by the housekeeper: spring pea soup, John Dory with salsify, cheese, and for dessert, poached pears and ginger yogurt. During the meal, Jay explained the plot of King Lear, which was playing at Lincoln Center, and Sabine paid careful attention to what he was saying.
“So he gave everything away before he died?” she asked. Even as a generous person, she found it hard to accept such foolishness.
Jay nodded—his wide-eyed expression matching her sentiment. He was pleased to exploit his English major for some useful purpose. At school, he’d carefully read over twenty of Shakespeare’s plays and most of his sonnets. In his senior year, he’d written about Ovid’s influence on Shakespeare. If prompted and encouraged, he would’ve recited sonnets after the coffee.
Isaac preferred ballet—introduced to him by his daughters. He’d never been much of a reader. However, he was impressed by Jay’s exuberance for the play.
The coffee was served with petit fours from Bonté, and Isaac tapped his head, remembering the champagne. “Not much of a bartender, am I?”
He brought over a bottle of vintage Krug sloshing in an ice bucket and four flutes.
“So have you set the date?” he asked.
“Not yet,” Jay said, turning to Casey. “I’m still waiting to hear about B schools.”