Portrait of a Love by Joan Wolf Read Free Book Online

all the time?”
    “Pretty much. It’s inevitable, I reckon.”
    “Because that’s what most everyone is involved in?”
    “Not really. One presumes that a group of bankers would have something else to talk about besides banking. It’s the very nature of the kind of entertainment Washington excels in: the formal dinner party. Imagine, there you are, seated between two women whom you scarcely know, and you must spend the first half of the meal talking to the lady on your right and the second half to the lady on your left though you may not have a thing in common with either of them. In other cities this could be very awkward, but in Washington you can always fall back on politics.”
    “Good heavens,” said Isabel. “It sounds rather daunting.”
    “It can be, I reckon, but I love it. You can’t get away with a sloppy thought or an undocumented fact, you know, not even in casual dinner conversation. Someone will infallibly pick you up on it.”
    “You are terrifying me.”
    “Am I?” He glanced her way, a quick flash of blue before his eyes went back to the road. “You should be able to handle it. I was in the library yesterday and I looked up Cooper Union. You didn’t get in there on just your looks.”
    “I was lucky,” she answered. “Like you.”
    “Mmm. Did your father ever get involved in politics, or was he an armchair critic?”
    Isabel then astonished herself. “For the last ten years of his life my father did nothing but drink. The only reason he held down his job at the end was because his friends covered up for him. He didn’t read anything; he just sat at the bar all night.” The bitterness in her voice was audible even to her own ears. She bit her lip. “Sorry, that was unnecessary. And after all I just said about public confessions.”
    “I’m the one whose sorry, honey,” he said gently. “You interest me and so I’ve been houndin’ you with questions. I didn’t mean to rub an unhealed wound.”
    Isabel bent her head. “It is an unhealed wound, I suppose. I used to love him so much, and then he went and did that to himself. I can’t forgive him. I don’t think I ever will.”
    Leo glanced once more at her, at the fine narrow head bent over the tensely clasped hands in her lap. She was taut with stillness, a controlled, intense stillness.
    “Did he begin to drink after your mother died?” he asked softly.
    She nodded mutely and Leo felt a sudden surge of tenderness and pity sweep through him. Poor kid, he thought, she had lost both her parents in one fell swoop.
    “There’s nothing I can say that I’m sure you haven’t heard before,” he said after a minute. “Except that if you can’t forgive him, you really must try to forgive yourself.”
    Her head lifted at his comment. There was such a deep and lonely watchfulness about her, he thought.
    “Do you think so?” Her voice sounded odd, breathless.
    He nodded gravely. “You didn’t fail him. In a case like his, there is quite literally nothing one can do. He had to do it for himself.”
    “That’s what Bob says too,” Isabel mumbled.
    “Bob is right,” Leo replied evenly. “The failure was your father’s, and it was a failure of self-discipline, of hope, of loving you enough.” Leo heard Isabel’s forcible intake of breath as he said the last words.
    “You ought to go into the psychotherapy business yourself,” she said shakily. “You’re damn good at it.”
    He shrugged, his big shoulders moving easily under the tan sweater he was wearing. Isabel was keenly aware of his physical presence, and the feeling was oddly comforting.
    “When I was in college, I worked in the Big Brother program. The boy I was a Big Brother to came from a broken home—his father was an alcoholic.”
    Isabel was silent as she listened to the sound of the rain teeming on the car’s roof. “I see. So you have some firsthand experience.”
    “I’ve seen the havoc that particular illness can wreak on a family, at any rate.” He