"He was with other women in Halifax!" she blurted out.
"Mom, you told me. I know he left you. But I never knew he wanted to see me."
"I couldn't stop him from seeing you, could I?" she asked. "When you were out in public, I couldn't prevent him from getting a look at you. But if he wasn't going to be with me, why should I have let him be with you?"
"So that I would have a father?"
"Who knows what sort of father he would have been, Jack? With a man like that, you can never be sure."
"Did he see me in Toronto, Mom? Did he get a look at me, when I was a baby--before you drove him away?"
"How dare you!" his mother said. "I never drove him away! I gave him all the looks at you that he could stand! I let him see you--at least from a distance--every time he asked!"
"He asked? What do you mean, 'from a distance,' Mom?"
"Well, I would never let him see you alone," she explained. "He wasn't allowed to talk to you."
What wasn't he getting? Jack wondered. What didn't add up? Had he been a child on display for his father, perhaps to tempt William to accept Alice's terms--namely, to live with her? "Let me get this straight," Jack said to his mother. "You let him see me, but if he wanted further contact with me, he had to marry you."
"He did marry me, Jack--but only under the condition that we get immediately divorced!"
"I thought it was Mrs. Wicksteed's idea that I have his name--so I would seem less illegitimate," Jack said. "I never knew you married him!"
"It was Mrs. Wicksteed's idea that the only legitimate way for you to have his name would be if he married me and we were then divorced," his mother told him--as if this were a petty detail of no lasting importance.
"So he must have been around, in Toronto--when we were here--for quite some time," Jack said.
"Barely long enough to get married and divorced," Alice said. "And you were still an infant. I knew you wouldn't remember him." (She hadn't wanted Jack to remember William, obviously.)
"But Mrs. Wicksteed was my benefactor, wasn't she?" Jack asked. "I mean we were her rent-free boarders, weren't we?"
"Mrs. Wicksteed was the epitome of generosity!" his mother said with indignation--as if he'd been questioning Mrs. Wicksteed's character and good intentions, which he'd never doubted.
"Who paid for things, Mom?"
"Mrs. Wicksteed, for the most part," Alice replied frostily. "Your father occasionally helped."
"He sent money?"
"It was the least he could do!" his mom cried. "I never asked William for a penny--he just sent what he could."
But the money had to come from somewhere, Jack realized; she must have known where William was, every step of the way.
"Which brings us to Copenhagen," Jack said. "We weren't exactly searching for him, were we? You must have already known he was there."
"You haven't touched your tea, dear. Is there something wrong with it?"
"Did you take me to Copenhagen to show me to him?" Jack asked her.
"Some people, Jack--men, especially--are of the opinion that all babies look alike, that infants are all the same. But when you were a four-year-old, you were something special--you were a beautiful little boy, Jack."
He was only beginning to get the picture: she'd used him as bait! "How many times did my dad see me?" Jack asked. "I mean in Copenhagen." (What Jack really meant, in terms familiar to him from the movie business, was how many times she had offered William the deal.)
"Jackie--" his mother said, stopping herself, as if she detected in her tone of voice something of the way she'd admonished him as a child. When she began afresh, her voice had changed; she sounded frail and pleading, like a woman with breast-cancer cells taking hold of the emotional center of her brain. "Any father would have been proud of what a gorgeous-looking boy you were, Jack. What dad wouldn't have wanted to see the handsome young man you would become?"
"But you wouldn't let him," Jack reminded her.
"I gave him a choice!" she insisted. "You and I were a team, Jackie--don't you remember? We were a package! He could have chosen us, or nothing. He chose nothing."