Daddy - Hardcover

Steel, Danielle

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0385297661 ISBN 13: 9780385297660

Publisher: Delacorte Press, 1989

Synopsis

Oliver Watson's world suddenly dissolves around  him when Sarah his wife of eighteen years, returns  to Harvard to get her master's degree. Oliver is  left on his own, with three children and a freedom  he never wanted and doesn't completely understand.  His family's needs and demands suddenly consume  his life.

When Oliver's mother is  diagnosed as having Alzheimer's disease and dies soon  thereafter, Oliver's father's life is changed as  well. Braver than his son with less of a future  before him, George Watson, at seventy-two, quickly  embraces new relationships and, eventually, a new  life. The sudden changes come as a shock to both  father and son.

Ben, Oliver's oldest  son, rejects his father and reaches outward, under  the illusion that he is grown-up and can make it  on his own. Melissa, the middle child, blames  Oliver for her mother's desertion. And Sam, the  "baby," is too shaken to deal with it at all.  Now the only parent, Daddy must  somehow cope this, his troubled family and  explore a world of new responsibilities, new women, and  new experiences. Each of the three men must start  a new life: Oliver in New York and then in Los  Angeles with his children, once he faces the  biggest change in his life; his widowed father with the  woman next door; and seventeen-year-old Ben with  his girlfriend and baby. Nothing is as it was  before... nothing is as they once thought it would  be. But in the end, different is better...  different is more... for each of them--and especially  for Daddy.

About this title

About the Author

Danielle Steel has been hailed as one of the world’s most popular authors, with over 560 million copies of her novels sold. Her many international bestsellers include Sisters, H.R.H., Coming Out, The House, Toxic Bachelors, Miracle, and other highly acclaimed novels. She is also the author of His Bright Light, the story of her son Nick Traina’s life and death.


From the Paperback edition.

Reviews

Steel's captivating 25th novel will send her rocketing past the 125-million mark for books in print and satisfy avid fans with its splashy sentiment, loudly plucked heartstrings and boldly drawn, if superficially developed, cast. Oliver Watson is a successful, rather stolid, advertising executive with a beautiful wife, Sarah, three children, Ben, Melissa and Sam, and a house in suburban New York. But his paradise is teetering over an abyss: Sarah, who never wanted a conventional life, coldly abandons husband and kids to "find herself" by pursuing a master's degree at Harvard. Then Oliver's mother dies of Alzheimer's disease, leaving his 72-year-old father bereft, and 17-year-old Ben fathers a child and drops out of school. Oliver blames the unremittingly icy Sarah for every sorrow, yet initially refuses to get on with his life, even when his father points the way by finding a new love. Steel ( Star ; Zola ) is at the top of her bestselling form as she steers Oliver through a fearsome new world of single parenthood, modern women and radically changed sexual mores before winding up with a paean to family life and romance. Literary Guild and Doubleday Book Club dual main selection.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Chapter One


The snowflakes fell in big white clusters, clinging together like a drawing in a fairy tale, just like in the books Sarah used to read to the children. She sat at the typewriter, looking out the window, watching snow cover the lawn, hanging from the trees like lace, and she completely forgot the story she'd been chasing around in her head since early that morning. It was so damn picturesque. So pretty. Everything was pretty here. It was a storybook life in a storybook town, and the people around her seemed like storybook people. They were exactly what she had never wanted to become, and now she was one of them, and had been for years. And probably always would be. Sarah MacCormick, the rebel, the assistant editor of the Crimson, the girl who had graduated from Radcliffe in 1969 at the top of her class and knew she was different, had become one of them. Overnight. Or almost. In truth, it had taken almost twenty years. And now she was Sarah Watson. Mrs. Oliver Wendell Watson. She lived in Purchase, New York, in a beautiful house they almost owned, after fourteen years of struggling with the mortgage. She had three children, one dog, the last hamster had finally died the year before. And she had a husband she loved. Dear sweet Ollie. He graduated from Harvard Business School when she finished Radcliffe, and they'd been in love since her sophomore year. But he was everything that she wasn't. He was conservative when she was wild, he had believed in what they had tried to do in Vietnam, and for a while she had hated him for it. She had even stopped seeing him for a time after graduation, because she insisted that they were too different. She had gone to live in SoHo, in New York, and tried to write, and she'd actually done pretty well. She'd been published twice in The Atlantic Monthly, and once . . . holy of holies . . . in The New Yorker. She was good and she knew it. And Oliver lived uptown, in an apartment he shared with two friends on East 79th Street, and with his MBA, he got a pretty good job in an ad agency on Madison Avenue. She wanted to hate him for it, wanted to hate him for conforming, but she didn't. Even then, she knew how much she loved him.

He talked about things like living in the country, having Irish setters, wanting four kids, and a wife who didn't work, and she made fun of him for it. But he just grinned that incredible boyish grin that made her heart pound even then . . . even when she pretended to herself that what she really wanted was a man with hair longer than her own . . . an artist . . . a sculptor . . . a writer . . . someone "creative." Oliver was creative, and he was smart. He had graduated magna from Harvard, and the trends of the sixties had never touched him. When she marched, he fished her out of jail, when she argued with him, even calling him names, he explained quietly and rationally what he believed in. And he was so damn decent, so good-hearted, he was her best friend, even when he made her angry. They would meet in the Village sometimes, or uptown for coffee, or drinks, or lunch, and he would tell her what he was doing and ask her about the latest piece she was writing. He knew she was good, too, but he didn't see why she couldn't be "creative" and married.

". . . Marriage is for women who are looking for someone to support them. I want to take care of myself, Oliver Watson." And she was capable of it, or she had been then, after a fashion. She had worked as a part-time gallery sitter in SoHo, and a free-lance writer. And she'd made money at it. Sometimes. But now, sometimes, she wondered if she would still be able to take care of herself, to support herself, to fill out her own tax forms, and make sure her health insurance hadn't lapsed. In the eighteen years they'd been married, she'd become so dependent on him. He took care of all the little problems in her life, and most of the big ones. It was like living in a hermetically sealed world, with Ollie always there to protect her.

She counted on him for everything, and more often than not, it scared her. What if something happened to him? Could she manage? Would she be able to keep the house, to support herself, or the kids? She tried to talk to him about it sometimes, and he only laughed, and told her she'd never have to worry. He hadn't made a fortune, but he had done well and he was responsible. He had lots of life insurance. Madison Avenue had been good to him, and at forty-four, he was the number three man at Hinkley, Burrows, and Dawson, one of the biggest ad agencies in the country. He had brought in their four biggest accounts himself and he was valuable to the firm, and respected among his peers. He had been one of the youngest vice-presidents in the business, and she was proud of him. But it still scared her. What was she doing out here, in pretty little Purchase, watching the snow fall, and waiting for the kids to come home, while she pretended to write a story . . . a story that would never be written, that would never end, that would never go anywhere, just like the others she had tried to write in the last two years. She had decided to go back to writing on the eve of her thirty-ninth birthday. It had been an important decision for her. Thirty-nine had actually been worse than turning forty. By forty, she was resigned to "impending doom," as she woefully called it. Oliver took her to Europe alone for a month for her fortieth birthday. The kids were away at camp, two of them anyway, and her mother-in-law had kept Sam. He had only been seven then, and it was the first time she'd left him. It had been like opening the gates to heaven when she got to Paris . . . no car pools . . . no children . . . no pets . . . no PTA . . . no benefit dinners to run for the school or the local hospitals . . . no one . . . nothing . . . except the two of them, and four unforgettable weeks in Europe. Paris . . . Rome . . . driving through Tuscany, a brief stop on the Italian Riviera, and then a few days on a boat he rented, drifting between Cannes and St. Tropez . . . driving up to Eze and Saint-Paul-de-Vence, and dinner at the Colombe d'Or, and then a few final whirlwind days in London. She had scribbled constantly during the trip, and filled seven notebooks. But when she got home . . . nothing. None of it wanted to be woven into stories, or tales, or articles, or even poems. She just sat there, staring at her notebooks, and a blank page in her typewriter that she never seemed to fill. And she was still doing it a year and a half later. At forty-one, she felt as though her entire life were behind her. And Oliver always laughed at her when she said it.

"Christ, Sarrie . . . you haven't changed a bit since I met you." And he meant it. It was almost true. But not quite. She, and those who wanted to be critical, could tell the difference. The shining dark red hair that used to hang down her back in sheets of coppery brilliance had faded to a reddish brown now. She wore it to her shoulders and there were more than a few threads of silver, which bothered the children more than they did Sarah. The bright blue eyes were the same, they were a dark, vibrant blue, and the creamy skin was still fine and for the most part unlined, but there were tiny traces of time here and there, but Oliver only said that they gave her face more expression. She was a pretty woman, and she had been a pretty girl, long and lean, with a good figure and graceful hands, and a sense of humor that danced in her eyes. It was that that he had loved about her from the first. Her laughter and her fire, and her courage, and her rabid determination to stick by what she believed in. There were those who thought her difficult when she was young, but not Ollie. Never Ollie. He liked the way she thought, and the things she said, and the way she said them. They had a relationship built on mutual respect and caring, and they had a very good time in bed. They always had, and they still did. Sometimes he even thought that after twenty years it was better. And it was, in some ways. They knew each other perfectly, like satin-smooth wood that had been touched and caressed and traveled a thousand times by loving hands and the tenderness of true belonging.

It had taken him exactly two years to convince her to marry him after her SoHo days, and at twenty-three she had become Mrs. Oliver Watson. Balking all the way, and in typical fashion, she had refused to have a traditional wedding. They had been married in the garden of his parents' Pound Ridge home, and her parents and her younger sister had come from Chicago. Sarah had worn a bright red dress and a big picture hat, and she looked more like a young girl in a painting than a bride, but they had both been happy. They had gone to Bermuda for their honeymoon, and the weather had been lousy, but they never noticed. They laughed and played, and stayed in bed until the late afternoon, emerging only for an early foray in the staid dining room of the hotel, and then they would hurry back to their room again, giggling and laughing, like two children.

It was three weeks after that that Sarah was less amused. They were living in a small apartment on Second Avenue, in a building filled with stewardesses and young executives, and "singles" who seemed to turn the entire building into a constant party.

He had come home from work to find her looking as though her best friend had died. But it was no friend, it was only "the rabbit." She had been puzzled by the absence of her period once they got home, but she had been religious about using her diaphragm, and knew she couldn't be pregnant. She had worn it practically night and day from the altar till they got home from their honeymoon, but somehow, some way, something had gone wrong, and she was pregnant. And she wanted to have an abortion. Oliver was horrified that she would even think of it. But Sarah w...

Edition details

• Publisher: Delacorte Press
• Publication date: 1989
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0385297661
• ISBN 13: 9780385297660
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 352