who clearly have the right to be here, so he rushes to assist the woman. He knows her. She is Natalie, mother of the twins and soon to be ex-wife of Kemble.
It is immediately clear that this handover of the children is typical in its awkwardness. The boys dash into the revolving door and enjoy going round twice, and as they do, the man and the woman look at each other through the glass. She turns and walks back to the waiting car. Kemble remains watching her until he is jolted into the present by his two boys who finally tumble excitedly out of the revolving door and into the lobby with their father. All three of them get into the elevator with the suitcases. The boys are fizzing but they know to rein it in a bit when they come here. Dad isn’t as lighthearted as Mum. And Granma Glenn isn’t any fun at all, but Granpop Thomas is game, and anyway none of it matters too much at the moment, because they’re with Dad. Yes, they want lots of Dad. Three is a more cautious lad than Red, who is a washing machine of continuous energy cycles. Three is also slightly smaller than Red, and he’s a clever, sensitive anxious soul who, despite his slighter stature, is looked up to by the more robust Red. Three is a tidy blond with a touch of red. Red is red. In every way. He’s fiery and fearless and funny, and has a flame of proud sticky-up red hair to announce it.
These twin chaps are magnets for each other. They are especially close, but when they do fall out, a rarity, the repell is cataclysmic and cruel. Then, just as quickly as they tear apart, they suddenly inexplicably mend again and all seems instantly, genuinely forgiven. These demolitions and repairs happen in twin-time, to the exclusion of others. They truly belong
together in a way that ordinary siblings don’t quite, and it’s this phenomenal connection that has kept them both strong in the last year when the split between their parents could have been devastating. They are perplexed by it, and Three especially worries about it, but because each parent is behaving well in front of them, like a lot of decent divorces, the boys are shielded from the worst hurts. Those are reserved for private meetings with lawyers and shockingly clinical letters that fire off several times a week between the two parties. That’s where the vicious greedy battles are fought.
The negotiations have recently collapsed entirely, prompting Queen Glenn to bully Kemble into insisting that the twins move in with them for a few revengeful months, thereby stoking the fire of Natalie’s pain into a raging furnace of frustration. Glenn has stopped loving Natalie altogether, if indeed she ever did. It wasn’t part of her plan for Kemble to marry a Frenchwoman. She would have preferred a less continental choice. A non-smoker. Someone more waspy, perhaps? Glenn now regards Natalie as a threat, and has closed ranks against her. Natalie knows of old that Glenn is not someone you want as your enemy, but it’s her boys at stake, so ‘little’ ‘fragile’ Natalie has butched up for the fight of her life. This concession, letting the boys spend time with the Wilder-Binghams, is only because Natalie knows how desperately her beloved boys want time with their father. It’s heartbreaking for Natalie but she knows she must do the right thing by them, so that’s
why she has delivered them up to the East Side. It’s not forever, it’s just for now.
Inside the lift, Red is gabbling away about the gadget he wants most in the world, which is a junior metal detector, ‘It’s, like, so cool, Dad, because you could get one too, the big one will fit over your arm. The one I want, like, fits over my arm. You can like find gold an’ stuff … pirate coins …’
Three stands quietly next to his father. He looks at Kemble’s hands in his pockets, and he reaches his own little hand up to link into his father’s wrist. Kemble removes his hand from his pocket and holds Three’s hand. Red clocks this and grabs