Roscoe

by William Kennedy

  “Oh, Gilby, sweet boy, how handsome you look.” She grasped his hand and squeezed it.

  “Leave him alone,” Veronica said. Pamela ignored her and went to the table where Marcus was waiting. A court bailiff entered the judge’s chambers, and then George Quinn, the court crier, announced that court was in session, the honorable Francis Finn presiding, all rise. Finn was a young question mark, for, although he owed his presence on the bench to Patsy’s endorsement, it was Marcus who had used his influence to get him into Albany Law School right out of high school, without an intervening college education.

  “I’ve read your petition, Mr. Gorman, and your response, Mr. Conway,” Judge Finn said, “and it seems to me there are issues of fact to be determined here. Do you agree?” He looked to Marcus, a formal figure in dark-blue suit and subdued red tie, who stood and spoke with unusual restraint—flamboyance, not understatement, was Marcus’s trademark.

  “No, Your Honor,” Marcus said, “for we are dealing here with the biological right of a mother, under law, to possess her own child. There was no legal adoption of this boy by Veronica Fitzgibbon, only a temporary custody arrangement agreed to by a deeply troubled mother whose circumstances would not allow her to raise the child as she wanted him raised. But she has triumphed over adversity and now reclaims her right to cherish her own flesh and blood, to give him the upbringing he deserves from his true mother. And we ask that immediate custody of her only son be granted to her—today.” And he sat down.

  “What do you say to this, counsel?” the judge asked Roscoe.

  And Roscoe stood and recounted the Gilby prenatal adoption plan, noted the absence of contact between biological mother and child for three years after the birth, and only eight mother–son meetings during the next nine years.

  “And so Pamela Yusupov,” said Roscoe, “who gave her child away with a great expression of relief before he was born, has seen the boy only ten times in his entire life, including the day of his birth and this sighting today. Yet she wants to take him from the mother who, while cradling him as her own when he was only hours out of the womb, heard Pamela Yusupov say, ‘Thank God, thank God I’m no longer a mother.’ Now this unnatural mother seeks to wrench that child out of the only mother’s arms he’s ever known. The boy does not want to leave, and it would be tragic to place him, against his will, in custody of this stranger. What’s more, this stranger’s sole purpose here is to obtain money from the estate of her late ex-husband, who disowned her five years ago, who was father to this boy but never saw him—not once—in his entire life. Should the profoundest of human bonds, between mother and son, ever be measured by the financial gain it will bring? Your respondents ask that this mischievous suit be dismissed.”

  Judge Finn shook his head and said, “Let’s not waste the court’s time here, Mr. Gorman, Mr. Conway. The way to resolve this is through sworn testimony, and we must hear from the infant.”

  “Then we request that testimony be taken in chambers,” said Roscoe, “to make the environment less frightening for the boy.”

  “We will reconvene here, in my chambers, two weeks from today,” the judge said.

  To Roscoe, Veronica had been a savvy childhood goddess, creature of heavenly body to which he had modest privilege; but then she became, oh yes, high priestess of betrayal and venal dreams, human after all. Pamela was Veronica manquée, savvy and single-minded, the vulvaceous creature of devilish body and venturesome sin. Roscoe loved the blood that flowed in the young sisters’ bodies, loved their vitality and, of course, their beauty. That both were beautiful no one disagreed. When Veronica was nineteen and about to marry Elisha, she was photographed in a white parlor of her home, wearing a white, off-the-shoulder evening dress with no trace of vulgarity in her bare shoulders, standing in a smoky light that obscured her right hand and gave her an aura of ethereality. The photo was everybody’s favorite when it appeared in magazines and rotogravures, and so Pamela, at nineteen and about to marry Roscoe, had an identical photo taken to prove Veronica’s image was not a singular phenomenon, and proved the reverse. Pamela’s photo accented her shoulder bones and her curiously inelegant posture, and Roscoe concluded that, though she tried to stand upright for the portrait, her crooked soul betrayed her. Now, twenty-nine years later, here she was in court, still getting even for genetic inequities.

  When he married Pamela, Roscoe had a modest income from his father’s Stanwix brewery, an enterprise that dated to 1886, when Felix bought it from John Malley, who gave up making beer in order to sell it retail in what his sons would develop into the city’s largest saloon. Two years later, Felix was elected Albany’s first mayor of Irish extraction, and the day after his election he led a parade of twelve Stanwix wagons, each drawn by a double team through the entire city, to let it be known that good things would happen to saloonkeepers who served Stanwix beer and Shamrock ale, the Democratic Party’s new official beverages. The brews remained such even after Felix was removed from office for fraud, for he continued as a figure of power in the Party, and the brewery made him a fortune. It also kept his wife, Blanche’s regal standing in the First Irish Families, that elite social unit with which Felix would have nothing to do, for, as all know, elevated social status turns the Irish into Republicans.

  When the Democrats lost City Hall in 1899, Stanwix beer had a sheer falling off. But its quality kept it popular and, by 1914 its profits gave Roscoe enough income to travel comfortably in the Fitzgibbon social circle, which included the Morgan sisters. And it was these sisters, not money, or politics, that focused Roscoe’s mind. He had proposed to Veronica Morgan when he finished Albany Law School, but she married Elisha and his fortune.

  Then came Pamela.

  Roscoe studied Pamela the plaintiff, who remained photogenic for the newspapers, her essential blond hair durably bottled in bond. But her smile had changed: two of her incisors gone crooked. And that tantalizing body he had pressed against so often, on sleigh rides, at dances, even when pursuing Veronica, had developed into one of Pamela’s worst fears: the thickening middle. Together at Veronica’s wedding reception at the Albany Country Club, Roscoe and Pamela had watched thick-middled Honey Mills, fiftyish, hair like straw dyed black, talking with three men sitting on chairs across from her, and offering them all a prolonged revelation of her thigh. Pamela said an ugly, shapeless woman doing such a needy thing was pathetic, but then she and Roscoe went off to the shadowy cloakroom, where Pammy kissed him and gave him exploration rights. Divested of one sister, Roscoe took the other. He courted Pamela, went with her downtown, even to Fifth Avenue on the New York train, shopping for hats, coats, dresses. He kept her company when she was blue, took her to Dr. Warner’s office when she had the stomach pains, sometimes associated with her monthlies, took her to dinner at Keeler’s, to dances at the Yacht Club and the Hampton Roof Garden, and went with her on vacation to Tristano, the great Adirondack camp Lyman had started building in 1873. It was both Ariel’s and Elisha’s favored retreat. Elisha always invited Roscoe, and Roscoe always went, for Veronica would be there.

  But Pamela became his primary interest during this visit to Tristano, where social fantasia pervaded the air like the scent of pine trees. Accessible from the railhead at North Creek only by horse-drawn carriage and then by steamer across the lake, Tristano was isolated amid the loons and raccoons, the foxes, eagles, and great horned owls, and surrounded by alders, spruces, cedars, white pine, and hemlocks. Its twenty-four buildings along the shoreline seemed on first approach to be the edge of a small city that extended infinitely backward into the estate’s two thousand wooded acres. And indeed it bustled like a city when family friends and servants put it to full use. Life amid this animated isolation, this log-cabin luxury of the uncommonly rich, offered the visitor a transformation of expectation. What happened here seemed a charade played out among real people by unreal rules with improbable consequences—Roscoe, for instance, alone on the floor with Pamela on two raccoon coats at four in the morning, proposing ma
rriage, being accepted, then bringing her back here as a bride.

  Their honeymoon was romantic solitude in front of open fireplaces, long walks in the pineydown woods, cool swims in the lake’s morning stillness, and pointed talk, never about tomorrow, but about how they would spend the abundance that was today. Looking at Pamela in the courtroom, Roscoe remembers that vivid yellow hair when the yellowness was real, can see her in a shimmering blue summer evening gown, then slipping effortlessly out of it, remembers how she walked or provocatively sat, and how much he loved her. But he now knows this love was independent of Pamela, a consequence of his own unruly capacity for love.

  After Veronica married Elisha, Roscoe could no longer love her as before; and so loved Pamela instead, and she loved him, and they married, made love, and made love again, half a dozen times the first day. In between they ate what the Tristano servants cooked for them: fresh fish from the lake, a pheasant shot by Kendrick, Ariel’s resident woodsman. They drank lightly to keep love at a sharp edge, took the boat out on the lake to find a place where there was no sound. Their lives became elemental, centering on the forest, the water, the bed, and the belief that life was purposeful, even though its only discernible purpose was love, effortless love that Roscoe could give and receive at will. And he loved it, loved Pamela, loved that he loved her, loved women, loved love.

  When they woke into the third day of the honeymoon, Pamela was revisited by her old pain. She ate sparsely and said she would not give in to it. They fished off the dock by the Trophy House, and Roscoe was reeling in a small trout when they saw the steamer coming across the lake. He threw the trout back and stowed the fishing rods in the house, and they walked to the pier to meet the invaders. Ariel was first off the steamer.

  “Ah, my little ones,” he said to Roscoe and Pamela, “I didn’t expect to find anyone waiting for us.”

  “We’re three days into our honeymoon,” Roscoe said.

  “What a pity to disturb you.”

  “But we’re disturbing you in your own house, Ariel,” Roscoe said. “Elisha did know we were coming. I’m surprised he didn’t tell you.”

  “Elisha and I aren’t talking,” Ariel said.

  Ariel on the pier was a handsome, salient figure in blue blazer and white slacks, pencil-line mustache, a preposterously large ruby on his left ring finger, and a full head of pure white hair. He did not look his sixty-eight years, and he exuded a sense of mature dignity that was wholly unearned. Ever since Elisha relieved him of power at the steel mill, he had been in perpetual motion between Albany, Manhattan, Miami, Saratoga, and the pleasure domes of Europe, never alone, devoting all his days to the hedonistic carnival his life, in late years, had become. Now, as his servants unloaded everyone’s luggage, Ariel introduced Roscoe and Pamela to his traveling companions as they came down the ramp: Lamar Kensington, the insurance executive who backed the Broadway musical with him, Encore, Maestro, a hit that renewed Ariel’s exchequer after he left the mill; three Broadway dancers, Billie, Lillie, and Dolly, from another Ariel-Lamar show that had just flopped; two judges from downstate whom Ariel introduced only as Jerry and Ted; Ariel’s chauffeur, Griggs; his personal chef, Philippe; and, last off the boat, his physician, Roy Warner, and Warner’s bosomy wife, Estelle. Ariel saw or talked with Warner every day of his life to combat the shifting pains, maladies, and other multifarious disguises that death assumed in its never-ending pursuit of Ariel’s ailing soul and body.

  “Oh, Dr. Warner,” Pamela said when she saw him, “thank heaven you’re here. You don’t know the pain I’ve been in.”

  “She’s been suffering since yesterday,” Roscoe said to Warner.

  Dr. Warner, an affable, jowly man in his forties, with large ears and a perfect bedside smile, shook hands with Pamela. “Your stomach acting up again?” he asked.

  “It gets better, then it comes back.”

  “Do you have the pills I gave you?”

  “Gone. But I haven’t needed them for weeks.”

  “I’ll get you some when we settle in and I find my bags.”

  “You’ll join us for lunch, and late dinner,” Ariel said. “We have a continuing feast, you know.”

  “Of course,” said Roscoe, who was already making plans to leave.

  Half an hour later, Roscoe had escorted Pamela to the Warners’ cottage and was walking with Ariel, both of them coatless under the ardent July sun. They were nearing the Swiss cottage, the most elegant of the secondary buildings, built to match the main lodge, with twisted cedar and shaggy spruce. On the sloping lawn in front of it, Billie, Lillie, and Dolly were sunbathing on the grass, all supine and naked under small lap-towels.

  “Excessively lush, the scenery at Tristano,” Ariel said, and he waved to the women. They all waved back and Billie removed her towel.

  “And it changes radically from minute to minute,” Roscoe said.

  “You hardly need anything along these lines at the moment, Roscoe, but you should know that these young women are very friendly.”

  “But I have a very friendly bride.”

  “You also have a reputation for diversity, and it’s a comfort to have excess on hand for emergencies.”

  “I can’t imagine one arising,” Roscoe said. “Which of those excessive creatures belongs to you?”

  “Oh, that’s not how it’s done. We have no ownership here.”

  “Sweet land of liberty. E pluribus unum?”

  “There you have it.”

  Ariel’s sexual excesses distanced many, but they amused Roscoe. Since childhood he had developed a friendship with Ariel that was familial. It had been painful to watch him squander his money and weaken the steel mill as he became a full-time satyr. But the dream assumes curious shapes.

  “I suppose you miss the mill,” Roscoe said.

  “Not at all,” said Ariel. “I gave it all I had. Now I’m doing the same for myself.”

  “I grieve over the trouble between you and Elisha,” Roscoe said. “The war between fathers and sons is unwinnable and usually a self-mutilating pursuit. And Tivoli isn’t the same without you around.”

  “Ah, you grew up well, Roscoe, and you have the gift of talk. I thought you’d rise in political office like your father.”

  “I wasn’t cut out for public life.”

  “We never know what we’re cut out for. Who could have predicted I’d swap my stable of horses for a stable of women?”

  “Some might consider that an improvement.”

  “As do I, on those days when I don’t think I’m dying.”

  “Psychic sex as an antidote to psychic illness. Are you dying now?”

  “Not at the moment. But the day is young.”

  “We won’t clutter your demise,” Roscoe said. “We’ll get out of your way by morning.”

  “Don’t be in a hurry. There’s always room for two more at Tristano. Too many is just enough. And the time allotted for frolic runs out, Roscoe. Take my word.”

  Estelle Warner was alone on the porch of the main lodge, drinking what looked like gin, when Ariel and Roscoe settled into green rocking chairs. Lee, an Oriental servant, appeared at their elbows as they arrived, asking whether he might bring drinks. Whiskey and whiskey, the two men said, and Lee vanished into the lodge.

  “Did you have a nice walk, Ari?” Estelle asked.

  “We did. The girls are taking the sun.”

  “I thought of doing that myself,” Estelle said, “but it’s a bit too high in the sky for me. I’ll get the freckles in odd places.”

  “Nothing wrong with freckles in odd places,” Ariel said.

  “You like the odd places,” Estelle said.

  Estelle smiled at Roscoe, revealing a set of teeth so egregiously false they neutralized all meaning in her smile. Her manner, like her bosom, was ebullient.

  “Are you waiting for the doctor?” Roscoe asked her.

  “He’s having a session with his patient.”

  “Pamela, you mean.”

  “Oh yes, Pamela
. They do drag it out.”

  “I know,” Roscoe said. “I’ve taken her to his office.”

  “She takes you with her, does she? He’s had her in hand since she was fifteen. He’s brought her along.”

  “Oh yes? How do you mean that?”

  “He’s taught her how it’s done. Roy does love the little chickadees.”

  “Estelle, Roscoe and Pamela are married.”

  “Married, are you? How cozy! You and I should have a matching consultation. We could have it right now, right here on facing chairs. The servants would never intrude, and Ari could cheer us on. You know, I’d wager that Roy is re adjusting her pelvis even as we speak.”

  “They’re on their honeymoon, Estelle.”

  “Honeymoon! Oh, that is very spicy, and the doctor having a house call from the bride.”

  Roscoe remembered Pamela’s face that day when she walked up the steps of the porch with Dr. Warner. It was a half-smile, a mask of relief at the presumable banishing of pain, the restoration of light to her dark condition, but also, in her cheeks and lips, the flush of gratification that Roscoe knew well. The force of the doctor’s jaw, his parsimonious grin, expressed quiet triumph.

  “Walk me back to the room, Roscoe,” Pamela said. “I still feel lightheaded. I need to lie down.”

  As they left the porch, Roscoe decided that none of what Estelle had suggested was true, that it was Tristano imposing its aura of fantasia. In their room Pamela opened her body to Roscoe with such fervid immediacy that he understood, even if he could not confirm, that it was not Tristano’s fantasia but the experience of receiving a second lover within a quarter-hour of the first that was driving Pamela’s ecstasy; that this arose not from either act of love but from their whor ish succession. Roscoe then realized this had been the pattern of their love since he first came to know it, that hers was no more related to him than his was to her, that they were both artful stylists enacting a loveless ritual that had no meaning beyond the orgasmic. Meaning would destroy the ecstasy. Roscoe now thought of it as loathsome pleasure, consummated by mutual traitors. Life without betrayal is not life.