by Mark Helprin
“Where?”
“I don’t know, a lot of places. Daddy loved to swim, but when Franklin was around he would get extremely nervous when he came out in his bathing suit, looking about as if he were walking through a field of cobras. And then, usually just before he got to the point where he might have thrown himself into the water, Franklin, who had been hiding, would appear. And my father would say, in his seven-year-old’s voice, ‘Oh no! Oh no!’
“Then the chase would begin, with Daddy, often in flippers and water wings, desperately trying to escape—which, if you’ve ever seen a little boy in flippers furiously trying to get away from being tickled, is alone worth the price of the ticket. My father never forgot this, of course.
“Sometime in the thirties he was called to the White House as part of a move to put pressure on what was left of the banks. The meeting was in the Cabinet Room, where the weight of the president’s power was set against that of the assembled bankers and financiers. My father, as usual, came in late. It was already very tense, so, to the horror of the other bankers, what does he do? He immediately runs around the table and digs his fingers into Roosevelt’s ribs, and doesn’t cease tickling him even after the guards burst in, practically in cardiac arrest, because the president . . . of the United States, is shrieking like a hyena. ‘That’s all right! It’s okay! Stop it, Billy!’ the president is shouting. No one knew what the hell was going on. The financiers were white—of course they were white, but I mean with shock—and at the president’s command the guards just stood there like ice sculptures, while he took his punishment.
“‘It’s quite all right,’ the president said, dismissing them. When he had finished shrieking and laughing so hard he had tears in his eyes, he asked, ‘How many times are you entitled to do that, Billy?’ ‘I think about a hundred, Franklin,’ was the answer. The president made everyone promise not to tell, but I’m sure they all will, eventually, if they live long enough. But you can’t.”
“I won’t.”
“I hardly knew FDR. When I was little he hadn’t become governor and he was in a wheelchair. He was very nice to children. There were always a lot of us around, and we would sort of form into gangs and go away to play while the adults talked, and to us he was the most adult in that the wheelchair scared us, or me anyway. After he became president, he became very remote. Obviously he was busy, and he was always castigating people like Daddy, so I didn’t like him, but Daddy said, no, despite that, the personal is more important. Anyway, Daddy says that he was much more like TR than people realize, and you know that TR was perpetually six years old. The meeting that followed may have been the most relaxed and delightful ever held in the White House. Who knows? It may have been good for the country: everyone stretched, everyone gave. It was quite something. That’s what my father says. Now do you think my father wouldn’t wet his shirt?”
“I think he might take a bath in the sink.”
“So should we,” she said. “Let’s cool off.” And they left to do so, even if not by bathing in the sinks. When he reappeared, his shirt was wet through and wonderfully cool. She had splashed so much water on her face that it had run down the curves of her neck, splotching the shoulders of her dress, and fallen in cool rivulets past her open collar, across the top of her chest, and between her breasts.
As she emerged, she and Harry looked at one another, the sound of jackhammers hypnotic in the distance, the faint ringing of their metal like bells in a meadow. He could not separate his gaze from the splotches of water on her dress, and from her eyes in their extraordinary setting.
“If I were to die right now,” he told her, “on a settee outside the bathrooms on the fourth floor of Saks, and if this moment never ended, the sun didn’t move, and people worked their morning’s work for eternity, I would be happy. But, eventually, this morning will be lost.”
“So much the better,” was her response. “It’s one of a kind.”
They had been going from department store to department store to look at the leather goods and their pricing. Catherine was impressed to see Copeland Leather well represented everywhere, and everywhere the most costly, but Harry had been disturbed. What she could not see, not knowing how things once were, was that Copeland’s display space had plummeted and sales had followed. Once, their pricing had held up and they had had half the floor space in the appropriate departments. Now they occupied twenty percent at best, and were outsold by cheaper imports comparable in appearance and quality.
Before Saks they had made a stop at the Copeland store on Madison Avenue, where Thaxton and Henry were impotently upset and yet proud to divine that the owner was affianced to Catherine Hale. They knew Billy. They had known Catherine’s grandfather. They were possessive of such people and would mention their names and exaggerate their connections so as to feel important, as feeling important is the one treasure for which everyone in Manhattan has always been willing to lie, cheat, and kill. It is the chief thing for which New Yorkers work, money and goods being only subsidiary. They will do without food and water, and if necessary thrive anaerobically as long as they can touch, see, or hear someone of greater social status, someone whose fame will rub off on them microscopically atom by atom, a lingering odeur imperceptible to a bloodhound but for them sufficient unto the grave: Myron and I once took a taxi in which Francis X. Bushman had ridden only a week before.
Thus, Henry and Thaxton were pleased to have sensed the engagement. But they were also thrown into deep anxiety that the daughter of an exemplar of their kind would stoop to marry a Jew (which was almost as distressing as if she would marry a Negro), even if he were their employer, even if they had loved his father, even if they respected him immensely and he was fairer to and more generous with them than anyone ever had been. Blood is the thickest. She was so beautiful, in her way, stunning in mien and character, almost not of this world. She was light where he was dark. Her eyes were like jewels and his were like coals. She was bred to perfection, and he, by definition, could not have been bred at all.
Thaxton spoke reflexively, asking, “If you and the young lady were to marry, would it be in a church?” This was not only highly impertinent, it was almost insane, but he couldn’t help it.
Though he was shocked, Harry answered, “As things stand, we’d have a civil ceremony.”
“Oh.”
The oh was like the slamming of a thousand doors, but Harry, unlike Catherine, whose eyes flashed with anger, was immobile. Soon, however, they became absorbed in talk of commerce, and she separated from them to wander about the store.
It was as polished and impressive as a gold piece. Every item was of the highest quality, every surface shiny and rich. From across the room she noticed that Henry and Thaxton were actually dressed in morning coats, which gave the place the air of a vicarage, and although she pitied these two she could see that Harry needed them. Were he to man the counters, he could never be elegant and comfortably self-demeaning in their way. And she wondered if this unseen advantage, an inbred confidence that could not be eroded by defeat, would be denied to her children even though they would be of her blood as much as of his.
Later, on the settee, as water ran down the front of her dress and the cooling evaporation stimulated her subtly and deeply, she brought up the subject indirectly. It spoiled the moment, for she had hoped that they would get in a cab; that upon arriving at his house she would exit, semi-delirious from kissing all the way up Central Park West; and that on this day the courtship would come to a close. The most natural thing, soon enough, would be for them to lie pressed together, pinioned at the groin, bathed in sweat, exchanging breaths from one set of lungs to another, for hour upon hour. Soon enough, it would come, for it had been held back with hallucinatory discipline and pleasure that would color and elevate their lovemaking for the rest of their lives. And now it was time. But she could not help asking, again, “Why didn’t you fight?”
“Who this time?”
“Rufus, Henry, Thaxton, me, my parents, V
ictor, the whole world that says and feels that you and I are not appropriate for one another, that for you to mix your blood with mine would be a pollution.”
“Your parents haven’t said that.”
“Don’t you understand? It runs under everything. Why haven’t we let them know? It’s been months now.”
“Not that long. I told you. I’d find it hard to announce such a thing. You make it sound as if I would say something like, ‘Oh, by the way, I have a wooden leg.’”
“But it’s you who must tell them. It’s not for me to do.”
“They’re always surrounded by guests or just rushing off someplace. If you want, the next time I see them I’ll make a declaration and ask for your hand.”
“That’s not good enough.”
“Arm?”
“You know what I mean.”
“Shall I send a telegram?”
“I mean it doesn’t explain why you don’t fight. It doesn’t.”
“I’m tired, Catherine, I’m tired. I’ve killed men. I spent four years of my life preparing for it and doing it. And now I find myself in the safest place on earth, a place that I nearly died to preserve and protect. I’ll fight when I have to, but I’ve been at peace for a year and I like it. If I can avoid several actions at once, I will. I have enough to do without trying to cure anti-Semitism. I think I’ve cured my share of German anti-Semitism.”
“What other actions?”
“I can’t live on your money. If I can’t pull my weight, we can’t last.”
“I don’t care about the money,” she said. “I hate the money. I’ll give it all up.”
“No you won’t, and you shouldn’t. You’re the only child. You can’t cut the line like that.”
“And I can cut the line by marrying a Jew?”
“That’s different,” he said.
“Why?”
“You’ll know when you see our sons and daughters. Nothing that’s admirable in the line will cease, and they’ll be the proof. Those who would say no will have to look them in the eye and back down.
“Out of decency, you have to accept the wealth your parents bequeath, and pass it forward to our children. But not to me. I have to make my own way, or it’s finished.”
She was distressed, so he tried to explain. “I had a friend in college with whom I used to study languages. He would come to my room, and because it was so small we’d go up on the roof and sit in the open air, drilling in declensions and vocabulary—and syntax: you can never know enough syntax in a language that’s not your own.
“When I would go to his house, a Bulfinch greystone on Brattle Street, we would sit in his garden or in the library and servants would bring us iced tea and hors d’oeuvres. His father was, or still is, the forest ranger in charge of Mount Moosilauke in New Hampshire.”
“I used to climb that mountain,” Catherine said, “in camp. But I didn’t realize forest rangers made that kind of money.”
“They don’t.”
“I do know that, Harry.”
“They were as poor as you might think a forest ranger’s family in the thirties would be.”
“What happened?”
“There was no school nearby, so they had to send him away at an early age, and St. Paul’s took him on scholarship. He became indistinguishable from his classmates and stuck with them at Harvard, where he met and fell in love with a Radcliffe girl early in freshman year: Alison Ranley.”
“Chemicals.”
“And everything else. Out of California.”
“I know.”
“She was a lovely girl, and by sophomore year he had decamped to Brattle Street and was pushing around a very expensive English pram with a beautiful baby in it. They didn’t have to rent the baby.”
“Not a bad ending,” Catherine said hopefully.
“No, but that’s not the end.”
“I hope they’re all right.”
“They’re not. Once, we were up on my roof—we were really young then. We were in the middle of vocabulary. It was a beautiful day. He looked at his watch and jumped up. ‘I have to go,’ he said, and gathered his books. ‘We have a dinner tonight.’
“‘Who’s coming?’ I asked. I think I was trying for an invitation.
“‘The dean of the law school.’
“‘Harvard Law School?’
“‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Alison is endowing a chair.’
“‘Oh.’
“As he was about to go down the stairs, he turned to me and said, ‘Harry, I love Alison more than anything in the world, and I wouldn’t have it any other way, but if you can help it, don’t marry money. Maybe for people who’re older it’s different, but for me it’s a little like the lid sliding over a sarcophagus. The money takes from you far more than it gives. Trust me.’”
Because she was both hurt and frightened, Catherine became cold and reserved. Harry went on. “In November of ’thirty-nine they were living in London, where he was working in one of the family’s subsidiaries or banks—I don’t know. He joined the Royal Air Force, was trained as a pilot, and flew in the Battle of Britain.”
“That’s impressive.”
“Yes, and he died in the Battle of Britain. He left behind a young child and a young wife. That’s not unusual, but her family and his had begged him to come home. It wasn’t his war at the time. It didn’t have to be.”
“I see.” Catherine could be quite severe. She now simultaneously instructed, challenged, reprimanded, and risked him. Even in her incomparable voice, she was clearly calling him out. “Harry,” she said, “you’re not marrying money. You’re marrying me. If you don’t know the difference, there will be no marriage.”
Proud of her strength and infatuated with her courage, he said, “I do know the difference. How could I not? And thank God for it. At the same time, I have to make my own way.”
“But you are, so what’s the problem?” She was gripping the edge of the settee very hard.
“We find ourselves,” he said, without fear, but without hope, “in a very unusual situation. I have yet to make it completely clear to you.” Then, with the sound of the jackhammers coming faintly from uptown and out toward the East River, and as the sun wheeled through the summer sky illuminating the dust of the streets, he told her in detail for the first time how and why he was rapidly going under. One did not have to be an accountant to understand. It seemed so unnecessary, but there it was. For him, and now for her, the world, which since the war had ended, since he had returned from the army, had become beautiful and calm, had now taken a somewhat different turn.
24. The Economics of Hot Water
WHATEVER THE OPIATES he was given, they confounded gravity and time and relaxed him with glimpses of eternity that slipped through his fingers before he was fully conscious. When the evening dose wore off in the morning, the hot, irritable feeling beneath his skin was as welcome as a cool rain, for it meant that, even if not for long, he was about to come into the clear. Though in August the city was half emptied, at eight o’clock the buses crowded Amsterdam Avenue, the bells of St. John the Divine banged out the hour, the sun was still low enough in the east to be not entirely white, and the eastern face of every block was propped up by a wedge of black shadow.
Slipping in and out of relaxed memories and dreams, he couldn’t tell one from another. Though the sun had begun to bake the western façades of every avenue in the city, Harry was with Catherine at Amagansett, where it was a July night, the sand and the wind were cold, and the waves were thudding at the shoreline. To the left the ocean was surging and black. To the right, running on its straight track through the dunes, the New York train sounded its whistle in a mournful note before it shot through the crossings, its light blinding whatever lay ahead. They reclined on the slope of a dune. Sometimes a summer night speaks longingly of the clarity of winter and the hardness of things, from which respite is only temporary. As they warmed in one another’s embrace, they knew this.
He was alone. The wall
s of the room were beige. A Protestant cross—wood without Jesus—was hanging on an interior wall facing two large windows filled with the sun, which would soon climb above the clouds and spend the day diffused as if by cotton, but now was like a dam-burst of white gold. Most hospital rooms do not have airy spaces, flowers in Chinese vases, or fine English furniture. He had had no idea that such accommodations existed, until he had awakened in one at St. Luke’s, to which Catherine, after a telephone call to her father, had had him transferred.
When he was able to speak, he told her that most of the hospitals he had seen were in humid tents where forty men, many of whom would die, lay in undistinguished rows. Rain leaked through frays in the canvas and was caught in buckets that nurses and orderlies tripped over and kicked. The dead had no mourners, and were taken out in sacks. Wind shook the walls, and the thunder of artillery echoed back and forth in duels that helped to keep the tents always full.
“When you endow a hospital wing, you get to have a room like this,” she said, “with the payment of an extra charge so modest it’s basically fraudulent. When the people who endowed it aren’t in it, South American dictators are.”
“I didn’t endow anything.”
“Neither did I. Neither of us deserves it, but we’ve got it. You can worry about the inequity when you recover.”
Every day she came at ten A.M., and with the exception of three half-hour breaks in which she walked briskly around the Columbia campus, she stayed until five unless she had rehearsal. He felt strength and energy whenever he would awake. Then it would quickly drain from him and, unless diverted, he would drift back to sleep. Even with Catherine there, he slept while she read on the sofa beneath the cross. It was back far enough in the room, and the room was big enough, so that in storms when the light disappeared as if in an eclipse she would have to switch on a lamp to read by it as sheets of rain lashed the windows.
