Schmidt Steps Back

by Louis Begley

  Actually, he said, I wanted to find out about you. That nice lady in Paris, have you seen her again?

  Schmidt nodded.

  And she was the reason you wanted to spend some more days in Paris. So you still like her?

  Schmidt nodded again. He had taken a second helping of the lobster salad and once more had his mouth full.

  And has she decided that she likes you?

  That is the question.

  Mr. Mansour laughed and said, Yes, as the bard said, that is the question!

  That’s about it.

  When are you going to see her again?

  I hope in June, mid-June. Oh and I don’t expect that to be a foundation trip. I’ll just go over and stay a few days.

  Mr. Mansour asked Manuel to bring his PalmPilot, and having consulted it, he said, I’m going to Paris on June eighth. You can come with me on my plane. If you stay until June thirteenth, you can come back with me.

  That would be perfect.

  Fine. We’ll be in good shape. I’d like to meet this lady. Maybe we can bring her back to New York with us. Ha! Ha! Ha! Did you get a picture of her?

  No, said Schmidt sheepishly.

  In fact, why hadn’t he? Not to show Mike but to put on his desk or on his dresser.

  We’ll take care of it next month. Unless you can ask her to send one in the meantime. On another subject, Mr. Mansour continued. Jason and Carrie: she’s having the baby induced on June fifteenth. I assume that’s why you like the idea of coming home on the thirteenth? Am I right? Or am I not?

  You are right. And you certainly stay informed.

  It’s the security guys. They talk to Jason. Don’t forget he was their boss. They told me. The question is: who is the father? What is your opinion?

  Mr. Mansour’s eyes were little slits. He was smiling beatifically.

  Why of course Jason, answered Schmidt. Does he think otherwise?

  Ha! Ha! He’s not saying he isn’t, that’s for sure. He’s behaving very well.

  He’s a very good fellow. You do know they’ve gotten married?

  Yes, yes, I’ve given them a handsome present. Here Mr. Mansour made a little gesture with the thumb and index finger of his right hand, which in vast areas of the planet denotes counting rapidly a wad of banknotes.

  You see, replied Schmidt, great minds think alike—or if you prefer I’m learning from you. That’s the kind of present I gave them too.

  You have gotten a lot smarter. And if you’re really smart you’ll stick to the story that the kid’s dad is Jason, no matter what the little fellow looks like. I suppose he’ll be called Jason Junior.

  As a matter of fact, they’re calling him Albert. I think they want me to be the godfather.

  Very interesting, very interesting, said Mr. Mansour as he began working the ivory worry beads that he had set aside while he was busy with the lobster salad.

  Are you interested in my own family news?

  Other than that you want to marry the nice lady in Paris?

  Yes! I’m going to be a grandfather. My daughter says the baby is due in September.

  Mazel tov! cried Mr. Mansour and pressed an invisible button that summoned Manuel. Our friend Mr. Schmidtie is going to be a grandfather. Please get some of my very special occasion champagne.

  One could only admire and envy the preparedness of the Mansour household. The champagne arrived instantly, delicious and perfectly chilled. They clinked. This must be, thought Schmidt, how the Strategic Air Command functions. Some little light blinks—perhaps once perhaps twice—sirens begin to wail, fifty figures in flight suits, helmets, and goggles slide down a chute and rush to bombers that other shadowy figures have towed to the runway, the figures in flight suits mount, canopies open and shut, vroom vroom, and the H-bombs are on the way. We’ll be over, we’re coming over, and we won’t be back till it’s over over there!

  Mike, he told Mr. Mansour, if everybody were as ready as you for all occasions, just think: there wouldn’t have been an Anschluss or a Pearl Harbor!

  Pas de problème. And no Yom Kippur War either.

  They should put you at the head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff!

  They could do a lot worse.

  A moment of silence ensued, and then Mike spoke again. Your daughter, Charlotte n’est-ce pas, is still married to that Jewish boy, Jon Riker.

  Indeed.

  And he’s still with the Grausam firm?

  To the best of my knowledge.

  I’ve kept an eye on him. Not all the time. That firm is all right, but it hasn’t taken off as it should. They’re high-caliber lawyers, but they haven’t caught the right wave. Not yet. Take bankruptcy: it’s their important specialty, but they aren’t in any of the big cases. I’m just telling you that so you’ll know that his income isn’t what you’d expect for a partner his age in a firm like your old firm. It’s something to keep in mind.

  The clicking of the worry beads accelerated.

  Schmidt tried Alice’s number as soon as he got home, a little after nine in the evening her time. To his surprise, Madame Laure answered. Madame est sortie dîner, she has gone out to dinner. Was there a message? The question threw Schmidt for a loop. He didn’t want to ask her to call him in Bridgehampton, since by the time she called he might be on his way to New York, and, not knowing when he might be reachable there, he didn’t want to leave the New York number. He left the stupidest of messages: he would call again. As though she could have any doubt about that!

  He reached her the next day, which was Tuesday, from New York. She had just come back from the office, she told him, and wasn’t planning to go out. Madame Laure had prepared a simple dinner, and afterward she was going to bed. Antibes had been exhausting, her father feeling anxious and Janine really not well at all. Some sort of pulmonary saleté—infection—not quite a pneumonia, more like a bad bronchitis. The coughing tired her terribly and, of course, kept her father awake.

  Have they engaged a nurse?

  They hadn’t, not until I arrived. I found two, one for the day and one for the night. That still leaves some hours uncovered, but my father refused to do more. He’s worried about money—it’s the way he is—even though most of the cost is covered by insurance, and anyway money is not a problem for her or for him. Schmidtie, it was so sad. Being at a sickbed is so tiring, and so depressing.

  He told her that he had called from the airport on Friday afternoon, when she was leaving for Antibes and he was on his way to New York, to leave a bunch of kisses on her answering machine, but in fact she had come to the telephone, which startled him so that he hung up. He tried her number again, almost immediately, to apologize, but it was busy and remained so for almost an hour. Oh yes, she told him, I was on the phone with Air France for more than an hour, more like an eternity, trying to get a place on a plane on Saturday morning. So was probably everybody else booked on the flight they canceled. Then I went out to dinner with Serge and one of his British authors. He’d been trying to talk me into it all afternoon. In a way I was glad the flight I thought I was on didn’t leave. We had a really amusing time, and I had one less night of being the head nurse.

  Goddamn Popov, thought Schmidt.

  I have dates to propose for our June rendezvous, darling, he told Alice. What would you say if I arrived on Thursday, June eighth, and left on Tuesday, the thirteenth?

  I’ll be waiting for you, she whispered. I may even buy a new frock.

  He had barely hung up with Alice when his telephone rang: an unusual occurrence in his pied-à-terre. So few people telephoned him anyway, and practically no one knew his New York City number. He picked up the receiver and listened warily. It was a voice he recognized and, next to Popov’s, the last voice he wanted to hear. Renata Riker, Charlotte’s busybody grasping and evil mother-in-law. The thought that the poor deluded girl believed she had found in Renata the mother she lost when Mary died was unbearable.

  Schmidtie, spoke the voice, this is Renata. I hope I find you well. You and I need to
talk about our children and our grandson.

  Schmidt said nothing.

  Schmidtie, are you there or have we been cut off? Will you please say something.

  Clearly she wished to avoid the less dignified hypothesis, that he had hung up on her.

  I’m here, he replied.

  Schmidtie, you are acting out your resentment of Jon. That you resented him when you found he was living with Charlotte, and when they got married, we both know that very well. Now he has committed the greatest crime of all. He has impregnated her; she has conceived and will bear his child! Not yours. His! He has usurped the role you and so many other fathers unconsciously reserve for themselves. These are feelings that should be examined and worked through before they do more harm.

  What twaddle, said Schmidt. Do people pay you to hear it? No wonder you say there are fewer and fewer of them.

  You can’t get rid of me with insults, Renata replied. I know you’re in New York, and I want to see you this afternoon or evening or just about anytime tomorrow.

  You do have a lot of free time!

  He knew it was cruel to laugh, but he couldn’t help himself. The effect was immediate. Renata began to cry. For a moment he thought it was a trick, but no, those sobs were real and wrenching. It was his doing, and he had better calm her. But he wasn’t going to let himself in for a lunch at his club or a restaurant. They had tried that before.

  I have to leave my apartment at seven. If you like, come over for a drink at six. Please bring Myron if he is free.

  I will see you at six, replied Renata. Charlotte has given me the address.

  It was a fine May evening, and Schmidt was amused to see that Renata’s collection of Chanel suits or Chanel knockoffs was equal to the occasion. This one was white. Even if it was true that she and Myron had fallen on hard times, she had not lowered her standards in other aspects of her wardrobe either. She wore signature Chanel beige pumps with black patent-leather toes and beige stockings. Her pocketbook matched the outfit. But none of these things was new, a fact that enabled Schmidt to calculate the cost of the whole get-up: in the years before Mary fell sick with the illness that would kill her he would occasionally buy for her one of those suits or some accessories, and so he knew what such things used to cost. If you kept buying them, pretty soon you were talking about real money. There must have been other extravagances as well. No wonder that the Rikers’ savings were being depleted. In other respects, she had changed. When he saw her last, the previous autumn, at his favorite Northern Italian restaurant over lunch to which she had invited herself, he had noticed that she had aged more quickly than one would have expected, her once-jet-black hair gathered in a tight bun at the back of her head having turned completely gray. Since then she had cut her hair into a pageboy and had not bothered to dye it. Her eyes looked even more tired; the bags of yellow had darkened and were perhaps larger. He found it difficult to believe that the first time they met he had made a pass at her and that, when he was sick with a violent flu, she had reciprocated with an unexpected deep kiss. Less than three years had passed since then, but now his gestures and hers seemed equally ridiculous, in fact grotesque.

  She looked around her, peeked into the bedroom and the kitchen, and, returning from her tour, nodded. This is quite a little flat, she told him, and in one of the best buildings on Park Avenue. You’re a favorite of fortune, Schmidtie!

  It’s a company apartment, picked out and decorated by the company. I use it when I’m in New York on business.

  The company is your billionaire friend’s foundation, unless I’m mistaken. That’s what Jon has told me.

  Schmidt replied that her son was well informed and offered her a drink.

  Nothing alcoholic, she told him. Any sort of juice or water.

  He gave her V8, which he kept in the refrigerator, hesitated between a bourbon and a martini, and settled on a martini because while he fixed it the clock would be running. He might shave three or four minutes off the interview.

  She was on to his game and followed him into the kitchen. I’ve come here to talk to you, Schmidtie. When you called Jon, why did you first tear his head off and then hang up on him? What was the capital offense? Asking his very rich father-in-law to make a secure financial arrangement for his first grandchild?

  Schmidt had finished measuring out the gin, added a drop of vermouth and several ice cubes, and shook vigorously. An olive jar was open. He took one olive, washed it under the kitchen faucet, dried it with a paper towel, laid it carefully in a glass, and poured out the contents of the shaker. Having taken a sip, he turned toward Renata.

  You know, he said, when I hear you talk I begin to wish I were a Jew. It must be nice to have a Jewish mother wiping your nose and your behind even when you get to be a grown man and running interference for you. As I told your grown son, I’ve had my fill of you Rikers, mère, père, et fils, of you and your money grubbing.

  Money grubbing! cried Renata.

  Yes. I’ve given Charlotte a pile of money. First, when she decided she didn’t want the house I lived in, her aunt’s and her mother’s house, the house she was brought up in. That money was supposed to pay for the property she wanted to buy near your place in Claverack, or the apartment in New York, or both. Frankly, I get lost in the Riker finances. All I know is the result: the property was bought in both their names. Then Jon slapped a mortgage on the apartment or on the house or both even though with the money I had given no debt should have been needed. And then, when they split over the revolting affair he was conducting with one of the firm’s paralegals, he refused to give back to Charlotte what was hers! How slimy can you get?

  How dare you say such things!

  It’s easy; no trouble at all. I’ve always given Charlotte money freely, even if she could never bring herself to ask for it nicely or to thank me nicely. What she and your son have done with it I honestly don’t know. And then your son has the gall to ask me to provide for the unborn Myron!

  Well, Schmidtie, Renata said slowly, you’re certainly less inhibited than when I first met you. You were so WASP polite you could hardly bring yourself to speak. And now, just listen to you! Is it your Puerto Rican waitress girlfriend who has loosened your tongue? That girl should be a therapist.

  She had drunk her V8. After a look at her wristwatch she said, I see we have thirty-five minutes left. Could I have a glass of whatever it is you are drinking? A martini, I suppose. Poor Myron has had to give them up.

  Schmidt remembered Myron’s excellent martinis and having let himself get suddenly and stupidly tipsy on them, but he was not interested in bittersweet reminiscences. He poured Renata’s drink, refilled his own glass, and sat down. If she wanted to talk on he would listen. For another thirty-two minutes.

  Are you angry because they’re going to call the baby Myron, rather than, for example, Albert?

  He answered truthfully that he wasn’t. The name wasn’t one he liked. He did not mention the coincidence that a baby due to be born before little Myron would indeed be called Albert. Perhaps one Albert at a time was enough.

  You say that, but residual hostility may still be there. You should know that Myron hasn’t been well, he’s got heart problems, and they’re aggravated by worries about his practice. He’s still doing group therapy in the city, but there may be a possibility of a hospital position up in Columbia County, near Claverack. If that pans out, he may commute to that job from the city, or perhaps I will commute the other way around. The point of all this is that they were looking for a way to boost his morale.

  Schmidt nodded.

  You should also realize that Jon is not earning as much as he had hoped or deserves. His firm is not as profitable as it should be. That’s a worry. You already know that he is helping us. I’m not proud of that, but I’m not ashamed either. Myron and I, and Jon as well, on top of everything else, we have all had considerable investment losses. Are you aware of that?

  You mean the losses? It’s the first time I’ve heard about them
. Charlotte hasn’t mentioned them, and she certainly hasn’t asked for advice.

  That is because you intimidate them.

  Balls!

  The beneficial effects of the second large martini were spreading pleasantly through Schmidt’s body. Balls, he repeated. It was such a fine expression, preferable to both “twaddle” and “humbug.”

  Your army basic training talk doesn’t scare me, replied Renata. I will tell you something else you may not know. Charlotte and Jon are deeply anxious about the financial implications—maybe I should say consequences—of your liaison with that waitress. Given that concern, they think it’s only natural to ask you to do what’s right in order to protect your daughter’s and grandchildren’s future.

  I have news for you, Renata, said Schmidt. Under the laws of this great state of New York, my daughter and my grandchildren, born and unborn, have no interests in my property except such as I choose to give them. I have no intention of disinheriting my daughter, but if you and the other Rikers persist in insulting me I may just change my mind. Or leave my daughter something that she and Jon will doubtless think is a pittance. So watch out, and tell them to watch out. And now your time is up.

  That wasn’t strictly speaking true, and she knew it. Schmidtie, she said, aren’t you even planning to see your pregnant daughter?

  Schmidt shrugged. That is pretty funny, he said. I have asked her to come to see me in the country, and I have offered to see her in New York. She turned me down.

  He was momentarily too proud to mention that she hadn’t invited him to Claverack.

  Don’t you think you could manage to drive out to their place? Claverack isn’t such a hard drive from Bridgehampton. You can also take the train from the city to Hudson. They’ll pick you up there.