The Speed of Light

by Susan Pashman

  “Ah, this big old hearth is a pleasure.” Robin Colby shoved a fistful of almonds into his large, wet mouth and thrust his hands toward the fire. He was a huge, coarse-featured man with a moist pate and gnarled limbs.

  Nathan proffered a drink and cautious conversation about their shared profession. Robin was the group’s enfant terrible. Aberrant, dangerous.

  “This house is always a pleasure in winter. Look at the moonlight on that icy lake.” Melancholic Armand Ackerman was Carla’s favorite. Despite the polished smile that flashed across his chiseled features, Armand’s quiet manners hid deep and ancient wounds. He would always be inconsolably lonely. Some said the only explanation of his marriage at forty to the frowzy, alcoholic Zoe Langton was her Mayflower heritage, but Carla would not permit gossip about it.

  Zoe poured herself a double Scotch and sidled along the piano to where Tom and Tilly Szabo were waiting for their drinks. The Szabos had just arrived in Peekskill; the dinner was in their honor. Zoe had heard that Tilly was the daughter of a Tennessee horse breeder. She hoped this new woman, a gentile in her second marriage to a wealthy Jew, might offer rescue from the isolation that was Zoe’s lot in the group. But Tilly’s project, it turned out, was to succeed with Tom where his first, Brooklyn-bred, wife had failed. Tilly was struggling against her nature to learn to cook and keep house and have more tow-headed babies than anyone could count. Zoe poured more Scotch and continued along the piano to find the Perrins rapt in Felix’s discourse on the significance of a child’s artistic representations.

  “The intuitive vision that cuts right to the essence of a thing, that distills perception down to its pure meaning, that intuition is utterly miraculous. Miraculous because an adult like Picasso has to work for such clarity but in a child, well, it just appears!” The old man beamed at Marian Perrin. “You are a happy woman, I can tell,” he said. “Your husband loves you and that puts roses in your cheeks.”

  Marian smiled at him benignly.

  “I know what I am saying,” Felix insisted with a chuckle. “I, too, have the intuition of a child.”

  “Dinner, everyone. Take any seat. Boy, girl. Szabos in the center so we can all get to know them.” Carla was a scrupulous hostess.

  Everyone knew the purchase price of the Szabos’ new home. What they wondered was what Tom did to afford it. They were grateful for Marian Perrin’s radiant good nature. It allowed her to ask directly.

  The compact, barrel-chested Hungarian was the son of a Brooklyn tailor. “It was public school all the way,” Tom said, gesturing expansively. “No ivy crawling over me.” He had sniffed the company enough to know what distinguished him from almost everyone at the table. And he knew his frank admission would startle them and win him further distinction.

  “I guess you’re wondering how a kid from Brooklyn College ended up with the Hale Estate. Well, I certainly didn’t inherit it.” Tom’s eyes, like his smile, were full of mischief.

  Carla felt uneasy with her guest of honor. His sincerity challenged her other guests, shifting the compass that usually steered their dinner conversation. It left her unsteady, off balance.

  “I won a sixty-million-dollar law suit,” Tom said. His absurd grin and raised eyebrows told them that, like them, he was astonished by his fate. Now he was one of them.

  Szabo had spent some army leave in Hungary on a quest for his roots. He’d struck a deal there for a patent on a synthetic fiber that could be woven into virtually impermeable textiles. He licensed the patent to the government for space-suit construction, they exceeded their license, and Tom sued. Some of the sixty million went into a development company.

  “What are you developing now?” Nathan was curious.

  “Oh, holography, cancer cures. You’d be amazed at the nutjobs that knock at our door. I’m never going to find that fiber again, but I have to keep trying. Have to keep running. Brooklyn guilt, I suppose.”

  Tom sensed he’d had enough of the spotlight. “What’s your game?” he turned to Lew Perrin.

  “Jewelry,” Lew said, “and I did inherit it.”

  “We’re expanding into Tibetan art,” Marian added.

  “Marian bought a wooden sculpture in Tibet last winter that was too ugly to have in the house. I used it in a window display at the store. You wouldn’t believe how many people wanted to buy the damn thing.”

  “So we sold it,” Marian said, “and then everyone wanted one. We’re going back next month for more.”

  “Hey, you never know,” Tom said. “When I bought that fiber, I was thinking swimsuits.”

  “Robin, please! Not while we’re eating!” Reena Colby’s protests were in vain. At the far end of the table, her husband was well into his story.

  “Well, the Germans were minor news in France at first,” he was saying. “There were such juicy scandals to divert attention.” He reached for his wine with one thick hand and for another slab of beef with the other. “The roast is splendid Carla, and,” he paused for a noisy swallow of wine, “I love braised turnips. Americans underrate turnips. So these two were found dead in the office of the Minister of Culture,” he continued. “The aristocrat, slumped over his desk with blood running from his mouth onto the desk blotter. The other, crumpled on the floor in a pool of blood which seemed to spring from his upper thigh.”

  “Rob, please!” But Reena had to capitulate. All ears were bent to Robin.

  “The aristocrat had a hematoma high over his left ear and there was a heavy glass paperweight on the floor near the other fellow’s hand. The aristocrat had died of a cerebral hemmorhage. They often drain into the mouth, you know. The police hypothesized a fight in which one took it in the leg with a letter opener or something and retaliated by smashing the other’s head with the paperweight. I could have told you that was ridiculous given the quantity of blood.”

  “Robin, I think your wife is right,” Armand said. He wanted only to register his distaste. There was no hope of diverting Colby.

  “When the medical examiner went looking for the wound to the fellow on the floor, it turned out he was bleeding profusely from the crotch. And … his penis was gone! They looked in his pants, on the floor. Nothing. Then, they examined the fellow with the hematoma and what do you suppose they found in his mouth? Voila!

  “Apparently, the aristocrat had been sucking this poor slob off and had gotten too rough, so his partner whacked him on the head and inadvertently killed him. As his chin hit the desk, his jaw clenched shut and he chomped off his lover’s penis.” Robin thumped his massive fist on the table and laughed until he began to cough.

  “For Heaven’s sake, Rob!” Reena Colby held her napkin up to her face.

  “The government tried the usual cover-up but the papers got the story. The French were so enthralled with the scandal, they ignored Hitler for months.”

  Reena helped Carla clear the dishes. “I’m sorry about Robin,” she said.

  The guests said good-night. Nathan slumped among the chintz cushions. “Colby really makes me sick to my stomach,” he began. “And, you know, he’ll always be part of the group. Goddamn son of a thief. Father runs to Switzerland and changes his name from Goldberg to escape the goddamn Feds. Robin returns to the States with a waspy name, a Swiss education, and a degree from the Sorbonne and marries Rustin Klieger’s daughter. He gets Klieger’s practice, the best ophthalmology practice in New York, and all the Klieger money. And here’s what kills me: That crass bastard is in line to be chief at Saint Luke’s! They think he’s a goddamn French-educated wasp!”

  Nathan stood up and slammed a chintz pillow into the sofa. “He’s a pig,” he continued. “He fucks Chinese girls, and you know what? I think he fucks Chinese boys, too. And now he’s going to be goddamn chief!”

  Carla had heard most of this before. The news about Colby’s nomination as chief registered only as a troublesome lump, an unpleasantness she would become accustomed to. Nathan would curse and complain about it for years, she supposed.

  When she was a girl,
her father had taken her to see the bears at the Central Park Zoo. It was the only time she’d actually seen a bear, but she knew there was a bear dancing in the kitchen now. A barrel-chested Hungarian bear, twinkly-eyed and roguish. She inhaled deeply as she sorted through the silverware. At the very least, there was a bear-fragrance filling the Peekskill air that night, wafting in, she decided, from the delicatessen streets of Brooklyn. She felt alert, expectant, some new rhythm had been set in motion.

  Nine

  On Alex’s fourth birthday, Nathan bought her a harpsichord. He had always longed to play the Well-Tempered Clavier on a proper instrument. Stout, woolly-haired, and solemn, Alexandra doted upon her father and he upon her. Although he could not explain it, Nathan was delighted that the little girl, so carefully nurtured by her mother and her grandma, had turned so completely into his disciple, following him about, mimicking him, regarding him worshipfully. He drew the girl close beside him on the wooden bench and held her little wrists up so the tips of her stubby fingers just touched the keys.

  “That’s the position you want. You’ll get more power and mobility that way.”

  He played the First Prelude and Fugue for her. The veins rose on the backs of his hands as he rapped the keys in crisp staccato. His head vibrated with the trills. His daughter gazed up at him. She had expected no less. She would learn to play it just that way.

  He raised his eyes from the keyboard. The French doors opened to the terrace and the soft, damp lights of the buildings surrounding Gramercy Park. He had placed the harpsichord precisely for this vista. Behind him, the dining room with its stalagmites of newspapers, the Rosenthal still in crates, unable to come to rest in a china closet. He’d moved the piano into the dining room too. Now, from the bench at the harpsichord, his view was serene, nostalgic.

  He returned home late these nights, putting in long days at his new research lab. He saw patients from eight until two, marching to the flawless routines Doris Needham laid out for him. He marvelled at how fluidly it all ran, how grateful his patients were for the absentminded conversation and the politeness he routinely accorded them, for the erudite allusion he occasionally tossed out.

  At two, he took his fifth cup of coffee, black, and drove to the hospital, to the laboratory. His laboratory. Four white-coated assistants, a suite of offices, two part-time clerks. Director of Research. He had never imagined this for himself. But several assiduous months in the library had confirmed that cancer research was eminently fundable. He had left it to Hilda Marks to articulate a project and work up a proposal. Hilda was a meticulous and also an imaginative researcher, but a woman incapable of proposing a project of her own, a woman cowed by the title, “Director.” She served the men who craved such titles. Nathan knew he was blessed to have her. She supervised the project each day until he arrived. She brought him lunch and reviewed with him the morning’s progress. They worked into the night. At eleven, he drove her home and then headed back to Gramercy Park.

  As he moved to the C-minor Fugue, he studied the lights surrounding the little park. They could be stars. He could be one of those winged men of science fiction, zooming toward a star-specked horizon. His lips arched in a faint smile. He had to admit he was surprised to find himself so absorbed in research. It was to have launched his ascent at the hospital but it was proving pleasurable in its own right. Time vanished in the lab. Hilda would call a halt to the day. She was a gem, Hilda. Uninspired in bed, but invaluable in the lab.

  He wished his father had lived to see the lab. It was almost a year ago, in that oblivious, benumbed week before the New Year, when calendars are too laden to accomodate unexpected events. Nathan had quoted Marcus Aurelius in the eulogy. Irv had almost embraced him. They had faced each other and nodded significantly, each grasping the other’s elbows firmly in his palm.

  He skipped ahead to the A-major Prelude. His father had nothing but scorn for his accomplishments at the harpsichord and had very little comment about Carla or about the Weisenthals. He did not appear to take much pleasure in Alexandra, either. Not as much as in Irv’s children. But the research grant, the lab with its white-coated little army under Nathan’s command—this, Nathan was certain, would have won his father’s admiration.

  “Tomorrow,” he told his daughter, “your harpsichord lessons begin in earnest. We’ll be very busy, sweetheart. I’m going to take you skiing this weekend and teach you to play the C-major Prelude, too. So you’d better get a good rest.”

  Years later, he would be asked if he had ever missed having a son. He would reply that he had never considered the question. Alexandra remained a steadfast disciple.

  February is a month of artifice and convention. Days anointed as feast days by the polity solely to keep its members from going mad with unfulfilled yearning. The ancients, who felt more keenly the authentic pulse of the Earth, saved their festivities for times of harvest, rekindling, and resurrection. February is a month of desperate quiescence when only the dauntless remain hopeful, and only the most restive stir. It is the month that Lily’s husband Howard hanged himself.

  “I’m terribly sorry, Lily,” Nathan said when he got there. He detested madness. He froze within her slack embrace.

  “Did you hear he left a note?”

  He wished he had called instead of rushing over.

  “Lily, I want you to know that I’d be honored to deliver the eulogy,” he said.

  “It’ll be a cremation,” she said. “No speeches. But thank you for offering, Nathan. Howard left a note.”

  Lily was small, crumpled, translucent. She sat on the leather couch where Howard’s patients had conjured their dreams.

  “I have known for some years that I am not alive,” she read. “By that I mean I am incapable of love. With you, Lily, I have grown increasingly aware of my terrible deficiency. You mourned the death of our son while I rummaged through classical texts on the meaning of death. I watched you grieve and then heal while my own threadbare emotion remained a pale monotonous whine. You have healed because you can love. You are concerned for your patients. I am contemptuous of mine. You even love that poor stupid retriever of ours. I am ashes and always have been.”

  Lily searched for Nathan’s eyes but they were elsewhere. “So that’s it,” she said. “Howard had no delusions.”

  Nathan knew immediately that he must leave. “Lily, dear, if there’s anything we can do, never hesitate to call. You know Carla thinks you’re wonderful. So if there’s anything we can do …”

  Carla had chosen powder blue for their bedroom. Phil Neuman’s favorite shade. With the spread rolled back, her bent knees made two powder blue mountains of blanket. Papers ascatter, files in stacks with markers protruding like tongues. She was compiling a glossy coffee-table book.

  He slung his Burberry over a wooden hanger and considered its verticalities. Howard must have looked something like this, he thought. He thrust the hanger into the closet and leaned back heavily on the closet door to seal it shut. But Howard slipped past the jamb and hovered before his eyes. Ashes, he had said. He said he felt like ashes. That he could not love, that he could not grieve. A pale whine, he had said. Nathan wondered if he had appropriately mourned when his father died, if he had felt the proper grief. He had delivered an excellent eulogy; everyone said so. He sat at the foot of the bed and untied his shoes.

  Carla was riffling through the papers on their bed, arranging them in piles. He wondered what her book was about but could not ask. He knew she had told him once. He wondered what she was like as she went about her day. He imagined her with her hair bound in a bandana, dusting ferociously. But that was ridiculous. Rose, the housekeeper, did that. She was busy, he knew, at the National Arts Club and with the Gramercy Park Association, but he could not say quite how. Friends and colleagues left messages for her. Organizations sent her mail. People warmed to her. Her face shone. She was negotiable and gracious and widely welcomed. He needed her for that alone.

  He was no longer dismayed at her unresponsiveness, b
ut proceeded unhurriedly, deliberately. A patient beachcomber with a Geiger counter, each day hoping anew to unearth the elusive gold watch. He wanted above all else to be blameless.

  “It’s not your fault,” she would say.

  “But it would make me feel grand,” he would say.

  “It’s fine as it is,” she would say.

  She laid the stacks of papers on her lamp table, threw off the blanket, and shuffled to the bathroom. She brushed her teeth and returned, waiting under the cover for him to put aside his magazine and flick off his bedlamp.

  “Would you agree to having another child?” she asked.

  Nathan could not imagine a child other than Alexandra. She defined his fatherhood.

  “It’s about time for another, I suppose,” he said.

  “But you must want it,” she said.

  “Well, yes. Of course,” he said. “Of course. Why not? Two seems about right.”

  The Hale Estate had a rundown tennis court enclosed by vine-covered cyclone fencing. All in all, a very ugly affair. The Szabos hired a man to patch the surface and another to teach them tennis. Tom bought a pile of Lacoste shirts and racquets of various sizes.

  “I couldn’t tell much by holding them at the store,” he explained. He was surprisingly good for a novice. Hard-hitting, fast on his feet. A natural strategist. Nathan suggested a book to improve his form. Tom laughed.

  “It’s too late for form,” he said. “I just want to get the job done. Just want to play well enough to beat you.” Once more, a good-natured laugh.

  “There’s more to the game,” Nathan insisted.

  “Winning is enough,” Tom said.

  Tilly’s game was hopeless. Eventually, Armand became their regular fourth. Nathan, Carla, Tom, and Armand. Saturday afternoons and Sunday mornings. Zoe read the paper. Tilly put Band-Aids on the children. The Szabos’ housekeeper served sandwiches with gin and tonics. In August, Carla retired to the sidelines to sit out her term. The Ackermans went to Maine to visit with Zoe’s family.