Don't Worry About the Kids

by Jay Neugeboren

  I could hear my heart pumping, could feel blood swirling through me. I closed my eyes, saw blood pouring down the mountain, rushing past cypress and wild olive trees, circling the highway from Roc Agel to La Turbie, from La Turbie to where we were, and then down again, down into the green sea.

  Do you recall what she looked like? Aldy asked. Do you remember her in Rear Window?

  No.

  She was flawless. Pure Irish cream. Would you like it if I looked like her? Or like Stephanie? I could talk with Stephanie about us getting together—getting it on together, to be exact. Stephanie trusts me, you see. Why? Because she fears I may find her uninteresting. Aldy stopped. Rear Window—it just occurred to me—they pulled her through the rear window. Character is fate, yes? So tell me. Tell me what you want, Carl. I want to give you everything you want.

  I want you. I want—

  She placed her free hand over my mouth. No, she said. Tell me something else: Will you talk with my father about how I lusted after you when we were at Princeton? My father saw you play against Yale and Colgate. He said you had a superb spin move—that you could stop and turn on a dime. He said you were amazing in the open court, that you had a marvelous sense of where you were. Like Bill Bradley. She leaned her cheek against my chest. I love to hear your heart, she said. I love to know how much I excite you. I’ll do anything for you.

  Just love me.

  Shh. Princess Grace dated the Shah of Iran when she was in acting school, Aldy said. She dated Onassis. She was a guest on his yacht, where the bar stools were made from the scrotums of whales. Frank Sinatra was her close personal friend. Frank Sinatra’s close personal friends sell crack and heroine to children on street corners.

  Why are you telling me this now?

  She pushed me against the wall until I felt the warm stone cut into the small of my back. She dated and fucked the scum of the world, Aldy said. She was President of the local Le Leche League. She had two miscarriages. She said that a woman’s natural role is to be a pillar of the family. It’s their physiological job. The emancipation of women, she stated, had made them lose their mystery. Am I still a mystery to you, Carl? In what ways do you not still know me?

  I said nothing. I watched her eyes, the strange glazed surface, the fire below. Aldy kept talking, whispering in my ear: When Marilyn died, people in mental hospitals went berserk. When Grace died, nothing. Flowers and diplomats. Grace would never have done to you what I’m doing now.

  I dug my nails into her back. Grace didn’t drink and she didn’t smoke and she didn’t take pills and she worried about her weight. Women only work, she claimed, to avoid their true responsibilities. She was as dull as coal dust in a dark Pennsylvania mine.

  You know why I love you? I asked.

  Tell me.

  Because you do your homework so well.

  Aldy smiled. I’m considering a series: Marilyn, Liz, Jackie, Madonna, Jane. You’ve heard of “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous”? My series will be called “Leftovers of the Rich and Famous.” We photograph the insides of their refrigerators. We run elaborate layouts of their bathrooms and bedrooms. The back seats of their cars. When they’re gone. When they’re dead.

  Her touch was gentler than her voice. Are you happy, Carl? she asked. I like hearing you breathe against my neck. Will you come in my hand? I want you to. Now, Carl. It was a safe life for you here until I showed up. That’s what you said to me, our first night together—afterward. Remember? You said you’d had a safe life here until I entered it. Now you don’t.

  The villa Aldy’s father was staying in for the weekend was in Cap d’Antibes, less than a quarter mile from the villa that had once belonged to Somerset Maugham. I sat on the patio, gazing at the green sea, Aldy beside me, while her father poured wine for us, talked to Aldy about the Riviera, about who—Picasso, Modigliani, Chagall, Francoise Sagan, Graham Greene, Brigitte Bardot, Jean Marais, Jimmy Baldwin, the Countess Tolstoy—had lived in which villas and which villages, about who she would write about when she was done with the royal family. Aldy said she was going to write about me, of course. She was going to interview me to find out what a gifted and graceful athlete imagined life would be like when his playing days were over. What would he think and feel during those hours and years when his body could no longer do what it was born to do so well? After me she would interview Baryshnikov and Michael Jordan, Nureyev and Magic Johnson and Martina and Gretzky and Flo Jo. She already had a title for the series—“Life after Grace.”

  Aldy’s father asked me questions and I answered him, explained how the system worked in Europe—what American players like myself were paid, how each team was allowed to have two of us on its squad, what the differences in the rules were: a lane that opened out, zone defenses to keep the scores down, a thirty-second time clock. The World Championship would be held in Spain during the second and third weeks in June. My team, representing Nice, was the best in France, but the French teams were invariably weak internationally, inferior to the Italians, Russians, Spanish, and Yugoslavians—even to the Greeks and Israelis.

  Aldy leaned over me, kissed me, upside down. Her tongue tasted like wine. Carl came here in search of the good life, she said. Carl majored in philosophy. He can tell you about the difference between an object and the name of an object. He can explain Wittgenstein’s theories of epistemology.

  Aldy left. I’ve never seen my daughter happier, her father said. She’s always been amusing, if in a mordant way—life after grace is right—but she seems to be truly enjoying herself, even her cleverness—in a new way. You’re a good influence on her, Carl. I’m pleased. He paused. Only she shouldn’t have followed you here. I warned her. She’s in danger, you know. They’ll use her to get to me.

  They knew that an American airliner was going to be blown out of the sky, and they knew who was going to do the job. Americans and Jews would be killed. They were trying to make a deal, but things were getting tricky, and if they were unable to come to terms, they would, afterward—were their foreknowledge exposed—need deniability. I could help. And if I helped, not only would I be aiding my country and my people, but I would also be saving the woman I loved.

  I would not have to know anything. In fact, the less I knew, the better; not knowing reduced my liability and vulnerability. My presence was, as Aldy said, merely a convenience. As a regular part of my vocation—my team’s schedule—I frequently crossed borders. I met with Russians, Israelis, Greeks. I would be given messages I would not understand, to deliver to people I did not know. It would not be unusual for a basketball star to talk to a fan, to give an autograph, to buy American magazines at kiosks, to order room service, to celebrate after a victory or, after a loss, to keep to himself—or to brood during long solitary walks. The championships in Madrid—my two weeks there—were an ideal cover, their timing excellent. Now that Aldy was here they would use her—to pressure her father for concessions. Now that Aldy was with me—was being threatened—how could I not be involved?

  I thought we believed in never submitting to terrorists, I said.

  Everyone submits to terrorists, he said. Even the Israelis. How else did they get into Entebbe? It’s all deals. Like point spreads, yes? The best team usually wins, but there can be refinements, profits for shrewd and knowledgeable bettors along the way.

  Then you fix games too.

  If we also saw to that, where would the sport of it be?

  Nobody gives us a chance, but I want to win, I said. And I was angry with myself at once, for saying so.

  Then forget all the people on the plane you and I have never met, he said. Forget what Israel will do to civilians in retaliation. Forget the Israeli children who may be kidnapped, tortured, killed. Just think of Aldy.

  You like this, I said. You get off on it, don’t you?

  Please. I like knowing that my career endangers my daughter—that it may result in her death? Don’t be absurd.

  No. You like the danger—the sport of it.

  Aldy came t
oward us, carrying our Sunday lunch on a tray. I took the tray and set it on the table. So, she asked. What is the good life—have you decided?

  We drove along the Costa del Sol, Stephanie singing to us from the tape deck: Ouragan.

  She has no voice, I said.

  But she has an island—Mauritius—and she’s offered it to us.

  If we have to escape?

  If we want to. I won’t write my article if you won’t play in your game. We go to the airport, get on a plane, leave this world behind. Your choice.

  You’re not scared, then, are you.

  No. Daddy’s still Daddy. I don’t expect to change him. I’ve lived with it—the threats, the games, the stuff—my whole life. Alas, he’s not as mature as I am, yes? He still wants to change me, and he’ll use anything—even you, sweetheart—to have his way.

  Which is?

  To get me to return home. He can’t understand why a young woman with my gifts would want to spend her time writing about people less interesting than I am. He probably still thinks I should make a suitable marriage, breed grandchildren—the rest of that Wasp jazz. Strange. He has such conventional hopes for me, yet I often suspect he’s secretly happy about my unconventional life—happy I’m like him in this.

  In what?

  My love of a free-lance existence, of danger. Nobody’s ever owned Daddy. I was there once, eavesdropping, when they told him that if he didn’t perform a certain act, his name would go to the top of a shopping list.

  A shopping list?

  He would be terminated with extreme prejudice. Eliminated. “You do what you have to do. I do what I have to do.” That was all he said.

  Maybe he staged the scene for your benefit.

  I considered that.

  Maybe your coming here—your pursuing me—is merely defiance of him.

  Let’s not be tedious, all right? If Daddy wants to reduce the fate of nations to the personal—Will the man save the girl?—that doesn’t mean we have to do the same.

  Perhaps you and your father have staged the whole thing these past few weeks, not because you’re in danger, but to set me up, to use me.

  She drew away slightly, said nothing for a while. I waited.

  She turned off Stephanie’s voice. I love you, Carl, she said. I love being with you. There isn’t anything in life—no man or woman—I’ve ever loved or desired the way I love and desire you. And you’re not forcing the words from me. It would be harder to hold them back than to let them flow. She smiled. Perhaps I lack the energy to hold back feelings that strong. It’s a wonderful weakness you bring out in me. She touched my cheek. I can’t wait to arrive in Madrid, to get to our room, to lounge there, to make love to you, to watch you dress, to see you play. This is the first time it’s ever happened to me.

  Love?

  Being dazzled more in my life than in my fantasies. Caring about somebody else this way—wondering what that person thinks, and feels, and desires. She looked away. You’ve never let me down.

  So far.

  Don’t, she said, and now she leaned on me, held tightly to my arm. Please.

  I loved her most when she was like this—when I heard urgency in her voice, felt it in her touch. The softness of her lips, when they touched my cheek, chilled me. The road curved to the left and a wide arc of sky and beach stretched before us, as far as we could see. I imagined our car moving straight ahead, gliding soundlessly through air, landing far out to sea.

  What Aldy desired most of all, she said, was to find something in her own life she could love as much as I loved playing ball. Now that she was falling in love with me, she said, she felt optimistic. She was only twenty-seven years old. Most things were still possible. She would never play in the NBA or be a chess master or a concert pianist. Certain kinds of genius flowered—and died—young, she said. Mozart, Keats.

  Bias, I said.

  Biased against what? I’m for you, Carl. Don’t you understand? I may have joked, with Daddy present—irony always gives comfort—about aging athletes, but it does hurt, to think of what you may feel one day when your body won’t do for you what it does so wonderfully now.

  Not biased, I said. Bias. Len Bias. He was an All-American basketball player who overdosed on cocaine and died at the age of twenty-two—shortly after he was drafted by the Celtics.

  Did you know him?

  No.

  Are you nervous? she asked.

  About what will happen in the hotel room?

  What else would I be referring to?

  I’m nervous.

  Has anyone contacted you?

  Yes.

  And–?

  They gave me the date on which the plane will be blown up. It’s the day you fly back to the States. You’re safe, they assured me, but if I inform anyone of their plans, they’ll transfer the bomb to your flight. If you cancel, they’ll simply get to you some other way. If I cooperate and do what they ask, there’s nothing to worry about. If your father is reasonable, nobody will be hurt.

  Are you surprised?

  No. I don’t even know which side the person who called me was on.

  Maybe he didn’t either.

  She.

  Aldy laughed. Affirmative action—on the job in international espionage, she said. Sometimes I think the major part of their work, my father and his counterparts, is simply keeping one another from the unemployment lines. You threaten our operative, we’ll threaten yours. You bust our code, we’ll bust yours. You get somebody to kill my kid, I’ll get somebody to butcher yours.

  Why didn’t you tell me you were planning to go back to the States next week?

  Because I didn’t want to worry you before the championships. Because I thought this might happen. Because I wanted to be able to escape, by myself or with you, if necessary. I spend a large portion of my life devising contingency plans. It’s one thing I’m good at.

  True.

  And because I promised the magazine I’d finish the article this month—that I’d retrace the family’s journey: from the peat bogs of County Mayo to the pink palace in Monaco. From Rutland, Vermont, where the clan first settled, to upstate New York, where they moved next, to Schuylkill, Pennsylvania, where they settled at last.

  And worked in coal mines?

  Textile mills. She stopped. Damn! she said. I hate having to give anybody reasons for what I do.

  But you just did—and with great exactitude. You were ready for my question.

  For my important interviews, I always prepare especially well. Didn’t you say you loved me because of how well I did my homework? So here’s another question for you: What did you tell them when they called?

  To go fuck themselves.

  She rested her head on my shoulder. My hero, she said.

  Not quite.

  Because saying yes would have implicated you and thereby involved me? Or because you’re like me—willful, competitive—even while you fight for me—because above all what you want is not to give my father what he wants?

  Why answer? You seem to know what I think before I do—to have me all figured out.

  Not at all. Shit. She touched my hand. I’m sorry, she said. I watched her eyes and saw something flicker there that I’d never seen before. I thought: If a woman was beautiful, intelligent, wealthy, and gifted—if she was born and raised taking for granted that whatever she desired in life, she could have—how would she ever come to experience or feel anything that resembled doubt?

  I meant to ask—are you pleased with how the article on Stephanie’s coming? I asked.

  She shrugged. Monaco’s half the size of Central Park, she stated. Did you know that?

  No.

  Grace Kelly didn’t get into the colleges of her choice—did you know that?

  No.

  Thanks, Carl. Thanks for asking about the article. Know what else?

  What?

  I’m glad I’m not Stephanie.

  Me too.

  Know what I’d love most of all?

  No.r />
  To have lots of ordinary conversations with you.

  Yes.

  She caressed my wrist. Do you remember your first day of grade school, Carl—who you held hands with, on line? she asked. Do you remember tying your shoelaces for the first time by yourself—or each of your teachers from each grade and what you imagined their lives were like when they weren’t teaching?

  Yes.

  I used to dream about falling in love and when I did, I imagined that that’s what people who were in love did—that that was how they knew it was true love: That, quite simply, they spent their time together telling each other the stories of their lives.

  God created the world because He loved stories.

  He did?

  I laughed. Maybe. It’s a saying I found in a novel—I hadn’t remember it for years.

  I haven’t had much practice at this—at answering questions, at being in love. I’m fine at getting others to tell me their stories—it’s my job—but I’ve never given anyone my own. I’m nervous.

  I’m dangerous.

  Yes.

  Your father said that to me—that your being with me endangers you.

  She touched my mouth with her fingers. Then let’s just go. Please? Let’s just go now. Let’s go to that island you dream of, where nobody knows us, where we can tell each other the stories of our lives, and if ever we’re done doing that, we’ll just make things up. We can lie. We can imagine new lives and then live inside them.

  You’d really do that, wouldn’t you? If I said yes—if I drove to the airport instead of the hotel—you’d get on the plane with me and leave everything behind.

  Yes.

  You think we could make each other that happy.

  Yes.

  Beyond the pleasure principle is the reality principle.

  Too bad.

  Not at all. The reality principle protects our ability to experience pleasure.

  Who cares? I don’t want theories, Carl. I want you. I want us both to live. I’ve thought about it a good deal—I’ve thought it through, this far: If I can’t have me, then nobody else can either.

  I want you.

  But you’re choosing not to have me forever.

  You’re serious, aren’t you—about leaving everything behind?