Ghosts of Manhattan

by Douglas Brunt

  January 28, 2006

  MY MARRIAGE IS ABOUT TO SHATTER AND I MAKE A connection to my parents that I have never made before. It isn’t that any of the four people in the two marriages are at all similar, but there is a dynamic that is relevant. My father’s easygoing way, which I have always counted among his best qualities, I now call into question. My mother is a bitch, and in plain view. Not once did my father ever challenge her on this, even when on the receiving end of her coldness. Not a single word of reproach. Now I see that he taught himself to deny that my mother was a bitch at all. Rather than have the conversation, he was more comfortable living in a self-fashioned fantasy. I now understand that he could have done better by all of us.

  Julia’s parents to me are just something to be suffered. If anything, the roles are reversed and her dad is the active pain in the ass while her mom goes along.

  Our dinner plans with them have been set for this Saturday. This is the type of thing I usually might find an excuse to miss, but tonight I sense it is an opportunity. Blindly doing the opposite of what my impulses have been in the past seems like a sound plan, so I try to be cheery about the dinner. The problem is I hate spending time with her father even under normal circumstances. The mother isn’t actively horrible but she’s complicit in her husband’s jackass behavior and so I can’t stand her either. My cheeriness sounds a little hyper and false.

  I had made sure to come home late Friday and she was up early Saturday, so this afternoon is our first time together since my reading the diary. I’ve been avoiding her, steeling myself for how to act around her. She doesn’t know I’ve seen the diary, so her interpretation of my avoidance could be anything. Probably she thinks I’m just sour about having to spend the evening with her parents. There’s some truth in that.

  It’s an hour drive to the restaurant in Oyster Bay. “It feels nice to drive out of the city. It’s a mini getaway.” It feels like I’m working for every minute.

  “It’s nice to get a change of scenery,” she responds, and I pat her left knee with my right hand, keeping my eyes still on the road.

  “It’ll be good to see your dad. It’s important.” My new rule is to say only positive things. If I have a negative thought, I’ll filter it before it gets to my mouth.

  We’re through the Midtown Tunnel and on the Long Island Expressway going east. I’m in the passing lane doing about seventy. In the rearview I see a black Nissan bombing up the right-hand lane. It has a spoiler on the back and performance tires with fancy hubcaps. It has racing stripes down the side. It has a weird suspension like it’s meant for drag racing. Probably a twelve-thousand-dollar car with twenty thousand worth of extras. Absurd. I think all of this but don’t say it, keeping with the new rule.

  The car is screaming up toward us and there is a gap where he can pass me on the right and slip into my lane before he reaches the car in front of him. There’s a car about fifty yards in front of me, so he’ll have to switch lanes back again. I hate this kind of idiot driver.

  I press down on the accelerator to get even with the car in the right lane and close the gap to pin in the Nissan. I want to see him smack his steering wheel and scream into the dashboard.

  I had meant to subtly accelerate, but the rpm needle jumps and the pitch of the engine makes everything feel urgent. Julia moves her hands from her lap to the sides of her seat and hangs on.

  “Crap,” I mutter under my breath. I get off the accelerator and touch up the brake. The damn Nissan is on us in a second and its engine sounds like a blender. I see the teenaged bastard behind the wheel, and he slips into our lane in front of us with about three feet between his bumpers and the cars on either end. He’s in our lane for about a three count before he passes the car to his right and is back over in that lane again. I feel a little proud of myself for granting passage. Julia’s hands come off the seat. I think she’s relieved but hardly proud.

  The restaurant is cedar-shingled and looks like a converted old inn. The parking lot is a driveway that has been expanded for more cars and winds around the side of the building. I pass a few open spaces and park around the corner from the entrance. There’s no benefit to doing this. I realize when I’ve stopped that it just isn’t the way a person who wants to get inside would do it. I shut off the car but don’t make a move for my door.

  She turns to me. “You ready?” She’s trying to sound cheerful too.

  “I’m hungry.”

  “Nick, at least try to fake it. Just for a couple hours. Please.”

  “It’ll be just fine as long as he doesn’t talk much.”

  “Just take the high road.”

  “I’m kidding, I’m kidding.” I flip the door handle and get out.

  Alistair Pembroke, the great retired attorney and royal pain in my ass, is already there seated on a wooden bench along the wall in the waiting area. His legs are crossed knee over knee with his hands resting uncertainly on top as though the legs are something extra, a piece of luggage next to him on the bench and not connected to the rest of his body. He’s tall and tan, with thinning black hair combed straight back and small amounts of gray at the temples left skillfully undyed. He has a long, thin nose that isn’t so bad on a man and fortunately didn’t get passed down to Julia. He’s wearing a blazer with a black turtleneck shirt underneath. The outfit looks ridiculous on a man nearly seventy. It belongs in Miami Beach on a man half his age running a nightclub.

  While he sits, Patricia Pembroke is up across the room like his receptionist checking on the table with the host. She’s at least dressed sensibly in the sort of pants and blouse you’d expect from a woman her age. Julia gets her looks mainly from Patricia. Tall, thin, athletic, pretty eyes, pretty lips. She looks much like Julia might in thirty years. She has a nice way about her too, but I can’t forgive her the sin of what she chose for a husband. Show me who you love and I’ll show you who you are.

  The one positive thing I can say for Alistair is he didn’t drop Patricia for the fresh-faced secretary. Knowing him, he probably had affairs, he just never had the guts to be honest with everyone, especially himself, to go the whole distance and set everyone free. But Patricia sticks around for it. They don’t seem very loving, more as though they have a good professional relationship but one that obviously fills needs, because they’re both here.

  Alistair uncrosses his legs and stands. All his movements seem to happen sequentially like a kid moving the parts of a toy robot. I go to shake his hand and muscle up a smile. I can’t stand the way he talks, always in run-on monotone sentences that force the listener to do the punctuation for himself. It has a schizophrenic quality and is probably why he couldn’t be a litigator and why he worked in corporate law.

  “Good to see you Nick glad you both could make it out this way and I suppose traffic wasn’t too bad and you were able to keep my daughter safe must be nice to have a little break from that city if only for a night, eh?”

  “Good to see you, Alistair. Patricia, you look nice.” She had appeared at our sides for the handshake like the dutiful aide. I give her a kiss on the cheek.

  “How are you, Nick?” Patricia always seemed to like me. She seems to get along with all men, especially those she thinks are handsome. But she’s also cautious of the tension between me and Alistair.

  “I’m getting by.”

  Julia hugs each of her parents and we start for the table, a round one in the middle of the room. Fortunately Alistair is quick to order a drink and I get bourbon on ice. Neither of us wants to be here, but it’s the only way he can see his daughter. I have no reason for being here.

  “So Nick how are things on Wall Street seems like a good year never does seem to matter though you traders can move it around whether it’s going up or down.”

  “Should be an okay year. I’ll fax over my W2 if you’re interested.” He irritates me. I can’t help it.

  “Ha nothing like that very funny though it seems like only you and the baseball players get paid no matter what got a guy gettin
g ten million and bats two hundred ought to give it all back for turning in a rotten season like that what a joke, eh?”

  “Well, I couldn’t get into law school.”

  “I say I was there in the heyday of it all billion-dollar oil and gas mergers and saving thousands of jobs at airlines through structured bankruptcy and fighting Carl Icahn in a proxy war to take him for a billion it was fun and one hell of a time we did things.”

  Alistair’s stories seem to grow by twenty percent each time I hear them. With compound growth, a person needs to know him only a few years before they’ve doubled and tripled in grandeur. I can hardly tolerate his indulgences to preserve some legacy for himself. Corporate lawyers really have a chip on their shoulders about having done anything exciting. I look at Julia and widen my eyes, which I hope communicates to her that I’m nearing a breaking point already and she better jump in and shut him up.

  “Mom, you look great. Where’d you get those earrings?”

  The drinks arrive and I order another one before taking the first sip. Patricia glances at me but I’ve already decided that if I’m going to make it through dinner, I need to focus on me and my survival and there might be collateral damage in doing so.

  “Honey, I’ve had these earrings for years. Your father gave them to me on our tenth anniversary.”

  Alistair reaches over in a fumbling way to touch one earring, and I half expect him to yank Patricia out of her chair the way one of the Three Stooges might pull another by gripping a nose or an earlobe.

  “Yes yes beautiful they are the way a man needs to be for a woman there’s a sparkle and I remember the jeweler was a good man and he and I designed a few pieces together you remember dear.” Of course any comment at the table he needs to relate back to himself. I think the only way to contain him is not to make any comments at all.

  The waiter arrives, so I barge in to announce that I won’t have a salad or appetizer and I order my entrée. This seems like a good way to shorten dinner by thirty minutes. Alistair is put off by my behavior, but the girls go next and go along with just an entrée and so does he. It feels like a small win.

  I have the pork, which turns out to be very good, and I switch to wine. I don’t know what the others are having or what they’re saying. I’m playing a game with myself to think back through a whole story start to finish, whichever story comes to mind first, then come back to the table and conversation to see how much time has passed. It’s usually only two or three minutes, so I keep playing. No one seems to mind.

  The entrées are finished and taken and Alistair orders dessert. He eats it slowly, and I notice Patricia is looking concerned for Julia, several times placing her hand on Julia’s forearm in a comforting way and without prompting. Julia looks happy for it, which isn’t normal, and I can see it makes Patricia feel happy and needed. It makes me want to leave faster.

  The waiter delivers the check directly to Alistair though I had wanted to pay. I don’t want him to feel like he’s doing anything nice for us. “I’ll get that, Alistair.” I reach over with my credit card.

  “Nonsense the least we can do you coming all the way out here to sit with us.”

  Short of ripping the bill from his hands, I’ll have to let this go. Alistair completes the tip and transaction with the waiter, then quietly surveys the table with his hands folded in front of him like a rancher looking over his pasture from up in the saddle of his horse.

  “So when are you two going to deliver us a grandchild not getting any younger here and neither are you would be nice to know the child you see in our day we raised children when we were young and they were the focus and family the priority.” He starts talking while looking at Julia and ends looking at me.

  “That’s none of your business, Dad.” Julia is uncomfortable but firm and looks him right in the eye, meaning to shut this down before it goes a comment further.

  “Alistair, please.” Patricia puts her hand on Julia’s forearm again and slowly strokes.

  I let it all pass but Alistair doesn’t want to end dinner having been rebuked. He moves on like a pitcher who has thrown a called ball and goes right back into his windup for the next pitch. He decides to press what he clearly views to be a related point.

  “Nick, how long do you keep it up on Wall Street younger man’s game you know could buy a little business to run and live in a house with a yard find a little business that does some good and gives some back could be fun.”

  He knows very well this hits a nerve with me, that some part of me agrees with what he says. Coming from him, I can’t see it as support but only as antagonism. Maybe he’s pissed that even average bond traders make more than partners in law firms. I lean back first to think about the best way to respond, and I decide direct is best. “Alistair, every time we see each other, you find a way to criticize me and my job and try to convince me to make changes as though you’re not happy with who I am. As though you think I’m soulless, my job is soulless. Why would you say that to me? Is that what you think?” I lean forward at him to show I intend to get an answer to the question.

  There’s no sound but the clinking of teacups in saucers. Alistair clears his throat. Like any passive-aggressive, he’s not used to direct confrontation or an honest interpretation of his question that forces him to defend why he asked it. He prefers to have his subtlety returned with subtlety.

  “It’s a fine job provides for the family and all to be sure not at all soulless just there comes a time and people try things make career changes see what’s out there and this is what you’ve done for a dozen years and just a thought.”

  Confronting Alistair like this is one step. I could smile and shrug it off now and everyone’s temperature would drop and it would all be forgotten. I could stop it at this level of damage. Or I could take the next step and say what I’ve thought but held back for the sake of keeping the peace, keeping Julia out of the cross fire of open war. To take the next step with Alistair would be irreversible. If I fight with Julia, we have a foundation of years together and a contract that means we work to fix it and we want to forgive. To fight with Alistair would poison the soil we’ve been trying to build on and we’d abandon the effort and the toxic ground. On the other hand, to confront him is the honest thing to do. I want to make the changes in my life to cut away the negative and focus on the positive. If I believe in this, then Alistair must go. These are the kinds of decisions I need to make.

  This is a turn down a one-way street with no U-turns. I feel myself press down the accelerator. “Just a thought,” I repeat back to him. “Here’s a thought for you, Alistair.” I look for a moment at Patricia, then at Julia, then settle back on Alistair. Patricia looks horrified at what she knows is coming. Julia looks calm as though this is something she’s been predicting for years would come and is happy to see it and feels vindicated. There’s even a small smile curling up one side of her mouth, and in the middle of this it strikes me how beautiful she looks. Alistair shifts in his chair with hands clenching the edge of the table like an airline passenger hitting turbulence.

  “You’re incapable of being honest with yourself, which is lucky for you because you don’t have to come face-to-face with what a pompous clown you are. You reinvent history and yourself to be whatever makes you feel happy and secure. What’s unlucky for everyone around you is that we’re stuck with you. You’re just as incapable of changing from the piece of crap that you are because you can’t or won’t face how twisted up you are, and so we all have to sit around and indulge this illusion you’ve created of yourself, for yourself. Just a thought.” I remember my commitment to filter the negative and say only the positive. My new rule lasted about two hours before I overwhelmed it.

  Alistair looks stunned and angry. I don’t think he heard anything specific that I said after the first few words. He internalized only that it was insulting and insolent and he dismissed it. Patricia has her hand to her mouth.

  I play back in my head what I’ve said, and I know it is immature
bordering on irrational. I’m tempted to apologize, throw up my hands and say hey, let’s forget the whole thing, but that feels impossible and might make me look even crazier.

  Julia takes a final sip of coffee and, putting the cup down, says, “Okay,” with more emphasis on the kay than the o, which seems to signal the end of dinner. All four chairs push back from the table at once. The simultaneous precision is comical. And tragic.

  21 | MY ROOTS

  January 29, 2006

  JULIA GAVE NO EXPLANATION AND NONE WAS ASKED for. She simply said she wasn’t going to come. I simply nodded and said okay. It’s hard for me to gauge the damage from last night’s dinner, given she’s not a fan of her own father, as well as the context of the already catastrophic level of damage in our marriage.

  I park behind a line of cars along the street of my sister’s home. It’s the kind of town that averages about a half acre per house. Hundred-year-old renovated homes with manicured lawns are close together, creating a real neighborhood with enough kids always nearby to meet in groups and play in the streets.

  Ted Golb is walking in front of the house carrying bags and wearing a tall hat that looks out of a Dr. Seuss story and that says “Happy Birthday” around it.

  “Nicholas, my man.” Never Nick. He never calls anyone by the name they go by. If I went by Nicholas, he’d call me Nicky. He always changes everyone’s name to some form of nickname he can use. He feels it’s the chummy thing to do, that it breaks down barriers and means we’re old friends. It’s part of his social awkwardness.

  “How are you, Ted.”

  “Hey, pal.” He raises his hands a few inches to show they are full of bags. “Would you mind getting some beer and soda and ice from the refrigerator out back and bringing it in? See if anyone needs a refill?”

  “Sure. If you have a mop, I can do the kitchen floor. Maybe sweep out the garage?”

  “No need, buddy. All set.” I assume he’s choosing to ignore my sarcasm rather than having missed it entirely. I want to be sure, though.