The Peace Process

by Bruce Jay Friedman

  In the meanwhile, I packed a few twisty little panties that probably hadn’t fit Jenny since she was a cheerleader at Ball State. How she managed to combine cheerleading with a doctorate in Far East studies is a mystery to me. I threw in a toothbrush, a couple of face creams, and an Irish novel that I warned Jenny was all texture but that she insisted on buying anyway. I was looking under the bed for a flannel nightie when it occurred to me that this whole episode was real—it wasn’t a rehearsal for Hedda Gabler—and there was nothing in the drawer to calm me down. We had a new doctor who practically threw pills at you when you walked in the door, but he refused to give me anything for anxiety. He’d seen me on a panel show, the one time I was really on my game. I was wailing—nobody could get a word in.

  “I can’t give you anything,” he said. “You’re a national treasure.”

  So as a result of him thinking I was a national treasure, everyone in the city was running around with some kind of happy pill except me.

  What I was worried about primarily is that I’d faint and they’d have to make room for me on the stretcher. I have a little history in this area. I’d almost keeled over recently during a backer’s audition for a movie about chemo high-jumpers. It was just raw footage, but it was pretty powerful stuff with the ironic soundtrack from Aerosmith, and I barely made it through the credits.

  Somebody on the ER team said it was time to get moving and I didn’t even have time to think about fainting. The next thing I knew, all fourteen of us were parading past the doorman from Chechnya and they were sliding Jenny into the ambulance and I was thinking, Hey wait a minute, where are you going, where are you taking her? Don’t you understand, don’t you get it … that’s my girl.

  We were out in Quogue. Peaceful. Jenny was in a chair. I can’t bring myself to say “wheelchair.” I fed her, changed her, washed her skinny legs. I read to her. “Page Six,” The Economist. We took walks along the ocean, Gary trotting behind us. Then back to the fireside. It wasn’t a bad life—nothing to write home about—but hey, as I say, she’s my girl.

  The Savior

  He was a stout and indolent-looking man who appeared to be in his mid-fifties, a bit older than Lowell. He could usually be found on the porch of the small resort hotel or beside the lake, sitting in a chair and dozing. Not to be unkind about it, but Lowell felt he looked like a giant bullfrog, lazing in the sun. Yet for a reason he couldn’t fathom, Lowell was drawn to the man.

  It took some time for Lowell to realize, however implausibly, that this was the person who had torn the heart out of his first marriage, destroyed his family, and virtually ruined his life.

  Lowell’s second wife, June, had found Pinewood Lakes on the web, listed under “weekend getaways.” The tiny resort community was an hour and ten minutes’ drive from Manhattan. Yet the contrast with the city was dramatic. The air was fresh and invigorating. As a boy, Lowell had been sent to summer camps in Maine and New Hampshire. He’d forgotten how much he missed the lake country—and the crisp mountain air.

  Though the room they were shown to in the small hotel was cramped, the manager tried to put a good face on it.

  “It was a favorite,” he said, “of the late, great Lou Gehrig, one of your baseball icons.”

  For all of the freshness of their surroundings, they soon discovered that there wasn’t much for them to do in the way of activities. The lake was a bit too chilly for swimming. The bike path that ran along the highway was narrow and dangerously close to traffic. The one restaurant in the nearby town featured German-style cooking that was decent but nothing to write home about. Lowell suggested they take a hike through the woods. June gamely went along with him, but she was unenthusiastic about it. To get to her job as a schoolteacher in Brooklyn, she had to take long walks back and forth to the subway each day. That, and standing on her feet all day long, was exercise enough for her. And June was much more self-contained than Lowell. She was content to cozy down beside the lake with her mystery novels—and to go to bed early.

  By the end of the second day of their four-day vacation, Lowell, an entertainment lawyer, was restless. At nine o’clock at night, he found himself sitting in the hotel lobby with one disinterested eye on the tiny television set. A heavyset and heavy-lidded guest was sitting on an adjacent sofa. As it turned out, he wasn’t dozing at all. Lowell could not recall who it was that was the first to speak. But suddenly they were chatting away. The man’s name was Peter Neely. He had grown up in the same Bronx neighborhood as Lowell, though Neely had attended Catholic schools and Lowell was a public school graduate. They had both come from poor, if not impoverished, families, although they agreed it made them feel wealthy to live within walking distance of two Major League ballparks, Yankee Stadium and the Polo Grounds. Neely wasn’t in the least bit indolent. His memory was as clear and sharp as the mountain air. He was able to recite the entire lineup of the New York Yankees of the period—and that of the New York Giants before they were moved to San Francisco. A printer by trade, Neely lived in Garden City, Long Island. He and his wife had been guests of the little hotel for at least a decade. They came up in summer and winter. On this occasion, Mrs. Neely had chosen to visit her sister in Lauderdale. Neely had come up alone.

  Lowell warmed to the man even more when it turned out that Neely had a strong interest in serious theatre and in contemporary British fiction as well. Both men were huge fans of Anthony Powell. Neely had read the early works of the great novelist—the ones before the famed “Dance” series. Lowell hadn’t—and scribbled down their titles so that he could order them when he got back to the city.

  After they had been chatting for an hour or so, Neely said that he often stayed in Manhattan for dinner after work.

  “I wonder if you’d care to join me one night,” he asked.

  Lowell said he’d be delighted.

  “Do you know of a restaurant in the Village called Gene’s?”

  “It’s one of my favorites.”

  “Suppose I call you one day,” said Neely, “and we meet there for dinner?”

  “It’s a deal,” said Lowell.

  Lowell was pleased with his new “find.” He had recently lost several close friends. His remaining ones—acquaintances, really—were writers, agents, lawyers, all of them connected to the entertainment field. He had often wondered what it would be like to know a normal person, a “real American,” so to speak—though he was aware of a whiff of patronization in this feeling. Perhaps more than a whiff. For the remainder of the trip, Lowell waved to Neely whenever he saw him but did not stop to speak to him—as if afraid to jeopardize their budding friendship. When Neely called, a week after their encounter, Lowell agreed to meet him at Gene’s restaurant.

  The conversation at dinner was stiff at first, but each man loosened up quickly after a few cocktails. Lowell told his new friend that he and June had lived in Manhasset for many years and only recently moved back to Manhattan.

  “I love every precious second of it.”

  Neely spoke of his college years at Loyola and his late—and childless—marriage to Eunice. It was only when he brought up his early years as a limousine driver and his work as manager of a small bookshop in Chelsea that Lowell began to suspect that he had met his dinner partner many years before. He became convinced of it when Neely mentioned that he had once translated the work of an obscure German essayist named Hans Wollschläger. There was no question about it. No two individuals could have had the same background. The man who sat opposite Lowell had once wrecked his life. For years, he had thought of him as a mortal enemy.

  “Was your name ever McNeely?” asked Lowell.

  “Yes. I decided to tighten it up a bit.”

  “And we knew each other, didn’t we? Before we met at Pinewood.”

  “It’s entirely possible,” said Neely neutrally, polishing off a giant shrimp with a single bite.

  Lowell felt a coldness at the
back of his neck and across his shoulders. Was it possible that Neely knew in advance of Lowell’s visit to Pinewood—and had shown up at the resort in order to taunt him? This was highly unlikely. Lowell and his wife had decided to get away for a weekend on the spur of the moment. No one else could have known about their trip. Did Neely know of their past connection now? If so, when did he first become aware of it?

  What to do? One option was to rise above the battle, so to speak, and simply get up and leave, washing his hands of the whole business. After all, hadn’t it all happened long before, in what seemed like another life? For the time being, Lowell decided to go ahead with his dinner. He ordered a porterhouse steak.

  “I’ll try the striped sea bass,” said Neely.

  Before the main courses were served, the waiter placed a sharp steak knife beside Lowell’s dinner plate. There was a time when he would have plunged it into Neely’s chest without hesitation. Lowell had left his office one night with a lead pipe in his pocket, determined to seek out Neely and crush his skull. Lowell had told his story to a partner in the firm who had stopped him at the door.

  “It’s not worth it,” said the old barrister.

  But it had seemed worth it at the time.

  Lowell had only the dimmest recollection of the young Neely’s appearance. He vaguely recalled a man who was tall, sharp-featured, and wore a cap.

  Years back, to celebrate their anniversary, Lowell and his first wife, Sylvia, had hired a limousine to take them from Oyster Bay to a dance party in the West Village. A group of friends awaited them. On the way to Manhattan, they began chatting with the driver, who turned out to have a literary bent. With his eyes on the road, he quoted Rilke and the work of a lesser-known writer named Wollschläger. Though Lowell didn’t much care for Champagne, he and Sylvia drank quite a bit of it on the way to Manhattan. Since they were both charmed by the driver, it made perfectly good sense at the time to invite him along to the party. Once there, Lowell left his wife in the hands of the limo driver and slipped away in pursuit of women. His marriage was shaky. He and Sylvia did not get along in bed. As a result, he was always on the lookout for a possible affair. Nothing of the kind came about that night. They took a train back to Oyster Bay, paid the babysitter, then slipped into a loveless bed. A week later, Lowell received a gracious note from the limo driver—McNeely—thanking the couple for a lovely evening. A week after that, Lowell was taken aside at a cocktail party by an alleged friend of Sylvia’s.

  “Aren’t you shocked?” said the friend, eyes sparkling. “How can she do this?”

  “Do what?” asked Lowell.

  “Have an affair … with a limo driver?”

  Lowell felt as if he’d been shot through the chest. Too upset to wait until they got home, he confronted Sylvia at the cocktail party. Was it true?

  “Yes,” she said, in the defiant manner of heroines in Victorian novels.

  “You’ll have to break it off immediately.”

  “That’s impossible,” she said.

  Sick at heart, and barely able to stay on the road, Lowell drove his wife home in silence. For the next several days, they said nothing more of the affair. Lowell moved from the master bedroom to the attic. Late at night, he would see a yellow light on the second line of the attic phone and he knew his wife was talking to the limo man. (Lowell stubbornly refused to use his name.) He covered the phone light with a pillow, but he knew it was on and that they were talking, sometimes for hours. Only when he checked and saw that the light had gone off was he able to get to sleep.

  His wife refused to discuss the affair. Maddeningly, she traveled in to the city on “shopping” trips. Though Lowell couldn’t bring himself to contact McNeely on the phone, he plotted ways to kill him. Not hurt him. Kill him. Lowell’s wife said that the limo man was aware of Lowell and his intentions and had moved in with a friend who served as a bodyguard. Lowell planned to kill them both. He told his wife that he was not going to move out or file for divorce until the girls were on their feet. They were ten and eleven.

  “But once I decide to leave, there is no force on Earth that will keep me here.”

  In truth, he was afraid to be alone, afraid to be abandoned.

  He amazed himself by continuing to be effective at his work, negotiating contracts for comedians. Each night, he drove back to Oyster Bay on the Long Island Expressway and waited for Sylvia to return from one of her “shopping” trips to Manhattan. He began a halfhearted affair of his own, taking advantage of a solemn pottery instructor, though he knew they had no future. He felt a certain contempt for himself. To hide his face, he grew a beard. Then one day he shaved it off and saw a divorce lawyer.

  “Did she withhold sex?” the man asked. To illustrate, he held up an invisible tray, then whisked it away.

  “Yes,” Lowell said with infinite sadness, “I suppose she did.”

  Eventually, he moved into a one-room flat in Manhattan and stayed in touch with his daughters by phone. He learned after several months that his wife’s affair had petered out. (And there was an expression for you.) She tried another, with a police officer. When that didn’t pan out, she called Lowell and asked if he wanted to give the marriage another try. Out of pride, Lowell said that was impossible. It had taken him too long to recover from the breakup, if indeed he had recovered at all. And now, years later, at Gene’s restaurant, he sat opposite a bloated version of the man who had caused him so much pain.

  It was a difficult decision, but Lowell decided not to acknowledge that he recognized Neely and that he was aware of their history. Why give him the satisfaction? If Neely brought it up, provoked him, lorded it over him, he would reconsider. He hadn’t entirely ruled out the steak knife.

  Lowell steered the conversation into relatively safe areas—the state of the theatre, the advantages of public transportation. Should the mayor be permitted to try for a third term? And all the while, as they ate dinner and chatted perfunctorily, Lowell’s thoughts were divided. On one level, he remained in the moment. On another, he thought of Sylvia’s affair and its aftermath. At first, he’d kept to himself in his single room. He had to learn how to make coffee and to deal with his laundry. Slowly, as if recovering from an illness, he ventured out to a neighborhood bar and made a few tentative friends. One was a woman who decorated store windows. She came back to his apartment and gave him some tips on how to brighten it up. He learned to cook and was proud of himself for pulling off a veal roast. Then he bought a car and began to cruise the nighttime streets in a black Lincoln. Since he was still shy, he tried drugs for a while, then decided he didn’t need them. He found he was able to meet and attract women when he was clear-eyed. He moved to a larger apartment and began to give parties for his new friends and neighbors.

  He took care of his family’s needs and had plenty of money to spare. Sailing through the midnight streets in his car, he often felt like king of the city. One night, to cap it all off, he met June at a wedding reception. She became the center of his life. From the moment they met, he lost all interest in other women. He kept a photograph above his desk in which she has her arms around his neck and looks at him with complete trust and adoration. It was a look he had never seen before. In the photograph, he returns it. They moved in together, were soon married, and had a daughter who could only be described as a love child. Lowell enjoyed every day of his life.

  Now, in the restaurant, Lowell could hardly believe he had considered harming the man who sat opposite him. Yet he had that capability. In response to 9/11, he had immediately signed up for an intensive course in martial arts. Suppose there was another attack and Lowell was on an airliner. Why sit around and not try to prevent it? Though he’d lasted only two sessions, he remembered a few moves. Now and then he practiced them. It would take little effort to reach across the table and blind the man. Using the heel of his hand, drive his broad nose back into his brain. And there was always the knife.

&n
bsp; But to even have these thoughts. To consider injuring an individual who had made possible a glorious new chapter in his life. Neely, McNeely, whatever his name was, might as well have been an angel sent down to compensate for a deceitful marriage. A sullen, prisonlike existence. And Lowell had considered harming him. Breaking his neck. Breaking his back, for that matter. This saint who sat across the table. What kind of person had Lowell become?

  “It’s still a great restaurant,” said Neely as he finished his apple pie.

  “Convivial is the feeling I get when I’m here.”

  “Convivial,” said Neely with a sigh of pleasure. “What a lovely word.”

  They made a perfunctory plan to meet again. A bit later, the waiter brought the check. Both men reached for it.

  “Let me take that,” said the fat man.

  “Out of the question,” said Lowell, who had gotten to it first. “It’s the least I can do.”

  “That’s very kind of you. But you haven’t said much about your wife. I saw her at the lake. She’s lovely. The kind of person it would be fun to know. Why don’t we all get together, me, Eunice, you, and your wife and go up to a restaurant I know of in Castle Hill? You’ll like it. I’ll rent a limo.”

  “A limo?” said Lowell. “My precious wife?”

  Thrust back in time, he started for the man.

  “You sonofabitch, you should have quit while you were ahead.”