Summer in the City

by Robyn Sisman

  Suze drew back. One hand strayed unconsciously to her new short hair. Somewhat to her surprise, she found she didn’t want to wallow in recollected misery. She summoned a rueful smile. “I made a mistake. Or perhaps he did. Frankly, I don’t think East Hampton is my scene.” To divert him she started to tell Jay about the ghastlier guests.

  “Ah, the B list.” Jay nodded sympathetically. “Bulimics, babes, bratsos, big shots and blondes. Was it total hell?”

  “Worse. What’s the A list, then?”

  Jay took a sip of his wine. “Alcoholics, actresses, aristos and assholes,” he pronounced.

  “You’re making it up.” Suze giggled. “Anyway, whatever the list, I wasn’t on it. Perhaps I’m not as sophisticated as I thought.”

  Jay gave her an assessing look. “Perhaps you’re growing up?” he suggested.

  Suze eyed him warily. She had always hated it when people said that. Lawrence used to tease her about becoming a “grown-up” one day, prompting images of herself preparing advance meals for the freezer, or having her hair sculpted into waves under a drying helmet. Now it struck her that there were other ways of growing up, not all of them bad.

  “Tell me more about Lloyd,” she said, changing the subject. “I still can’t understand why he didn’t make a fuss when he got fired. You have to admit, the way he just accepted everything made him look very guilty.”

  Jay fiddled with the menu, searching for words. “People are complicated,” he said at last. “They find reasons not to do the obvious thing.”

  “Like what?” Suze demanded. “Sorry, am I being nosy? It’s just that he sounds . . . quite nice, actually. I’d like to understand him better.”

  Jay smiled at her. “Let’s order,” he said.

  They decided to share a selection of starters, which arrived in small bowls temptingly scattered with fresh herbs and paprika. Sunlight filtered into their green cave.

  Jay picked up a marinated green pepper and nibbled at it thoughtfully. “OK,” he began, “I’ll tell you about Lloyd, because I think I trust you. But this isn’t tittle-tattle, you understand.” He pointed the pepper at her warningly. “It’s not something you bring out as a tasty piece of gossip at one of your tony English dinner parties.”

  “I’d never do that!” Suze responded hotly, though even as she spoke the words she felt an uncomfortable shock of recognition. The old Suze had done such things. Lowering her eyes, she dipped a piece of pita bread into the smoky eggplant paste. “Go on.”

  “First,” he said, “you have to understand the American suburbs, particularly those green little towns outside New York with cute red-brick shopping malls and nice white churches, where everyone’s so rich and privileged the whole place is awash with problem teenagers. All the dads commute to the city, and all the moms divide their time between shopping and the country club. That’s the kind of place where Lloyd and I grew up. My dad was a big shot lawyer, Lloyd’s was a stockbroker—very successful, very charming. I’m an only child, and by the time Lloyd was born his sister was already ten, so we were both loners in a way. We liked books and ideas and language, and had the same sense of humor.”

  “Weird, you mean.” Suze grinned.

  Jay bowed his head in acknowledgment. “As we grew up we became rebels, naturally. When all the kids at school were into bubblegum rock or heavy metal, we were listening to the Sex Pistols. We dressed in black and read Thomas Pynchon and brooded about the meaninglessness of life over our chocolate milkshakes. We despised television, except for English imports like Monty Python and Fawlty Towers. I think there may even have been a stage when our regular greeting to each other was ‘Salut, mon vieux.’ I tell you, we were cool, man.

  “At around fifteen, we got sent away to our different preppy schools up in New England, two spoiled brats being groomed to inherit the earth. When we remembered, we wrote each other long letters full of profound observations and rapier-like wit. In the vacations we’d come into the city and hang out at Tower Records, or I’d drag him into the art movie-houses to watch Bergman and Renoir. Lloyd knew I was gay, of course. He was the first straight person I ever told. It never seemed to matter.

  “The summer of my junior year, a boy at school—a real jerk called Murray Rose, only we called him Runny Nose—came up and asked me in a sneery way what I thought of my friend Rockwell now. He showed me a newspaper headline from our local paper. It read, ‘Swindler Rockwell Arrested.’ ”

  “Swindler!” Suze repeated. “What had he done?”

  “It turned out that there had been some irregularities in Mr. Rockwell senior’s dealings with his clients’ investments. He made the classic mistake of temporarily borrowing from one fund to make up a shortfall in another while he waited for the big dividend that would get him out of trouble.”

  “But it never came?”

  “It was messier than that. Lloyd’s dad had been having an affair for years with his secretary. It was one of those situations where he kept promising to divorce Lloyd’s mother, but of course he never did. One day the secretary got tired of waiting, so she huffed and she puffed and she blew down the whole house of cards.”

  “How horrible!”

  “Worse than you can imagine. As financial scandals go, this one was pretty small potatoes, but the trouble was that Lloyd’s dad had been Mr. Popular—pillar of the golf club, school governor, life and soul of every party. He radiated energy and confidence, with the result that half the town had invested their savings in him. When it all collapsed, they were vindictive as hell. Nobody hates to lose money more than rich people, have you noticed that?”

  “What did they do?”

  “Oh . . . petty, mean-minded things. Rocks through the windows, garbage in the swimming pool, nasty telephone calls. The first morning after Lloyd came home from school, he opened the back door and found the family dog lying dead on the porch. It had been shot in the head.”

  Suze jerked away from the table with a cry of disgust.

  “Nice neighbors, huh?” Jay grimaced. “That’s when Lloyd’s grandparents came and took him away—his mom’s parents, of course. They were ‘protecting’ him. His father was already in jail. No one would raise the bail to keep him out until the trial. I don’t know if Lloyd even got to see him.”

  “Poor Lloyd. He must have felt completely abandoned. And I suppose you couldn’t help if you were away at school.”

  “I could have done something.” Jay’s face darkened. “But I didn’t. Not a thing. I didn’t write, I didn’t call, I just hoarded the knowledge like a terrible secret disease. I guess I didn’t know what to do—I was only seventeen. Adults did what they did, and kids just watched. But I hate myself for it now. By the time I got home for vacation, Lloyd’s dad was on trial, and Lloyd and his mother had moved to California. I went on living my normal, selfish teenager’s life. I missed him, though.”

  “How did you make contact again?”

  Jay lit a cigarette and leaned back in his chair. They had both forgotten about their food.

  “On my eighteenth birthday I decided to break it to my parents that I was gay, that I wanted to be a filmmaker and no way was I ever going to law school. I was pretty full of myself in those days. Probably I didn’t mince words in making it clear to my dad just what I thought about becoming a workaholic fat cat like him. Anyway, there was a big bust-up and I lit out for San Francisco, where I’d heard the sun always shone and people were happy and practically every other person was gay.” Jay gave a wry smile. “I hated it. Everyone was so goddamn easygoing I thought I might fall asleep and never wake up again. No one had mentioned the word ‘fog’ either. The good thing was that I hooked up with Lloyd again. He was pretty freaked out. Dad in prison, Mom poor and alone and spitting poison, a high school where the other kids hated him for being an East-coast preppy.”

  Suze sat with her chin propped on her hands, trying to imagine what it must have been like. Nothing as bad had ever happened to her. She felt a sudden welling of warmth for her own
family and friends. How lucky she was!

  “I thought it was time we both got out,” Jay continued. “Lloyd had this old car. We decided to go traveling and take any job we could find while we figured out what to do next. It took us about nine months to work our way to New York. By then, Lloyd had himself pretty well under control. I went to film school, Lloyd went to college and life returned more or less to normal.”

  “And what about Lloyd’s father?”

  “It could have been worse. He was transferred to one of those middle-class places where you can take a degree and practice your golf swing, and he got parole after five or six years. Still, prison is prison. When he came out he didn’t have a cent, Lloyd’s mother had divorced him and none of his children wanted to know him—Lloyd included.”

  Suze nodded slowly. “He sent Lloyd a card for his birthday. Lloyd told me to throw it away.”

  “There you go.” Jay frowned. “Personally I think he was more of a fantasist than a criminal, but Lloyd seems to want to blank out the whole episode. He gets uptight about doing the right thing. This trouble at Schneider Fox—I get the feeling he’s been waiting half his life for something awful to happen to him, just like it did to his father.”

  They sat together in silence, smoking their cigarettes. Suze thought it must be lonely to carry such a secret from one’s past. “He’s lucky to have you for a friend,” she told Jay.

  “I’m the lucky one,” Jay countered fiercely. “I’d hate to lose him again.”

  Suze stared at him in surprise. “Why would you?”

  Jay started to answer, then a guarded expression came over his face. “Circumstances alter,” he said cryptically.

  Before Suze could press him further, he leaned over and gave her cheek an affectionate rub with his knuckles. “I’m glad you’re helping him. No one could call you uptight. You probably bring out the best in him.”

  Suze blushed. “I don’t know about that,” she mumbled. As he withdrew his hand she caught his wrist and turned it over so she could read his watch. “Christ! I must get on. That’s really why I asked you to meet me. I need your creative brain—and your film equipment.” She gave him a coaxing smile. “Can we go back to your studio now? I’ll explain the problem.”

  They paid the bill and walked up the stairs that led from the restaurant’s secret courtyard to the pavement. At the top, Suze turned to Jay. “Thank you for explaining about Lloyd. I won’t tell anyone else.”

  “I know you won’t.” He ruffled her hair. “I kind of like the new Suze. You look like a wayward angel.”

  Suze was still thinking about Lloyd. “If you think it would be fairer, I wouldn’t mind if Lloyd knew something personal about me.” She paused. “I mean, you could tell him about Lawrence, if you like.”

  Jay dropped his cigarette to the ground and extinguished the tiny spark with his shoe. “I already have.”

  After an hour in Jay’s studio, Suze headed back for the apartment, her head full of plans and new thoughts. It was a beautiful afternoon, clear and hot, with a cooling breeze from the river. Suze stepped out along the now-familiar streets, at one with the busy throng of passersby. In front of her, Manhattan’s great buildings rose into the sky like a sheaf of arrows targeted on the sun. She was happy.

  Back in the apartment, she changed into cut-off jeans and an old T-shirt, studied Lloyd’s fax once again and set to work. For the next two hours she made phone calls one after another, trying to track down things she needed. Then she turned on the computer and switched her mind into creative gear. Lloyd’s ideas were good; she thought she could see ways of making them even better. She was sitting at the desk, surrounded by a sea of paper and colored card and open magazines and phone directories, when there was a ring at the door. Surprised, Suze padded across in her bare feet and opened it cautiously. Confronting her was a handsome woman in her sixties, swathed in flowered silk and clutching a formidable handbag.

  “Why, hello,” the woman gushed. “I’m Mrs. Rennslayer.” Her expectant smile tightened fractionally under Suze’s blank stare. “Betsy’s mother,” she explained.

  “Oh.” Stifling her annoyance at the interruption, Suze swung the door wide. “Come in,” she said politely.

  Mrs. Rennslayer’s heels rapped across the parquet. “I’m here to pick up some clothes for Betsy. She’s having trouble with your British weather. I did try to telephone, but all I got was the busy signal.” She swung around and eyed Suze reproachfully.

  Suze gestured at her papers. “I’ve got a lot of work on.”

  “So I see.” Mrs. Rennslayer skirted the spreads laid out on the floor and forged her way into the living area, eyes darting about appraisingly. “Oh! You’ve moved the couch!” She bustled over to it and started plumping up the cushions. Next, she straightened the shade of the table lamp.

  “I think you’ll find the clothes in the bedroom,” Suze suggested. “Why don’t I make you a cup of tea while you sort things out?”

  “How gracious of you to offer. Don’t worry, I won’t disturb you one teensy bit. I’ll just creep into the bedroom and get what I need. I’d like to use the bathroom, too, if I may.”

  “Of course.”

  Suze put on the kettle and returned to the computer, but her concentration was broken. She could hear Betsy’s mother opening and closing drawers, and clanging hangers—probably having a good old snoop. Instead of focusing on the job in front of her, Suze’s mind filled with a painful inventory of her unmade bed, the pile of underwear draped over a chair and the muddle of skin creams and half-read paperbacks on her bedside table. She heard the lavatory flush and the water rumble. Eventually Mrs. Rennslayer reappeared, freshly combed and lipsticked, carrying a small airline bag. She wore a puzzled expression.

  “Isn’t the vacuum cleaner working?” she asked.

  “I expect so.” Suze was taken aback. “Why?”

  “I thought I saw a dust ball under the bed. Betsy has to be so careful about dust. Her system is very sensitive.”

  Suze bit her lip. “The kettle’s boiled.”

  Mrs. Rennslayer followed her inquisitively to the kitchen. In the doorway she stopped with a gasp. “My goodness!”

  “Sorry about the mess.”

  There was a sorrowful sigh. “I guess you working girls don’t have time to clean up. Oh, no, dear, not those awful mugs. Let’s have the nice china tea set. I always think tea tastes so much better when it’s properly served.”

  After Suze had put sugar in the sugar bowl, milk in the flouncy little jug, tea in the teapot, silver spoons on the saucers and carried the whole lot out to the dining table, she and Betsy’s mother sat down opposite each other. Suze tucked her dusty feet out of sight. She felt somewhat underdressed for a formal tea party.

  “So.” Mrs. Rennslayer cocked her head to one side. With her beady eyes and frosted hair fluffed into a crest of soft curls, she looked like a sly parakeet. “I understand you work for Lloyd.”

  “Well, we work for the same company. I’m on the design side.”

  “It’s wonderful how successful Lloyd has become. Betsy is so proud of him.”

  “Yes,” Suze agreed cautiously. Had no one told the woman that Lloyd had lost his job? How odd.

  “I imagine you two know each other very well, professionally speaking?”

  “Actually, I’ve never met him.”

  Mrs. Rennslayer’s eyebrows rose. “But he writes to you. Didn’t I see a letter lying on the table?”

  Suze looked up sharply. What was she getting at? “A fax,” she agreed. “We’re liaising over a confidential project.”

  “My, my, ‘liaising.’ It must be nice for Lloyd to know he has a little helper back home while he takes charge of the London office.”

  Suze fought against mounting resentment. She could not think of a riposte that would not betray Lloyd. “More tea?”

  “Thank you.” Mrs. Rennslayer took a handkerchief from her sleeve and dabbed at the corners of her mouth. “What a wonderful opportunity
this must be for you, to come to the United States and see how we live here.”

  “I’ve enjoyed it very much,” Suze answered coolly. “Do I gather you’re about to visit England for a taste of our culture?”

  Mrs. Rennslayer eyed her suspiciously. “I’m going to see my daughter,” she corrected. “But of course I love England. It’s so quaint.”

  “Quaint?” Suze was tired of this game. “You obviously haven’t been there since you were young, Mrs. Rennslayer. You’ll find that the wattle-and-daub houses have all but disappeared now. We’ve been civilized by Coca-Cola and The Oprah Winfrey Show.”

  Mrs. Rennslayer clanked her silver spoon in her saucer, lips pressed tight. After a moment, she raised her head and fixed Suze with an insincere smile. “I imagine you have a boyfriend back in England?”

  “Not at the moment.”

  “Don’t worry, dear.” Mrs. Rennslayer placed a liver-spotted hand on her arm. “You’ll find someone.”

  “I’m not worried.” Suze practically shook her off. “I’m not looking for anyone.”

  “That’s good. Men never like to be chased.” Mrs. Rennslayer’s gimlet eyes bored into Suze’s. “Fortunately, my Betsy’s never had trouble in that direction. But not everyone is as talented and attractive as she is.” Her whiplash glance skimmed across Suze’s tatty T-shirt. “Lloyd just worships her, you know.”

  “That must be nice.” Suze stared back stonily.

  A silence fell.

  “Oh, my Lord! Look at the time.” Mrs. Rennslayer rose grandly from the table. “It’s been lovely visiting with you, but I can’t waste my time chitter-chattering.”

  “Please don’t let me keep you.” Suze jumped to her feet and almost ran to the door. She waited with her hand on the lock while Mrs. Rennslayer gathered her belongings and checked her appearance in the mirror. Suze studied her cold, complacent profile. She bet there were absolutely no dust balls under the marital twin beds back at Château Rennslayer.