by Louis Begley
Give me your hand.
I held it out. He opened my palm and passed it over his breasts, under his armpits, and down toward his belly.
That’s right, he said, relax and avoid excitement. I have always thought there was a fruit inside you, but this is not your day. Don’t think of sex, feel my skin and all these frigging bumps. More warts, growing ecstatically like weeds. Fear death by cancer. That is my opinion, as yet unconfirmed by my doctor. Can’t say I would care about his opinion were he to have one. For now, I scratch at the little bastards until they bleed. Like this! I also examine myself for the big ones with oddly shaped edges, black harbingers of disaster.
Using a thick yellow fingernail he scooped bits of flesh from his stomach and made a stain of blood on the mirror, as though he were preparing a laboratory smear.
Do I disgust you? Bear with me, I don’t think we will need a stool sample today.
He cradled his penis in one hand and testicles in the other.
Nothing much to report here. Slowness, occasional dysfunction, inevitable retreat of libido. Only remedy is promiscuity—the old call: change partners and do-si-do! My skin, especially on the legs, deserves your attention. It’s thin like rice paper. Inside my trousers and socks, when I wear them, it peels, leaving a fine white snow like dandruff! These are, my dear Max, extravagant disorders, not autumn’s rich increase. I have gone to seed, like you, like that superannuated rhubarb plant under your window. The ghoulish shame of it is that I am as strong as that rhubarb, indestructible. How many times have you tried to kill it and failed?
The truth is I haven’t. I rather like it. It’s practically the only thing that was planted by me.
Quite in character. One who has power to hurt and will do none. If I have revealed to you more than to any human being, it is because you have not used my words against me or in your own cause.
While he put on his clothes I wiped the stain off the mirror. We went downstairs. He refused my offer of another glass of wine.
Toby is waiting with lunch. I want him to eat his meals, he said.
He had come on his racing bicycle and refused also my offer to put it in the trunk of my car and drive him to the other side of the valley. I walked alongside him to the end of the gravel driveway. There he fastened his trouser legs with rubber bands, mounted the bicycle, and pedaled off at great speed.
MY FATHER WAS almost twenty years older than my mother. She had been his student. He died when I was in my last year of boarding school. His retirement coincided with an illness from which he never recovered. It absorbed most of his and my mother’s attention. Our kitchen shelves were filled with special foods, all of them repellent, corresponding to his ever-changing diet. Leftovers cooked with margarine, in dishes covered with saucers and later in plastic containers, unfinished bottles of strange oils, and watery cottage cheese littered the refrigerator. I recoiled at their sight. On the windowsills in the kitchen, as well as in the bathroom that I shared with them, were his pills and, in larger bottles, the potions he ingested before and after meals, while he ate, upon arising, and at bedtime. The apparatus my mother used to give him enemas hung from a hook on the bathroom door, under his pajamas. As the number of household chores he felt unable to perform grew, he took to preparing, in anticipation of my visits on school holidays, a list of tasks he had saved up for me. The list would be presented sometimes before I had even crossed the threshold, at the bus stop where he met me in his Nash. Washing that car and simonizing it were among them. He ended in a Providence hospital, permanently catheterized, other tubes conducting yellowish liquids to his body connected to machines that surrounded his bed like unknown relatives. In comparison, my mother’s exit, four years later, seemed triumphant. She fell down the cellar stairs, headfirst, arms and legs splayed. I like to think she never recovered her consciousness.
As I dressed for Charlie’s party, and then drove to his house in the last of the sunset, I thought about that hospital room, the sore at the corner of my father’s mouth where the tube leading to his esophagus had rubbed against the lip, and the mixture of patience and eagerness with which he greeted each new procedure. He was lucid and wrote orders, imprecations, and answers to the occasional question on a pad of paper within reach of his right hand. There was no doubt that he wanted the cure to continue. Why? I would ask his doctor. I had always known my father as a valetudinarian, he was certainly very cautious, but I had never had reason before to think that he was a coward. Why had he this insane reluctance to die?
It’s the fear of final impotence, total and irreversible, the end to all knowledge, he told me. Only people who die suddenly avoid it.
Ricky and Edwina Howe, the van Lenneps, the gay cellist performing at Tanglewood, and I represented the Berkshires. Most of the guests were from the world of Charlie’s other affections, perhaps more permanent, and in the years since I had become a part of his retinue I had come to know them sufficiently well for exclamations that served as greetings, embraces, and kisses. Among them were several architects of a renown that at least they considered equal to Charlie’s and a family of real estate developers with a well-publicized devotion to culture; the most worldly among critics of architecture and art, and a giant of a man who had recently acquired the magazines they wrote for; the head of an investment bank for whom Charlie had constructed a mansion of celebrated opulence on many acres of East Hampton waterfront (the last such work, he claimed, he would undertake); a marquess in whose Venetian palace Charlie willingly sojourned; gorgeously colorful among the black of these figures, big-game wives or companions, and the divorcées whose souls and amatory affairs Charlie was directing, in part because he genuinely liked the company of women and in part because, in principle, he preferred his table to be balanced, even though this was a goal he seldom achieved. The invitation had specified cocktails at eight and carriages at a quarter after eleven. Their automobiles lined the road—on aesthetic grounds, Charlie did not tolerate the presence of cars near his house. Before they turned into pumpkins, these guests would be hurtling down the Taconic on their way back to New York. Charlie’s indifference to the comfort of others and his hauteur were greater than the Howes’. He would not have taken the trouble, I was willing to bet, to look for lodgings anywhere nearby for this crew of revelers. The absence of younger members of the camarilla—a designer working for Charlie, and a photographer and an actor who were a couple—surprised me; they were Toby’s age, and I had expected to see them at the party for his sake, if not for Charlie’s.
I looked for Toby and found him in the smaller living room, before the fire. He was thinner than when I saw him last and had a small Band-Aid above his upper lip. Like my father’s, I thought. There was another one on his cheek. I kissed him, although this had not been my habit, and told him I was very grateful for his work. The house was just as I had hoped; would he come to see the finished product and witness the owner’s admiration?
Perhaps tomorrow afternoon. Are you heating your pool? I might have a swim. You wouldn’t mind?
The water will be at room temperature. Come to lunch first, with Charlie, and bring some cheese if there is any left. You can swim afterward.
We agreed on that plan. I told him about Rodney Joyce’s lawsuit against his new Saudi neighbor across the lake who had taken to waterskiing in front of the Rumorosa and the letters of insult they had exchanged.
He is a fat prince, I said, with a little beard and bodyguards who have longer beards and guns as well and follow in a bigger boat when His Highness is on skis. Edna thinks they will dynamite the dock or drive a car bomb up to the veranda.
That’s Lebanese stuff. According to my father, Saudis are wimps.
Some wimps! That must be when they aren’t lapidating adulterers or cutting off the hands and feet of pickpockets! I have been told by a friend who lived there—I think in Jidda—that on Fridays adulterers are sewed in burlap bags up to the neck and then released in a public place. They waddle around like ducks. The authorities pre
pare neat piles of fist-sized rocks for the occasion, from which the faithful help themselves and start stoning!
He stared at me. I think that stopped a while ago.
Perhaps, but they were still at it in the sixties, I insisted. My friend, a very precise person, said he would first go to the barber to get a shave and then watch the executions. Saudis also like floggings. Then there is their fixation on hawking. Training hawks is a very cruel process. The eyelids of young birds are stitched closed, to make them blind, and therefore dependent on their owner. Then, when the bird’s dependency is judged sufficient, they cut the stitches open and real instruction begins.
Toby covered his eyes with his hands and turned away from me.
Stop, he said. I don’t want to think of these things. I guess the old man was joking or was wrong.
More likely he was only thinking of Saudis he meets in the casino!
Toby didn’t reply. From the other room, Charlie was calling us to the table. I brought myself to ask the question I had been avoiding.
How do you really feel?
He smiled. Pretty bad—or good. Depends on the day, and what you compare it with. But I’ll be all right.
I was seated next to Edwina Howe, whose rank if not age had given her the place of honor next to Charlie. On my own right was Toby. This was something of a surprise. I had, in fact, completely forgiven Toby such injury as there was to forgive, but how were he and Charlie to know it? It was tempting to conclude that their natures were trusting, in a way that mine was not. On the other hand, it was equally possible that they had not thought about my feelings, or were indifferent to them.
Edwina wore one of her habitual embroidered silk sheaths—associated in my mind with old photographs of Madame Chiang Kai-shek—that would have been a challenge to a woman half her years, but in fact revealed a shape at once trim and feminine. At seventy or more, Edwina had a bosom that was, as she might have said, sortable! Over beautifully stretched skin, she was made up as though to appear on stage; necklaces, bracelets, rings, and earrings of striking colors and great complexity were displayed from her neck plunging into her décolletage, on her wrists and fingers, and from her ears. “Howe paste” was Edwina’s name for her jewelry, as if to forestall any question about the provenance and nature of these cunning garnitures and, incidentally, to underline her disarming simplicity. The merest hint of an emerald tiara perched in her thinning but still quite red and well-organized hair. I wondered whether she entrusted the curling of this endangered part of her charms to a Lenox operator or had found Charlie’s birthday worth a rapid trip to New York.
Toby had turned his back on me to talk to a journalist. Edwina was in conversation with Charlie. Across the table, voices were raised in a debate about Pete Rose’s exclusion from baseball. Bart Giamatti had died the previous day, only one week after that decision was made. Was there a causal link between the two events? Had the heart attack been brought on by the stress the controversy had generated, or was it retribution for what Giamatti had done to Rose? The latter suggestion was shouted down: there had been no vendetta, the suggestion one might be “punished” by an illness was barbaric. Someone interjected: How about cholesterol and cigarettes? The publishing magnate wanted my opinion on whether Rose had had the benefit of due process. I answered, truthfully, that as I didn’t follow the game I had paid little attention to the proceedings. My answer was received with the scorn I had anticipated. I raised the ante: the only aspect of the Giamatti affair that had interested me was his decision, after he had resigned as president of Yale, to enter professional baseball.
Go back to the rule against perpetuities, you wet macaroon, boomed Charlie. That was the whole point of his departure. He wanted to run baseball!
Doubtless, I would have been remitted to my black hole if Charlie, now aroused about baseball, had not abruptly abandoned Edwina. We had not seen each other since my divorce. Without missing a beat she spoke to me.
We are so sorry about Camilla. It was lovely, especially for Ricky, to have her as a neighbor, and so unexpected!
I acquiesced.
You too, of course! Although we haven’t seen you nearly enough. Lawyers work too hard, even during their holidays. Dean always did. I am certain Foster did too, when he was in practice. But they always found time to be charming to everybody! Don’t you agree?
If you mean Dean Acheson and John Foster Dulles, I can’t tell. I didn’t know them.
What a pity! You would have liked them so much. Dean, especially, was always kind to young people. Such a tragedy!
You mean that Dulles turned out to be Acheson’s successor?
Young people today; that poor Toby.
She had not lowered her voice. Reflexively, I looked over my shoulder.
She reproved me: People never hear what’s said about them except if one whispers. You mustn’t allow yourself to be too busy to help out here. Charlie’s patience won’t last. I have known him for such a long time.
So have I.
There, then you understand. His kindness is skin-deep. We leave in two weeks, unfortunately.
Really.
She reviewed their travel plans for me. The inference to be drawn was that, if a large number of important people were not at risk of being seriously inconvenienced by a change in the program, she and Ricky might have stayed to succor Toby themselves.
Soon after I met them, Camilla had explained to me the Howes’ modus operandi. It had its roots in the high rate of English income tax, which led Ricky to choose Bermuda for his residence; Billington was out of the question, as it would have subjected Ricky’s personal fortune to American tax. The advent of Ronald Reagan and Mrs. Thatcher had changed the arithmetic, but not the noble couple’s habits. No longer accustomed to living under their own roof, except in the Berkshires, they had become highly adapted nomads—regular guests in the houses of the more sedentary rich—with patterns of migration as regular as those of certain birds Rick studied. In late September, they could be spotted at the house of an Oriental prince in Paris, subsequently, toward Christmas, on a commodity store magnate’s estate in Florida, then on a Central American island refuge of a family that owned the adjoining country, et cetera. This was an ecosystem of great delicacy. I sympathized with Edwina’s unwillingness to disturb it.
I will leave our addresses and telephone numbers, she promised. It would be dreadful to be without news.
The effect of Charlie’s habit of eating slowly, his imperturbable disregard of the empty plates of guests who had already been served twice, and the incompetence of the servers he had imported from Pittsfield was cumulative. We drank a heavy Italian red. Neither Charlie nor Ricky, who presided at the other end, paid attention to the general flow of the conversation. My attempt to attract Toby’s attention failed. I realized that unless I rose to make a toast I was in Edwina’s thrall for the rest of the evening—Charlie did not like leaving the table for coffee. It was my intention to make a toast, but I doubted that I had the right to go first. There were other people present whose initiative Charlie would find more flattering.
Meanwhile, Edwina returned to the subject of Camilla.
You do know that she is about to marry Roland?
No. Really?
Except for his age it does seem rather natural. They have always been so close. She has a good job and a little money of her own, and that will be a big help. Just as well the two of you didn’t have any children. Is it because you can’t?
I don’t know. I am not sure that I ever had an opportunity to find out.
Ricky can’t. So many men seem to be like that, but it’s women who get the blame!
The news about Camilla and Roland hurt, although, of course, it didn’t matter whether she married him or another. I was about to make my toast, after all, without having thought out what I would say, when Toby turned to me and whispered, Please help me get upstairs. I am not well.
A sort of bashfulness reinforced by its opposite, suppressed unhealthy curiosity
, had previously confined me to the ground floor of Charlie’s house. I had seen his bedroom only once, when he invited me to view the recently inherited Sargent portrait of a great-aunt he had installed there. On that occasion, I had also noted and admired his sculpted, blond art nouveau suite of furniture, particularly the bed, which recalled a giant seashell over which peeked smirking mermaids. It was large enough for two. Did Toby share it? Did he and Charlie lounge on the panther skins thrown over that aquatic couch? Leaning against me as I supported him with both arms, whimpering very softly, Toby said, No, not here, when I instinctively turned at the top of the stairs in the direction of Charlie’s room. It’s on the other side, at the end of the corridor.
This room was huge too, directly over the back flower garden. Unless this Victorian house had been built with two master bedrooms, they had surely added to Toby’s room an adjoining guest room. I deposited Toby in an armchair and asked what the matter was, what I should do to help.
It’s my eyes. Like black spots before me. I’m scared.
Are you fainting? Do you want a cold compress?
No, I’m so scared. I think I’m going blind.
I helped him climb on the bed and put pillows behind his back. All the while, he kept on making his little crying noises. I said I would leave him for just a moment, to get Charlie.
Don’t, not now. Maybe you should. Turn on the television. I want to be able to look.
