A Weekend in New York

by Benjamin Markovits

  ‘Nothing I want to repeat,’ Paul said.

  ‘But I thought you liked him.’

  ‘I did. I really liked him. But you can’t say that you like somebody in this context, it doesn’t mean anything. Even if it’s true. Even if you think it’s one of the nicest things you can say about somebody, I really liked the guy. And the fact is, the whole thing, you look around you, you’re in this big shiny mid-town hotel, and all these people are there, dressed up, and you recognize half of them because they’re more famous than you. And everybody is about as sad and genuinely moved as it’s humanly possible to be, given the setup. And the whole time I’m thinking, this is what it means to have an effect on the world. All these photographers, TV cameras, journalists and celebrities. You know, it was impressive and moving, but at the same time you want people breaking down and making a scene, so that they have to be carried out, just to show everybody what’s really going on here. Because Marcello’s dead. And then his sister got up to say something. They had a mike rigged up on a little stage where I guess the jazz band plays over Sunday brunch, and that’s what they had to do. They had to carry her off. She said, I don’t know what she said, I couldn’t hear her, but she started crying and then her daughter came up and did this funny thing. She had a little pink jacket in her hand and she covered her mom’s face with it, like her mom was some kind of criminal making her way through the court reporters, and led her off the stage. Which wasn’t easy, there were three or four steps. I don’t know what happened after that. But I thought, thank God for that.’

  Liesel said, ‘You can’t force a two-year-old boy to do something he doesn’t want to do.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘You can’t force someone to go to sleep.’

  ‘Oh you can force them to do plenty of things. You’re bigger than they are. You know better. It’s all force.’ He walked on a little and said, ‘Half of it’s force.’

  ‘It’s not fair on Dana to leave him like that.’

  ‘He was fine. He was basically asleep. In my experience, you get to a point in the evening where they’re so tired you have to pick a fight just to push them over the edge.’

  ‘This is why Dana wanted to put him to bed two hours ago.’

  And Paul turned towards his mother and said, sweetly and almost amused, ‘Are you trying to pick a fight with me?’ and Liesel thought, it’s true, he can be very patient.

  ‘Oh, I’m tired, too. I’m sorry. I worry about Dana.’

  Paul said, ‘She’s fine.’

  Michael’s apartment was on the fifth floor of a Gothic pale-stoned block two hundred feet shy of Central Park. The doorman, Eduardo, who knew Paul by name, gave them the key and helped Bill with his bags to the elevator, which opened up straight into the apartment itself. Then Paul spent a certain amount of time turning on lights. The sitting room was full of comfortable, expensive furniture, side tables with vases and busts, plants in brass pots and several Tiffany lamps, but the ceilings were high, there were French windows, and even with their bags left by the elevator door, it didn’t feel crowded. There was a marble fireplace with a spider plant growing out of the grate, and a kind of Roman frieze above the mantelpiece: loosely clothed women and boys dancing.

  Bill sat down heavily on one of the sofas. ‘So where does he watch TV?’ he said. He took off his shoes. ‘Jesus, I’m tired. Who is this guy?’

  ‘You don’t have to stay,’ Liesel said. ‘We’ll figure everything out.’

  ‘There’s a TV in the study, in one of the cabinets.’ For some reason, Paul wanted to talk about Michael, maybe for Dana’s sake, but he waited for another prompt and then went on anyway. ‘He runs a hedge fund; I think his grandfather was lieutenant governor of Virginia. They’re like American aristocrats, but Michael’s also one of these people who thinks that making a lot of money qualifies you as an intellectual.’

  ‘How well do you know him?’

  ‘I don’t know, I know him. I basically like him. He was honorable to Dana over the divorce. Everybody’s still friends. He makes an effort with me. That kind of thing.’

  ‘How do you meet someone like this?’ Liesel had for some reason taken indignantly against the apartment. She looked for the kitchen, which was tiny, really just a staging post for caterers, and came back with a glass of water. ‘Who can cook in a kitchen like that.’

  ‘I don’t think he cooks much. He orders in. He throws parties.’

  ‘Everything here is for show – he doesn’t care about the rest. It’s not a home, it’s a public space.’

  ‘Stop it,’ Bill said. And then, to his son: ‘You should go back. Get some sleep.’

  ‘Don’t say anything to Dana,’ Paul told his mother. ‘She’ll see it as a reflection on her.’

  ‘It reflects that she was lucky to get out. Did she live here, too, when they were married? No wonder she left.’

  Paul said, ‘She didn’t really leave. It wasn’t like that.’ He went into one of the bedrooms, and then another. There were several doors leading off the living room; he found the study and the television and turned it on and off. ‘I left the remote on the couch,’ he told his father. ‘It’s pretty straightforward. It doesn’t matter where you sleep. The beds are all made up.’

  ‘I’ll stay up for Jean,’ Liesel said.

  ‘I’m sure she can figure it out.’ He stood there for a moment looking at them both. Liesel had collapsed into an armchair. Bill was lying on the sofa, with his feet in their socks rubbing against each other and pointing upwards. ‘You okay, Dad?’

  ‘Terrific.’

  ‘Is there anything you want to do in New York?’

  ‘See you play.’

  ‘I mean like visiting Aunt Rose.’

  ‘Maybe I’ll do that, too.’

  ‘You can see her on Sunday.’

  ‘Or next week. It doesn’t matter.’

  ‘If you stick around.’

  ‘That’s right. Don’t worry about it.’

  His mother, with her gray hair and her brown face, slightly pink from tiredness, her large eyes, looked vulnerable without her glasses on. His father was in one of his slightly heavier phases, you could see it in his untucked shirt. Paul thought or felt something like, you’ve got to carry this body around year after year, without a break.

  ‘Let me know if there’s anything I can do for you.’

  Bill said, ‘You can get some sleep.’

  On the walk home, under the dripping sidewalk trees, seven or eight blocks, ten or twelve minutes, Paul felt childish, faintly contracted, as if the edge of his self had retreated a little behind his eyes but was looking out. The doorman was smoking under the arched entrance of his apartment block, and Paul tried to say one of those things you say in passing, funny or funny enough, but couldn’t think of anything so just nodded his head. In the elevator he caught sight of his reflection. What do you want? he said, half joking, almost angrily, out loud. Dana had gone to bed, but his heart beat very slightly faster to see the light still on in their bedroom – she lay among newspapers.

  ‘How was Cal?’ he said.

  ‘Fine. Tired.’

  ‘What have you been doing?’

  ‘I called my mother.’

  He changed and went to the bathroom and brushed his teeth, making more faces in the mirror. The mug they put their toothbrushes in was always too full, and his razor fell out when he put the brush back in. He caught it cleanly in his left hand; lately, this kind of thing had been happening again and again. Physically, at least, he seemed sharp, he seemed in tune with something. A few days before a tournament he tended to become sensitive to omens. Well, okay, maybe the signs were good. Then he climbed in next to Dana under the duvet. The papers rustled; she put the section she was reading down.

  ‘How did that go?’ he said.

  Something had shifted, she didn’t seem mad at him, or she had gotten over it, whatever that meant.

  ‘She’s reading your mother’s book.’

 
; ‘Is she? Does she like it?’

  ‘I think she does. She wanted to talk to me about it. She says it’s very personal.’

  ‘Well, it’s a memoir.’

  ‘That’s what I told her. It’s funny, my mother would never want to write about herself, but she’s been telling everyone she knows, my daughter’s mother-in-law has written this book. She even said to me, am I allowed to call her that? She thinks you guys must all be obsessed with it, and I told her, I don’t even think you’ve read it.’

  ‘I’ve read it.’

  ‘You have not read it.’

  ‘I know the stories anyway. She told them to us when we were kids.’

  ‘You should read it. It’s very—’

  ‘Okay,’ he said, which is what he usually said when he wanted to close off a conversation. Dana looked at him. Lately their mood changes had not kept pace with each other, but for once she decided not to worry about it. Talking to her mother had cheered her up – she was an upbeat, narrow-minded, but also intelligent woman. One didn’t complain, there was nothing wrong with conventional views. It was useful sometimes for Dana to remember, the Essingers were a funny family.

  ‘Do you know,’ she said, ‘for a second tonight, I thought your dad was propositioning me.’ Paul stared at her, and she went on, ‘He looked me right in the eyes, and said,’ – but here she began to laugh helplessly, she was trying to do his voice – ‘Listen, I’m only going to say this once. Let me pay for a hotel.’

  ‘What was he talking about?’

  She could hardly get the words out. ‘He wanted you to—’

  ‘Just say it.’

  ‘—sleep at a hotel. So you – could get some sleep.’

  ‘But I don’t want to sleep at a hotel,’ he said at last.

  ‘Well …’

  ‘Don’t make me sleep at a hotel,’ he said, pulling her towards him. They lay like that for a minute with the lights on, until Dana could breathe again and wipe the tears from her face.

  SATURDAY

  Michael’s apartment had a wide though impractical balcony running off the living room, through French doors. There were slender-limbed trees outside. From the sofa, you could just see their green tips, silently restless in the morning breeze. If you opened the doors (the key was sticky in the lock) and stepped onto the balcony and leaned over the balustrade you could almost touch them. From that position, you might also be able to make out Central Park itself, over the arch of leaves – more green trees rising on a hill.

  Liesel leaned and looked. Bill had gone out to get milk and a newspaper; Jean was still asleep. This is the kind of thing Liesel wanted from living in New York: the ordinary business of life, the way it involves you in the city. Buying a Times from the concession stand on the corner, watching the joggers on their way to Central Park. She had made her peace with the apartment, too. Though it puzzled her still, the strength of her reaction; she was tired but that didn’t quite explain it. Poor Dana, she thought, aware that a part of what she felt had to do with the way Paul seemed to be treating her.

  When Bill came back, with bagels and fresh orange juice, and babka muffins (he’d gone all the way to Zabar’s), she looked in on Jean. But the girl was still fast asleep, lying with one leg hanging over the edge of the bed and the sheets twisted under her. Girl – she was twenty-nine years old. Her calves were stippled with small black hairs; she needed to shave them. And her toenails were painted bright green. Liesel could see them on the dangling foot, the little nails neatly colored in, like the drawing of a careful kid, the flesh surrounding them pink and perfectly clean. But green … it’s a color you choose when you aren’t very confident about your looks, and so make a joke of the whole thing.

  Even when they were little, Liesel liked nothing more than watching her kids in bed. There’s a personality in sleep, you can see it in the face, which is somehow a hundred percent likable – in the day, in their waking selves, the percentage drops a little. They resent you, they’re busy, they show off. But at night, asleep, there’s a kind of concentration or focus, and what’s left is … regular breathing, REM. Liesel used to go into their rooms and look at them for a half-minute; it was part of her bedtime routine. The love she felt had a lot of pity mixed in. Poor thing, she thought, watching their eyelids flicker. It was like some kind of torture, subjecting these kids to a constant stream of images. I guess it happens to all of us. But Jean got nightmares, she often crawled into their bed, and Liesel let her, though she never let the others. Because Jean was the baby, probably. You had to be careful what she watched on TV. It was difficult to police, Nathan was nine years older, you couldn’t expect him to put up with endless cartoons.

  She walked out again and said to Bill, who was setting out plates and glasses, ‘We’re meeting for brunch at eleven.’

  ‘That’s okay.’

  ‘You won’t be hungry then.’

  ‘I can sit there, who cares.’

  ‘I care. The point is eating together.’

  ‘But I got all this food,’ he said. And she let it go. She found a breadboard in the kitchen and brought it out – Bill cut the muffins in half and started eating.

  ‘Aren’t you going to wake Jean?’ he said, with a full mouth.

  ‘She was sleeping, I don’t know. Let her sleep.’

  ‘What time did she get in last night?’

  ‘A little after eleven. She woke me up. I was asleep in the chair.’

  ‘What time is it now?’

  ‘A little after nine.’ Liesel poured herself some juice and went on, ‘I got an email this morning from a woman at the Village Voice – some woman my editor knows. She heard I was in town and wants to interview me.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘Just something for the blog; it doesn’t matter.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter if it doesn’t matter. You should do it.’

  ‘Well, we have to make a time. I don’t want it to be a distraction.’

  ‘It’s not a distraction for anybody else.’

  ‘If I had this much money in New York,’ she said, ‘I would want a balcony.’

  ‘There is a balcony.’

  ‘I mean somewhere you can sit.’

  ‘You can sit on the balcony if you put out a chair.’

  ‘Maybe Dana can. I can’t.’

  ‘Why Dana?’

  ‘She’s very small.’

  ‘She’s six foot.’

  ‘Well, she’s very skinny. All of Paul’s girlfriends were always so skinny.’

  ‘What’s that got to do with it?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘When were you planning on waking her up?’

  ‘You go,’ Liesel said.

  After Bill left, she took one of the muffin halves and walked to the balcony with it, opened the French doors and stood outside, eating. It had rained some more in the night, heavily at times; the parked cars looked recently cleaned. The air was heating up, but the sunshine, coming over the apartment block on the south side of the street, hadn’t reached them yet. Bill thought that one of the reasons she wanted to move to New York was professional. She had an agent now and an editor, she had started to write a few pieces for the Times Book Review, there were parties she could go to. He didn’t object, not at all, but he pointed it out as a reason she had that he didn’t, for moving to New York. But she didn’t like parties, she said, she didn’t want to go to any parties, and was sure at least that that part of her explanation was honest. Why shouldn’t you go to parties, he said. You might meet someone useful. Because I don’t want to go. Somehow the argument always got twisted around.

  But she didn’t mind any of that, just standing there on the balcony, looking out over 83rd Street. She was basically very happy, she could hear Bill singing, There she is, Miss America, to wake Jean up. In his deep, almost comically deep singing voice; his mother thought he could have been a cantor. There she is, your ideal. One of her little reproaches, for marrying his son, when she wasn’t Jewish. It didn’t matter now. His mo
ther was dead. They had made their peace with each other, all three of them, before she died. And the only thing that bothered Liesel, a little, was that thread of selfishness in her happiness, the thought of talking to the woman at the Village Voice, which very slightly offset her worries about Paul.

  *

  Jean was already half-sitting up in bed, with her hands behind her head on the pushed-up pillow.

  ‘I’m up, I’m up,’ she said, but Bill kept going:

  The dream of a million gals who are more than pretty, Can come true in Atlantic City.

  ‘I’m up.’

  ‘How are you doing? How’d you sleep?’

  ‘I don’t know. By the time I got in I had kind of pushed through the sleep window and come out the other side. So I just lay there reading. And then it was like, somebody knocked me out cold.’

  ‘There’s babka muffins.’

  ‘That’s what I came for, Dad.’

  Her accent had shifted slightly in England, and she overcompensated now by exaggerating a little her Jewishness – you could hear both London and New York. Austin was in the mix, too … she was hard to place.

  ‘All right, I’ll leave you alone. We’re meeting the others for brunch at eleven.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Everybody but Susie and the kids.’

  ‘When are they coming down?’

  ‘Tomorrow.’

  ‘On her own? What about David?’

  ‘Who knows,’ Bill said. ‘Nobody tells me anything.’

  Since leaving college, seven years before, Jean had become aware of a couple of things: that she was unusually close to her family, and that her family were odd. There was a quiet contradiction in recognizing both at once, which she dealt with by presenting a cheerful front whenever she saw them. It let them in and kept them out at the same time, but didn’t always last very long.

  ‘What do you think of this apartment?’

  Bill looked around. ‘Cheap at half the price.’

  ‘If I were Dana, I think I’d have stuck it out with this guy.’

  ‘Well, there’s something to what you say. I’m not sure it was her choice.’