A Weekend in New York

by Benjamin Markovits

  Jean pushed the covers off and swung her legs over the side of the bed.

  ‘What time is it? Do I have time to shower?’

  She was wearing boxer shorts and a T-shirt. Bill felt vaguely uncomfortable around his daughters’ bodies; he felt a kind of shame, not for his own sake but for theirs. Something had happened to them since they were kids and used to climb on his lap. He didn’t have the same reaction to the boys.

  ‘You have time. Almost ten.’

  Jean wouldn’t have taken off her shirt in front of her father, but she wouldn’t have asked him to turn around either. She didn’t have to, because he walked out. The bathroom was just outside her door, down half a corridor, and she undressed and tucked a thick white towel under her armpits. Barefoot, feeling first the tacky wood-stained floorboards of the hallway, then the cool black-and-white tiles of the bathroom, then the faintly resonant cast iron of the tub, she got in the shower. The pressure seemed good, especially after England, and she closed her eyes against the heat. Her hair went smooth and lank; she pulled the water through it.

  Always the side effect of closing her eyes was that the consciousness of other people began to press against her. Henrik in England, though he was probably on a plane to Split right now, or already there. His wife’s family owned a beach house near Vranjic, and Jean tried to picture him going about his day. They had an old boat, Henrik was good with his hands. The boys spent as much time as they could in the water, he took them fishing. They ate their meals outside and poured honey into empty wine bottles to keep the wasps away. For whatever reason, he got on well with his wife’s Croatian relatives, the men at least. Everybody relaxed.

  Why he had told her these things, who knows. It was his habit to explain himself calmly on all subjects, to make no distinction between public and private, or personal and impersonal. At least this is what Jean said to him. Instead of expressing jealousy, she analyzed his character, but it came down to the same thing. Eventually they both admitted this, and Henrik did his best to comfort her. In those early days, everything, even guilt, could serve as an excuse. Though now that she was here, in New York, trying to wash the jet lag away, and with her parents in the next room, she really couldn’t tell how jealous she felt. It was like testing a wound; she seemed okay. And that worried her, too. Because in that case, if it didn’t matter much …

  Over breakfast she argued with her mother about the apartment. It started out as teasing and almost turned into something else. ‘Check out the real estate,’ Jean had said. Liesel couldn’t keep out the disapproval in her voice, and Jean reacted against her mother’s disapproval. Really she was taking Paul’s side. But Bill eventually shut them up – he hated being late and waited at the elevator door for two or three minutes, pressing the button, until his wife and daughter were ready to go.

  Out in the street, Liesel said, ‘I’m worried about Dana.’

  ‘What’s wrong with Dana?’

  ‘I don’t think she has enough to do with herself. You go a little crazy.’

  ‘She has a two-year-old kid.’

  ‘That’s what I mean. It’s a lot of work.’

  ‘You’re not making any sense.’

  ‘Tell me about it,’ Bill said.

  ‘They’ve got Inez to look after him,’ Jean said.

  ‘That’s what I mean. She doesn’t know what to do with herself. She goes to the gym, I don’t know what she does. And Paul doesn’t help.’

  ‘What’s wrong with going to the gym?’

  ‘Nothing, but you can’t spend your life this way.’

  ‘What do you think Paul does for a living?’

  ‘I’m talking about him, too.’

  ‘You’re not making any sense.’

  Liesel looked at her daughter. ‘You’re supposed to be my sympathetic child.’

  ‘I’m being sympathetic. I’m pointing things out.’

  ‘Well, I don’t know,’ she said. ‘I’m just trying to talk, to say something. There’s something I don’t like going on.’

  ‘I’m sure it’s fine. He always gets funny before a big tournament.’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘He’s not the one I’d be worried about, if I were you.’

  ‘Who should I worry about?’

  ‘Don’t worry about anybody,’ Jean said, taking Liesel’s arm. Bill was never physically affectionate with his wife; she relied on her daughters, and now that they were all grown up….

  ‘I miss you in England.’

  ‘Don’t say that,’ Jean said. ‘How do you think I feel?’

  *

  Paul and Dana and Cal were waiting outside the restaurant, MaBelle’s on Amsterdam and 81st. The sky looked recently swept, the air felt cool and humid. It must have rained heavily overnight. The awning still dripped and the plastic surfaces of the outdoor tables and chairs were covered in beads. Cal was in his stroller, not quite asleep but glassy-eyed. Dana rolled him back and forth without thinking. Jean, when she saw the boy, went straight to him and crouched down. ‘Hey, kid. Remember me?’

  ‘Maybe let him be.’ Paul was hovering. ‘He’s almost asleep.’

  ‘It’s okay,’ Dana said, but Jean stood up anyway and gave her brother a hug. She wore black jeans and black Converse, like a teenager. Her white T-shirt had a grid of numbers on it; they seemed random, but maybe they weren’t. It looked like a math geek thing. Around her family she almost consciously regressed. It was a relief, it felt less like regression than a return to normality.

  ‘Who chose this place? It’s so Upper West Side.’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘Expensive and pseudo-homey.’

  ‘Dana,’ Paul said.

  Dana made her not-really-offended-but-protesting face. ‘What, I like it. I like the jam. We needed somewhere that could sit a party of nine.’

  ‘Party party,’ Jean said. ‘I’m just being a snob. Ignore me.’

  There were two sets of glass doors leading in; a couple seemed to be waiting in the space between them, and Bill pushed his way past them and looked inside, then came out again. ‘Do we have a reservation?’

  ‘So what kind of place do you go to in London?’ Dana asked.

  ‘I don’t go out much, it’s too expensive. I like English breakfasts, so I go to greasy spoons. But my friends have a thing for upmarket pseudo-American diners.’ After a moment, she added, ‘Pseudo seems to be my word of the day.’

  ‘We’ve got a reservation,’ Dana said. ‘But they won’t seat us until we’re all here.’

  ‘Someone should tell them we’re here.’

  ‘What about Nathan?’

  ‘He’ll be late.’

  Liesel stood up for her eldest child. ‘He’s gotten better.’

  ‘Shouldn’t you be out hitting balls or something?’ Jean said to Paul.

  He was stretching his neck, turning his shoulders from side to side – motions that made him look relaxed but were really an expression of nerves. ‘I went for a run this morning. I’ll hit some balls this afternoon.’

  ‘They’re going to give up our table,’ Bill said. ‘Tell them your mother needs to sit down.’

  ‘I’m fine.’

  ‘Okay, then I need to sit down.’

  Jean put her arm around her father. ‘It’s fine. It’s a beautiful morning. We’re all standing in the street, catching up, like a happy family.’

  ‘If we’re waiting for Nathan, we might as well forget about it.’

  Jean said, ‘For five minutes, you can stop worrying.’

  Dana liked Jean – she often said what Dana wanted to say on family occasions. Of all the Essingers, Jean was the one she might have been friends with independently. This is what she told herself. Of course, a certain amount of intimacy had been given to them for free by their relation to Paul. But they had other things in common. Jean smoked socially, when none of her family was looking. She had lived in England long enough to pick it up, more as a social skill than a habit; and Dana had always belonge
d to the kind of rich fun crowds that treated smoking the same way. Sometimes, at very boring family parties, they snuck off and shared a cigarette. It stood for other things, too, an attitude to good times. Bill and Liesel hadn’t taught their children to value pleasure. This is one of the things Dana sometimes fought about with Paul. She considered Jean an ally in these fights.

  ‘How was your flight?’ she said.

  ‘It was a flight.’

  Bill bent down to stare at his grandson in the stroller. ‘Cal’s gonzo.’

  ‘What about lunch? If he sleeps now, he misses lunch.’

  ‘Don’t worry about it, Paul,’ Dana said. ‘Last night you weren’t so worried about his sleep.’

  ‘I want him to see his cousins.’

  ‘That’s assuming the cousins ever show up,’ Bill said.

  He was in a better mood now, still pacing, but somehow pleasantly restless. Sometimes all it took was a joke to cheer him up – one of his own, to turn anxiety into good humor. He checked out the menus by the side of the door and watched the food being served at the window tables.

  Paul noticed Jean’s shirt. ‘Fibonacci sequence?’

  ‘No. So how much money should I put on you?’

  ‘You can’t bet on sports in the state of New York.’

  ‘In London I can bet on anything.’

  ‘What odds are they giving me?’

  ‘Who’s got a phone?’ Jean said. ‘I don’t want roaming charges.’

  Dana looked in her handbag, but it was a mess – diapers and creams and bottles and little packets of biscuits and fruit roll-ups. She began taking them out, one by one.

  ‘By the way, I like American diner food,’ Paul said.

  There were little frictions he forgot about when his family were absent. Not frictions, exactly, but you felt a kind of pressure to assert your own opinions. Which meant you had to have an opinion in the first place – you needed to come prepared. Dana sometimes complained about this fact. She said he idealized his family, nobody could live up to them, but then, in their presence, he went silent or picked stupid fights. Not stupid fights, Paul told her once, this is just what intimacy looks like. You wouldn’t know, you’re an only child. Which started off a very stupid fight.

  ‘But you wouldn’t spend ten pounds on a hamburger,’ Jean said.

  ‘What do you think you spend around here? Fifteen, twenty bucks.’

  ‘But do they serve it in those cheap plastic baskets with check-tablecloth-style grease paper?’

  ‘Sure, some places.’

  ‘I don’t know, the whole thing bugs me somehow. England has this ridiculous relationship to America, where they basically hate us for legitimate political reasons, and then they spend like twenty pounds for two small pancakes and some scrambled eggs and lox on the side. Which is not what you would get in any actual American short-order joint. They conflate diner breakfast with Upper West Side brunch …’

  ‘Who says short-order joint anymore?’ Paul asked.

  This pulled her up short. ‘Assholes like me.’

  ‘Here’s my phone.’ Dana passed it to Jean and started reassembling her handbag – she had spread the contents precariously over the cover of Cal’s stroller.

  ‘Okay, let’s check out what Paddy Power has to say. Paul Essinger to win the US Open.’

  ‘Don’t do that,’ Liesel said, sitting down. She had found a packet of tissues in her coat and used most of them on one of the plastic chairs.

  ‘Paul doesn’t care. Do you care, Paul?’

  ‘I don’t care.’

  ‘I care. Dana, stop them from doing this, please.’

  ‘I can’t stop any of you guys from doing anything.’

  ‘Shades of former lateness,’ Paul said, because Nathan had arrived. He wore a dark gray suit, cut to hide an extra twenty pounds, and a pale green shirt from Gieves & Hawkes on Savile Row. Expensive clothes but he didn’t look after them. The old leather briefcase he carried under his arm had a broken handle. Maybe he was two inches taller than Paul, closer to six four than six three. Bill sometimes thought, if Paul had those two extra inches, who knows …

  ‘What are you talking about?’ Nathan said. ‘I was told eleven o’clock.’

  His kids, two girls, had been walking behind him. They came up and stood by their father’s side, in the shade of his protection.

  Bill looked at his watch; he had to shake out his arm, and pull up the sleeves of his sports jacket, and turn the strap around on his wrist. ‘Eleven seventeen and … thirty seconds.’

  ‘That’s within the margin of error,’ Nathan said. He was a big man who didn’t know what to do with his bigness. Yet at the same time it was an attractive quality and suggested force or gravitas and not only that but generosity. With his long arms, he could tap you on the shoulder from a distance; his hair, still full, waved in the wind. Almost forty, approaching middle age, he looked both younger and older – a little wild but also somehow well established, and very much at home on the streets of New York.

  ‘Whose error?’

  ‘I don’t care,’ Liesel said. ‘Tell them we’re here. I need another coffee. Where’s Clémence?’

  ‘Montreal. Visiting her sister.’

  ‘She’s not coming?’

  ‘You knew this,’ Bill told her.

  ‘Hey, Julie, hey Margot,’ Jean said.

  She bent down to her nieces, playing the jolly aunt. Jean hadn’t seen them since Christmas and always felt a kind of reproach in the way they changed, as if she hadn’t been paying attention. Which of course she hadn’t. Margot at least was still Margot, five years old and someone you could read to, if you couldn’t think of anything else to say, but Julie must have grown three or four inches in the past eight months. If you didn’t know her you could almost see her as a teenager. Still just ten, but in a transitional state, she had responded to what she couldn’t control by cutting her hair very short. A razor cut. Straightening up, Jean ran her hand through the bristle, and Julie flinched or shrugged.

  ‘It looks good,’ Jean said, hurt. Her niece wore a flowery little-girl dress and big black heavy Dr Martens boots.

  ‘What are you doing on the phone?’ she asked.

  ‘Seeing if your uncle Paul’s going to win.’

  ‘You can’t find that out on a phone,’ Julie said. She had learned to respond matter-of-factly to anything that resembled condescension and Jean felt (as she often felt around other people’s kids) slightly foolish. Not quite a grown-up and not quite one of them.

  ‘I used to wear that dress,’ she said. An old Laura Ashley design – pink roses with stems and thorns on a limeade-colored background. The material had faded like a photograph with repeated washings.

  ‘I know.’ People were always telling Julie things they had told her before.

  ‘I remember when I got it. It was so long I could stand on the hems and pretend I didn’t have any legs.’

  ‘That doesn’t make sense. Why did Liesel buy it if it was too big?’

  Nathan’s children called their parents and grandparents by their first names. It was a part of the way they were raised – to treat everybody as equals.

  ‘I got it from Susie. It was a hand-me-down.’

  ‘Listen,’ Nathan said. ‘We should go in and eat. I’ve booked a couple of viewings for one o’clock.’

  The Essingers had reached the stage of family evolution when the oldest child begins to take charge. Nathan in full flow had a lot of energy, for work, for good times, for argument; for sympathy, too. There were so many things needing his attention, and he liked a full dance card, as his father put it.

  Liesel called out from her chair: ‘What do you mean, viewings?’

  ‘Apartments for you to look at.’

  Bill stopped pacing. ‘Who’s buying a place in New York?’

  ‘Maybe you are, Dad.’

  ‘Twelve hundred to one,’ Jean said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘The odds they’re giving for Pauly to win the Op
en.’

  ‘Where are these apartments?’

  ‘I have to look it up.’

  ‘Put me down for a dollar,’ Bill said. ‘If he wins, I’ll buy an apartment in New York.’

  ‘You’ll need to put down a little more than that. Let’s say a grand.’

  Paul smiled and shook his head. ‘Those are not reasonable odds.’

  He helped his mother up; she had reached out both hands to him, and he felt how warm and wrinkled they were. Liesel looked at Jean indignantly. ‘I didn’t want you to do this.’

  ‘What. They’re better odds than I’ve got.’

  ‘That’s not what I mean,’ Paul said. ‘There’s no point in putting odds on something that’s not going to happen.’

  ‘What’s not going to happen?’

  ‘I’m not going to win the Open.’

  ‘You don’t know that,’ Bill said.

  ‘I know it. What are the odds on my first-round match? That’s a reasonable bet to make.’

  Dana broke in: ‘Has someone told the waiter we’re here?’

  ‘Let’s change the subject,’ Liesel said. ‘What kind of apartments?’

  ‘One of them is a brownstone—’

  ‘I’ll tell them,’ Paul said, but Dana had beaten him to it and escaped inside.

  Nathan kept going. ‘Two bedrooms, it’s got a working fireplace. No real balcony, but there’s a fire escape at the back, with a window in front of it. Maybe you can climb out.’

  ‘Your mother’s not climbing out anywhere.’

  ‘The other apartment is less nice, but there’s a doorman and the balcony is unusually large. You’re high up, though. I can’t tell from the website whether it’s the kind of place you’d want to sit, or whether people just put their bicycles out there.’

  ‘We’re not going to have any bicycles,’ Bill said.

  ‘You know what I mean.’

  ‘I can’t understand this.’ Jean was thumbing at her phone. ‘There’s a plus minus number next to your names.’

  ‘What are the numbers?’

  ‘He’s plus 450. You’re minus 200. Is that good?’

  Nathan shifted the broken briefcase from his right arm to his left. He said, ‘That’s not particularly good,’ and opened the case one-handed to take something out – a small blue academic diary. He had to dig around. ‘The brownstone is on 84th Street, between Amsterdam and Columbus. The other one’s on 86th, closer to Riverside. What do you think, Paul, a five-minute walk between them?’