Someday This Pain Will Be Useful to You: A Novel

by Peter Cameron

  The woman looked at it and then showed it to her companion, pointing to the price with a highly developed nail lacquered red.

  “They are all available?” she asked.

  I said they were.

  “Not one has been sold?” she asked.

  “There has been much interest,” I said. “We are holding some. But no sales yet. Is there a particular one you are interested in?”

  “The number 5 is very nice, we think.”

  “Ah, yes,” I said, “that’s my favorite.”

  “It is the best, you think?”

  “Yes. I believe it is the artist’s favorite, too.”

  “It is good,” said woman. “Very good. We may return here. You have a card for us?”

  I handed them one of the gallery’s cards. “Would you like to join our mailing list?” I asked, indicating the guest book.

  “Ja,” she said. “Of course. Although probably we are already there.”

  She signed the book, and handed the pen back to me. It was a Waterman fountain pen; my mother thought it was very classy to have such a pen, but of course people were always trying to walk out with it, so it made things very difficult. Whenever anyone signed the book I had to watch them and make sure I got the pen back. I thought the resultant asking for the pen back pretty much countered any classy aspect it provided, but my mother was undeterred.

  Later that afternoon, when I returned to the gallery with John’s snack, my mother was standing at the front desk, going through her bag. My mother spends much of her life going through her bag. She always carries around these huge bags in which she stows everything and can never find anything.

  “My sunglasses have disappeared,” she announced. “As soon as I find them, I’m leaving. Do you want to walk home with me?”

  “It’s only four o’clock,” I said.

  “Yes, and it’s a Friday afternoon in July. Anyone who is even remotely interested in art has already left the borough. Is that for John? Tell him he can leave, too.”

  I brought the frothy and expensive beverage in to John. “She says you can leave,” I said. I could tell by the intent way he was looking at his computer screen he was gent4genting.

  “Great,” he said. “I’ll be right behind you. Just finishing up some work.”

  “Have a good weekend,” I said.

  “You too.”

  My mother had miraculously found her sunglasses and we left the gallery and walked down the hall and waited for the freight elevator, which is the only elevator in the building and is operated by friendly men who relish their ability to dawdle and delay gallery folk.

  Out on the street we turned west and walked the one block to the West Side Highway. We waited for the light to change and then walked over to the Hudson River promenade, which was, at this hour, teeming with Rollerbladers, bicyclists, and joggers: a sort of mobile, healthy happy hour.

  It was nice, though, walking along the river. We passed a cart selling frozen lemonades and my mother bought us each one. “Did you have lunch with your father today?” she asked me.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Did you tell him about me?”

  “Yes.”

  “I wish you wouldn’t do that, James. He doesn’t need to know every little thing that happens in my life.”

  “I don’t think that’s a little thing,” I said.

  “You know what I mean,” she said. “Where did he take you?”

  “The partners’ dining room.”

  “My God, you can’t even get a decent lunch out of that man. Do they let women in there yet?”

  “I guess,” I said. “As long as they’re partners.”

  “Which, of course, they are not,” said my mother. “What did you have?”

  Like so many people who eat the majority of their meals in restaurants, my mother is always curious about what other people ordered other places. “Penne,” I said. “With fresh basil and heirloom tomatoes.”

  “Was it good?”

  “Yes,” I said. I thought about telling her what my father had said about pasta, but I decided to skip it.

  “I had lunch at Florent with Frances Sharpe. Did you know her daughter goes to Brown?”

  “No,” I said.

  “Yes,” said my mother. “Olivia Dark-Sharpe. She’s going to be a junior. Unfortunately she’s spending her junior year in Honduras. Apparently Brown has some program there, where you teach crafts to the natives.”

  “Shouldn’t it be the other way around?”

  “What do you mean?” my mother asked.

  “Why do Honduran people need Brown students to teach them how to make crafts?”

  “Frances explained it to me. Apparently the crafts they make are no good. So this program gets them making crafts that can be sold abroad, like tote bags and scented candles and soaps.”

  “Well, I can’t wait for my junior year.”

  “Don’t be smart, James. Frances says Olivia adores Brown.”

  “Adores?”

  “Yes: adores. What’s wrong with that?”

  “I don’t know. I just think it’s a little weird to adore a college.”

  “Sometimes I can’t stand you, James. You’re so reluctant to show any enthusiasm about anything, or even allow it in other people. It’s very annoying, and immature.”

  “That’s not true,” I said. “I’m enthusiastic about many things.”

  “Such as?”

  “Well, that house I showed you last night, for instance.”

  “What house?”

  “The house in Kansas. With the sleeping porch.”

  “Well, since that has absolutely no bearing on your life, it hardly counts. What in your life are you enthusiastic about? What do you adore?”

  “I adore Trollope,” I said. “And Denton Welch and Eric Rohmer.”

  “Who’s Denton Welch?”

  “A brilliant writer. He was British, and he wanted to be a painter, but when he was eighteen or something he got run over by a car while bicycling and became a permanent invalid who couldn’t paint, so he began writing.”

  “That sounds morbid. Although I do admire people who make the best of adversities.”

  “He was an amazing writer. You shouldn’t make fun of him.”

  “I’m not,” said my mother. “But, James, those are all cultural things—books and films—it’s easy to like them. It’s easy to like art. It’s liking life that’s important. Anyone can like the Sistine Chapel.”

  “I hate the Sistine Chapel,” I said. “I hate that Michelangelo had to waste his talent pandering to the Roman Catholic Church.”

  “Well, fine—hate the Sistine Chapel. But like something real.”

  “You don’t think books are real?”

  “You know what I mean—something that isn’t created. Something that exists.”

  “I would like the old Penn Station, but it doesn’t exist anymore.”

  “Well, what about Grand Central? Grand Central Station is wonderful, and thanks to Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, it still exists.”

  “Well, I do like Grand Central. But you can’t live there.”

  “Of course you can’t live there! What, you won’t be happy unless you live in Grand Central Station? That doesn’t bode well, my dear.”

  I didn’t answer. I knew my mother was right, but that didn’t change the way I felt about things. People always think that if they can prove they’re right, you’ll change your mind.

  We walked for a while in silence and then my mother said, “What’s new with your father?”

  I thought about telling her about my father’s elective cosmetic surgery, which would have delighted her, but decided not to. The only way my parents ever find things out about each other is through Gillian and me, but since my mother had scolded me for disclosing her marriage debacle, I saw no reason to cooperate. So I said, “Nothing.”

  “Are you going out to East Hampton this weekend?” she asked.

  “I don’t think so,” I said. “
I think I’ll go see Nanette tomorrow.”

  Nanette is my grandmother: my mother’s mother. She lives in Hartsdale and she’s probably my favorite person. She’s called Nanette because she thinks it sounds more sophisticated than Grandma or Nana, and plus she understudied the star (I think it was Debbie Reynolds, but I’m not sure) in some revival of No, No, Nanette in the seventies. For many years she was a panelist on a TV game show called You Don’t Say. She got to wear a different dress every day, all provided by some department store. She often refers to herself as “the poor man’s Kitty Carlisle Hart.”

  “Do me a favor,” my mother continued. “Don’t tell Nanette about Barry and me. She’ll find out soon enough and I’d like a few days of peace and quiet before she begins haranguing me.”

  “What if she asks me?”

  “What if she asks you what?”

  “About you and Mr. Rogers?”

  “She won’t ask. You know she never asks about me. She doesn’t even think about me.”

  “Well, if she does ask, what should I say? Do you want me to lie?”

  “Believe me, James,” my mother said. “She won’t ask.”

  Later that night I was sitting on the couch in the living room with Miró trying to complete the New York Times crossword puzzle that my mother had left three-quarters finished, but since it was Friday and basically impossible I wasn’t making much progress. My mother had gone to bed. About eleven o’clock Gillian and Herr Schultz came in from seeing some stupid movie. I don’t understand how supposedly intelligent people—say a professor at Columbia University and a student at Barnard College—can go see a movie like Pirates of the Caribbean. Gillian went into the kitchen and came out with a bottle of Peroni beer for her and a diet, caffeine-free Coke for Rainer Maria. “Do you want a beer?” Gillian asked, but she waited until she had come into the room and sat down before asking this question, which implied I should say no.

  I did (say no).

  “How was the movie?” I asked.

  “It was great,” said Gillian. “At least the part we saw. But somebody started a fire in the theater, so we had to leave. They gave us free passes.”

  “I don’t know why you would go see a movie like that on Friday night in New York,” I said. “It’s like going to hell.”

  “Get a life, James,” said Gillian.

  “Children, don’t bicker,” said Herr Schultz. “I get enough of that at home.” Rainer Maria was married and had several alarmingly blond children. His wife, Kirsten, taught Scandinavian languages at Columbia (I’m sure there was huge demand for that) and wrote a series of mystery novels featuring a Swedish transsexual detective (female → male). Kirsten was having an affair with her former therapist. She and Rainer Maria had an “open” marriage. (I know all this because Gillian told me.)

  “Guess what?” I said to Gillian.

  “What?” she said.

  “Dad’s having plastic surgery this weekend.”

  “Cool. What’s he getting done?”

  “He’s having the bags under his eyes removed.”

  “It’s about time,” said Gillian. “He’s beginning to look like Walter Matthau. So that means he won’t be at the house this weekend?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  She turned to Rainer Maria. “Do you want to go to the beach tomorrow, sweetie?”

  “No,” he said. “I hate the beach. And please don’t call me sweetie.”

  “Are you going out there?” Gillian asked me.

  “No,” I said. “I’m going to see Nanette tomorrow.”

  “You’re so weird.”

  “Fuck you,” I said.

  “Children, children,” said Rainer Maria.

  “Well, don’t you think it’s weird?” Gillian asked Rainer Maria. “An eighteen-year-old boy who visits his grandmother?”

  “No,” said Rainer Maria. “You Americans have so little family feeling. In Germany, it is different. We love our grandparents.”

  “I’m not saying you shouldn’t love them,” said Gillian. “I just think visiting them is weird. It will be so good for you to go away to school, James. You really have to get out of this house.”

  “I’ve decided I’m not going to college,” I said.

  “What? Since when?”

  “Today.”

  “What do you mean, you’re not going to college? What are you going to do?”

  “I’m thinking about moving to the Midwest.”

  “The Midwest? The Midwest of what?”

  “The United States,” I said. “The prairie states.”

  “The prairie states? I think you’ve read My Ántonia one too many times.”

  “Hush, Gillian. I think this is a very good plan for you, James,” said Rainer Maria. “The college experience in the United States is a farce.”

  “Hello!” said Gillian. “You teach in a college.”

  “My dear Gillian, if everyone had to believe in the work he did, not much would get done in the world,” said Rainer Maria.

  “Have you told Mom about this?”

  “I mentioned it to her.”

  “What do you mean, mentioned it? How can you mention you’re not going to college a month before you’re set to go?”

  “I mentioned it. I think she thought I was joking.”

  “I’m sure she did. What’s wrong with you? Why don’t you want to go to college?”

  “I think it would be a waste of time, and I wouldn’t like the people. I don’t want to live with people like that.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like you.”

  “I think you make a lot of sense, James,” said Rainer Maria.

  Gillian hit him. “What do you mean? He just said he didn’t want to live with people like me.”

  “I mean about it being a waste of time, and I don’t think James would like the people, and that’s no reflection on you, my dear.”

  Gillian finished her beer and stood up. “I’m hungry,” she said. “Let’s go get something to eat.”

  “All right,” said Rainer Maria. “But someplace quiet. And cheap.”

  “Let’s go to Primo.”

  “Primo is neither quiet nor cheap,” said R.M.

  I stood up. “I’m going to bed.”

  “Yes, you better rest up,” said Gillian. “You have a big day tomorrow.”

  “Will you take Miró out?”

  “No,” said Gillian. “I walked him twice today, and he pooped both times.”

  “I will walk the dog!” said Rainer Maria. “When I return, you will have thought of an appropriate restaurant, Gillian. Good night, James.”

  “Good night, Rainer Maria.” I did not say good night to Gillian, and she did not say good night to me.

  5

  May 2003

  FOR A FEW WEEKS AFTER MY DISASTROUS RETURN FROM THE American Classroom, very little was said about the incident. Because the police had been involved, my school was notified, and my guidance counselor, a woman with the unfortunate name of Ms. Kuntz (pronounced “Koontz”) called me into her office and asked me if I wanted to talk about what had happened. I of course said no, which I could tell relieved her, and she said that since The American Classroom was an extracurricular activity not associated with the school, she saw no reason why the information should be included in my transcript or passed on to Brown. “We’ll just pretend the whole thing never happened,” she told me, and I said that was fine with me.

  For a while it appeared as though my parents were going to take the same tactic, for neither of them mentioned it, but I knew they were probably just deciding how to deal with it. Ever since my parents divorced there has been this delayed response to Gillian’s and my transgressions, for they must get together and agree on what to do, and since they don’t like to get together and rarely agree, time invariably passes.

  And then one night in May, my mother came into my bedroom and said, “I want to talk to you.”

  I was sitting at my computer and I said, “So talk.”
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br />   “No,” she said. “Shut that off. Or at least turn around and look at me.”

  I swiveled around so I was facing her. She was sitting on my bed. She looked at me appraisingly for a moment as if I might be an impostor, and then said, “I had lunch with your father today.”

  I said nothing. I wasn’t quite sure where this was going, but I couldn’t imagine it going anywhere pleasant, so I saw no point in advancing the conversation.

  My mother waited a moment and then said, “We had a little talk about you.”

  “Little?” I said. “A chat perhaps? A tête-à-tête?”

  “I am just going to ignore your tiresome remarks, James. We had a little talk about you.”

  “What is there to talk about me?”

  “What is there not to talk about would be the better question. We are both worried about you. We talked about that.”

  “Why are you worried about me?”

  “Why are we worried? James, you don’t have any friends, you rarely speak, you apparently had some sort of psychotic episode at The American Classroom that caused you to act both irresponsibly and dangerously. That is what worries us.”

  “Well, as long as I’m happy, why should you worry?”

  My mother leaned toward me. “Are you happy? Are you happy, James?” She asked these questions almost fiercely, with a disturbing vehement anguish. It scared me. I realized she was worried. Because my parents have often acted so irresponsibly, I forget that they do feel responsible for me and Gillian. Perhaps because they see their divorce as failing us in some way (which of course it did), they feel even more responsible, but I think it is a Sisyphean task, the thought of which both exhausts and immobilizes them, and so they avoid it as long as possible, and then at the last moment switch into this alarming über-parent mode. My mother was all buggy-eyed and a vein in her temple throbbed.

  “No,” I said, after a moment. “I’m not happy.”

  “That is why we are worried about you,” my mother said gently. “We are worried because you are not happy. We want you to be happy.” She sat back.

  “Well, who’s happy?” I said. “I don’t think anyone is happy. How can anyone be happy in the world we—”