Rich Boy

by Sharon Pomerantz

  Using her hand as a sun visor, she squinted up at him, her expression unreadable; just as she seemed on the verge of a ruling on the situation, Barry returned, dragging an overheated bulldog behind him.

  “The Deauville,” he said loudly, “does not accept dogs. Under any circumstances. So fuck ’em, I’m not staying there.”

  Robert sighed. Why oh why was it all so complicated? His family, a simple weekend trip to the beach, the money, the hurt feelings, the constant intimations of mortality, the memories? Why couldn’t it be simple, an established routine, a friendly, familial dignity—like in Tuxedo? And as that thought went through his head, he turned and walked away, walked away from all of them, and the bags, and the hideous embarrassment of a car, only apparent now next to so many shiny new Cadillacs and Buicks and even the occasional Mercedes. Then he took the handles of his father’s wheelchair—his father’s good leg raised forward at a slight angle, like some strange human compass—and began to wheel him out of the parking lot and toward the entrance. “You figure it out and let me know!” Robert called over his shoulder. “I’m hungry and Pop’s thirsty, and we want to see the ocean and walk on the boards.”

  His mother yelled after him, “Why didn’t you eat when we stopped on the road?” and he let her words echo behind him, as the two men rolled away toward the Orange Julius stand. He’d read in the paper that there was scaffolding on the Chalfonte-Haddon Hotel, but the state had been slow, very slow, to issue casino licenses, and the hotels were getting impatient. Robert was glad about one thing—the Boardwalk was not yet dug up or cut into, at least from what he could see, and the skyline more or less remained. For a few more months, anyway. For himself, he could cope, but he knew his father needed it to be the same.

  After their hot dogs and orange drinks, Robert and Vishniak rolled along in the salty sunshine, the wheels of Vishniak’s chair making a clomp clomp sound on the wooden boards. They said little even as they got to Convention Hall. It had been the family’s custom, and the custom of many they knew, to drive to Atlantic City at Easter, watch the parade, and pose for pictures in front of the neo-Grecian hall with its tall columns. Why this tradition had started among the Jews of Philadelphia, no one quite knew, but it had ended with his parents’ generation.

  “You don’t see the crowd that used to come,” Vishniak said. “The place is full of schleppers now. And you hardly hear a word of English.”

  “Some of it is the same,” Robert said, pointing out that the old men were still lined up under the candy-striped canopies reading the newspapers by the band shell, and the yellow motorized trams still beeped to get you out of the way. Up above, a small plane flew slowly over the ocean. A streamer blowing out behind it read: Come to Benny’s, Steel Pier, kids eat ½ price.

  Robert wheeled his father toward the rows of seats that looked out on the water. Up above, the seagulls dove low and occasionally swooped down to pick up some trash, or a peanut shell. He took wonderfully deep breaths, simultaneously unwrapping the wax paper from piece after piece of bright pink, sea foam green, and red-and-white-striped saltwater taffy, as he had always wanted to do as a child, when he was never allowed to eat the whole box but had to ration it, one candy a day. For once, father and son were at ease, their faces turned toward the sun. His father, so tired from the beginning, now dozed under the wide straw hat that kept the heat off his pale face. Robert could escape a decision no longer. They needed a place to sleep.

  Robert put his hand on his father’s shoulder and shook him lightly awake. “Pop?” he asked. “Where do you want to stay?”

  “I don’t give a rat’s ass,” he replied, patting Robert’s hand. “Just stop the screaming with your mother. Stop it. I want to sit by the water, and I want some peace and quiet. Understand?”

  They found a motor inn closer to Brigantine, a little too far out for convenience, but good enough, clean enough, Robert supposed. Stacia unpacked her pots and pans, which she didn’t use at all except for breakfast, but that was enough to satisfy her. She slept in the same room with the kitchenette and her husband while Barry and his dog slept next door, their combined snoring a cacophonous symphony of mouth breathers. Robert stayed in his own room at the Deauville. It was a small room, which was what you got at the last minute in the height of the season in a hotel that was still, it turned out, doing a decent business. There was no view; the air-conditioning came out in alternating arctic and tepid blasts, and the bathroom smelled of disinfectant, but the floors were marble, the soaps, conditioners, and shampoo were provided daily, wrapped in pink tissue paper, and the towels were soft and thick. All in all, he had what he’d wanted: a sad, barely middle-class comfort, that much less lofty for all that he’d gone through to get it.

  They had an easier Saturday. His mother spent the morning around the pool at the Deauville with Cece, while Robert and Barry took turns wheeling their father on the Boardwalk. Just after lunch, while Vishniak napped in Robert’s room, the two brothers went to the beach, set up their towels and cooler of soda, and marked their territory. After they were settled, Robert signaled to the ice cream boy, who brought over his selection of ice cream sandwiches, chocolate-dipped cones, frozen rocket ships made of red, white, and blue ice, and orange creamsicles. Robert bought cones for himself and Barry, telling the boy to keep the change on a five. At the start of the trip, Robert had so much he’d wanted to talk about with his brother—the job offer, his relationship with Crea, their father, their shared apartment, even his wish that Barry, once and for all, would finish the degree and get a straight job—but now, as they unwrapped their melting cones, he wondered where, after all, to begin. Could Barry even understand his life anymore?

  Easier to enjoy the hot sun, taking a break now and then, when the heat became deliciously unbearable, to go and ride the waves, swimming out into the cold, salty water, dunking his head as he had in childhood, allowing himself to be towed back, over and over, to the shore, with its blowing trash and strange, otherworldly piles of seaweed, and treacherous shards of broken shells. Each time he returned, sopping wet and coated with sand and salt, to lie once again on the towel and bake, numb and relaxed, it would be Barry’s turn to swim or take the dog for a walk. And before he knew it, the sun was dropping lower in the sky, the air cooling off; the brothers, exhausted and exhilarated by the salt air and the short swims, dragged their stuff slowly back to the hotel. Tomorrow would be a short day, full of logistics and driving home. He had missed his chance.

  That Saturday night, no longer able to bear his own guilt, Robert moved himself to the motor inn. He knew that sleeping in a room with Barry and the dog would not be sleeping much at all, and the mattress would be hard as a rock by comparison, and the place smelled of mold, and the pipes moaned and groaned, but he gave in so that for one night they might all be together in the same place, a family, if only for a little while, even as he told himself that this was the last time, the very last time, that he would make such a compromise.

  DANNY, WHO LONG AGO gave up on Atlantic City, had taken the cab for a family trip to Long Beach, so when Robert got back he drove the cab of a friend of his uncle’s, Lou Stein, who was away, too, but had left his car behind. Like most of the newer cabs in New York that year, this one had a lockbox. The driver was encased behind a bulletproof Plexiglas wall, could see the patrons only in slices, and often only the tops of their heads. The air-conditioning in the cab was sketchy—no wonder its owner took off part of August. Some days the cold air blasted in the back and hardly at all up front, and other days, for no apparent reason, the reverse was true, and he wore a sweatshirt while his passengers mopped their brows, complained, and tipped more poorly than usual. He felt the familiar sticking of his fingers to the coating on the steering wheel, the scent of his own sweat inside the box that now contained him. At the end of his first week, he counted his money and realized that after paying Lou, he’d made all of fifty-two dollars.

  The next day, his day off, he typed up a letter to Phillip Healey and ac
cepted the job. And the following weekend he went to Tuxedo. He’d missed Crea more than he’d expected to, and perhaps she could feel this from him because they had a wonderful time together, full of small jokes and subtle affection, helped along by Mark Pascal’s absence and Jack’s good mood. Robert had missed her body, especially, and her smell, which he identified with the grassy-sweet scent of Tuxedo. They had been apart for only two weeks, but Robert could not remember a time that felt longer. He had even missed the huge glass house in the middle of the grove of trees, missed how smoothly everything flowed there, how rarely people yelled, how little he felt about much of anything as he stared out at the view that stretched for miles and miles, the endless green of the property and two neighboring estates, with their hedges and peaked roofs and landscaped flower gardens nestled in deep valleys, and watched over by distant mountains.

  The first night, Tracey and Claudia came to dinner. They sat outside, the patio illuminated by giant citronella candles that cast shadows on the flagstones, and ate barbecued chicken and corn on the cob, washing it down with beer, licking their fingers. Even Jack seemed young for those few hours—for once, he made eye contact with Robert instead of looking over his shoulder. This had to be progress, Robert thought, as they all joked and teased each other, debating the question of modernism. Did the Beaux-Arts qualify, as in the controversial exhibit at the Modern? Or had it begun in Germany between the wars, with the designs of Josef Hoffmann? What was the difference between the modernism of America and that of Europe?

  “Can someone tell me what postmodernism is?” Claudia asked, taking a sip of beer. “Am I a fool for asking that question? It’s taken me this long to figure out abstract expressionism. You know, de Kooning and Pollock and that lot. Is that postmodern?”

  Tracey took her other hand and kissed it.

  “There’s overlap,” Crea said, taking her seriously. “If you put the beginnings of modernism between the wars, but then some people claim it started earlier, which throws everything off if you ask me. Most people say this is the era of postmodernism, right now.”

  “I declare myself a neomodernist. Art is about the moment we haven’t experienced yet,” Jack proclaimed, interrupting her, and raised his glass. “Does anyone want to challenge that?”

  “I’m not sure we could, dear,” said Crea, patting her father’s hand indulgently, “as none of us has any idea what you’re talking about.”

  “Are we still talking art? Or have we moved on to the realm of personality?” Tracey added.

  Crea and Robert and Tracey and Claudia laughed and laughed. They hardly knew why, but everything brought on a fit of giggles. Jack was talking about the future, what was next, in the space beyond the stripped away, the streamlined? What was next?

  Yes, what was next? Robert wondered. Was a path not set out for him? And yet he’d refused it, run from it, and why? He looked around at the faces of his companions, alternately flattered and then made ghoulish by fluttering candlelight. Food flowed from kitchen to table to kitchen, as if on a timer. Crea squeezed Robert’s hand under the table.

  “To your future and to all of ours,” Tracey said, holding up his glass. “I know Claudia and I are a damn sight happier when you’re both up here.”

  Robert raised his glass. Surely this is where I belong, because I have made it so. Surely this is where I belong. So much was being offered to him, the whole world, practically, or the Alexanders’ large piece of it, with the sky full of stars so visible from the backyard, and all the rooms in that glass house. He would appreciate the beauty in front of him and not spend so much time looking back.

  That night he made no show of staying in his own room, or crossing through the discreet door that joined their rooms, but simply entered her room with her, then pulled her white T-shirt over her head and kissed the side of her neck. He took her small, perfect breasts in his hands, not caring if his desire made him weak, or greedy; all his life he had needed women, it was simply who he was, he liked to touch them and talk to them and make love to them, at times clinging to those small moments of sweetness as all that grounded him to the earth.

  After they’d made love, they lay side by side, staring into the darkness. Robert felt sweaty and exposed, happy for the night breezes from a series of open windows; the Alexanders were not big on air-conditioning. All day long he’d expected questions from her about the time he’d been gone, but she’d said nothing, only reached over and ran her fingers through his hair, massaging his scalp, lulling him almost into unconsciousness.

  “You know,” she said, “I have so much room in the city.” That was all she said, and he answered that yes, her place on Gramercy Park was the biggest one-bedroom he’d ever seen.

  “What does your father think?” he asked.

  “He thinks I should please myself, or rather, he knows that I always do.”

  “I don’t think I should move in unless we’re married,” he said. “It wouldn’t be proper.”

  “Proper? Robert, it’s nineteen seventy-seven.”

  “I want to do things right for once, from the beginning.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean, ‘for once’?” she asked. But he was not going to explain his past to her, not then, and probably not ever. She was his fresh start; a fresh start and a strange nod to the past. He could begin again and also settle old scores.

  “I ask a woman to marry me and she gives me an argument.”

  “Are you sure? Back in June you said —”

  “I didn’t know what I wanted then,” he said. “Now I do.”

  She laughed and hugged him, kissing his neck. “Really?! Do you mean it?”

  “Yes, my love,” he said. She leaned over and kissed him on the lips, and he turned over and began to kiss her back, marveling that her skin was, always, so soft.

  He never said to himself: I will marry this woman for her money, her position, her family. Later, others would think that. But the decision was so easy that night, so evident. He enjoyed her company, cared for her, admired her confidence and grace, much the way his younger self had admired these qualities in Tracey. That he did not love her the way he had once loved Gwendolyn did not matter—he no longer had such expectations; indeed, they seemed naïve to him. He would be practical, for once, and take the deal that was offered.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  The period of trials

  The announcement went into the papers in September, and Crea and her secretary set to work. It was unorthodox, but her mother had passed away years ago and she wanted to make the decisions about what would be the most important day of her life. He hated when she referred to their wedding that way; surely they would have other important days? To her, walking down the aisle was like graduation, an accomplishment that deserved public recognition. To him, it was merely a ceremony.

  Most nights that fall the couple went out. Robert was a new face on the social scene, and their picture appeared in society pages from New York to Palm Springs. Crea did not work for money, but her charitable activities amounted, some months, to more than a full-time job. She was on the board of several museums and seemed to be involved in everything from cancer research to Architects for the Preservation of Cast Iron. When they were out in public, and even as he stood at her side chatting and shaking hands, Robert observed Crea’s talent in a crowd. Going from politician to heiress to artist, she always remembered the names of people’s children, where they’d spent their last vacation, even what style their houses were decorated in. Did she write these things down? She never stayed too long in each group, and by the end of the evening, it was inevitable that she’d gotten someone important to give money to something else.

  Once he’d overheard Crea asking a tight little clump of women, “Have you ever seen a man look better in a tux than Robert?” And he wondered then, as if overhearing an insult, if he’d proposed or been cast in the role. Crea’s friends—young matrons in patterned dresses that swept gracefully to the floor—did not, like so many women he knew
in law school, talk of careers or a male-dominated world from which they needed liberation. Liberation from what? The freedom to do as they pleased? But, excepting the occasional awkward moment, most of the time he enjoyed the glamour, the beautiful surfaces, and the easy sociability of this world. Crea introduced him to important people—real estate developers, heads of companies, philanthropists with political connections—and he was surprised by their friendliness toward him. He understood that were he to meet them on his own terms, he would likely not receive a second look. But wasn’t everyone like that, and didn’t most opportunities come from who you knew? In the worst of times, he reasoned, with New York still climbing out of bankruptcy and humiliation, this small group of revelers with their charities and expensive clothes were actually admirable. They not only kept the city’s cultural institutions going, but without them who would even believe in gay old New York anymore?

  These days, his schedule was flexible, and even with putting in hours at the Law Review office, he did not start classes until noon. He might at one time have given those early-morning hours to the law clinic, but these days he needed the sleep. In falling in love with the woman who funded the place, he no longer had time or the desire to volunteer there.

  By the end of September, he had settled into this life. No longer driving his cab, he once again walked each morning and evening through a door that was held by a smiling doorman. Comfort had never been hard for him to adjust to, and for a little while he forgot that he’d ever lived any other way. And then he got a late-night call from Barry: Vishniak was in the hospital again. Gangrene in the other leg. The doctors would have to amputate, but first they’d have to stabilize his sugar level. His father was gravely ill.