Rich Boy

by Sharon Pomerantz

  But the problem was that Robert, in fact, did. He was aware of this privilege and appreciated it. Appreciated, for instance, having a driver, though he’d initially fought the hire until he realized that if he picked the man himself and paid his salary then he might have the best of both worlds—freedom and privacy. He appreciated that he and Crea never had to worry about babysitters or radically change their lifestyle, because their nanny lived in. She was a homely Hunter graduate student in linguistics who could speak to his daughter in several languages and kept to herself when not working. Crea hired her. He enjoyed the luxury of their homes, the liberty of so many choices. No purchase was prohibitive, no vacation too extravagant, if they could only schedule the time. Crea was still a profligate gift giver, which created a problem because he felt the burden to reciprocate but could not always afford it. And there was nothing he loved more, no moment that gave him a bigger thrill, than picking up the check. He did it whenever possible.

  His personal finances and those of his wife (the “family” finances) were two separate but interconnected things, yet he denied that separateness to himself. Trying to keep up with his own wife meant that out of nowhere, the arrival of certain bank statements could make him feel as if he’d laid his hand on an electric fence. Easier not to look too closely at such mail. Still, he benefited from Crea’s generosity. Recently, she had bought him a Patek Philippe watch, waterproof, and platinum, with a large blue face. When he was concentrating on a problem at work, he would sometimes take it off and hold it in one hand and then the other, shuffling the object back and forth, feeling the heavy weight of its worth. In the first few months of ownership, when he’d taken the $25,000 watch, warm from his own touch, and slipped it back on, he felt a pleasure that was almost erotic. But that feeling didn’t last long and only left him empty and restless for something else.

  Life with Crea might be equated exactly with that watch. The novelty, the heft, while still impressive, had worn off more quickly than he’d expected. He was left with the satisfactions, some of them quite substantial, of work and family life, of caring for his daughter and watching her grow up. This, and the rare moments of peace between himself and his wife, would have to suffice. The lives of other married associates sounded dull in the extreme: the concerns of private school tuition and repaving the driveway; the striving to get invited to the lowest-level parties and find a sitter, the desire, unfulfilled, for a second home. He was grateful that his marriage, at least, existed above that fray.

  In his twenties and thirties, he’d believed that he was jaded, and what had made him so was the loss of his young love, but now he understood that losing Gwendolyn had not jaded him—any relationship mourned for so long did not jade a man, only made him more aware of the potential depth and vulnerability of his own feelings, if they could only be touched. Marriage had jaded him and done it quickly. Being married, he was let in on the secrets of other people’s unions, either overtly, because sometimes after work and a few drinks married men talked to other married men, or through observation, at the coupled parties and fund-raisers he and Crea attended. And what he’d determined was that his marriage was no better or worse than most.

  Marriage was marriage, except for a certain type of rare couple who existed among them as if they were a separate species. At parties, a husband or wife of this type watched the door, not because they feared being caught by their spouse while flirting with someone else, but because they awaited their spouse’s arrival with genuine anticipation. It did not matter that they saw each other at home or had known each other for many years—still they watched the door. A couple of this type meeting for dinner in a restaurant would begin talking before they’d even sat down, burdening everyone around them with their passion to share, as if life did not actually happen until one told the other about it. They mystified him, even infuriated him, because they threw a wrench in his theories. He was big, now, on theories. And his most beloved theory was that starting out with a grand passion was no recipe for success in marriage, just as starting out with not much more than warm respect was no guarantee of disaster. And all things being equal, he would rather be in his situation than most. Except when, once in a great while, he saw one of those damned couples at a party.

  His wife believed in servants and specialists and now he did, too. A woman had come to arrange his closet, creating special nooks and instruments to keep everything spotless and easily coordinated. All forty pairs of his shoes were similarly arranged. This was how the men in his social milieu always looked so neat, in one sense hardly like men at all, devoid of stains and five o’clock shadow and wrinkles and dull shoes. Expensive clothing in natural fibers had to be steamed and dry-cleaned, wrapped in tissue, arranged and taken care of; luckily other people did this for him. The result being that in summer his linen or cotton suits moved with his body as unobtrusively as a whisper; in winter, fine Italian wool was unusually warm but not bulky. Both were as foreign as possible from the scratchy blue polyester uniform that his father wore to work, with the name embroidered on the pocket, the white undershirt underneath with the collar peeking through, and the crepe shoes with the squeaks that announced him anywhere he went. Getting dressed for work each morning, Robert could feel the art and craft of his clothing.

  Despite wearing these things, he still fought personal vanity as he always had, despising men who used hair gel or stared at themselves for too long while shaving—he occasionally cut himself working not to fall into the trap. Gyms with their weights and steam rooms, once the training places of dancers and professional athletes or the social outlet of homosexuals, now dotted every block in the city. He found the concept humiliating. To ride a bike or jog around the park in old clothes, panting and sweating, was one thing, but wearing spandex and jumping up and down, staring at oneself in the mirror, this he could not abide. Perhaps it was all he could do, with so much care going into his wardrobe, to carve out a little niche of self-abrogation for himself, to continue his own personal battle against narcissism.

  It was an uphill fight. Almost forty, he now had his asthma more under control—age had reduced its severity—so that, still lean, he looked healthy from the outdoor exercise he was now able to enjoy. His posture was still excellent, but the tragedies of his early twenties, and his natural intensity, had taken their toll on his physiognomy: there were frown lines etched lightly around his mouth and across his forehead; a pronounced furrow was visible above his nose, and the gray was quickly overtaking the black in his hair. But when he smiled and the dimple flared on his cheek, there was still that about him which was boyish.

  There was nothing that New York women of all ages, and men, too, liked more than a handsome man of a certain age who dressed meticulously and reeked of affluence. Young women, and some men, too, stared at him on the street, in movie lines, or while waiting for the elevator. They offered him their phone numbers, or looked right at his wedding ring and invited him to dinner. And it was even easier to say yes now, because the women had changed. They didn’t care so much, did not hang on a man the way they used to—they now had their time, the way men had always had time, to enjoy themselves. Oh, his generation had it, too, but the women of his youth were absorbed in their own novelty and its challenges. Their energy went into the making of the thing, the opening of heavy doors that had once been bolted shut. But for the young women coming of age in this decade, there was little sense of breaking down anything, only the desire to live and enjoy being young and single before, someday, in some distant future, settling down.

  In short, to be Robert Vishniak in New York City in the summer of 1986 was to be faced with endless temptation—beautiful women were everywhere and they wanted him, often without strings, and he had only to stretch out his hand and take. Much of the time he said no, was proud of himself for that, perhaps too proud; his wife was so focused on him that he didn’t have the heart. Were she to discover an affair, he feared it might kill her. Most certainly it would end life as he knew it.


  Having set his boundaries so deliberately, so painstakingly, he could not help but wonder, as he sat in the backseat of his car and waited to be delivered home in the bright light of an early summer evening, why had he taken so many stupid chances with Sally Johannson? Why her? She was sexy and young, but no younger or sexier than so many of the others who’d offered themselves so freely to him. Yet he had brought her into his workplace, a place where right now he had to be at his most careful, had offered her his apartment, an apartment he had intended for a wholly other purpose, and now all he could think of was being alone with her there. This was about something more than being from the same neighborhood, it had to be. From the moment he’d seen her shining that first pair of shoes, he’d felt powerless to resist.

  Punching in the alarm code, Robert could hear his daughter chanting, “Dad-dy! Dad-dy!” on the other side of the door. He hadn’t expected to find anyone home. Since Gwen was born, she and Crea spent Memorial Day through Fourth of July in Tuxedo, and Robert came up on the weekends. Then for July through Labor Day they moved on to Bridgehampton because Crea liked to be there for the polo competitions and the horse show, and because her younger friends preferred the newly chic Hamptons to Tuxedo. They had bought the cottage several years ago. Unable to bear the idea of his wife owning yet another piece of real estate without him, he’d put in some of the down payment. The mortgage was a small one, but even so, with his new Upper West Side apartment, he found two mortgage payments a strain on $75,000 a year. He had other expenses as well, including Troy’s salary, which he alone took responsibility for, because he got most of the benefit, and he wanted his chauffeur’s loyalty and also, somehow, his respect. Was it possible to be a kept man while drowning at the same time? That was his problem—he was neither fully kept nor fully independent—but he had made this deal and had no one to blame but himself.

  His daughter was jumping up and down, and he picked her up and kissed her. “I’m so glad to see you, Gwen-Gwenny-Gwendolyn! What are you doing here?” He carried her, his arms gripped lightly around her behind, her legs wrapped around his chest like a monkey, into the living room where his wife sat reading a magazine.

  “Surprise,” she said languidly. “We had to come home.” She paused as if for effect. “The pills the allergist gave her are just not working.”

  His daughter had not only inherited his face, she had inherited his allergies.

  Robert sat down with Gwendolyn in his lap. “Honey, go ask May when dinner is going to be ready,” Robert said. “Maybe she’ll let you help.”

  Gwen, smart enough to sense where the action was, hung on him until he forcefully sent her on her way. Once his daughter entered the kitchen, she’d become entranced. She was fascinated by the processes of heat—blending, baking, melting—wanted nothing more than to watch the alchemy of ingredients all day long.

  “I don’t like to do that to May,” Crea said. “She’s a cook, not a babysitter. And we have an extra tonight for dinner.”

  “Oh?”

  “My father came back with us for the appointment. He’s coming by for dinner—don’t look like that. He’s staying in the city overnight, so I invited him.”

  “You see him every night in Tuxedo. You can’t take a night off?” Robert got up and went to the stairs, then yelled up to the nanny, whose name was Karen; she had her own studio and bathroom on the third floor.

  “Must you yell?” Crea asked. “Use the intercom.”

  “I hate the intercom,” he said. “It makes me feel like I’m at work. Anyway, she’s in there with her music on.”

  Karen called down to him, and he asked if she could go watch Gwen in the kitchen. The nanny ducked out of her room, closed her door, and came charging down the steps. She had a heavy footfall.

  “Problem solved. Why was she up there, anyway?” he asked, sitting next to Crea on the couch.

  “Because Gwen was with us and Karen needs some time to herself.”

  “She gets awfully absorbed in her reading.”

  “It’s better than getting awfully absorbed in the wine cellar,” Crea said, lowering her voice. “You need to be more consistent with the staff. Either you ask nothing of them, or you expect them to read your mind and be at your beck and call.”

  “I know. You’re right. Even after all this time, well, it still feels odd having so many strangers in the house. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy the convenience, but I feel like we’re never alone. Not to mention the ‘guests’ who stop by for dinner.”

  “My father is not a guest. Anyway, when we’re alone lately all we do is fight,” she said, and moved her hand closer to his.

  “Tell me what the doctor said.” He lifted up her hand and kissed it. The slightest show of affection by him made his wife sit up straighter, her face lit with a sudden and frightening hope. Each night, he came home determined to be kind but broke his resolution within moments. His parents had bickered all his life, but they had money and health problems to worry about; he and Crea bickered over stupid things.

  They went on to discuss Gwendolyn’s allergies, and the change of medication that was supposed to keep her up less at night and make her less drowsy during the day. In a few years she would likely need shots. Robert heard accusation in Crea’s every word—his genetics had given her this. “She seems fine now,” he said.

  “Well, she’s always worse in the country.”

  “Then maybe you shouldn’t take her there so much.”

  “That’s just what you want, isn’t it? Any excuse not to go to Tuxedo.”

  “Our daughter’s health is not an excuse.”

  “She has to be in the world, Robert. We can’t keep her locked in a box. She has to be able to run and play and be outside with other children.”

  “It’s not that I don’t like Tuxedo or even think it’s so bad for her,” he said. “I just don’t see why we have to always stay with your father. Instead of buying in the Hamptons, we should have bought in the Park years ago. Tracey and Claudia were dying to sell us that lot.”

  “Jack has seven bedrooms. It’s not like he crowds us. And he likes seeing Gwen.”

  “My mother likes seeing her, too, but I don’t see us running there every weekend.”

  “I never keep you from going,” she said. “But I don’t think I’m welcome.”

  “That’s ridiculous. You don’t want to go and so you blame it on my mother. Anyway, we’re not talking about Philadelphia, we’re talking about Tuxedo. Honestly.” He stood up. “I feel like I can never breathe. I’ve got your father and his people looking me over at the office, and then there he is on my weekends. And Mario, too, another member of the partnership committee.”

  “You said that Mario has helped you a great deal.”

  “That doesn’t mean I want to see him on weekends!” As soon as the words were out, Robert knew he was being ridiculous. It wasn’t Mario he was annoyed about. “Jack stays out of my way at the office, too, yet still manages to make his presence known. And what’s that I hear? Oh, he’s right on cue.”

  The buzzer rang, and Karen and Gwen rushed to open it. His daughter was chanting, “Gram-pa, Gram-pa,” and for the second time that day the child was lifted high into the air and then dropped gently to the ground. Robert went over and welcomed his father-in-law as if the past ten minutes of conversation had never occurred, a smile plastered on his face. Jack looked around at the Arts and Crafts–style furniture, the stained-glass window in the entrance, the early-twentieth-century feeling of the house, and frowned. “What is that over there?” he asked Crea.

  “It’s a clock,” Robert said. “Erhard and Söhne,” he added. “Silver on wood.” This one, which did not chime, had replaced the larger, louder clock from her Gramercy place. He pointed to the intricate carving of the two knights jousting on the bottom.

  “What did she do with that Chuck Close portrait I gave her?” Jack asked. “When I give a gift, I like to see it on the wall.”

  “Why don’t we sit down?” Robert said.
“May just gave us the signal.”

  During dinner, Robert was forced to summarize that day’s meeting with Mark Pascal for his father-in-law, though he tried to avoid too much detail about the sewage problems.

  “Perhaps I need to go back to sitting in on those meetings,” Jack said.

  “Talk to Mario,” Robert mumbled. At almost seventy, Jack was backing away from the practice of law in favor of the management of the firm. There was hope among some of the younger partners that this signaled his move toward retirement, but Robert knew that his father-in-law would hold on to his firm—his baby—for dear life, just as he held on to his daughter.

  “That was a solid business five years ago,” Jack replied. “Now Mark’s making all kinds of crazy decisions.”

  The unspoken message being: when the older generation managed things, all was well. Robert did not reply.

  “Gwen, eat like a big girl. Don’t use your fingers,” Crea said. “Must you two talk about the office at dinner? I feel completely left out.”

  “All right, dear, let’s talk about Gwen’s allergies,” Jack said. “She looks much better. This morning she gave us quite a scare with that coughing.”

  Robert looked at Crea, but she changed the subject. “Here’s something Gwen will like,” Crea said. “We’re invited to a pool party at the Evanses’ on Saturday.”

  “Can I use my new wings?” Gwen asked.

  Robert, who had not planned to tell her so far in advance, so as to avoid argument, now had to announce that he would stay in the city this weekend for a meeting with Mark Pascal.

  “Is that really necessary?” she asked. “On a Saturday? In June?”

  Jack continued eating in silence.

  “You can ask Mark if you don’t believe me.”

  “Why wouldn’t I believe you? Gwen, eat some of that sautéed spinach, it’s very good. What about Saturday night?”