“I think I’ll need the whole weekend,” Robert said, “to catch up on some work.”
“I assume you’ll be up for the Fourth,” she said. “You wouldn’t miss the Traces’ barbecue?”
“I will if there are no crises at the office,” he said, glancing at his father-in-law, who did not raise his eyes from his plate. “Barry will be at the Fourth this year, too.”
“You’re lucky that your brother is in the city,” Jack said wistfully. His one remaining brother had recently retired to Palm Springs.
“Yes,” Crea said, picking up the decanter and pouring herself some more wine, “how lucky for all of us.” She let the decanter drop to the table with a disapproving thud.
“Crea, be careful with that!” Jack said. “It was your grandmother’s.”
AFTER DINNER, ROBERT AND JACK sat in silence reading the newspaper. Upstairs, Crea was in the middle of giving Gwendolyn a bath when the screaming began, echoing throughout the house.
“That doesn’t sound good,” Jack said.
“No,” Robert replied. “I’d better get up there.”
“Can’t you send the girl?”
“No, she’s screaming for me.”
Jack only shook his head, as if to ponder the mysteries of modern parenting, and went back to his reading.
Gwen did this whenever her father was at home. She claimed that Crea got soap in her eyes, but she was perfectly happy to let her mother bathe her and wash her hair when he wasn’t around. Robert felt for his wife in these moments. She looked so rejected. “Look at her arm,” Crea said, as soon as he entered the bathroom. Gwendolyn sat in the tub, her face blotchy and red from crying. Her arm, held aloft by Crea, was dotted with a large round rash.
“She’s allergic to tomatoes,” Robert said.
“Don’t tell me,” Crea replied. “You had that, too.”
“Barry, Barry had it,” he said. “Well, who knows what it was because we never saw doctors. But he got rashes like that when he was small, and he wasn’t allowed to eat tomatoes.”
“What about spaghetti sauce?” Gwen asked.
“That’s tomatoes, too, kitten,” he said.
“Soap my hair, Daddy.” She took his hand and put it on her head. Crea dropped the washcloth and left the bathroom.
“Okay, Gwen-Gwenny-Gwendolyn, now let’s get down to business here,” he said, rolling up his sleeves, then hiking up his trousers and kneeling beside the tub. He reached for the baby shampoo, taking a small puddle into his hand. “Close your eyes.”
“It’s just the two of us now, right, Dad?” she asked from behind her closed eyes, her voice merry with satisfaction. “Just Daddy and his Gwenny.”
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
Sally will not give in
For the record, I’m not going to sleep with you. I don’t care how nice your place is.”
“I haven’t even shaken your hand yet,” he said, standing close to her in the long hallway. He put his hand carefully on her lower back as if to lead her around the place. “I can control myself.” He had been late, coming from his business lunch with Pascal and the owners of the button factory. The meeting went well; the family was more open to selling than Mark had implied, albeit for the right price. Mark, elated, took Robert to his club afterward to have a drink and discuss a few things. He kept him there for too long, but then, any wait might have felt like forever with Sally at the end of it.
“You said this place was unfurnished,” Sally said, peeking into the bedroom, “so why is there furniture here?”
“I ordered a few things this week. Just a few chairs, a couch, a bed.”
“If it’s furnished, does the price go up?”
“Sure,” he said. “Let’s say six hundred and fifty dollars.”
“What’s the actual mortgage? I won’t do this if you don’t tell me.”
“Fifteen hundred, plus three hundred a month maintenance.”
She frowned. “Can’t pay more than eight hundred. For a little while. Until I find something else.”
“I’d have given it to you for six fifty. Negotiation is not supposed to mean that the buyer hikes up the price. That’s highly unorthodox.”
“You could get anyone in here, for full price or more,” she said. They were standing in the living room that looked out onto a courtyard and got the midday sun. Sally wore a short summer dress and flat red sandals, her hair held back by a clip. She looked more proper than at the office, but he could see her legs better this way. They seemed to go on forever, and then there was the line of her panties, visible under the thin skirt.
She plopped herself down on the couch, which still had on the plastic cover it had been delivered with. “Plastic,” she said, and looked up at him, “just like home.”
“You had to have been the only Johannson in Oxford Circle,” he said.
“Who says that’s my real name?”
He sat down next to her on the couch. “You’re something else.”
“A lotta tricks up these sleeves,” she said, gesturing to her naked arms.
He put his hand on her bicep and ran his finger down her soft, pale skin.
“I told you,” she said, standing up, “it’s not happening. Not even because you’re cutting me a break with the rent. I’m only doing this because I’m desperate. I’ll be out in a month or two.” She walked over to the windowsill, then stared up at the molding. “How many friends from Philly do you have in New York?”
“Just my brother.”
“Barry Vishniak?” she asked sarcastically. “You and me could be friends. I bet that would break a pattern for you. Friends with a woman? Try something new for a change.”
“I have a woman friend,” he said. “Claudia.”
Sally sighed. “What is Claudia, like, a friend of your wife’s or something?”
“She is, among other things.”
“Doesn’t count. I’m not talking about someone who’s your friend because sleeping with her would destroy your life. I mean someone who’s your friend because, you know, you have stuff in common, or you get a beer after work, or whatever.”
“What do we have in common?”
“Lots of stuff.”
“I can’t be friends with you. Not when I want to see you naked,” he said. “I’m trying to be honest here.”
“You’re honest, all right,” she said, walking back into the hallway. “Why’d you buy this place, anyway? Is it an investment or something?”
“Something like that,” he called from the couch, then got up and followed.
“Your wife know about it?”
“Absolutely.”
“Should I, like, call her and ask how she feels about your renting under market value?” she asked. “Damn, this kitchen is small.”
“All kitchens in New York are small.”
“This one is for some chick who weighs ninety pounds. So what is this? Your love den? What kind of place do you live in with your wife?”
“Beaux-Arts townhouse, circa nineteen twenty-one, East Seventy-third Street.”
She whistled. “And you bought this? What, three floors wasn’t enough space for you?”
“You probably won’t believe this, but I wanted a place where I could be alone and think.”
“That I do believe,” she said. She now stood uncomfortably close to him. He could smell the watermelon lip gloss and a faint odor of bubble gum from a piece cradled in the back of her mouth. “You have it all, don’t you, Robert?”
“Pretty much, yup.”
“The saddest people in the world, if you ask me.”
“Who is?”
“People who have it all.”
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
Independence Day
The last week in June, Robert went to see Sally in her show, a horrid mess about a group of soldiers, a nurse, and a drug-addicted doctor in Vietnam. The dialogue barely got above the level of bad television, but he saw something in her performance, some spark beyond mere physical charisma, and
he found himself relieved. She was not a fraud. She could act. It would have been awful, somehow, if she were just kidding herself. She had a monologue toward the end, about a boyfriend she’d left behind, whom she knew she’d have to leave as soon as she returned because he’d never understand what she’d been through, had never experienced this, but she’d hold on to him for now, no matter how selfish, because she needed his letters. Needed someone, anyone, to speak words of love to her. As she spoke the lines, she seemed to look right at Robert—the only one in the audience, from the looks of things, who’d actually come of age in the era that these actors in their early twenties now gamely tried to reconstruct. Or maybe it was just that the house was small—only about fifteen people in a place with easily three times that many seats—and he wanted that longing of hers to be specific, to be for him.
Afterward, going backstage, he had asked if she wanted to get a drink and celebrate, but she was going out with the cast, a scruffy bunch of young men from the show. They had taken up a certain dirty, hippie-ish style that made him uncomfortable in his Italian suit and, feeling old and separate, he left quickly, wondering why he could not get this girl out of his system.
EVEN IN TUXEDO THAT WEEKEND, he thought of her. It was Fourth of July, a time of parades, evening fireworks, and the Traces’ annual barbecue, held, as always, in their enormous backyard overlooking the lake and distant hills. The Traces’ home was a castle, enormous and Gothic, complete with rounded turrets and a large, pointed corner tower with a window seat on the tippy top. If you dared attempt to sit on it, it rewarded you with a view that stretched across the Park, the river, and into the next county. Robert always enjoyed the extent to which Tracey’s house dwarfed Jack’s. The only time he ever saw his father-in-law look uncertain was when he was surveying the Traces’ property, perhaps reflecting on what it might be like to have a place preserved through the generations, as opposed to one that had swept the past so utterly clean.
Robert still thought it the most wholly romantic house in the Park, at least from the outside. Claudia had long ago taken over the grounds work—it was her one true pleasure, working outside with the gardener. In front was an extensive flower garden, and around each side were herbs and vegetables. Guests often asked: how could one woman do so much with only an elderly man to help? She was always out there weeding and pruning. Except today, when she came toward Robert in tiny white shorts and a black sleeveless turtleneck, so that from far away, and even more up close, what he noticed were her long legs, so strikingly, luridly lean, her thighs the width of an adolescent’s, and the narrow but shapely arms, muscular from so much weeding and work outdoors. As she moved, he could almost see the bone and tissue and muscle all working together under her skin. “Isn’t Gwen getting big?” Claudia kissed Crea and smiled at him, then made quickly for Barry, who had just pulled up in his new Audi convertible. “Finally—I’d almost despaired! You’re going to be bored out of your head, you know?”
Barry, getting out of the car, looked pleased with himself. “I’m a one-man band, kiddo. When I’m here it’s never boring.”
Claudia grabbed his hand and ran with him toward the house.
“Can I go with them?” Gwen asked.
“No, sweetheart, let’s go see the juggler,” Robert said.
“What on earth do those two say to each other?” Crea asked.
“He can be charming sometimes,” Robert replied, as they walked toward the back patio.
Tracey played lord of the manor, shaking hands, hurrying along waiters, holding babies, and directing people to a croquet game set up on the lawn. When the food was almost cooked, Tracey stepped in, taking the tongs from the caterers to turn over the bratwurst and flip a few burgers, so that, just as in college, he had taken the credit for the thing without actually having to do the work. The children, off together on the other side of the house, were now being rounded up for the food, which would be served to them separately. Crea stood with her head thrown back, laughing, her hand on Mark Pascal’s shoulder. Robert rarely heard her laugh like that anywhere but in Tuxedo. Around her stood several childhood friends and a few elderly neighbors, people who’d known her for so long that they might as well have been family.
Robert remembered what she told him on his first visit—there was no place in the world she felt more at peace. Tuxedo was her history. But what of his? He rarely saw the familiar faces of his childhood—the young cousins he’d run with or the girls with whom he’d first had sex. Stacia was a voice on the telephone, or the guilty pull of a fast visit, made alone or occasionally with Gwen for an afternoon. He had done what he was raised to do, moving beyond Oxford Circle—and he had made money. Yet, witnessing Crea’s comfort, as if Tuxedo were an old sweater she put on for warmth, he felt adrift.
As the afternoon wore on, he chatted with a successful contractor, then shook hands with a developer who had claimed for the last twenty years to be “considering” A, L and W to represent him. Robert made another lunch date with the man, hoping he’d keep this one, but had low hopes—even Jack had failed to reel him in, after many tries. Then he talked to an “independent financial advisor,” which was a nice way of saying that the man invested his family’s money. Tracey’s group of friends was virtually unchanging, and they had long ago been squeezed for business, where possible. For Robert, there was no more juice to be had.
For Barry, on the other hand, the day was filled with possibilities. Robert could hear him on the other side of the lawn talking with a few members of the local bridge club about limited-liability partnerships. He sounded certain, trustworthy, sober even, as he described low-risk investments in oil and natural gas. Where had he gotten that tone? Not at home, that was for sure. Someone asked him about junk bonds—Boesky was still in the news, and now there were murmurings about Milken. “Junk bonds are not for you, Cathleen; they’re for billionaires, and pension and insurance funds. Not for your average investor,” Barry said. “Let’s talk about what’s secure —”
Barry had already caught on to what it took Robert years to realize—that the rich liked to consider themselves middle-class. The idea comforted them in some strange way, and was about the only thing that they shared in common with the poor. Robert walked off alone to stare at the view. Just then, Sally was back in New York, moving her stuff up into his apartment with two male friends—it was so humid today, would be especially so in the city, and he could imagine her drenched in sweat, the rings under her arms, the beads of moisture collecting on her upper lip as they hoisted her furniture and dragged up boxes and trash bags of possessions — in his imagination, somehow, Sally had endless possessions, as many as he had, though he knew that this was unlikely. Afterward the three would probably go out to dinner in the neighborhood, someplace cheap. He wondered if she was sleeping with either boy… or was she loyal to the boyfriend? And when would he be back to claim her?
HOURS LATER, THE SUN SLIPPED below the horizon, and Robert could hear the futile pops of the first few impotent fireworks set off in a field behind the club. The adults sat on folding chairs while the children were on blankets on the lawn, staring up at the dark sky dotted with stars, waiting for the festivities to begin. He had hardly seen Barry all day, saw no sign of him now.
Crea sat behind him in a folding chair, while Robert sat on the blanket with Gwen. She’d had a hard day—the ragweed was early that year. Even with taking her medicine in the morning, Gwen still had to have an antihistamine before dinner. He felt her forehead—it was warm, but she had insisted on staying to see the fireworks; still, as she settled down, he felt her dozing against his shoulder. He put his arm around her. “Dad,” she whispered, opening her eyes abruptly, “did I miss anything?”
“You won’t sleep through the fireworks, baby, it’s not possible.”
“I decided that I don’t like jugglers,” she said. “Bo-ring.”
“And how do you feel about sack races? Or running with an egg on a spoon?”
“Nope,” she said. “P
eople fall down and cry.”
“When I was little,” he said, “I didn’t like most of the activities grown-ups dreamed up to amuse children, either.” Stacia had drained all that out of him. But what was Gwen’s excuse? He stroked her hair. Maybe she’d been born that way, his chip off the block. From earliest memory, he’d doubted magic, was bored but didn’t have the heart to say so the one time Uncle Frank took him to the circus; and he liked few board games except Monopoly, the child’s game that he knew now was no game at all.
“You know what, Dad?”
“What, my love?”
“I wish we could be joined together forever, like those twins we saw on the news.”
“But they were joined at the head, and remember how uncomfortable they looked? You asked me if each one got to have her own thoughts, remember?”
“I don’t need my own thoughts,” she said. “I could have yours. We could share.”
“No, baby,” he said. “Have your own.” He hugged her closer. This child was his family, his past and his future. Had his parents felt this rush of emotion when they looked at him? No, they had not been so in need of grounding, surrounded as they were by relations, entrenched in all that was familiar and continuous. They could not have felt this alone.
A loud pop became an explosion of magenta in front of them, followed by green and then gold, and then white. His daughter, finally, finally, struck with the awe of childhood, her mouth hanging open, was so absorbed that she hardly noticed him get up. He felt restless. The sky was not completely dark yet but would be any minute, and as he walked toward the house he saw, in the shadows under the empty, shaded patio, Tracey leaning against a wall next to a tall waiter, the two of them jostling and laughing softly, trying to throw each other off balance.
Robert entered the house from the side, walking through a bustling kitchen with the sound of dishes being stacked, the clink of silverware, and voices barking orders. He came out into a long hallway as lights flickered in front of his eyes, twinkling in the hollowed spaces of walls. Candles—placed there, no doubt, to create this mood, romantic in principle but eerie now —cast long shadows on the floor. Not knowing what he was looking for, he followed the light.
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