by Louis Begley
I’ve talked so much about this short period to make it easier for you to understand what a huge, lifesaving relief it was to have that marriage end. Ever since I can remember, they had fought. Or rather, apropos of this or that she’d let him have it. Any subject would do. The way he drove was a big one. His tennis service—she thought he didn’t throw the ball high enough and didn’t have the right kind of follow-through, and she was right about that, but what could he do about it? He hadn’t been taught right. The way he carved was lower class, especially leg of lamb and turkey. It had something to do with carving against the grain or with the grain, I can’t remember which, and the way he held the knife. She’d tell him to observe Uncle John and Grandpa De Bourgh carefully; they were beautiful carvers. Wearing black shoes in daytime. That was a real no-no. It didn’t matter how many times he told her it was the uniform on Wall Street. I’m only telling you about the out-in-the-open stuff. Other hollering had to do with what went on in the bedroom. Whatever that was, half the time Dad had to sleep in the guest bedroom. Sometimes she’d stand at the guest-room door and yell some more. Being in Little Compton with both of them was the worst. She rubbed it in all the time how it was her house, her furniture, her silverware, her club membership, her cousins, her friends. Even worse was the way she carried on when Dad took me to Newport to see his parents. Frankly, I don’t know how he stood it. Grandpa Snow had sold the garage by then, so he mostly did crossword and jigsaw puzzles. Grandma was working as the bookkeeper or office manager for the new owner. They were nice people, very quiet and very dignified, living in a nice house that I liked. Mom of course had seen it, and you should hear her on the subject of the aluminum siding. They had tabby cats, sometimes two, sometimes three. Grandpa had had a couple of little strokes, so he dragged his left foot, but there was nothing wrong with his speech or his mind. Of course, they never showed up in Little Compton. They wouldn’t have needed half their intelligence to figure out that Mom didn’t want them on her property. Enough of this digression. I don’t intend to knock Mom, but I think that by now you see that once that awful summer was over it was a relief not to live under the same roof with them.
By the beginning of the second term at school, they had worked out the separation agreement and when I could be with Dad, which was pretty much half of the regular weekends when I could get away from school and half of the summer vacations. Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Easter were always for Mom. She said she wanted me to spend them in proper circumstances, meaning with her, which was often a disaster because she’d not be feeling well or she’d made some plan that blew up, or in Bristol with Uncle John and Grandma and Grandpa De Bourgh if Mom hadn’t just had one of her regular battle royals with them, after which usually months would pass without their speaking to one another.
Other parts I found strangely uplifting:
Then Dad hooked up with Jane, which was the best thing that ever happened to him and to me. That was during the winter before he and I came to see you and Aunt Bella on Île de Ré. I don’t know whether you realized that he didn’t bring her along, although she was already divorced, because he didn’t want to give Mom a club with which to beat him and, I suppose, me over the head, meaning how he was exposing me to immoral behavior. They got married the following winter, but of course with the exception of that vacation I was seeing her each time I saw Dad. I didn’t think I had ever known anyone so beautiful or so good, and after a while I realized that I was truly jealous of Dad. Whatever Freud or Jung has to say about it, I think more-or-less-stable boys, which by some miracle I was, really do accept the fact that their father sleeps with their mother. It’s the way it is, a fundamental fact of life. With someone like Jane, who was so much younger than Dad and had no children, the knowledge that he was humping her, the word my friends and I seemed to favor, when they retired for the night or took an afternoon “nap,” it was really heavy. I have no idea how it would have turned out, whether we could all three have had a good relationship, if Jane had not been so good to me, had not made me feel that I was as important to her as Dad. That sounds really stupid, but it’s the truth. I assume it had to do with her not being able to have children of her own. God knows they tried. She hadn’t managed to get pregnant when she was married to that jerk Horace, but she thought it might have been his fault, so with Dad they tried everything, all sorts of fertility treatments and even artificial insemination. It just didn’t work. Dad offered to adopt, but she said, No, I don’t need to, I have Jamie. So I’ve tried to be a son to her, and I wish I’d been able to give her more—for instance, by living on the East Coast, but that isn’t where my work is, and I think she understands.
Then he came to what I thought was his real message, the real reason for writing the letter:
I never had any doubt that Dad loved me or was there to back me up. This became very important a couple of times when I screwed up at school, when I didn’t get the sort of grades he’d gotten at Harvard where some of the professors still remembered him, and of course crucially important when I went out to Hollywood and began the routine of submitting work to agents without finding an agent who’d take me on or, once I had an agent, a director or producer who was interested. I’m not talking particularly about giving me money to live on without making a fuss over it. Why shouldn’t he have? He’d become rich and didn’t try to make a mystery of it. I’m talking about his liking my work and understanding it. Trying hard to understand it, which wasn’t easy because he’d never watched television and his knowledge of popular culture was somewhere below zero. The crazy thing is that he got there and gave me comments and evaluations that were often way ahead of what I got from my agent or friends. I don’t suppose I need to tell you that Jane was and is fabulous as a reader and adviser. She’s a real pro, and she has the sort of sympathy or empathy that Dad had.
Then, when I met Stella and there was one of the bigger blowups with Mom, he kept his cool. Kept it with Mom, who was calling him five times a day telling him he had to stop me from ruining my life, and kept his cool with me. He avoided letting me fall into the trap of thinking that if Mom thinks I should stay away from Stella that is an imperative that says I’ve got to marry her ahora mismo. You may well ask what was so outrageously terrible about Stella, or perhaps you think you don’t need to ask because I’m sure Mom has told you about the Chicana. But there is more to it than her being of Mexican descent or her parents having picked lettuce in Salinas or her being the first person in her family to go to the university. (By the way, she has a master’s in mathematics and is a high school teacher.) Being the first person in your family to go to high school or college has become an American joke; I can’t believe even Mom would run around telling her friends OMG, my daughter-in-law’s parents only went through the tenth grade or whatever. No, the three major problems are that Stella isn’t very white (peon color is what Mom calls it), that her parents have six other children, which meant I was letting myself in for marrying a whole tribe of peons, and finally that not only do the parents have no education but they also lack the redeeming get-up-and-go. Instead of owning a bodega or some functional equivalent by the time I met Stella, they owned a taco stand! By the way, they still own it, and they make mean tacos. Oh, and I forgot: the grandparents, the senior Garcias, were still alive! That problem has been three-quarters of the way solved. Stella’s maternal grandfather is dead; both paternal grandparents are also dead; the grandmother lives with the parents. Now why do I tell you all this? It isn’t to knock Mom. Given who she is, her obsession with the De Bourgh and Goddard family trees and Rhode Island history, you could hardly imagine her saying, Yippee, my only son is bringing diversity into the family. She’d already done that by marrying Dad! It’s to offer a contrast. Dad, as you may or may not realize, for all his progressive, liberal, left-of-center, you name it, genuinely held views, was in his own much-quieter way a worse snob than Mom. For obvious reasons: he measured the distance he had traveled from the garage and didn’t really like to see me “t
hrowing it all away.” He didn’t tell me that, but I could read him. There was another problem so far as he was concerned—Mom had it too but to a much smaller extent, and I honestly don’t know whether she had figured it out—and that was money. He and I didn’t discuss money. He just gave it, usually without my asking. But when I told him I was quite serious about Stella, he said, among many very sweet things, that he was sure I understood that after he died I’d be rich, no, I think he actually said very well off, and I should be sure that the money I would inherit wouldn’t distort my relations with Stella’s family. “Distort” was the word. He said I should take care not to become the Garcia family piggy bank. So what I’m getting at is that at the end of the day Dad could see how deeply I loved Stella, and he studied her enough to see that she genuinely loved me, and once that was established he put his own pride and prejudices behind and decided to be really nice. By the way, he did manage it, as did Jane, who initially wasn’t amused either. That was because they put me and my feelings first, and also because they could look into the future and see that if they had screwed it up with Stella they would have screwed it up with me.
On the other hand Mom could only consider her own feelings, principally her pride, and couldn’t see the future. And here is another thing that is noteworthy. The way she acted was a contradiction of herself. Having known Mom for so many years you must know that she is the one who was the unconventional romantic, the occasional rebel and bad girl, while Dad when you come right down to it was always the quintessential square who kept his nose clean and had no use for eccentrics, bohemians, and weirdos and company.
I read Jamie’s letter over twice, swam laps for exactly twenty minutes, and then drove to Salisbury for a cheeseburger and French fries followed by blueberry pie à la mode and coffee. This was more unhealthy food than I usually allowed myself in a week, but something inside me said, What the hell, eat what you want, have a second helping of fries, and, if you want a smoke, go for it, get a carton of Marlboros at the drugstore. The letterhead paper Jamie had used included a telephone number in the address. I called him when I got home, figuring that at twelve his time I had a good chance of catching him at the office. In fact it was his home number; a pleasant and friendly woman answered identifying herself as Stella. She said she knew exactly who I was, that Jamie would be very happy to speak with me, and that she would connect me to his cell phone. He was at his office, but she was sure that it was all right to disturb him. He picked up on the first ring, and as soon as she had heard him she hung up.
Jamie, I said, you’ve sent me an amazing letter. I hope your father realized how much you loved him and how well you understood him.
He made a noise that sounded like a grunt. I took it to be a substitute for yes, and he told me once more how very much he would have liked to see me. I replied that if he let me know when it would be convenient for me to visit him and Stella, whether before or after the baby was born, I’d be on my way. There was another grunt of assent, whereupon I asked how he was getting on with Lucy at present.
Ah well, he said, she has cooled her jets. Actually, she’s said that she’d like to come out real soon after the baby is born. I think she has Christmas in mind. That’s all right with us provided she understands that we will have Christmas dinner with the Garcia clan. Our house is big enough. The others don’t have the space. I haven’t sprung this concept on her yet, but I will before she gets herself all tangled up in plans. We’ll see. The number one problem with her visits has been that we don’t have her stay with us. Stella thinks we should, but I know Mom better. It would end badly. There are a couple of really good hotels right near us, and you’d think she’d really prefer to go to one of them; instead, she’d rather carry on about how she can’t afford their prices. This time, if she really wants to come, I’ll pay for the hotel and for a Hertz car and tell her it’s her Christmas present. Period. Then if she decides she’d rather skip the Christmas meal with us and the Garcias she can eat there. Naturally I hope to hell it won’t come to that.
Good luck! I said, and added that I had another question. Did he know the reason Thomas left Lucy—and him—at that particular time?
Jamie laughed. There are two versions, he told me, Mom’s version and Dad’s. Mom’s version that she fed me for years is that she figured out he was cheating on her with Jane, and when she confronted him he flew into one of his rages, tried to kill her, and stormed out. I never believed that, because I happened to be there when Dad and Jane started dating, and that was more than a year after he left. I’d tell her that, but it was as though she didn’t understand English. By the way, I’ve never witnessed one of those rages. They’re also a part of Mom’s foundation myth. Dad gave me his reason when I was already at college, having a difficult time, and working with a therapist. This woman made me focus on the way the feeling that I had been abandoned by Dad was tied up with some of my problems. So I asked him why he had left just then, and so brutally, without cushioning the blow for me, without making arrangements that would have spared me that awful summer. “Brutally” was the word I used. As you can imagine it was a painful conversation for both of us. He said he had learned that very day that she had been having an affair with someone who had been around before and that the sense of betrayal and humiliation was so strong that he felt compelled to act. I’ve never stopped regretting it, he added. Yes, I had to leave, no, there was no alternative, but I should have done it differently, I should have tried to do less harm. The funny thing is that later I figured out who this particular guy was. After Dad was gone he’d appear from time to time and telephone. He had a pretty unmistakable accent, and when I answered he’d just give his first name and ask for Mom. After they’d talked—she’d get me out of the room—she’d say, I have to go out. Then she’d disappear for the afternoon or evening if he called while I was in the city for some holiday, or if we were in Little Compton she’d say, I’m going into the city. Something has come up. I won’t tell you his name, Jamie added. There’s no point. For a moment he fell silent.
Then he spoke again: Look, none of this matters anymore. It was the only time he hurt me, really hurt me, and how can I know that a slow exit, with all the fights and recriminations that would have surely taken place, was a better solution. And Mom? I don’t blame her for having had an affair or any number of affairs. She was looking for something she couldn’t find with Dad. His being a good guy, and having all those good qualities, was no substitute. She was very unhappy. The real point is that those two should have never been married. They should have never had a child.
You’re nuts, I said. You have turned out magnificently well. Your father knew it. I hope that your mother’s eyes will be opened. Perhaps they will if you carry through with your plan for Christmas.
I think of Bella constantly, not like the character in Proust’s great novel who thinks of his dead wife often but only for brief moments at a time. Her presence is real, almost tangible. Regret that she is with her family at the cemetery in Montparnasse and not on my hillside in Sharon, where I hope Josiah will bury my ashes, comes over me in waves. I realize that it’s childish and sentimental. Bella cannot know or care where I have laid her to rest, the place, be it said, that she had chosen. Neither she nor I will know or care about the eternal solitude of my bones. So in reality it must be that I mourn the extinction upon my death of the memory of the happiness we had shared. Our happiness which, now that she is dead, has become inalterable, a loss that no hope, such as the one that may have comforted Proust, that our books will be for some time still displayed in bookstore windows and on library shelves, can compensate. The fights and recriminations of which Jamie had spoken? They were as alien to me as the customs of the most isolated Amazon tribes Lévi-Strauss had cataloged in Tristes Tropiques. Bella and I had never fought. At times I found myself tormented by the realization that I had behaved foolishly or that she had misunderstood my actions and motives or that she or I might have been less rigid in the response to this or that
contingency, but we learned to regain our serenity quickly, and no residue of bitterness was left, in any event not in me. The gods seized and destroyed our little Agnes. Was that the price we paid for their blessing?
