by Louis Begley
He put his hand on my shoulder and said, I trust that as my younger brother you’ll be my best man. Of course, you’ll have to make sure you’re around next June. I’m giving you so much notice so you don’t fly the coop and so you can get your tailor started on building that cutaway you’ve always wanted.
At a loss for words, I embraced him. He had gotten to know me as well as anyone, in his way as well as Henry or better, and our friendship, which for so many years had seemed impossible, now astonished me by its solidity. It was a great reassurance, for though I was as devoted to him and to Henry as ever, I knew that I was drifting away from them and would have to count on their forbearance and willingness to accept me on my new terms. Inevitably, the characters I was inventing laid the strongest claim to my attention; I gave them more thought, certainly more intensive thought, than I did to any real person.
Realizing how I was moved and the need to change the subject, George asked about my mother. I said that he probably knew more than I did. I had been in New York only for a week and had no plan yet to go up to Lenox.
I saw something of her during the summer, he said, at the club. She and this fellow Richardson played doubles a lot. He’s got an amazing serve. They’ve given him a summer membership so he could be in the Labor Day tournament with your mother. They came in first, and were the Lelands pissed! The word is that your mother and Richardson are going to get married. Isn’t that a bit of good luck?
I told him that if true it surely was for her. My own feelings were another matter; I would have to sort them out.
HENRY WAS ALREADY at the restaurant when I got there, brooding over a bottle of Chianti. He perked up when he saw me. When I said that he seemed terrifically absorbed in his thoughts, he said it was nothing. Then he said, No, it is something important. He had been worrying about his study group at the law school. There were five first-year students in it, including him, and while the others were intelligent, and were certainly up on all the business vocabulary that he was only beginning to learn, speaking frankly they were creeps. In general, he said, law school students were a terrible lot, real turkeys, if you compared them with undergraduates at the college, but this group was as bad as they get. Their redeeming quality was their brains—which he didn’t think were any better than his. He wondered whether people would assume that since he’d chosen to be with these characters he must be like them. I asked why he had, in fact, hooked up with them.
He said, All five of us were always volunteering to answer questions in civil procedure and property, or else we were called on by the professor, and we didn’t make asses of ourselves. These two professors are really tough. After a class one of them came up with the idea that we be a study group and everybody agreed.
I said that sounded reasonable, although I would have supposed that he would be in a study group with his roommates.
I have no roommates, he answered, I live alone at Harkness. I didn’t know if anyone from our class was going to law school like me, after the army. Now I see that there are a few but none I know well. Anyway, there is no one to whom I could have suggested rooming together. All the people I knew and liked at college are in their last year—like George. He, by the way, is going out of his way introducing me to people. He’s a great guy.
Harkness was a dreary modernist dormitory for law school and graduate students designed by Walter Gropius, who had founded the Bauhaus and really should have done better. Its only advantage was being right next to the Langdell Library. No one socially desirable lived there, only the dreariest graduate students condemned to be snubbed by faculty members in their departments. Poor Henry had started off on the wrong foot.
Then the food came, and when we spoke again it was about his parents. Henry’s head was full of practical problems connected to his father’s business. There were apartment buildings his father had owned with mortgage payments to be made, repairs for which the landlord was responsible, ordinary upkeep, and rents to be collected to pay for it all. Vacancies were rare enough that he was spared at least the headache of replacing tenants. The manager looking after the buildings was doing a good job, according to Mr. Berger, his father’s lawyer, but Henry remembered his father’s saying that you had to keep after that manager, and this was something Henry hadn’t the time or inclination to do. Everything relating to the factory was even more complicated. Fortunately, his father had taken in his best salesman as a fifteen percent partner. Again according to Mr. Berger, this man was competent and honest enough to run the business until it was sold.
I can’t let the factory go belly up, said Henry. It’s not only the money; there are about forty employees. Either the business continues or I have to close it down very carefully so that everybody gets well taken care of, at least those employees who were already there when my father took over.
He hadn’t even tried to go through the house on Dorchester Road to empty it of stuff he didn’t want—ninety-five percent of the contents, he estimated—or to decide what to do with his parents’ personal papers. Mr. Berger had organized the business papers; there would be money from his father’s life insurance to pay estate taxes. For the time being, Dorchester Road would remain as it was, with the cleaning lady continuing to come in twice a week until his summer vacation. Then he would move in for however many weeks it took and to clear out the house for sale. How he was going to keep his sanity while he camped out there he hadn’t been able to figure out. One ray of hope was Mr. Berger’s belief that the factory might be sold before the summer. He advised Henry to keep the apartment buildings; according to him they were a great investment and Henry could afford to hold on to them.
I’ll take his advice, he said, because I trust him, but only if he is the one to keep after the manager and whoever we get to replace him.
He fell silent, though clearly struggling to say something. I waited and in the end he spoke first.
I can’t get away, he told me, from the double vision—that bathroom, of course, and also my father, his face clean shaved and green with just a little foam in the corners of the mouth. He had shaved, as always, a second time in the evening to please my mother, never mind that she was gone. In the morning two lathers and two passes with the razor, in the evening only one. That was his rule. I know that is how it had to be, I could tell just from the way he looked when I saw him wrapped in a shroud at the funeral parlor. You’ll tell me that I’m making this up, since he died alone, with his son overseas. Indeed, at the hour when the coroner said he probably died, a bunch of us who had gone to Paris for the evening were sitting down to a late meal at the Coupole. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to touch choucroute again. You want to know something else? They’d refrigerated him while they waited for me to arrive. He was like a block of ice when I kissed him.
There is something you don’t know, he continued. When my mother died, the army would have given me a compassionate reassignment to some place like Governor’s Island so I could be near my father. All I had to do was ask. But I didn’t ask. I think that if the company commander had offered to send me home I would have said thank you sir, but no sir; I believe my duty is to remain right here, in Headquarters Company. Why? I didn’t want my father to glom on to me. I didn’t want to be there with his grief, his fear of dying, his stubborn incompetence in everything that wasn’t running his business. If I let him, he would have swallowed me alive, like a python. That’s what I thought. So instead I helped kill him.
I pointed out that ever since I met him I had heard about his father’s weak heart and the threat of a heart attack or a stroke.
Yes, Henry answered, I know, that’s why I said I only helped to kill him. He would have died of his heart anyway sooner or later, but I almost surely made it happen sooner and I certainly made it sadder and harder. What happened was exactly what he feared: dying alone, found by a stranger. The cleaning woman, when she came in the morning. You’ll tell me that even if I had stayed I wouldn’t have been with him twenty-four hours a day—not while I w
as pushing papers on Governor’s Island or anytime later, and that is the pragmatic truth. The symbolic truth is different: it says that I willfully and unequivocally abandoned my father. I didn’t want to be around Daddy any more than I had wanted to be around Mommy!
He paused while the waiter cleared for dessert.
A napoleon, he exclaimed. That’s what I’ll have.
When the pastry was brought he examined it with great care and said, It was my mother’s favorite pastry. A Krakow specialty that she missed here. Quite honestly, can you believe that anyone else could have made such a hash out of his one and only visit—emergency leave, no less—to see his mother who was clearly bonkers? Show me another monster like that, if you can. He’s my missing brother. A fellow mother killer: I wonder why that isn’t the all-purpose GI epithet. It says it all so much more clearly than the one we use. I arrive and she tells me, Why are you here, go back to your barracks. What do I do? I get on my high horse. I can’t help it. I do it every time she says something that wounds me, and I make a point of being wounded. I do it like a fool, as though I didn’t understand the mechanism of what we do to each other so thoroughly that I could take it apart and put it together blindfolded. She was faint with the happiness of having me near, but for her to acknowledge happiness was to invite the thunderbolt that would destroy it. Far better to end it herself, design the set and direct the drama. Add to this her pride and her fear that I would rebuff her, and her craving for tension and excitement and risk—how long can she goad me before I turn on her?—isn’t that a better game than baccarat and roulette, which she never played? After four years in Pani Maria’s room behind a locked door, waiting for the evening so she can emerge for an hour or two, in each hand a chamber pot covered up so very carefully to contain the stench—what better games can you suggest for her to play? Why couldn’t I, why wouldn’t I, since this was certainly within my power, why wouldn’t I say, It’s all right, Mommy, I’m here because I love you and Daddy, and I’ll be back as soon as the wicked, wicked army lets me. Wasn’t that my ordinary and simple duty? Why did I have to be such a prick?
He stared at me as though expecting a reply. Only the most obvious occurred to me: in the long time we had known each other, I had never doubted his love for his mother and father, or doubted that they knew he loved them. And I knew that their love for him was the central fact of their lives.
That’s what makes it so much worse, he said. I did it to them and I did it to myself. As though I had been sleepwalking.
Although it was late, I couldn’t simply leave him, not with that masque of murder playing itself out in his head. If he didn’t have to go back all the way to Brooklyn, I’d propose a nightcap. I asked where he was staying.
At Margot’s, he said.
I contained my astonishment and asked whether, in that case, we might have a drink at some bar near the restaurant or at my apartment. He consulted his watch and shook his head.
I’d better get back. Margot said she’d be out late, but she should be getting home just about now.
All right, I replied, I’ll see you in Cambridge sometime before Christmas, unless you get to the city earlier.
We shook hands, and just as we were each about to turn, he east to the subway station and I west toward Park Avenue, he called out, Wait, I have an idea, why don’t you have a drink with Margot and me?
I asked, Are you sure that she won’t mind?
She’ll be thrilled.
In the taxi going uptown I reminded him that when we saw each other last—I took care not to refer to the circumstances—he had said that he would explain next time where he stood with Margot.
Ah yes, he said, I remember. She wrote right after Commencement, very affectionately, congratulating me on the summa and so forth. At the end she suggested that I call her at her parents’ apartment. Fortunately, the letter caught me just before I sailed for Europe so I called immediately and she said, Come over. The doorman told me to go up. It turned out that Mr. and Mrs. Hornung were away for the week, but the butler was there and he served us a cold dinner with wine—and drinks before that. The full treatment. Then we went to Eddie Condon’s to listen to jazz. I forget who was playing. I was too excited to pay attention. We couldn’t really talk over the music so we went back to her house. She kicked off her shoes and we both sat on the sofa in the library. She told me she’d go to Sarah Lawrence in the fall and wouldn’t even try to return to Radcliffe. Then she said she was sorry about the way she left me, that it was all her fault, a crazy period of too many things happening in her life all at once, and only one thing was certain, that she and Etienne were through. He was a major part of the craziness, he and his friends, and all the running around in New York hotels and in Europe, as though in some novel F. Scott Fitzgerald hadn’t written. So could we go back to the way we were? She held out her face for me to kiss. I thought I was in a trance. She told me that meant we would be the tenderest and closest of friends; she might even sleep with me, though not that evening. But I would have to recognize the way she was, which for the time being didn’t include being faithful and pretending we were married when we weren’t. I said yes. Can you imagine my saying no? She’s a curatorial assistant at the Met now, in the drawings department. Mr. Hornung is a big donor. She has a little apartment near the parents. Have I already told you that? I know that I’ve told you—I think the day we met—that Margot would be my long-term project. Well, I was right.
THE TINY APARTMENT was of the sort devised, she said, in certain Park and Fifth Avenue buildings as a dwelling for widows, old maids, and confirmed bachelors, so that at absurd expense they could live in four exiguous rooms and benefit from all the services and security that people like her parents considered appropriate. Two sofas faced each other in the living room. A long and narrow coffee table had been placed before one on which she and Henry sat after she had served us whiskey and sodas. I sat on the other, facing them. I had to hand it to Henry. She was superb, changed not only from that first vision of her in the Yard but from wherever I had seen her last, at some cocktail party or in the Square. She was wearing her hair longer, so that her face seemed softer; the lipstick was subdued; her dress was straighter and shorter and had a softer line than what I was accustomed to think of as the New Look. Her incredibly long legs shimmered in iridescent white stockings. Leaning back against the cushions, she told me how glad she was to see me. We talked about her plans, Sarah Lawrence, and the Met. After next summer she’d study in Europe, at the Courtauld or the École du Louvre, perhaps both. She’d be in New York during Henry’s summer vacation, while he was settling his father’s estate. She’d try to get him out of the city on weekends. Her parents might rent a house in East Hampton, instead of going to Cap Ferrat as usual. It depended on whether her father could arrange to join the Maidstone Club. She laughed as the words left her mouth. It’s absurd, she said, neither he nor Mother plays tennis or golf, but he would be unhappy if he couldn’t pick up the telephone and reserve a court.
I said that some people who came to the Berkshires apparently felt the same way about our club, which wasn’t much, and then asked why the Maidstone would be a problem for her parents.
She laughed again and said, Jews and Negroes aren’t welcome. Irish Catholics aren’t either, or Italians, unless they have what the admissions committee thinks is a real title.
And your parents? I said, thinking, perhaps wrongly, that I shouldn’t let on that Henry had gossiped.
Don’t you know they’re Jewish? she asked. My mother too, although it’s a big secret and she’d be furious if she knew I’d told you. My father’s different. He doesn’t hide being Jewish; he just doesn’t push it.
I had finished my drink and Henry offered to refill my glass. It was very late. I told them that I had been very happy to have dinner with Henry, perhaps even happier to see them together.
She said she had meant to thank me for all I had done to help Henry.
Help him? I inquired, genuinely puzzled.
Yes, she answered, from the beginning, when you told him to stop being so shy with me. We’re not self-hating anti-Semitic Jews. We’re only snobs.
I asked whether that was better.
Certainly, she said, so far as we’re concerned everyone gets a second and third chance.
To do what?
Don’t be so dense, Henry said, to remake himself.
XXIV
ARCHIE STARTED AT WHARTON right after the army, but he didn’t like Philadelphia, and after the first year he quit and went to work for a Wall Street investment bank. The idea was that with his perfect Spanish, elegant manners, and local contacts he would help invigorate its business in Central and South America. I began playing squash with him again. My game was once more in shambles, and Archie was exactly what I needed to force me to play with some energy and will to win. After a while I managed occasionally to beat him. He was all cunning and speed, which I preferred to cannonball serves one can’t possibly return and the like. So long as Archie worked downtown, we played at the end of the afternoon, which suited me very well. At some point, he changed jobs. His new firm was midtown, and we began to play almost always during the lunch hour, which at first seemed less convenient for me, but as I was learning to get up early and get right to work, a midday break in reality wasn’t too disruptive. We’d play at the Harvard Club and then have a hamburger in the grillroom downstairs. Some time later, Archie joined a much grander uptown club, with squash facilities of regal splendor, and began inviting me to play there after work. I accepted once in a while, with considerable reluctance. I didn’t like having him pay for me, and he refused all my offers to contribute toward the court fee and drinks that followed. It was the custom of the place to have the waiter bring cocktails or whatever else you ordered to the large room adjoining the locker room. The custom also called for conversation to be general so that you were more or less forced to talk to the members and occasional guests who happened to be there. I didn’t care for the type to which they ran; they reminded me of certain friends of George’s at college who, to a man, wore their club ties pushed forward like battering rams by the gold pins that squeezed together the wings of the collar. Or their conversation. When they spoke, they honked like geese. A hot subject just then was the number of girls they or their female cousins knew whom Jack Kennedy had raped, as though well-brought-up girls wouldn’t jump into bed with the president just because he happened to be a Mick.
