They honeymooned in Bermuda, a wedding present from his in-laws. It was much farther north of the Caribbean than he’d realized and correspondingly colder, even in summer. He returned to New York with his bride, conscious that in some indiscernible way, New York was his home, and that he should now become a New Yorker – after all, Sarah’s parents were in the Social Register.
He tried his best, but within eighteen months he realized he had made a big mistake. The biggest mistake of his life? The biggest one since I ran away and lost Cassie. Of Cassie he had heard nothing until, well after his own marriage, he learned from his father that she and Ronald had a little girl now, named Sally. He spoke so rarely with his father that he was surprised to hear him mention Cassie’s name. But why not, he thought, I’m married now. He probably thinks it doesn’t hurt any more. But it still did, and though he no longer saw her on the street, Cassie still figured in the fantasy life he found he often retreated to.
He had thought that marrying Sarah would somehow serve to bring them closer together, as if the legalization of jointly handling life’s small duties and obligations – paying the rent, filing taxes, taking the garbage down the hall to the building’s incinerator chute – demanded a similar sharing of emotional life. But it didn’t. There were no explosive arguments, and no sudden epiphanies, just an increasing process of disenchantment (mutually suffered, he was certain) in which he and his wife slowly found themselves not so much at odds, but operating with completely divergent views of what was meant to be their joint future. The first indication of this drift had come when he decided to study at night for a graduate degree. Streatley had been emphatic about it: ‘Look, whether you stay with this firm or do something else, if you really want to make it as an engineer you need at least a Masters.’
Sarah was less convinced, arguing that he should study for an MBA instead. ‘You could be a senior executive in any kind of business, not just engineering,’ she said, sounding excited. He took a Masters in Engineering anyway, and did it in two years, which almost killed him. Sarah complained with some justice that she never saw him, and he later calculated that in that two-year period they had gone to the movies together exactly once. He went to class three nights a week and studied on all the other nights; in his second year of study the firm allowed him half a day off each week to work on his thesis, a treatise on how iron bridges could still be constructed economically in an unfriendly world. Imaginative and well argued, came back the report with an ‘A’ grade, but entirely impractical.
He didn’t expect Sarah to share his enthusiasm for bridges, or for engineering in general, but he thought there had been a tacit acceptance that it was what he wanted to do. Instead, he sensed increasingly that she didn’t care what he did to make his living, or indeed whether he truly enjoyed it, provided he could make it in New York. And here lay the crux of the growing problems between them, as his fifth year in New York arrived and he found the early excitement he’d felt about his new life entirely gone. With his graduate degree, he had received two promotions at work, and begun to earn reasonable money – enough so that his father-in-law’s generosity seemed a nice bonus, rather than a lifeline out of credit card debt. But the work he was doing – managerial, financial – was not what he’d ever envisaged for himself. He knew what he cared about, and that was bridges, and he wanted to help make them work firsthand.
He liked New York a lot for what it was, a city, utterly urban, of extraordinary energy and diversity. He respected its riches, and tried to take advantage of them, but deep down, compared to what really seemed to stir him, he simply did not feel passionately enough about the place to make it, in his heart, his home. Oh, it was wonderful enough that you could find seventy-three different kinds of restaurant in a ten-block radius, or that there were more art galleries per head of population than anywhere on earth, or that every conceivable kind of performing art could be found, conducted at the highest possible level. He loved the brash brightness of its inhabitants – the fact that so many people read books while they took the bus or subway to work; the way that you couldn’t make assumptions about them – he’d had an ageing cab driver use the words deracinated and rebarbative in the course of a ten-block ride. He fully believed that Central Park was an unrivalled urban piece of greenery and accepted that Hester Street produced the best pastrami, and that in all likelihood there were more poets in three blocks of the West Village than at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. He admired these riches, but he didn’t need them, and he would have felt guilty that he didn’t love his wife enough to stay in New York and do what he didn’t want to do, had he not known that she didn’t love him enough to go with him.
He did his best to be with her in spirit, nonetheless, and it should have been easy enough to make that journey, considering the distance he’d come from Stillriver, his distance from his father and brother. He knew that sophistication acquired as an adult need not be skin-deep, if the acquirer’s earlier skin is shed fully enough. You can take the boy out of the small town, but you can’t take the small town out of the boy. But that wasn’t always true. Time and again, he would meet people who appeared seamlessly integrated into New York life yet, when asked, would turn out to hail from Wichita, or Duluth, or Boswell, Indiana.
But increasingly he felt he was trying to become something for which he had no real aspiration. He felt this especially in the upper class milieu of his in-laws, where it was what he hadn’t done and what he didn’t know that created the gulf. He hadn’t gone to Choate or Groton or whatever the name was of the prep school Mr Perkins had attended and always complained about; he hadn’t gone to an Ivy League college or, failing that, the University of Colorado at Boulder because of its proximity to first-class skiing; he didn’t make his living either on Wall Street or from designing solar heating panels for houses in Vermont; he’d never heard of paddle tennis or Plymouth Gin.
He supposed he could learn about gin and even, God forbid, take a paddle tennis lesson or two, but there seemed no point trying truly to assimilate. For there remained deep within him something of Stillriver, which he not only couldn’t remove, he didn’t want to excise either. It was something that wouldn’t let him go. And there was something else that wouldn’t let him go: the memory of Cassie Gilbert.
He sometimes wondered what a shrink would make of Cassie’s enduring presence in his mental life, for his mother’s flat statement that calf love never lasts had proved entirely incorrect, at least as far as he was concerned. Here he was nearing thirty and his first love from teenage years still had a hold on him of almost mesmeric power – how else to account for the weird sightings of her that had plagued him here in New York? He assumed any analyst’s diagnosis (did shrinks diagnose?) would be a straightforward case of persisting immaturity: You haven’t grown up, Mr Wolf, he could imagine them saying. Which might even be true to a certain extent, though he preferred to think that Cassie had been his second chance at Eden, after the original Fall from grace when his mother died. But where his mother was now reduced to a few images he held like slides in his head, Cassie was alive to him, Cassie kept him going, Cassie was his refuge from the life he now so much regretted.
His increasing unhappiness at work did not go unnoticed by Streatley, who bought him lunch at P.J. Clarke’s one Friday, and insisted they each have cocktails, something frowned on in the office.
With the first gulp of his Martini, Streatley said, ‘You’re getting sucked in, you know that, don’t you?’
‘How’s that?’
‘You’ll have your own office soon, then they’ll make you a director. One day you might even get on the board.’
‘You think that’s what I want?’
Streatley drained his drink and signalled elaborately to the waitress for another. ‘I don’t know. But it looks like what you’ll be getting.’
‘And if it’s not what I want, what can I do about it?’
‘That’s where I come in.’ Streatley leaned back while the waitress put down a paper n
apkin and his new drink before him. ‘Ah,’ he said appreciatively, after his first sip. ‘In theory, I remain your superior,’ he said.
‘That goes without saying.’
Streatley waved a hand impatiently. ‘This isn’t about turf. You know me better than that. The only reason I mention the fact is that I may still be in a position to help you. But not for much longer. One more promotion and you’ll be beyond my helping you.’ He gave a slightly tipsy chuckle. ‘Beyond anyone helping you, perhaps.’
‘What do you think I should do?’
‘Make up your mind,’ said Streatley, and his voice was suddenly sharp. ‘You can be a senior executive, wield great power, make excellent money, and become what I have signally failed to become. Nothing wrong with that.’
‘Or?’
‘Or, you can get your ass out of the General Motors building, wear a hard hat at something other than the office Christmas party, and be an engineer. As I said,’ he added wearily, ‘the choice is yours. But I don’t want you to end up where you don’t want to be. Unlike me.’
‘Christ,’ said Michael, trying to lighten the tone, ‘you sound like something out of a movie. You know, On the Waterfront – “I could have been a contender.”’
Streatley shrugged sadly. ‘Who says life can’t imitate art? Now tell me when I can meet this friend of your wife’s.’
At Christmas he got the usual card from Donny and Brenda and one from Nancy Sheringham, with a photo on its front, taken the summer before, of her and Lou and the three girls in front of a tractor in the orchard behind her house. On the inside of the card she wrote her usual report:
We’re all well and hoping this year will see a Michael Wolf presence in the state of Michigan! Corn was especially good this year, and peaches too.
Little news to report except my girls keep growing fast! Donny and Brenda are fine, and we saw Kenny Williams last summer with a new girlfriend (her dress was as high as possible – and you could almost see possible!) Had an early Xmas card from Cassie last week – her aunt (remember the one in Berkeley?) has moved to Austin, which is nice since Ronald is away working a lot. Your daddy says Gary is doing well at Lashings but says you’re no better communicating with him than you are with us. Shame on you!
But love from all of us and Merry Christmas to you and Sarah.
Nancy
Three weeks later a supervisor at a steel truss bridge in northern Montana broke his back when his jeep overturned on black ice. ‘That’s a wonderful part of the country,’ said Streatley meaningfully when he told Michael what had happened. ‘I need somebody to go for two months and fill in.’ And then, almost as an afterthought, he said, ‘There’s one in Texas, too. The crew engineer’s wife died and he’s got to go look after his kids.’
‘Texas? Why didn’t you say so?’ and before Streatley could ask any questions Michael nominated himself to fill in.
He got her number over the phone from Nancy Sheringham, who asked no questions. He figured it was eleven o’clock in the morning in Texas and Ronald would be at work. He dialled and hung up two times before he dialled again and forced himself to wait.
When he heard her voice say hello, he found it hard to speak. ‘Cassie,’ he said in a whisper.
There was a long pause. Then she whispered back. ‘Michael. Oh my God. Michael, is that you?’
3
HE WAS THREE weeks into a major job in the Hill Country, and instead of spending the first long weekend home in New York made an excuse to Sarah and went to Austin, where Cassie had arranged to visit her Aunt Judy, the ex-hippy who had moved from Berkeley.
He usually stayed in inexpensive chains – Best Western, Motel Six – but now splurged out on a long, light room in the Pedernales Hotel. It was big enough to have a sofa and two armchairs grouped around a table at the courtyard end. Two French doors opened out onto a small balcony overlooking a courtyard filled with potted trees and climbing plants and wood pigeons cooing in its high corners. He drew the curtains and tidied up the room. From the minibar’s fridge, he took out two wine glasses and a bottle of California Sauvignon he’d bought that afternoon near the university’s campus. When he heard the light tap on the door he didn’t have any idea what to expect.
It was the same Cassie, though of course it wasn’t – she had grown up like he had, and was entirely a woman now, no longer a girl on the cusp of adulthood. Yet her hair was still shoulder-length, with the same bangs in front framing her clear, ever-so-slightly long face, which was smiling at him a little nervously.
‘Come in,’ he said, trying to sound relaxed, standing aside and watching as she walked in. She was wearing cream linen trousers with a cherry-coloured top. On her ring finger she wore a thin gold band. What did I expect? Nothing this stylish and smart; he’d hoped she’d come in threadbare clothes, looking pinched and exhausted, impressed by the hotel.
They sat down and he gave her a glass of wine, while they made halting small talk. She showed him pictures of the house in Bryan, a long bungalow of white aluminium siding, with a catalpa tree in the front yard; the whole place looked hot. And pictures of her daughter Sally, in diapers, a little blonde girl crawling in a sandpit. There were no photographs of Ronald.
They talked for an hour, or rather he listened as she talked, first about her courses – she was excited to be studying again, happy at last to be getting the education she had always planned for – but then mainly about Stillriver. Out of touch, he learned how many acres Nancy Sheringham was now farming, that Mr Wagner, the twins’ father, had cancer, that Donny was working for the county on road crews, and that Anthea Heaton had married a flashy guy in sales and moved to Florida. She talked endlessly, it seemed to him, and innocently, steering so far clear of any emotionally-charged topic – from the worst of them (Ronald) to the mildest (his father) – that he felt like a man brought to a feast, who’s only allowed to drink water.
She’s going to go soon, he thought, and we haven’t talked about anything. He knew that he could leave things as they were, try and accept that people change, their lives diverging like the roads in the Frost poem he had liked so much in high school. But what struck him was that Cassie’s personality didn’t really seem to have altered. Yet if she were the same, were her emotions the same, too? Was her friendly but thin and distant conversation now the true extent of what she wished to say? Maybe she wasn’t holding anything back, because she no longer had feelings for him that she needed to repress. At the thought of this his spirits sank, and he sat, feeling fatalistically passive, waiting for her to announce her departure. She put both hands in her lap and tipped her head down, so he had trouble at first making out what she said. ‘Sorry?’ he said.
‘I said,’ she declared loudly, lifting up her head, ‘do you want me to go now?’
‘No. Of course not.’
‘Well, conversation’s getting a little stale, don’t you think? “And how is Johnny Ferguson, seen much of him? And whatever happened to Missy Carpenter, is she still in Michigan?”’ This was more like it, that slightly sassy sense of humour, which had always kept her good nature from becoming saccharine. ‘Aren’t you even going to ask me how I really am?’
‘I don’t know what you mean,’ he said, not allowing himself to hope.
‘Can’t you even pretend to care? Does knowing me back then count for nothing at all now?’ She had drunk two glasses of wine.
‘Oh, Cassie,’ he said, with a sense of despair that he would not be able to make himself understood. ‘Of course I care. It’s all I care about. Why do you think I’m here?’
‘I don’t know why you’re here.’
‘Well, I don’t know why you’re here either,’ he said like a schoolboy, and when she stuck her tongue out at him they both laughed. He said, ‘You know, I was hoping you’d come here tonight looking terrible and tell me how miserable you are. But instead you waltz in wearing fancy clothes and looking like a million dollars.’
‘Don’t tell me about fancy – how do you think I f
eel in this hotel? I couldn’t afford a cup of coffee downstairs from the looks of it. And these,’ she said, pointing to her trousers, ‘these aren’t even mine. I borrowed them out of my cousin’s closet. My aunt didn’t mind; she knew I didn’t have anything to wear.’
‘Well, I don’t usually stay in places like this. I’m more a motel man myself.’
‘You’re just saying that. You’re from New York, you must be used to the high life.’ There was a slight challenge to her voice. ‘You like the glitz, don’t you?’
‘What glitz? I live in a two-bedroom apartment on the eighteenth floor of an ugly building in an ugly block. I go to work on a hot, overcrowded subway and spend all day high up in a bland tower doing work that could be done anywhere – anywhere pleasant, I mean, with grass and trees and nice people. Except the owner thinks New York is the hub of the world.’
‘Well, isn’t it?’
‘It is for an awful lot of people, or they wouldn’t have gone there in the first place. I thought it would become that way for me, but somehow it’s passed me by. What about you?’ He looked at her. ‘Do you like Texas?’
‘I’d rather be in Stillriver. That’s the difference between us. You might not like New York but you wouldn’t want to be in Stillriver.’
‘Oh, I don’t know.’
‘Don’t pretend you miss the place.’
‘I don’t any more.’
‘What, you don’t pretend, or you don’t miss the place?’
He laughed, then said quietly, ‘What I miss isn’t there any more.’ He looked at her intently and she started to blush. He got up from his chair and stood in front of her. He leaned down and she looked at him with what seemed a tentative eagerness. He put his face an inch away from hers. ‘Let’s say hello again. Then we can really talk.’
Stillriver Page 32
