“In Vail?” his father repeated. “Vail, Colorado?”
Peter nodded defensively.
“Why not? Because we can’t afford it,” Dr. Chatfield said, staring at Peter with an air of bemused alarm, as though his son had suddenly leapt on top of the table. There was a long silence, during which Peter seethed resentfully. When Dr. Chatfield felt his point had been made, he returned to his newspaper.
“Besides,” Peter’s mother said reasonably from the sink, “we don’t know anyone who goes to Vail.”
“Well, I do,” Peter said.
“We’re still not going,” Dr. Chatfield said, behind the paper.
Peter pushed back his chair, stomped out of the room.
It had been at Harvard where Peter discovered how truly poor he was. Freshman year, his roommate was a rich Argentinian. Roberto’s talk of estancias, shooting parties, weekends at beach houses, balls, dances, private planes, silenced Peter. He watched Roberto’s treatment of things: Roberto dropped a cashmere blazer on the floor, and left it there for five and a half weeks. Peter owned only one blazer, and it was wool. During reading period, in January, Peter finally picked up the dusty abandoned blazer and hung it on the back of a chair. Roberto said cheerfully, “Don’t bother with that. It’s so filthy I’m going to throw it away.”
Peter stared at him for a moment. He thought of the blazer thrown into the scrap basket in their room, he thought of it out in the big trash basket on the landing. He thought of himself, sneaking it out of the trash basket. Furious at the idea, at his own imagination, he settled the blazer’s shoulders on the back of the chair.
“It’s just dusty,” he said coldly. Roberto shrugged. Later the blazer vanished: Peter supposed Roberto had thrown it out after all. Roberto paid no attention to his possessions. He lost his lustrous custom-made shirts, his lamb’s-wool sweaters. He wore his wing-tip Peal loafers without socks, roughly stuffing his heels into them until he broke down the backs. Then he threw them away. Peter watched this without comment.
At home, Peter noticed for the first time the frayed edges of his father’s blue broadcloth shirts. He noticed the tired, unrenewed quality of everything in the house: his mother’s tattered plastic address book, the faded sofa pillows, the ragged Persian rugs. It enraged him; he blamed his father for all of this. There had been money; now it was gone.
Peter put on his suit, smoothing his shirttail down inside the trousers. His suits were made for him. Not in London, he thought that was something you should inherit. His grandfather had had an English tailor, but no one knew its name. Finding a London tailor on your own, Peter thought, was like making up a family coat of arms. He went instead to Morty Sills, on Fifty-third Street. Sills’s was small and snobbish, like a private club. Caroline had been delighted when he told her he was going to Sills’s. Her face had lit up, as though Peter had achieved something substantive, instead of merely deciding to spend a lot of money on clothes.
Caroline had seen New York, as he had, as a place in which to excel, though their goals were different. She was aiming at social triumph. She was from Louisville—Loouhville, he had learned to pronounce it. Her family was large, with money in the background. There were cousins, houses, parties. Caroline’s mother, Mrs. Pierce, was glamorous and bossy, tall and thin, with a long corded neck. She had short rough bronzed hair, brushed up and back, with furrows as though a harrow had combed it. She wore gold jewelry that looked like braided rope, and was flirtatious with Peter. “Petah,” she would call, patting the sofa next to her, “you come ovah heah and sit down and tell me who’s going to be the next president of the United States.” She was flattering, charming. Caroline was afraid of her.
One evening Peter and Caroline came downstairs for drinks before dinner in the Pierces’ big red living room. In her mother’s house, Caroline spent hours dressing, painstakingly doing her hair, her makeup. That night she was wearing new earrings. She had bought them in New York and shown them to Peter. “My mother will love these,” she had said, exultant. He had realized that even in New York she dressed for her mother’s eye. Coming down with her that night, he had felt Caroline’s eagerness, her excitement.
There were guests, and the bright room was scattered with people. Mrs. Pierce stood in front of the fireplace, white pants, a bright red sweater, gold earrings. She was at the center of a group. Caroline, in a silvery top and black pants, her hair smooth, her patent-leather slippers gleaming, paused for a moment at the top of the two broad steps that led down into the living room. Smiling, she went down to greet her mother.
Mrs. Pierce turned, stared at her and said loudly, “Caroline, whatever possessed you to buy those earrings? They look like little bits of intestines wrapped in tinfoil.” Everyone laughed, and Mrs. Pierce turned back to her friends, smiling. “I loathe the earrings you see today. I wish Fulco were still alive. Do you remember him? Oh, his things were so much fun.”
Caroline, next to Peter, stood still. She touched her earrings and smiled, as the others laughed at them. Peter saw that her eyes were glittering. She said something indistinct, then turned as though she’d forgotten something. She trotted back up the two steps that led to the hall, then turned toward the dining room. Peter, following, pushed through the swinging door to the butler’s pantry. He found her leaning on the counter, crying, enraged. “I hate her,” she said furiously when he came in. “I hate her.” She put her hands over her face. Peter put his arms around her, and she wept against him.
When they went back to the living room, Mrs. Pierce was effusively friendly to Peter. She put him at her right for dinner.
Peter turned now to the mirror, sliding his tie around the neck of his shirt. The collar stood stiffly upright. That moment, when Caroline had collapsed against him, weeping, bruised, he had felt swept by tenderness, the wish to protect her. She had seemed vulnerable, he had felt strong. All this had risen up in him, urgent, turbulent. A kind of love; he had thought it the real one.
He knotted the tie, looping the flat panel of silk around itself. Odd that you have to look in a mirror to do this, he thought, even if you know how. Even if you know the mechanics precisely, you need the eye. He watched the loop, the slipknot, the silk tails fitting neatly one underneath the other, one just the right amount shorter than the other. He remembered learning to tie nautical knots, sitting inside on rainy summer days in Maine. The rabbit comes out of the hole, around the tree, back into the ground. He was ready; he buttoned his jacket. He looked up and met his own eyes in the mirror: now, Emma.
For an instant her face came to him: brilliant, radiant against deep space. Then it dissolved, and he had to blink, mentally, and turn his mind away before he tried again.
He remembered the first time he had met her, at the cocktail party. He had thought her cool, then, self-sufficient: now he knew she was shy, self-conscious. As she looked at his paintings, he had thought her judgmental and dismissive. Now he knew she was most ruthlessly judgmental toward herself. She forgave herself nothing, permitted herself no errors: it was absurd, touching.
He felt himself yearning for her. It was so different, this kind of love. How could he have mistaken the other for it? He longed for Emma’s presence, the pleasure, the luxurious solace of it. He thought of the long line of the inside of her arm, the pale untouched skin.
This part was like charging headlong down a mountainside, heedless of footing, balance, boulders, gravity, feeling only the necessity of the rush. Who knew what would happen? Who cared? How good that he was in the middle of it, in the middle of this hurtle, the thundering landslide of himself, toward her.
5
“This is an experiment,” Peter said, holding the door open for Emma. She stepped inside. The restaurant was Mexican, gloomy and pretentious. The rooms were high ceilinged, and on the red walls hung bad nineteenth-century portraits in ornate frames. The place was nearly empty, and the headwaiter welcomed them effusively. Bald and corpulent, he walked backward before them, bowing, as he led them to their table.
He placed himself behind Emma’s high-backed chair.
“Señora,” he said unctuously, seating her with a flourish. “Señor,” he added, bowing slightly. He handed them each a large menu, with red tasseled cords. He rubbed his hands together and smiled horribly. “Something to drink?”
When he had gone Emma asked, “Why is servility so offensive?”
“It’s hostile,” said Peter. “A thin skin of politeness over contempt.”
“That’s exactly right, isn’t it,” Emma said. “There’s rage behind the bows. But an Italian waiter can bow all evening long, and you don’t feel rage. You feel charm.”
“That’s because Italians don’t lose face by being polite,” Peter said. “They don’t lose face by doing anything. They’re inherently dignified. Nothing they do threatens their dignity. Americans, on the other hand, are so terrified of losing face they’ll make you learn their names before they’ll park your car.” He looked around at the funereal room. “I don’t know about this place. It’s pretty terrible so far.”
“Maybe the food is good,” Emma said.
“At least it’s not noisy,” Peter said. He reached under the table and took her hand. “I like being able to hear you.” He looked directly at her. “I like being able to look at you, too.”
“I can’t look at you too long,” Emma said. “It’s like looking at the sun.”
She could feel him beginning to relax. By now she recognized his tension, but did not yet know how to dispel it. She didn’t know how Peter would normally relax—exercise? solitude? alcohol? But this was not his normal life. He had no normal life now. Divorce had set him adrift, cut him off from the mainland.
Emma remembered the great crowd of people in his apartment the night she had met him. They seemed to her to have vanished from his life. Friends move toward the wife in a divorce. Caroline had custody of the child and the apartment; she seemed to have custody of their friends as well. Caroline continued to lead their old life, but Peter had been expelled from it.
Peter opened his menu. “Mexican food.”
“I love it,” said Emma. “I spent a summer in Mexico.”
“Did you?” Peter looked up. “Why?”
“I was in a community aid project, in a little village in the mountains. I loved it: it was so hot and dry and remote. It was complete in itself, it was its own world. The countryside was so spare and empty, so calm. At the markets, the women knelt on the ground, and set out their vegetables in little pyramids, green peppers, red tomatoes, all of them shining and clean.”
“What were you doing there?”
“The boys were building a schoolhouse. We all took turns doing the cooking. We worked in pairs, and my partner was a guy called Jeff. I had an enormous crush on him, but he didn’t pay any attention to me.”
“Was he blind?” Peter asked.
Emma shook her head. “He was above all that. He was very highly evolved. He was a pacifist and a vegetarian. He had views on everything. I was very impressed: I had no views on anything.
“On our last night there, Jeff and I made a big feast: a huge bean and vegetable stew. There were nineteen of us to feed, and Jeff and I worked all afternoon, peeling and chopping and mixing. When we had everything in the pot, and had poured in all the water, I added two cubes of chicken bouillon, those little golden squeezy things. When I looked up I saw Jeff watching me. He asked, ‘Did you put in bouillon?’ I realized what I’d done. ‘Oh, God,’ I said, ‘I’m so sorry. I’ll fish it out.’ Jeff shook his head. ‘No,’ he said, ‘it doesn’t matter.” He wouldn’t look at me. The stew simmered all afternoon. At dinnertime he got himself a plate, instead of a bowl, and all he ate were tortillas. He wouldn’t take a single sip.”
“Ah,” said Peter, “stuffy and sanctimonious. That was his problem.”
“I felt like a fool,” Emma said.
“You weren’t the fool,” Peter said. “He was. He was a self-righteous ass.”
“But he was principled,” Emma said. “I admired that.”
“He was rigid and intolerant and unkind,” Peter said. “Why admire that?” He paused. “I didn’t know you were in Mexico. I like finding these things out about you.”
“It makes me nervous,” Emma admitted. “What if you find out things you don’t like?”
“What if you find out things about me you don’t like?” Peter returned. “Should we quit from nerves?”
“And then what?” Emma said, laughing.
“Exactly.” Peter took a swallow of his drink. “How old were you then?”
“Nineteen,” said Emma.
“And were you happy? I mean, in your life?”
“I don’t know,” said Emma. “I’ve never thought of it that way. I was too young to think whether or not I was happy. When you’re young you just live.”
“I think you like places you’ve been to when you’re happy, and you don’t when you’re not.”
“But don’t you think you’d always love Venice, no matter how you felt?” Emma asked.
“I can imagine hating Venice,” Peter said. “Finding it cold and sinister. Damp.”
“Most unusual,” Emma said.
“That I wouldn’t like Venice?”
“That you’d think landscape would be colored by emotion.”
“Is that unusual?”
“In a man, it is,” Emma said.
“Oh, I think you’ll find I’m a most unusual fellow,” Peter said cheerfully. The headwaiter hovered nearby, predatory. “Shall we order?”
“Señor?” The headwaiter stepped forward at once.
As Emma gave her order, she heard the man’s slow stifled breathing, like a quiet snore. When he took the menus and left, Emma said, “Poor man. I feel sorry for him.”
“Why?”
“This can’t be what he hoped for, when he left Mexico. All his high hopes for a better life, and he ends up in this dreary place, groveling in front of rich Americans.”
“You don’t know,” said Peter mildly. “You’re being elitist. For all you know, this was his dream: to be a headwaiter in a fancy place. Gold-framed paintings. Menus with tassels. He’s put a down payment on a house in Queens, his wife drives a Honda.”
Emma laughed. “Maybe. But he might hate it. I think I’ll still feel sorry for him, just in case.”
“Good,” said Peter. “I rely on you for that.”
“For what?”
“Thinking of other people,” said Peter.
“And what do I rely on you for?”
“Whatever you’d like.” He smiled at her easily.
Emma smiled back. Warren had never told her he’d rely on her for anything, and when he told her to rely on him it had felt like a command. This felt different: an offer of partnership.
The food was good: pale steaming tortillas, a sharp ribbon of chili running through the soft simmered beans.
“Can you cook like this?” Peter asked.
“No,” Emma said. “I mean I could, but I wouldn’t. It’s very slow, Mexican cooking. Making tortillas, simmering beans. It takes days, it’s not something you start doing at five o’clock.”
“Do you like cooking?” Peter asked.
“Yes,” said Emma. “Sometimes,” she amended, honestly. “Not all the time. Does Caroline?” The name felt strange in her mouth. She tried to say it easily.
The subject of Warren and Caroline was always imminent, forbidden but irresistible. Merely to speak their names was a potent act. They were charged and powerful, central to the myth of Peter and Emma that was now unfolding. It was Warren’s and Caroline’s malevolent magic that had begun this chain of events. Telling their anguished stories drew Peter and Emma into sympathetic alliance. Out of loyalty and decency they resisted complaining, laying blame, but out of grief and rage and loneliness they yielded, doing both.
“Caroline thinks cooking is demeaning,” Peter said. “In fact, the moment I realized my marriage was over was one night when Caroline refused to cook dinner.”
“It had started weeks before,” Peter said, “We were invited to a cocktail party.”
That night, Peter had come home tired and cold. It had been a long day. Caroline was standing in the front hall, waiting for him. Before the door had closed behind him she held up an envelope. She was exultant.
“Guess what,” she said, waving the card in front of him. “Drinks at the Spensers’.”
“Great,” Peter said, not looking at her. He set down his briefcase and began unbuttoning his coat.
Caroline held up the card again, so close that he had to look at it. It was Tiffany copperplate on a stiff white rectangle. The sloping black script declared that Mr. and Mrs. Edward Spenser requested the pleasure of their company.
“Peter,” Caroline said, frowning slightly, “did you see this? Did you see who it’s from?”
“I saw it,” Peter said evenly. “And you told me who it’s from. But I just walked in the door. I’d like a chance to take off my coat before invitations are waved in my face.”
There was a pause. Caroline folded her arms and stared at him. “What’s the matter with you?”
“There’s nothing the matter with me,” Peter said, taking off his coat. “I have just walked in the door.”
“I think I understand that,” Caroline said. “Since you’ve said it twice and since I was standing here when it happened. How long would you like before you’re ready to receive information about social events?”
Peter hung his coat in the closet. He closed the door with emphasis and turned to Caroline. “You can start now,” he said. “Bring on our social events. What piece of earthshaking news do you have for me?”
Caroline narrowed her eyes. “I’ve already told you, actually,” she said. “And I have the feeling that you’re not taking it very seriously. It’s drinks at the Spensers’.”
“I am taking it seriously,” Peter said, irritated. “Drinks at the Spensers’. I said ‘Fine.’ I’ll say it again. Fine.”
“Actually, you didn’t say ‘Fine.’ Actually, what you said was ‘Great,’” Caroline said. She spoke rapidly, blinking with irritation. “Not that it matters. The point is that this invitation is a big deal. This isn’t something you just say ‘Great’ to.”
This Is My Daughter Page 7
