The Mentor

by Sebastian Stuart

  Portia tries to disguise how shook up she is. She pulls out a Pall Mall and sticks it between her lips. She lights a match and just before she holds the flame to the cigarette, she looks over at Charles. “I’ve never once been wrong about you.”

  Charles helps Portia out of the rowboat and secures it to the dock. She follows him across the patch of rocky shoreline. As they climb the steps, the only sound is their footfalls on the old wood. Charles feels emptied out, emotionless; speech seems an impossible effort-and what is there to say? Behind him he hears Portia’s labored breathing as she climbs, and her labored steps, her old feet carrying her old body. They near the halfway point, where the stairs turn and there’s a small landing.

  “I’ve got one of my chicken pot pies in the freezer, I’ll stick it in the oven,” she says.

  Charles reaches the landing and starts up the final stretch. Portia stops a moment, leaning against the rail, sucking air.

  “God bless R. J. Reynolds,” she says.

  Charles turns and looks at her.

  “You really should think about quitting,” he says.

  And then he pushes her.

  38

  Anne is thinking seriously about single motherhood as her cab struggles through traffic. The weekend with Kayla was rejuvenating: room-service meals, silly television shows, long talks-and a chance to gain some perspective on the situation with Charles. Divorce would be a big fat mess, of course, and Anne hates the thought of giving up, just hates it. But she’ll be damned if she’ll let Charles take her and her child down with him. He wasn’t at the apartment this morning when she went home to change for work, and it was obvious he’d been living in his office; the room was littered with tangled blankets, take-out food containers, and empty bottles of Scotch. The cab runs a light and a horn blares and she instinctively grabs the door handle-someone has stuck a wad of fresh chewing gum under it.

  For about six months she’s been thinking of moving her company downtown, creating a twenty-first-century workplace that would generate a lot of press and a lot of prestige for Anne Turner Inc. A real estate agent called to let her know about two adjoining warehouses with a large hidden courtyard between them. Anne was intrigued. An architect she’s interested in, a young Italian woman who’s creating a stir with her ravishing lofts and Silicon Alley offices, is going to look at the properties with her. Anne has to be at the Hilton in an hour, really should have scheduled this at another time, but she wants her days to be jammed beyond reason.

  Anne hops out of the cab in frustration and walks the last six blocks. The buildings are in the far West Twenties, near the Hudson River. The architect and the real estate agent are standing out front. The agent is an older man, tweedy and reserved. Gabriella, the architect, is pulled together in that uniquely Milanese way-belted black cashmere coat, black hair in a striking geometric cut-all postmodern cool.

  The agent leads them through the two vacant buildings, with vast open floors and fantastic old mullioned windows that look out at the river and New Jersey beyond. The courtyard is a junk heap but has the kind of potential that thrills Anne. She imagines it as a garden, an unexpected oasis for her staff, with shade trees and rushing water.

  The tour over, the three of them stand in front of the building.

  “Why don’t you let your imagination go crazy, and call me next week,” Anne says to Gabriella.

  Gabriella nods and lights a cigarette. She looks up at the buildings. “Fantastic.”

  “I’m sorry I have to run,” Anne says.

  “I am embarrassed,” Gabriella says with a charming smile. She pulls out an Italian edition of Life and Liberty. “Your husband’s work, it means so much to me. I found this first edition. If he would sign it, please?”

  The day is humid and still, the world covered with low clouds; at the end of the street the river is wide and gray. Anne hears children’s voices from the corner playground. She looks down at Charles’s book, runs her hand over the jacket. How old was she when she first read Life and Liberty and was so transported by it? For a moment she thinks she might cry.

  “I know he’ll be happy to sign this. I’ll messenger it down to you by the end of the week,” Anne says. Then she steps off the curb and hails a taxi.

  Anne pushes through the Hilton’s revolving doors and strides up the moving escalator to the ballroom. She’s late for the luncheon-considered skipping it, but it’s important-for the Children’s Defense Fund. She wrote them a check, but wants to be here in person, to feel like a part of the work they do, to connect. And to be seen. It’s very important for her to be seen these days, for people to know she’s out there doing her job, that everything is fine.

  As she crosses the mezzanine she runs into Nina Bradley.

  The two women stand looking at each other across all the years, all the dinners, all the laughs. Anne always thought of Nina as an extension of Charles in some funny way-the two of them were so close, almost like siblings.

  “I’m so sorry,” Anne says.

  “You have nothing to apologize for.”

  “Thank you. You’re very generous.”

  Nina smiles-beautiful Nina. “I need some time, Anne.” Then she starts into the ballroom.

  Anne doesn’t want to lose her. There are few people whose opinion she trusts more.

  “Nina?” she calls. Nina turns and Anne lowers her voice: “His new book, is it really that good?”

  Nina looks at Anne for a long moment. “Yes,” she says.

  And then she walks away.

  Anne stands there in the cold expanse and a chill runs up her neck. She heads into the ballroom, hoping she’ll be able to sit still through the lunch.

  39

  Emma is curled up in bed with all the lights off, staring at a paint chip on the wall. She hasn’t eaten in two days, hasn’t bathed in a while. The red neon glow streams in the window and she can hear voices down on the street below, happy voices, and all Emma wants to do is die. She feels like she’s back in the hospital, during those endless early months when she lay on her bed unable to move and the doctors came and talked to her and she couldn’t answer because she didn’t understand what they were saying, because the words made no sense, coming from so far away, from that other world. Emma’s world ends, then and now, at the edge of her bed, just falls away, black and hopeless.

  After a weekend of the phone constantly ringing, Charles hasn’t called once all day. He’s given up, come to his senses. Why would he ever leave a woman like Anne Turner for a girl like her, a girl with no family, no breeding, no education, a BadGirlSickGirl. Emma shrinks further into herself on the bed. She turns and gets caught up in the tangle of bedclothes; they’re sweaty and dirty and dank and all she wants is the energy to climb up to the roof and jump, fly into nothingness-sweet release.

  And then there’s a knock on the door.

  “Emma? It’s me.”

  Emma stumbles out of bed and switches on a light. The place is a mess. She frantically straightens the bed, shoves papers under the sofa.

  “Emma?”

  “Coming,” she calls, slipping on a robe over her T-shirt and panties. She takes a deep breath and opens the door.

  How strange he looks-sunken and tortured and scared. Does she smell whiskey on his breath? He needs her as much as she needs him-that’s it! These days apart have been an equal agony for her poor Charles.

  He kicks the door closed behind him and pushes her against the wall and kisses her hard, his body pressing insistently into hers. He opens her robe and grabs her panties in his fist and rips them and pushes down his pants and enters her. His thrusts are violent and Emma is scared by his need and she’s knocking into the wall and she wants him to stop and take her to the bed and make gentle love to her but still he thrusts and thrusts-and then there’s nothing but his smell and his tongue and his cock and she wraps her legs and arms around him and thrusts back again and again and again, matching his violence with her own.

  It’s after one in the mornin
g when Charles finally walks in the front door. The apartment is dark. He’s so exhausted; he’s never been this exhausted before-beyond thought, beyond feeling. He only wants to sleep, to sleep and wake up in a better world. He walks into the living room and over to the bar. He pours himself a stiff Scotch and downs it. That moment-his hands pushing Portia-floods back and he shudders. He can smell himself, rank with sweat and fear. What has he done?

  “Welcome home.”

  Charles spins around to see Anne sitting on the couch by the fireplace. In the dim light, her face looks hard and angular. He has a sudden urge to confess, to be forgiven, absolved, cleansed. No. That would destroy everything.

  “I didn’t see you there,” he says.

  “I didn’t expect you would. Hard night?”

  “Let’s not be childish, Anne.”

  “No, let’s not. Let’s be very adult. How much longer do you need to finish your book?”

  “About two weeks.”

  “Today’s Monday. On Friday I’ll leave for a week in Los Angeles. Kayla and I have some business plans. When I come back, I want her out of your life.”

  “I appreciate this.”

  “I don’t want your appreciation. I want our marriage back.”

  The world goes on and people like Anne put one foot in front of the other and do what they have to do.

  “So do I, darling,” he says.

  “I’m three months pregnant.”

  Charles sits beside Anne and she recoils slightly-his smell, no doubt. He takes her hand and holds it to his cheek, smells it, kisses it. Then he gently touches her stomach.

  “Thank you… for everything,” he says.

  They sit there without speaking. It’s been such a long day. But worth it. He’ll deliver a great book-for Anne, for their child, for the man he once was and still at heart remains.

  40

  It’s early, but Emma is already at her typewriter. She’s exhausted, hasn’t even dressed yet, but Charles will be arriving soon and she wants him to find her at work. They’re nearing the end of the book and she’s finding it almost impossible to write. She wants the boy, Zack, to get away from his mother, escape their squalid, sorry life. She imagines him rescued by his aunt, a shadowy but important character in the book. Rescued, taken away-as she hadn’t been. She can see him playing in the sun on the fresh green lawn of his aunt’s house. Safe. Happy. Saved.

  But no, Charles won’t hear of it. He says it would read like a tacked-on Hollywood ending; it would lack dramatic punch and tragic resonance, sabotage the climax they’d been building up to. He’s been fierce and unrelenting on this point, has mocked all of her objections. There’s only one way to end it, he insists: have Zack kill his mother. Not pretty, but honest. Bold. Horrifying. • •

  That March night, as the soft snow fell outside the window, the small town lay curled in on itself and Emma lay coiled on her bed, her body covered with wounds and welts, trembling with fear and rage, staring at her bedroom door, barricaded with all the room’s furniture, waiting, almost afraid to breathe, her mother, the devil, in the middle of a three-day speed-fueled fit, a fury, and then suddenly-she must have crept close-a crashing as she threw her skinny venomous body against the door again and again and again, screaming, and the furniture started to slide across the floor and her mother started to laugh and Emma realized with a sudden clarity that her mother was insane and so was she, they were both crazy, sick crazy, and she hated her mother for making her crazy, wanted only to kill her, and then the door was halfway open and Emma looked out at the snow and it was so pretty…

  And so Emma writes, each word like blood, and dreams of when it will be over. And then what? She hears his key in the door and quickly lowers her head, hoping to feel his lips on her neck. Instead he says, “Good morning,” and moves to the kitchen area.

  “Good morning,” Emma says, looking up. Charles hasn’t shaved, his hair is greasy, and there are dark circles under his eyes. He looks drawn and bloated at the same time. He’s carrying a shopping bag, which he sets down on the counter. Some food, some wonderful treats, Emma thinks. But he reaches into the bag and lifts out a fishbowl.

  “What’s that?” Emma asks.

  Charles pulls out a water-filled plastic bag in which two goldfish are swimming and dumps them into the bowl. “Goldfish.” He holds up the bowl like a proud little kid. “Are you all right, Emma?”

  “Why goldfish?”

  “Impulse. I had them when I was a boy.” Charles sets the bowl on the counter and studies the fish. “Beautiful, aren’t they?”

  Emma nods.

  “It’s amazing they don’t go mad, swimming around and around in such a small space all their lives,” he says.

  “How would we know if they did?”

  “Go mad?”

  “Yes.”

  He lights a cigarette.

  “Did you ever have fish?” he asks.

  Emma shakes her head.

  “Are you sure?”

  “Positive.”

  “For some reason, I imagined you as the kind of girl who would have kept fish. A turtle maybe?”

  “No.”

  “I thought it might be interesting if Zack had them.”

  “In the book?”

  “Yes, silly. In the book. Don’t you think a child in his position would try to create a world, even a world as small as a fishbowl, where he could be in control? Where there was no chaos and pain, just gentle swimming hour after hour?”

  Emma doesn’t answer.

  “Am I working you too hard, Emma?”

  “No.”

  “I know this is all terribly complicated, with Anne and the book and us. I’m sorry to put you through it.”

  He comes toward her and she prays he’ll touch her, stroke her. But when he gets close he turns and walks into the bathroom.

  “I look a wreck, don’t I?” he asks.

  “A little tired,” Emma says.

  “It is a strain.” He goes and lies on her bed. “Only one thing to do, get to work. Cures all ills. Read me what you’ve got.”

  Emma looks at the goldfish, swimming in restless circles around the small glass bowl. Why are they looking at her like that?

  41

  Anne watches Charles as he sits at the kitchen table and reads Portia’s obituary. He looks so shocked, so solemn.

  According to the New York Times Portia fell from an outdoor staircase and down a rock ledge. Her decomposing body was discovered by two hikers. Animals had been at it. Anne is fascinated by these morbid details-the ignominious ending of an illustrious life. And then there’s something about accidental death-the reminder of how short the distance is from here to there, how it can be crossed in an instant, the ultimate one-way street. The way the kitchen looks in the morning light, the taste of her coffee, seem altered somehow.

  Anne reminds herself that Charles has lost the person he trusted most. “I’m sorry,” she says.

  “She would have wanted to die like that, quickly, by her lake.”

  “She had a long and wonderful life,” Anne says, feeling slightly idiotic, as she always does when she has to summon up dishonest emotion.

  “At least now I can dedicate the new book to her. After Life and Liberty, she never let me do that again.”

  Charles carries Anne’s bags down to the car. The day is tangy and bright. Charles is blinking against the sunlight, shading his eyes. Hung over. Probably thinking about Emma, his so-called inspiration. He made his bed; now he and his creepy little muse can sleep in it.

  “I hope your work goes well,” Anne says.

  “And yours,” Charles answers, distracted, looking around, almost as if he’s paranoid.

  They cross the sidewalk, the driver takes Anne’s bags, and she and Charles look at each other.

  “I am sorry about Portia,” Anne says.

  “So am I.”

  Anne reaches up and touches Charles’s cheek lightly and then turns and gets in the car.

  Los Angeles
is just a little too close to home for Anne-she can’t face her mother, not this week-but Kayla’s Spanish-style spread in Santa Monica is warm and comfortable. She takes a long swim and a short nap, and when Kayla comes home Anne makes them a salad and an omelette.

  At nine on the dot the young woman arrives. She’s not what Anne expected-she wears glasses, a black turtleneck, loose jeans, and espadrilles; her hair is tucked up in a barrette. But there’s no disguising her beauty and cool cunning. The three of them sit around the oak table in the kitchen for two hours and twenty minutes, deep in discussion.

  “I think I’m going to enjoy Cambridge,” the woman says finally, gathering up her notes.

  Anne opens her purse and takes out an envelope filled with twenty thousand dollars in crisp hundreds. She hands it to the young woman, who shakes her hand and leaves.

  42

  When Emma looks up from her desk, Charles is standing there, a leather suitcase in one hand. He has on a brown hunting jacket and dark gloves. He tosses the suitcase onto her bed.

  “I’m staying down here this week,” he says.

  He’s staying at her apartment. She’ll fall asleep with him beside her, and when she wakes up in the middle of the night he’ll be there. There’ll be lots of work, of course, but also times when they’ll lie around reading or cook pasta or laugh at something silly.

  “We have to stay focused on the work, Emma. This is the crucial week. We’ll be at it twenty-four hours a day if we have to.”

  There’ll be no laughs. He’ll be bearing down on her relentlessly. The apartment will become a cage.

  The motherfucker.

  “You understand, don’t you, Emma?”

  Emma looks down at her writing. He’ll only be here for a week and then she’ll have the one thing she wants as much as she wants Charles-her book. She does still want it, doesn’t she?