The Henderson Equation

by Warren Adler

  When the letter had been posted, Nick called Margaret, now at home with Chums, who had arrived, both unexpected and unwanted, viewed by Margaret as a vicious attack on her person. It had been an intrusion of traumatic proportions more like an accident during a vacation, the sudden drop of a ski lift on the way to the summit, the capsizing of a sailboat on calm waters. She had gotten the results of the rabbit test while they were both in the office. He could see the answer in her drawn paleness as she had walked toward his desk in the city room, a beaten figure on the verge of hysteria. Seeing her coming, he had risen and walked toward her, then led her quickly to the elevator and the late-afternoon coolness of Shanley’s.

  “I can’t understand it,” he had whispered, after bringing two Scotches from the bar and urging her to sip one. She tried taking a big gulp, then spat it back into the glass, gagging.

  “I’d like to curl up and die,” she said, wiping the edges of her moist lips. “I knew this would happen. I knew it.”

  “We took precautions,” Nick said.

  She looked at him with unmistakable contempt.

  “You can’t play around with biology,” she said. “We’ve been taken.”

  “I hadn’t meant it to happen,” he said awkwardly, feeling stupid and platitudinous. The predicament seemed a cliché. Why does she not feel joyous? he remembered himself thinking, feeling both love and compassion for her and a yearning for this thing that they had created.

  “You talk of it as if it’s the end of the world,” he said. “I do love you, remember, and being married wouldn’t be exactly a tragedy. You see, you can’t fight City Hall.” He put a hand over hers and squeezed it. Talk of love seemed to soften her.

  “And I love you, Nick. It’s just that I’m not prepared for this. It comes as a shock.”

  “For both of us. You know I’m part of this deal.”

  “You’re a man,” she said helplessly. He knew what she meant.

  “We could get married and hell, you could work up to six months, maybe more. Then take leave and come right back to work. Women have been doing that for years.”

  “You just don’t understand, do you?” she said. “It’s a setback, an illness, a biological curse. The men who hand out promotions, who decide who shall rise and who shall fall, equate having babies with housewifery and motherhood. Actually it’s a black mark against me on the record.”

  “I don’t believe it,” he lied, searching his mind fruitlessly for examples.

  She tried sipping the Scotch again, sucking it in through clenched teeth. Turning, she searched the deserted bar. The big bartender was polishing glasses.

  “I want an abortion, Nick.”

  He watched her flickering eyes, misted now, the look of a trapped animal.

  “I think I have something to say about that,” he said. From the moment of their suspicion, when her period had not come, it had been alluded to, and he had laughed it off. But it had set off an inner turmoil, as if they were discussing the murder of someone they loved. He wondered if it were the ego inside of him crying out to be validated. Certainly, he knew, it was not a moral position. In the end, he had pushed it from his consciousness, unable to find two sides to debate. Now that he was confronted with the reality, he could only summon indignation, annoyance at her callousness.

  “I won’t hear of it,” he said, envisioning going up sleazy corridors in foul-smelling tenements, having her soft white body abused by an unshaven doctor with trembling fingers. It was not an uncommon image for the times, he remembered later, feeling, long after Chums had been born, that he, too, had been trapped by chronology. Perhaps, after all, Chums in her embryonic state was listening, had heard the discussion of her possible execution.

  “It’s my body and my life,” Margaret had said, her throat tightening, her voice sharply raised. He could see the bartender turn briefly, then look away.

  “You sound as if marrying me would be a stretch in purgatory,” he said.

  Later, he had relived the moment again when abortion emerged as a national issue, feeling the pain of it. He could never approach his pro-abortion position without a nagging sense of guilt. Suppose they had killed Chums?

  Margaret had actually searched for an abortionist. He was on the extension during the initial contact, the discussion revolving around the details of money and place. Perhaps it was the voice on the other end, furtive, gruff, cautious, that dissuaded them, or the screen of guilt which clung to them like chewing gum, but the idea was ultimately rejected. Emerging through tears and anxieties, sleepless nights, tender couplings, passionate ecstasies, they finally decided on marriage. It took place in a simple ceremony at City Hall, attended by Margaret’s mother and father, awkward and bumbling, holding back their anger. Later he had taken her to visit his mother in Warren, Ohio, and it seemed better in the glow of familiar faces, piecrusts, and the nostalgic odors of his old room, where he had insisted on their sleeping, although his mother was willing to give up her double bed.

  Chums, Charmagne, arrived with Charlie as absent godfather. By then his involvement at the Chronicle was keeping him busy and his telephone calls and letters were growing scarcer. They moved to Brooklyn after Chums was born to be near Margaret’s mother, who they assumed might be a built-in baby-sitter, when Margaret was ready to tackle work again. Unfortunately her mother developed phlebitis, which made it difficult for her to maneuver an infant, and Margaret was forced to postpone the end of her sabbatical. That, and the unaccustomed longish subway trip to Borough Park, once taken with such delight, became a plague, compounded by Margaret’s nagging and continuing feeling of regret and entrapment. As if in compensation, Nick took to spending more and more time in Shanley’s where McCarthy’s boozy Irish eloquence could calm the troubled soul.

  “She’s my whore,” McCarthy would say, pointing to the building across the street. “Her ink was her perfume, and when it wafted past my nose, my goose was cooked. No home, no children, no warm fireside. Only her whoring ways.” He’d shake a fist in the whore’s direction. “I’ll beat her yet, the fickle, devious, black-hearted, faithless adultress.” Toward morning, as the bartender made his last pourings, he would begin to rave and thrash his arms about. “Was this the face that launched a thousand ships and burned the topless towers of Ilium? Come, Helen, suck forth my soul with a kiss.”

  Despite the thickness of his tongue, the lines always came out crystal clear, an invocation of irreversible fate, as if it were the ultimate explanation of McCarthy’s hopeless entanglement. While others would politely excuse themselves from McCarthy in his nightly cups, Nick felt drawn toward him, fascinated by the never-ending articulation of his imagined burden, as if the editorship of the country’s most circulated newspaper were a disease to be endured, its terminality ordained by supernatural forces.

  “If you don’t keep her petted, adored, indulged, she’ll turn on you like a viper. The bitch is never satisfied, a bottomless pit of satiation. Throw whatever meat you can find in her maw and it leaves her perpetually open for more. Her appetite never ends. She goes on, never sleeping, always greedy, hungry for whatever garbage you can dredge up. And the bitch has got no conscience, no conscience whatsoever. Give her half a chance and she’ll swallow you up and regurgitate the bones.”

  Years later, a mirror image had cascaded out of Charlie’s drunken mouth, the same allusions, linked, it seemed, by a love-hate relationship with the same dissatisfied whore. And now him.

  In the silent listening, the receptive ear, McCarthy had apparently sensed some succor for his loneliness and perhaps it was appreciation for this that prompted his promotion. Nick was actually embarrassed by the quick change in his fortunes, since his befriending of McCarthy was not rooted in his own ambition. He was, after all, content to be a reporter, an observer, having achieved a pinnacle that was even then beyond his dreams.

  “You’re Assistant City Editor, Gold,” McCarthy had barked without looking up from a sheaf of copy paper. He had not even known that the post w
as open, learning only later that the opening of the newspaper’s television station was thinning out the deskmen’s ranks.

  Is he serious? Nick wondered.

  “Boy,” McCarthy shouted, looking up, seeing that Nick was still standing around.

  “Don’t just stand there with a finger up your ass, Gold,” McCarthy shouted. “Get to work.”

  “I can’t believe it,” he had told Margaret on the phone.

  “Why not?”

  “It’s just hard to believe.”

  He had dreaded the call, knowing how she related his success to her own failed hopes. She had been writing with a by-line before he had been hired.

  “You deserve it, Nick. You’re a professional.” He could feel her voice crack, then the click, as if further conversation would have prompted tears. He had meant to tell her that a raise came with the new job, enough to be able to afford a competent nurse and let Margaret return to work. Forgoing a night at Shanley’s, he had traveled home, the joy of the promotion erasing the pain of the last few months, determined to make a fresh start with their marriage. He was barely in the door of the apartment when Margaret announced that she would return to work whatever the practicalities of their financial situation. He ate his dinner in silence, feeling the closeness of the walls. Later, Chums began to cry.

  Even in his memory, those first years with Margaret and Chums’ babyhood seemed blocked out by remoteness, as if they had happened to other people, the impact of recall as muted as the insipid actuality. Both he and Margaret threw themselves into the rhythm of the News, tools of the great maw, losing all sense of outside involvement. On the level of work, the incidents and technique, the kaleidoscope of journalistic events, the gossip, were absorptions that could compete with marriage, which had become poisoned long before the beginning, which Chums victimized by the evidence of herself.

  Neither he nor Margaret tortured themselves over what was, in retrospect, only neglect of Chums. She was, after all, only a baby, a cocoon in a narrow world, a toy to be fussed over and played with on Sunday mornings and then only until she grew moist or smelly or cranky. They went to movies and sat in the dark, unspeaking, relieved to lose themselves in the lives of the giants on the screen. Margaret continued to be the assistant movie reviewer and it was apparent that it was a slot reserved, an heir apparency waiting for death of the queen reviewer, a frail tiny lady who had already held the job for nearly twenty years. Who could tell what guilt her wished-for end inspired in Margaret, whose sense of entrapment grew with every third-rate movie reviewed. Not that she didn’t try to get out of the well-worn rut, once so promising a stepping stone.

  “Please, Nick, get me out of there.”

  “I’ll try.” But it was always awkward, since he had no power of trade-off. The city editor took all the prerogatives of his fiefdom and, although there was power in certain decisions of coverage, he was forever the lieutenant, with little clout in getting Margaret promoted to feature writer. It became another bone of contention, an irritation, poisoning their bed still more.

  “Nick, I’m going nuts, you’ve got to try.”

  “I did.”

  “Well, try harder, damn it.”

  “You overestimate what I can do.”

  “Just try. Please.”

  “I’ll try again.” But it was too formidable an obstacle and he could sense stiffening resistance in the features editor, a peppery redhead who ceased trying to be polite.

  “Get off my back, Gold. The answer is no.”

  As if in direct proportion to her lack of advancement, Margaret’s sexuality began to expire, implanting a new contentiousness. As it was, her sexual appetite moved in an odd rhythm, running a course from craving to indifference. This was natural enough, except that craving might come in the middle of bitter silent pouting anger, an abrupt energy, disturbing sleep as she prodded his body to the quick intensity of her own need, repetitively urging him on until inevitable exhaustion. Then it was he who was pushing and she who dutifully submitted, a receptacle of orifice and breasts, available but unmoved by all his stirrings.

  “I can do better with masturbation,” he said to her after an episode of frozen response.

  “Please do,” she said sleepily, turning over as if his flesh inspired only disgust. Then he would vow to stay away from her, testing his own will and her sexual starvation, the latter proving far more durable than the former.

  In his loneliness, he felt the need for Charlie’s friendship. But Charlie was remote now, an apparition. There had been a wedding, only relatives, and Charlie had written him a short humorous note. As a wedding gift, he and Margaret had sent them a cut-glass vase with some sweetish poetic sentimentality about a perpetually flowering future. They had taken great care in the choice, which cost them nearly fifty dollars, outrageously high for them.

  They had received only a printed acknowledgment, not even a handwritten word scrawled beside the neat engraving. It gave Margaret new opportunities to inflict pain, fresh ammunition.

  “A fair-weather friend, your Charlie.”

  “He’s found another life.”

  “Now that he’s up there, why should he have anything to do with the peons, like you?”

  “You’re being unfair.”

  “You mean to say you’re not a trifle upset?”

  “No, I don’t mean to say that.”

  “Not just a trifle bitter?”

  “Charlie and I owe each other nothing.”

  They did get Christmas cards from Charlie, usually oversized pictures of the Parker mansion, bathed in snow, and a neatly written “personal” note in what might have been Myra’s handwriting, telling them how much Charlie and she had been thinking about them during the past year.

  If Margaret hadn’t made the one-sided estrangement an issue, Nick might have accepted things with better humor. He did not need any special symbols of Charlie’s friendship and it was with some smugness that he showed her a note he had received from Myra inviting them to their suite in the Waldorf “between five and seven,” a few weeks off.

  “It’s a crumb,” Margaret had responded, looking contemptuously at the card.

  “You don’t have to go,” he sneered.

  “I won’t.”

  But he had gone in spite of himself, oddly tortured by a loss of pride. Feeling like a poor relation answering the summons of a rich uncle, he arrived at Charlie’s tower suite, pushing into a large crowd that spilled out into the corridor. Almost immediately he had wanted to leave, feeling obscure. But he pressed relentlessly into the throng. They were a collection of politicians, actors and actresses, celebrities who, as he later learned, always answered the call of a media mogul. Not that the Chronicle had yet arrived at any plateau of power, but apparently it was making inroads, one measure of which was its steadily rising advertising lineage which he followed carefully in the weekly editions of Editor and Publisher. Under Charlie’s command, the Chronicle was unquestionably on the move.

  Nick moved through the crush toward the bar. Ordering a Scotch and soda, he reached through arms and over shoulders to receive the comfort of the chilled glass and perhaps the courage of the drink itself, before he would let his eyes search the room for the face of his old friend. Awkwardly he lit a cigarette, inhaling deeply, forcing himself to find strength. Then he heard the boom of Charlie’s voice rising clearly through the din.

  “Nick.” It seemed a gift. “There you are.” Turning, he saw a flushed, filled-out Charlie descending on him, pinstriped and vested, taller, it seemed, than when he had last seen him. He crooked his arm around Nick’s neck and squeezed hard.

  “How the hell are you, kid?”

  “Terrific, Charlie.”

  “Christ, kid, we never get to see you anymore.” His eyes flitted past him as he greeted others with a nod and smile. “Harry, Joe, Scotty. How the hell are you?”

  “So how come we never see you anymore, kid?” he repeated to Nick, then deflected again. “Hey, Mark, meet Nick Gold, my old Ne
w York roomy.” Nick shook limp hands as Charlie introduced him. Myra lifted her head from conversation and waved to him from the other end of the room.

  “How the hell are you, kid?” Charlie repeated, lifting a glass of champagne to his lips.

  “Terrific, Charlie.”

  “You old son of a bitch. How come we never see you?”

  “We’re busy as hell.”

  “Hey, where’s . . .” apparently he was stumbling over the memory of Margaret’s name.

  “Margaret’s fine. The baby’s great too.”

  “Jesus, that’s terrific, kid. Did you say hello to Myra?”

  “Yes,” he said. “I understand the Chronicle’s doing pretty well.”

  “You wouldn’t believe it, kid.”

  “And how’s Mr. Parker?”

  “Getting on. Doesn’t come in too much now.” He kept glancing past Nick, calling out names, shaking hands. It was definitely a different Charlie. Or was he, Nick, different, outclassed, perhaps? He wanted to cry, knowing that he could not.

  “So how come we don’t see much of you anymore?” he heard Charlie say, wondering if the words had been directed at him, watching Charlie moving away into the crowd, a stranger. When finally Charlie’s back was turned, he edged his way into the corridor and putting down his glass near the wall, pressed the elevator button.

  In the street, he stood for a long time in a deserted store front, feeling for the first time the end of his youth.

  Coincidentally with the deterioration of his personal life, the News experienced its first major circulation setback. Not considered cataclysmic, it produced just enough shock waves for management to demand remedial steps. The cause of this visible interruption in the rising graph was not a mystery. Television had come. Out of its infancy now, the bouncy baby was growing too fast for comfort, a gawky, squawky pre-adolescent, knocking down all competing media in its path.