by Louis Begley
Looks after her father. I completed the sentence for her.
I wonder about this grudge against Charlotte. Remember, I made her go with Jon and Myron. She would have stayed with you.
That’s right.
I wiped some of the grease off my face and drank another cup of tea. The tramway running back and forth inside my head was turning into a big Mack truck.
Renata, I said, you have me at a disadvantage. I am sick, I feel weak, I look disgusting. I haven’t the strength for a family therapy session. If you want to stay with me, please tell me a nice story or read a book to yourself. Otherwise, please go for a walk on the beach. I will be fine by myself, with this tea you brought me. Believe me, I don’t care whether it’s hot or cold!
She moved over to the side of my bed and once again put her hand on my forehead, keeping it there for a couple of minutes. I was glad I had shaved, because when she took her hand away it brushed against my cheek.
No therapy, Schmidtie, she said, but don’t be such a drag. It’s true you are feverish, but that’s no reason not to have a conversation. Here she stretched—rather contentedly, I thought. Think of all those nineteenth-century consumptives. In your present condition you may be quite interesting.
For instance, she continued, you have really handled very well not wanting to live with them in this house—you surprised me. How come? After such an unpromising start.
Her voice goes up a little at the end of declaratory sentences, turning them into questions without a question mark. Jewish accent, or the way everybody in New York talks now? I would like to ask Charlotte. Meanwhile Dr. R. had quietly taken my hand and was caressing it in a very soothing way. It’s nice that she is set in her ways. Not returning the pressure, I pretended I didn’t notice. Illness has its privileges.
Reply: I love my daughter. (I keep all note of pathos out of my voice. It helps to be the last of the Wasps.)
And you didn’t want to make her a poisoned gift.
That lilt again. I nodded my throbbing head.
And Jon? How does he fit into your view of the future?
As my daughter’s husband and potentially the father of her children—my grandchildren. I hope a good husband and a good father. A man is not required to love his son-in-law.
But it’s a great happiness when you do! We love Charlotte!
It’s clear that you and Myron are particularly kind. That’s your reward.
All of a sudden, she leaned down over me, and kissed me on the lips, passing her tongue briefly along my front teeth, which, unprepared for this favor, I had kept in their normal closed position. Then she sat up, took both my hands, and said, You wanted to kiss me and now you have!
Thank you, but I am hot and cold and disgusting. There will have to be a return engagement. (In fact, against my better judgment, against common sense, I would have liked to continue, but was cautious enough to know I should leave each move up to her.)
That may be too complicated and too dangerous! You did love your wife, didn’t you.
Very much.
But it’s not true that you were very faithful.
Again that lilt. I said, You didn’t really expect me to tell you all my sins the first day we met!
I think you were unfaithful to her every time you got a chance. How did you feel about that? Is that being a good husband?
Not every time, far from it, only when I felt an irresistible urge and the circumstances were right. You do realize you are extracting a confession from a sick and enfeebled man, don’t you?
Of course. So how did it feel?
Like a breach of a contract. One promises to love, to live together loyally, and to forsake all others. But I thought my breaches were minor. She didn’t know, I didn’t love her any less because of them, and I was discreet. No one could start being sorry for Mary. What about you? What about Myron? Are you always faithful to each other?
She laughed. If she isn’t repelled by my condition or afraid of catching my flu, why doesn’t she kiss me again? I was glad that she had taken my hand back into her good graces.
Myron is a mystery. I don’t think he has much temperament. He would tell me if he had someone. It would be the end of his being the injured party, but life would be simpler. I’ve had a lover for many years.
Really?
I was genuinely astonished.
He was a patient, but it only happened when the therapy was over. She laughed. The therapy was very successful—until recently. He is seeing another analyst. A man.
And Myron knows? And your sons?
Of course. By now, Charlotte, too, I imagine.
You still sleep with Myron?
When he wants to.
Suddenly she fell on me. It was like an attack. Her hands raced down my body. Just as abruptly, she pulled away. There was a silence. I was waiting for her.
You are lovely, Schmidtie, she told me. This won’t happen again. We will go back to being proper and good, like the father of the bride and the mother of the groom.
I only did it, she added, because of an intuition. It’s as though you were somehow doomed, disintegrating before my eyes.
That’s unpleasant, I said. Will you watch over me, will you help? Then I told her about the man. After all, I might get to be just like him. We are alike, except that I am thin and very clean.
She took a moment before replying, No, that’s not quite it. I will watch, if I am there. I don’t know that there is any way I can help.
And what, I called as she was leaving the room, what if your psychiatric sixth sense and your damned intuition are wrong and I keep going, just as I am?
Why, I suppose that will mean we will all live happily ever after!
Thursday, 12/12/91
Just before they all left for the city, Charlotte came to see me. I was still in bed, feeling less definably sick but very tired, unable to stay awake for more than an hour at a time. She said she wished she could stay to look after me, but urgent work at the office, etc., wouldn’t allow it. Then she told me the Rikers had been very generous. They were going to pay that part of the price of the apartment that couldn’t be financed, and that was why Jon decided they could afford to take over this place after all.
I can hardly think of a more irritating way she could have described the situation. In one or two sentences, she managed to make much of what the Rikers were doing—less than five hundred thousand, I suppose, but how is one to know since the apartment in question hasn’t been found—and deprecate my gift. Worse, the business about being able to afford to take over this place “after all” sounded as though they were doing me a favor, relieving me of an onerous obligation!
I didn’t respond, and I am glad I didn’t, not just because I want to keep peace but because, if one looks at the thing from a certain angle, there is an ugly grain of truth in what her remarks suggested—a grain of truth the existence of which nevertheless did not, in my opinion, justify her speaking to me as she did. It is this: I have a selfish motive in this transaction—to avoid the duty I would feel to treat my married daughter and her husband as co-owners with me of this house. The Rikers have no such motive. They are very simply helping their son, who is on his way to becoming rich but hasn’t got there yet. When I think of how much money he will be making if the firm doesn’t fall apart, I am tempted to advise the Rikers to make Jon a loan, not a gift, but that would be against Charlotte’s interest. But maybe it is a loan. It is also true that I have no legal duty, in case I were not to give Charlotte my life estate in this place, to treat her as a co-owner. She isn’t, not while I am alive. I could, if only I knew how, act more naturally, and say that while I am alive I am the owner, with the rights and obligations of such, and you and Jon, my dears, will have to wait your turn.
I did, on the other hand, ask why I hadn’t been told, by letter or a phone call, that they had decided to accept my offer. Charlotte seemed disconcerted by the question. I guess we thought we’d tell you when we got here, was her answer. Then Myron spoke up before we ever
got a chance.
So be it.
Christmas festivities were next on her agenda.
Did I know where I would be going?
No, not yet.
Probably they would be unable to squeeze in another weekend in the country. Could I come to the city, have dinner, and exchange Christmas presents? Is the day before I leave on my vacation convenient?
In order to be cooperative, I said yes. The truth is that I hadn’t given any thought to presents, and still don’t know where I might go.
So much for that.
Renata’s bedside manner needs work. She is too heavy to be throwing herself on top of me. Might have injured one of my vital organs. I didn’t like those massive breasts or the stiffness of the undergarments.
She likes connivance laced with tension. That’s what the conversation after Thanksgiving lunch must have been about. When I was sick, there was a new element: something like a bid for domination. The kiss, the revelation that she is available and is being used outside the marriage. She is counting on the delayed aphrodisiac effect. I think she wants to be the Sphinx in the Sahara of my affections.
I looked at myself in the bathroom mirror after writing these words and noted that I need a haircut. It’s been at least five weeks. There is a barber in Sag Harbor; perhaps I should try him instead of commuting to New York for the dubious pleasure of hearing Carlo plan his next vacation while he snips away. To think that in all the years I have been going to him that man still hasn’t learned to keep my shirt collar dry when he washes my hair! The advantage is that the result of his work is totally predictable.
How many more of these cycles of maintenance?
Monthly haircut, weekly clipping of the fingernails and toenails, daily shave and hair wash, daily or twice daily bath, depending on whether I have been out of the house; shirts, underwear, socks, and handkerchiefs thrown into the hamper and returned in disorder to my chest of drawers every Friday; each week, a visit to the cleaner in the shopping mall. Hand over two pairs of no longer fresh khaki trousers I have rolled into a bundle; receive their proud comrades hanging stiffly from wire hangers inside plastic cocoons; pay a certain number of dollars. The nice lady I deal with has early Parkinson’s—each week I pretend I don’t notice.
On the other hand, I will never again need to order a dinner jacket or an overcoat. The ones I have will see me through. Their remaining useful life is longer than mine.
VII
THE INVITATION is extended over the telephone by Mr. Gilbert Blackman’s assistant, new on the job or for other reasons unknown to Schmidt, although, having heard her speak, he might have sworn to Sergeant Smith that he could describe her in all relevant detail: medium height, a trifle on the heavy side, baby fat in all likelihood; ash-blond hair cut in a pageboy; gray eyes; blond fuzz on cheeks and upper lip; black crew-neck sweater with short sleeves, Black Watch kilt, pale stockings with seams straight as a rail, and black calf pumps. Except that he was all wrong. The Boston debutante Schmidt had beheld in his mind’s eye—a graduate, in that order, of Miss Porter’s, Smith College, and Katharine Gibbs’s starchy establishment—who had spent some time working as a movie mogul’s social secretary because the oaf who hadn’t as yet managed to give her an orgasm thought they should wait to get married until he got his diploma from the Harvard Law School, indeed could have been, as a matter of generations, the mother of Mr. Blackman’s employee. But she wasn’t. According to our information, the daughter of the Boston debutante so well known to Schmidt teaches aerobic dancing on the Upper West Side and lives with an African-American photographer. Gil’s current assistant is a brunette of Greek extraction, alone among her siblings, every one of them a college graduate, to have acquired a well-bred voice and perfect diction. When she makes the telephone call, she wears a red leather miniskirt, so short it makes it rather awkward to sit down. She prefers knitted silk to cashmere and has no immediate marriage prospects, among other reasons because—unbeknownst to Schmidt, months having passed since he and Gil last exchanged confidences of that nature at lunch—Mr. Blackman regularly bangs her on the sofa in the sanctum sanctorum accessible only through a discreet door in the office, graced by a Miró, where Mr. Blackman conducts the common run of his business. No matter: the vision induced great affability in the nostalgic Mr. Schmidt. Wordlessly, he forgave the slight (Gil could have come to the telephone himself; he knows very well I no longer have a secretary), and agreed to have dinner at eight in the country on the following Saturday. How lovely, rejoiced the perfect voice. Gil and Elaine will be so glad; I believe it will be just you and them.
Thus at five before the hour, in order to be neither early nor unduly late, in his better blue blazer, too stylish for O’Henry’s but exactly right for the Blackmans’, equipped with presents (CDs for the parents and the elder, presumably absent daughters, and a cologne spray for Lilly, in Schmidt’s opinion sexually advanced and much maligned), Schmidt stepped into his ice-cold car. Under a moon so fine and bright it could have shone over the palace of Osman Pasha, he drove to Geórgica. There stood Gil’s cottage. Not a car in sight—neither on the circular drive nor among the giant azaleas where a guest fearful of blocking others and indifferent to the welfare of the lawn might have parked. They would, in fact, be alone. Schmidt sniffed the greenery wired to the brass knocker, rang the doorbell, and entered. In the hall, under a majestic tree, packages had accumulated. He added his shopping bag. Was this a new extravagance of the Wandering Jew, to hang a wreath and dress the tree during Advent each time he pitched his tent for the night, or were the Blackmans actually planning to spend Christmas in Wainscott? Schmidt directed his steps to the library. Ho, ho, ho, he called out, here comes Schmidtie, the ruddy-nosed reindeer!
Gil rose from his wing chair and opened his arms. A huge, silent embrace—Schmidt felt a contraction inside his chest, as though his heart too had been squeezed. They had, after all, remained friends. When he took a step backward, away from Gil, his heart moved again. Gil had on a thick silky cardigan, beautiful as Joseph’s coat of many colors. It was the sort of garment that Schmidt knew Gil would not have bought for himself. Elaine had given it to him. Here was proof she was still in love, physically. She wanted her husband to be gorgeous. Schmidt imagined the sweater he might have received from Mary: the best kind of lamb’s wool, burgundy or dark green, to go with his tweed coat, and probably crew-necked, so that he could on occasion wear it without a necktie. There was nothing wrong with the rustic approach to decorating one’s husband; in truth, Schmidt thought it quite appropriate in his own case. He might have added that it had never occurred to him that he was a glamorous object of desire. Nevertheless, as he turned to kiss Elaine on the cheek, he wondered how much of that was in the eye of the beholder: What would it have been like to be married to a Jewess? He might ask Gil about that. Gil had drunk from both wells.
The exotic lady in question hugged Schmidt in turn. It’s so wonderful about Charlotte, she whispered. I don’t know the boy, do I? They’ll be so happy. If only Mary could have seen it!
The Blackmans were having champagne—silver bucket, large silver tray, tulip glasses. A mound of dark gray caviar on a crystal plate showed signs of recent erosion. Schmidt put his back to the fire, asked for a martini, and watched Elaine load the caviar on rounds of black pumpernickel.
Is lovely Lilly here?
She’s at her father’s, sleeping over, Elaine told him. It was perfect scheduling. The juvenile delinquent he screws is visiting her parents in Scranton, so he has time for his daughter, and I don’t have to worry about Lilly being embarrassed by the way they carry on.
You see the symmetry? Gil had returned with a martini in a silver goblet. He handed it to Schmidt together with a little linen napkin and a piece of bread brimming over with caviar.
Gil continued: Our juvenile delinquent leaves her mom’s home where she lives with the man who was crazy enough about her mom to abandon his own daughters and their mom, and goes to visit her real pop. In the meant
ime, the unrelated juvenile delinquent her pop is screwing, who could be his daughter, goes to visit her own mom and pop. If we only knew about the pop in Scranton—is this really his daughter?—we could extend the frieze.
You are revolting. Lilly isn’t a juvenile delinquent.
Neither is Judy! She is a rising rock artist who works very hard. I wish we could say as much for dear Lilly.
Now, now, said Schmidt. Time out. Is there more martini in that silver shaker? Have you taken the family silver out of the vault just for me? Or does the decoration mean you plan to spend Christmas here?
Elaine made a sniffing noise that Schmidt thought might be real.
You tell Gil he is a brute. He used to listen to what you say. Maybe he still does. The tree is for Lilly. She is having a party tomorrow afternoon for the kids from the stable.
Halsey’s! Mary and Charlotte used to do that until Charlotte decided riding took up too much time.
What a nuisance: Schmidt’s own eyes filled up with tears. He blew his nose elaborately, drank half of his second martini, and ate another wallop of caviar. Angry at the tremor in his voice, he announced: I have a problem with this Christmas.
Of course, said Gil, it must be very tough. Why don’t you spend it with us? We are going to Venice, just a few couples. We’ll be at the Monaco. If you decide quickly, I bet I can still get a room for you—or you and Lilly can share.
That’s the only condition on which I would go. I’d like to have you and Elaine as my parents-in-law. But it’s more complicated than that. I don’t think Venice is the right idea, although I am really very grateful.
Tell us over dinner. I am going to put the food on the table.
In fact, it was a small Oriental, an almost entirely round, elderly woman, shifting about in powder-blue felt slippers, who served the dinner. Elaine spoke to her with emphasis; either she was deaf or there was a question about how well she understood. The food was a succession of Chinese dishes of the kind Schmidt remembered eating before Hunan and Szechuan restaurants invaded New York, and afterward every shopping mall—peas, pea pods, and water chestnuts swimming in white sauces among mushrooms and alternating chunks of chicken and shrimp. It had a comforting taste. He ate with pleasure, hungrily, using his fork and knife, observing the Blackmans click their ivory chopsticks. These were linked at the top by thin silver chains—a new refinement, so far as Schmidt was concerned. The wine was fruity and strong. He was drinking it too fast, and Elaine kept his glass full.
