About Schmidt

by Louis Begley

  So I finish my ice cream and he finishes his coffee and he kind of winked at me and said it’s time to go home. By this time, I was acting pretty fresh, and I asked if he had to go back to his wife and kid. He just laughed and laughed! No, he says, there are too many girls in the world. Wasn’t that a cute line? He lived just a couple of blocks away, so I said I would walk him home, and I kept kind of bumping into him on purpose, to tease him. So suddenly he grabbed me by the elbow and said very quiet: You’ve got some cunt. I saw it. I want to fuck you. It was like I was melting. I tell you, Schmidtie, I thought I couldn’t get up the stairs I wanted it so bad.

  That man raped you. In New York, one goes to jail for abusing a fourteen-year-old girl!

  You’ve got it wrong, Schmidtie. He didn’t rape me and he didn’t abuse me. He was my great love. You’re just jealous.

  I’m sorry, said Schmidt. That’s how it struck me. And then what happened?

  He was freaking out a lot. I didn’t do stuff with him. At first he wanted me to, but when I said no he never asked again. Then he freaked out real bad. He almost died. They took him away, then they let him out, and they took him away again. He’d go nuts. It was like a routine.

  And you kept on seeing him.

  At first. It got pretty heavy. Then, when I was a senior, he was away a whole year. He lost his apartment and everything. Sometimes he just wandered around from place to place. There is a kind of little park at Brooklyn College. He’d sit on a bench and wait for me. Shit, Schmidtie, leave me alone. He became a homeless bum! He’d ask me to go with him under the boardwalk at Far Rockaway and I couldn’t because he smelled!

  She cried very hard. At first she would push him away each time he tried to stroke her head or arm. Then he remembered he had a bar of chocolate in the refrigerator and got it for her. She ate it like an unhappy little girl and went to sleep holding on to him.

  She was the first to wake up, although it was past nine in the morning. They had breakfast. She told Schmidt she wouldn’t go back to Sag Harbor before work; there was nothing she needed to do, and she could go to work as she was. The kitchen was full of sun. He asked her to sit with him in the window seat.

  You’re not mad at me? she asked. I mean how I acted like a baby?

  You felt terrible, that’s all.

  And you still like me? Now that you know about Mr. Wilson? You’re not disgusted? You will want to sleep with me?

  It’s not your fault what happened to him. I’ll tell you a secret: I think I am beginning to love you.

  And Bryan?

  He had forgotten about Bryan; his mind was occupied by the new fact, by the man.

  It doesn’t matter, he replied.

  XII

  A WEEK LATER the telephone rang. Hello, hello, said the vibrant voice. Renata here. Naturally, thought Schmidt, Thursday morning, the day when Dr. R. Riker attends to family business. Too bad Carrie is still here. Perhaps she will sleep through this.

  Schmidtie, we’ve got so much to talk about I’ll get right to the point. Will you come into the city and have lunch with me?

  Today? answered Schmidt, thinking he’d play dumb.

  Yes, if at all possible. It’s the only time I’m free during a weekday. I’m sorry I’m asking at the last minute. I tried to reach you yesterday evening, but you didn’t answer. Won’t you drive in, or take the bus?

  Is it really necessary? Couldn’t we talk on the telephone?

  You know that’s not the same. Besides, wouldn’t you like to see me?

  Not particularly, thought Schmidt, you meddling witch. The audible answer was, Can you doubt it, dear?

  He asked her to meet him at his club. As he knew that, in the end, he would pick up the check, it might as well be there or McDonald’s. Club food would do for him, and Dr. Renata had better watch her weight. One might say he was doing her a favor. Besides, he would get to shake the hand of Julio, the Puerto Rican hall porter, whom he missed—come to think of it, perhaps he was one of Carrie’s uncles, the scout presciently dispatched by a tribe ready to invade—and pick up some cigars. Satisfaction with the meanness of these witticisms masked for a moment the sick feeling in Schmidt’s gut, like mint toothpaste after you have been retching.

  It was a short moment. Then the thoughts that had been going round and round in his head returned.

  Why wouldn’t his daughter deal with him face-to-face? What had he done to her during all those years when he thought he loved her and she loved him? That Charlotte should have been told the vile canard about his reputation for anti-Semitism was unbearable. Believing it was even worse. Who would have put such a lie into circulation? It could only be Jon Riker, closeted with his fiancée. If that was what he had done, he was a blackguard, worse than a traitor, a man whose handshake must be refused.

  And it had to be a lie. He could not think of a single act in his career at Wood & King on which such an assertion could be based. Certainly not on his treatment of associates who had worked for him or of the other Jews in the firm, partners or associates, or on his role in recruiting lawyers. On the contrary, he had used his prestige as an alumnus who had been an officer of the Harvard Law Review to cajole a large number of its Jewish members into coming to work at the firm. Some of them were Semitic types straight out of a Nazi propaganda cartoon, including his favorite, the best associate he had ever worked with, who eventually left W & K for a professorship at Harvard. That one used to wear a yarmulke to the office! Then what could it be? Not anything he had said. He had never told jokes about Jews—in fact, he didn’t tell jokes of any kind, because the few times he had tried no one had laughed.

  The stuff about clients was hogwash, too. Poor Charlotte should know better but probably didn’t; no one seemed to have a historical perspective. At the time when his relationships with insurance companies and other great American financial institutions that directed business to W & K were cemented, there were in their management all told maybe five Jews who made decisions about investments and hiring law firms, and certainly no Jews in yarmulkes, or blacks, or Puerto Ricans, or women, or, so far as he knew, homosexuals. These people were white male Protestants—usually with the same background as his own. He didn’t especially like them for that. Too many were tedious, slow-witted boors, but one took one’s clients as one found them, and said thank you!

  And friends! They had had Jewish friends. Of course, they had met most of them through Mary. He had done his best with them, and it was they, along with everybody else out of Mary’s world, who dropped him when she died, not the other way around. The same was true of the homosexuals who used to come so regularly to lunch and dinner. Mary got to know them, because homosexuals work in publishing houses and write. But Dad, are you telling me that blacks and Puerto Ricans don’t write? No, Charlotte dear, of course they do. But in publishing they aren’t easy to find; it’s like looking for a needle in a haystack. And your mom hadn’t had the good fortune to publish Wright, Baldwin, or Morrison, who might not have wanted to be friends with Mr. and Mrs. Albert Schmidt even if she had! He used to think he had Jewish friends of his own too, at his firm. If Mr. Riker or whoever else was telling tales about him was to be believed, that had been an illusion. It follows that you’ve got it right, Charlotte: there is no one left who counts, no one except the unmentionable Gil Blackman!

  Righteously indignant, Schmidt nevertheless continued the examination of his conscience. Do you like Jews, or blacks, or Puerto Ricans, or homosexuals? En bloc, no. Were you pleased to hear that Charlotte was going to marry that upstanding, bright, and very successful Jewish boy? No, I wasn’t. And was it because he is a Jew? Not exclusively. But you would have swallowed hard and cheered up pretty quickly if he had been a nerd with a name—unchanged and unanglicized—like Mr. Jonathan White? Most probably. And it wouldn’t have been quite such an adventure to visit Mr. White’s doctor parents in their Manhattan apartment at Thanksgiving? Not really. Thank you, Mr. Schmidt. One more question: Would you prefer it if Carrie weren’t a lower
-class, Puerto Rican waitress? I love her skin and her kinky hair. I am afraid you haven’t answered the question. In her case, the devil take the rest.

  His mood darkened.

  Have you the right, Mr. Schmidt, to withhold your affection from your daughter’s fiancé because he is a Jew—yes, I know, you don’t need to repeat it, principally for that reason? Yes, every right. Who has the right to pry into my emotions? I don’t sit in judgment on the feelings of Dr. & Dr. Riker or those adorable grandparents. It’s enough for me if they behave decently. What is there to blame in my actions?

  Schmidt thought that was a pretty good answer, but he was not content.

  He found Renata in the waiting room reserved for guests. Black knitted suit that looked like real Chanel, black patent-leather pumps, black leather pocketbook on a gold chain, and opaque black stockings of an alarming brilliance—whatever this occasion was, she had clearly dressed for it. Wasted effort. She might as well have worn a burlap bag. But how was she to know that at most four hours earlier Schmidt had risen from Aurora’s couch?

  Let’s go up to the dining room, he told her. They don’t take reservations here. The early bird catches the worm! We can do our drinking at table.

  Once installed, he cut short her exclamations over the grace of the building and how rested he looked. Practice makes perfect: Hadn’t he spent more years than he could count chairing meetings and getting straight to the point? What was the issue on the agenda, and what did she want to do about it?

  Schmidtie, she said, I’ll be very frank. I think Charlotte shouldn’t have talked to you the way she did. There were things she wanted to say, and she didn’t know how to say them. She was overwrought. That makes people with her psychological makeup become aggressive. You were very restrained. I was proud of you.

  Thank you! I assume then that Charlotte gave you a detailed report about our conversation. It’s quite admirable how you find so much time to devote to a father and daughter who aren’t your patients!

  Now Schmidtie, you are being sarcastic. Is that necessary?

  No. It’s a reflection of my overwrought feelings.

  Exactly. And one of your feelings is that I am to blame for Charlotte’s confusion and aggressions.

  To some extent. Of course, you didn’t bring her up. I believe that upbringing is important. That means my poor Mary and I have to shoulder most of the blame. Or do you think it’s Charlotte’s nature, something in her genes? We gave her the genes too.

  I don’t think that being so unable to deal with conflict, having so much trouble saying to her father something he doesn’t want to hear, is genetic.

  All right, we’re back to upbringing. Early childhood experiences. And where does that take us?

  To how we straighten this mess out! Right now you and Charlotte and Jon are under dreadful stress. The relationship among you should be unblocked.

  If Charlotte talked to you about our conversation in detail—remember, I asked you—then you know that I told her what she should do next. I rather intend to take it from there myself.

  Take it from there—in which direction? Suppose what she writes to you isn’t what you would like to hear. Does a chasm open between you?

  There is such a chasm already. I’ll figure out what I should do when I see her letter. Perhaps it’s already in the mail. You would know. Is that why you wanted to see me?

  Charlotte didn’t just talk to me about your conversation. She gave me a tape of it. Here it is. It’s for you. I have a copy. I played it again, just before coming here.

  He pushed the cassette back toward her. They were seated at a corner table. Portraits of the distinguished New Yorkers who had been presidents of the club hung on the four walls of the room. He had no forebears among them, yet he looked at these intelligent and quirky faces hoping for sustenance, perhaps a sign he could decipher. Those of the club’s elders who had not allowed the cold to interfere with their routine were either downstairs, finishing their martinis, or had tottered into the dining room next door, reserved for members unencumbered by guests, perhaps with one more drink in hand. They would be talking about things one talks about at lunch: the likelihood of Macy’s filing for bankruptcy, George Bush’s sagging political fortunes, the sex drive of the governor of Arkansas. Whenever the door between the two rooms opened, he heard the roar of those jolly voices. Could he rise from his chair, rush into their midst, and seek tribal wisdom or sanctuary? Help, help, I am under attack by a shrink in a black suit whose son the lawyer is marrying my daughter! There were two members, who were shrinks themselves, sitting at separate tables near him entertaining guests. They’d tackle him and send for an ambulance. It was no use.

  Therefore he asked: Isn’t that illegal, taping a telephone conversation without asking for permission?

  Jon doesn’t think so. You know she only did it because they realized she would be too upset to remember clearly what was said.

  I’ll have that bastard disbarred! Thrown out of the firm!

  Ha! Ha! You’re dreaming, pal, he said to himself as soon as the words left his mouth. Will Jack DeForrest and his team of bean counters take measures against a bankruptcy litigator, just as they are salivating over filing after filing in the bankruptcy court? Kill the goose about to lay golden eggs. And over what? Ungentlemanly conduct? Since when are bankruptcy lawyers supposed to be wimps? Too bad that Schmidt can’t keep peace with his own daughter. Always had been rigid, not good at adapting to new circumstances.

  He observed that Renata was putting away her lipstick and was about to attack a second macaroon. He begged her pardon. She returned a kindly smile.

  All right, he said. Do let’s get to the point. What do they want?

  Dear Schmidtie. Could we have some more coffee? In one of these wonderful French café filtre machines? I haven’t seen one of those in years.

  They have sort of disappeared.

  He caught the attention of a waiter.

  You see, Schmidtie, Charlotte is afraid of you and doesn’t want to hurt your feelings. Believe me, she doesn’t. I know. And Jon reveres you. Don’t interrupt. That’s true. There is, of course, always the Oedipal aspect in these situations. That’s what makes communication among you so difficult. The point is really quite simple. In the lives of young people there comes a moment when they enter into a new alliance—marriage! Suddenly, their allegiance is no longer the same. The change can be very startling. In the case of Charlotte, she really wants to become a part of our family, whatever that implies. It has a great deal to do with the death of Mary, there being no cousins, aunts, or uncles on your side, and the way we have welcomed her into our family. Do you see?

  Yes, I do. You are Naomi and she is Ruth the Moabite.

  Really, Schmidtie, how can you. Ruth’s husband was dead!

  A minor detail. The point of that story is that Ruth was in love with her mother-in-law. Is that what’s happening here? Have you bewitched my daughter? Put her under hypnosis?

  Schmidtie, please stop. Jon loves her, and Charlotte, as I have tried to tell you, is deeply drawn to our family. Nothing could be happier or more normal. The consequence is annoying for you: Charlotte has rethought certain things. She no longer thinks that having the wedding in Bridgehampton is a good idea. Apparently, you have both drifted away from people there, so that practically all the guests would be imported! That does seem odd.

  And the house? Doesn’t she want to be married on the lawn of her parents’ house, the house where she spent all her summers, all her vacations?

  Of course she loves the house. It’s so beautiful. But the house has become something of a problem for both of you. It’s also a problem financially for Jon—but it’s more a matter of lifestyle; he isn’t sure he sees himself and Charlotte living in that sort of place in the Hamptons. Your wanting to give the house to Charlotte has made it all much more pressing—perhaps even oppressive. Jon has a different idea. We hope you won’t be put off by it—you’ve been so amazingly generous!

  Ah
a, thought Schmidt. In heavy fog, I am to drive my car off a cliff. They collect double-indemnity insurance money and everything else I have, and sell the house. That must be it.

  I suppose I should hear about it. Am I to hear about it from you? They are too busy or too timid to speak to me, I suppose.

  Schmidtie, they don’t want to fight with you. That’s all. The idea Jon had about the house is this—he says it has some tax benefits: Instead of giving the house to Charlotte and paying such a huge gift tax and then moving, why don’t you buy her part of it? That way they will have some capital, and you get to have the house. You can still leave it to Charlotte in your will.

  Well, that’s quite a proposal! What do they do with that capital? I suppose it pays for the apartment, and they no longer need to borrow from you and Myron—unless you were planning to make a gift.

  She sidestepped the nature of the Riker-to-Riker transaction.

  It depends on the value of the house. Jon said he doesn’t know whether you have already had it appraised. Yes, they would use the money for the apartment, but there is something they might do in addition. We have always rented in the summer, but now we are looking at a property upstate, near Claverack. Do you know where that is?

  Yes.

  There is an adorable little farmhouse adjacent to it. They thought it might be exactly right for them. There are skiing areas nearby they would enjoy.

  Schmidt nodded and lit a cigarillo.

  Schmidtie, you do understand the tax business, don’t you? Jon explained it, but it has gone out of my head.

  Those are details. The real question is whether I can afford to keep the house once I have given away or spent all that cash. I had counted on buying a small house that wouldn’t be so expensive to run. I am fairly certain I will do what Jon and, I assume, Charlotte want. Let me think about it for a day or two.