by Louis Begley
The next morning, after Carrie had left for work, he called Dr. Renata. She was with a patient. He asked to leave a message on her answering machine.
Renata, this is Schmidtie. About the house. Will you please tell Charlotte and Jon that I am ready to buy Charlotte out? They should talk to Dick Murphy at W & K. He’s my lawyer.
XIII
ON THE FOLLOWING WEDNESDAY, Carrie’s day off—she had mumbled, No, no, no, and burrowed deeper under the covers when, after nine o’clock, he kissed her ear, asking in a whisper whether she wanted breakfast—Schmidt went to the post office as usual, at nine-thirty sharp, to pick up his mail. The daily expedition was a ritual; since he expected only junk and bills, he might just as well have gone only once a week, perhaps on Monday. It wouldn’t have made any difference. He certainly didn’t pay bills every day. This time, however, the assiduity was rewarded: waiting for him was a letter from Charlotte. He didn’t think he wanted to read it while Carrie looked on, and she might be awake or walk into the kitchen before he had finished. Also, he might need a moment to collect himself. He decided he would open the letter at the candy store and read it over a cup of coffee.
Did the turtle doves have a laser printer at home? Had she written the letter at the office? He hadn’t a doubt that, in either case, Jon would have reviewed it. That made it like a legal communication—you never know whether Mr. White or Mr. Brown who signed is the real author.
Here is what the letter said:
Hi Dad, and it sure isn’t easy to write this letter. I guess the letter is easier. So I’m writing. Jon and Renata thought I should to say “thank you” and “sorry.” I’m saying both.
Jon and I are grateful to you for agreeing to buy my remainder interest. Jon has talked to Mr. Murphy who has told him there is no problem. I hope you are not inconvenienced. Bridgehampton has changed since I was a child, and I don’t like the way that area has been developed. Ulster County, where Renata and Myron are going, is still rural. We will be near them, and near several couples from W & K and my office who have houses there or are actively looking. We don’t have friends in the Hamptons and we don’t know how we would meet couples like us. I don’t believe we would meet them through your and Mom’s friends.
Do you think I could have some furniture from the house? I am making up a list of the better pieces that belonged to Aunt Martha. I believe that Mom intended me to have them. I will send the list soon. When we buy a house, please send the furniture. Jon asked me to tell you that he thinks we should pay for the move. And could we please have the silver?
I guess you are glad in the end not to have the bother of the wedding, especially as almost all the guests will be people you don’t know. Except the people from the firm. It would have been a lot of work for you, and now you can relax and carry on with your routine. It must be nice to be retired!
We have checked out several restaurants in Soho and Tribeca. The one we like best is Nostradamus, at the corner of Broadway and Spring Street. I don’t think that’s an area you know. The restaurant has been there for just about two years. A man in my office is married to the chef. She does light Cajun cuisine. They can seat 250, and still have room for dancing. We don’t need a band. We will use a DJ. The price they quoted is $200 per guest, everything included. They are reserved solid every evening, so they need a deposit of 20%, by the end of next week. You can make the check out to me. I’ll pay them with my own check.
The wedding will be on June 20. We will be married at City Hall in the morning, and then the party will start at seven. Renata and Myron will be back from a Psychoanalytic Congress in Toronto early that week, and Jon has checked the date with the key partners. I guess you don’t have too many scheduling problems!
So we hope you will come and see what a different lifestyle wedding is like.
You got up a head of steam about my becoming converted to Judaism. It won’t happen right away, because I have to do a lot of studying even though I am choosing Reformed Judaism, but I am heading down that road. The Jewish religion is very beautiful and I never got that much out of being an Episcopalian. If we have children it will be less confusing for them. We will be able to give them a spiritual background. That does matter to some people.
I guess this has gotten to be a long letter so I’ll say goodbye now.
Charlotte
Schmidt was one of those people who answer every business letter the day it is received and try to answer personal letters not more than one day later. Therefore, very little suspense, if any, will be sacrificed if the text of his reply is set out now, even as he ponders what he should say to his daughter.
Thursday
Dear Charlotte,
I haven’t found much by way of gratitude or apology in your letter, but I won’t quarrel with you about it. Not while I am writing in part about your wedding.
My check to cover the deposit at Nostradamus is enclosed. Are you familiar with the celebrated book of predictions by the XVIth century philosopher for whom that restaurant must be named? It might amuse you to consult it. Maybe prudent, too. I cannot do it conveniently on your behalf, because the Bridgehampton library doesn’t have it. Incidentally, I assume that Jon has gone over a detailed listing of what is included in the all-inclusive price.
You were right; my calendar is clear of conflicting engagements. I intend to be there on June 20th.
Since I am not dead yet I don’t think you will get Mom’s and my silver just now. I will send candelabra, trays, and such like that belonged to Aunt Martha. You may not recall it, but your mother gave Martha’s table silver to one of her assistants as a wedding present. That would have been about five years ago. For the same reason—my being alive—I will have to go over the list of furniture you want and decide what I can send to you without changing the look of the rooms here. I hope Murphy has told Jon that in the purchase of your remainder I am buying the contents of the house as well, I mean your rights to them after my death because all the furniture belongs to me for life anyway. They are included in the price. I also hope he has told Jon that the money is ready. We can close the deal anytime you wish.
I do not recall what you have told me over the telephone about your and Jon’s plans in the weeks to come. Should you wish to come here of a weekend, you are most welcome, but I would like a few days’ advance notice. Perhaps in the future I will have commitments.
Your
Father
Shouldn’t I send a copy of Charlotte’s letter to Renata? Schmidt asked himself. She has the tape. If she gets the letter, she’ll be starting a real collection. In the end, he didn’t do it: he felt too ashamed.
XIV
ONCE AGAIN, it’s Carrie’s Wednesday off: two days short of the beginning of spring. Huge clumps of forsythia are in bloom across the lawn from Schmidt’s back porch. They seem to be a stronger color with each passing year. The crocuses and narcissi are out too. Geese honk on the pond beyond Foster’s field. Every half hour or so, the great wings begin to clap, and a helter-skelter squadron takes flight toward the ocean, on the way sorting itself into an inverted V. It’s only an oafish joke, like the fat girls with chilblains who marched in the St. Patrick’s Day parade yesterday. These birds aren’t about to migrate anywhere. They’ll wheel in the sky and return to the pond, where they were born and will die. Drunks on their way home after the last pub has closed, lurching up Third Avenue toward the 86th Street subway entrance, pissing on grilles of closed storefronts.
It’s so pleasant on the porch. Only one day in the week when she can close her eyes like this and let her face absorb the weak sun. Schmidt asks himself whether she must really work so hard; suppose he offered to supplement her income. Would that upset the balance, should he risk any change? She is in the chaise longue. By now, she must have tried on all his clothes. The heavy white cardigan is very becoming. It makes her look even more exotic than usual. Is she dozing? They made love hard when they woke this morning; she drove him to his limit. The night before it was too late
and she was too tired. She had to swing by Sag Harbor to drop off some package for Bryan. When Schmidt came down to the kitchen this morning, to make his and Carrie’s breakfast, the fellow was already sitting there. He could have picked up the package himself and not have made her drive back and forth in the middle of the night. Unless. If Schmidt asks Carrie, she will tell him—more than he wants to know. Bryan and Carrie performing those gestures that are as monotonous as the antics of the geese. I belong to you, Schmidtie, like that, take me like that, she had whispered into the crook of his elbow just two hours ago. What more can he need?
It’s just as well Carrie didn’t come into the kitchen together with Schmidt, teasing him, her hands under his bathrobe, inside his pajamas. The official line is that Bryan doesn’t know. Schmidt needed someone with more brains and less velocity than the Poles, not to replace them but to make sure the shopping gets done, the plants are watered, and so forth, and offered in return a private room and bath and a little money for extra work. She would say to Bryan, This old guy eats at O’Henry’s. It’s a good deal. His house is real near the restaurant. In the summer he’ll let me use the pool when he’s not swimming. Nobody wants Bryan to go crazy. In order to ease into the situation and, Schmidt is quite sure, to provide Bryan with a place to screw her that isn’t under Schmidt’s roof, or in the back of Bryan’s half truck or his buddy’s house in Springs, where she just won’t go, she doesn’t want to be gang-raped, Carrie is also holding on to the apartment in Sag Harbor for now. She wants to see how things will work out. And maybe that’s the truth.
The advantage of this handyman-artist is that most of the time, unless something sets him off, he doesn’t talk, and doesn’t seem to mind if Schmidt is silent as well. When a question is put to him, he answers politely in a soft voice, his words gentle around the edges, like a little boy’s. Before she left for Florida, his mother must have taught him not to use bad words and to speak carefully. You’d think he was sixteen, and yet he must be close to thirty! There is nothing childlike about his body: it is short but powerful. One can imagine him on the chin-up bar, putting in his five minutes every morning. The impression comes rather from the perfect oval face and cheeks that blush so easily under blond fuzz. There is another aspect, a little out of place: the tiny earring, the long, thin blond hair gathered in a ponytail, the fake elephant-hair bracelet, the fingers with nails that have been chewed raw, and something disagreeable about the eyes. At first the eyes seem “who? me?” Li’l Abner candid, but a careful observer cannot fail to notice that the whites are in fact yellow, and that Bryan doesn’t look you in the eyes. He looks away, furtively. Is it better when he has on his aviator glasses? Hard to tell. It turns out that Bryan considers carpentry as only a means to get enough bread. In reality, he is an artist. He has brought over his paintings for Schmidt to look at. They provoke a similar unease in spite of their banality: huge canvases covered by tantric patterns. The boy has a weakness for poison green, magenta, purple, and pink. What of it? You wouldn’t expect Carrie to have a beau from Skull and Bones!
Perhaps it’s time for conversation? Schmidt asks him: Is this your day off, Bryan, or is business slow? The slump must hurt even on the South Fork.
It really does, Albert. Something awful.
Another redeeming grace. Although nine times out of ten, Bryan’s kind of person proceeds immediately to a first-name basis, for instance on the telephone, calling you from the garage to say he’s finished the lube job on your car, Bryan did not. It was Mr. Schmidt this and Mr. Schmidt that, although Schmidtie, seeking to ingratiate himself, told him early on to skip the Mr. and use the cozy, softened version of his name. Bryan replied with a pretty lisp: Gee, I just can’t, it sounds so disrespectful! Would you mind if I call you Albert instead?
My buddy who lives in Springs is real worried. He’s making payments on his truck. I’m lucky. I’ve got these other jobs.
Oh yes? Things you can do when the carpentry is slow?
That’s right. I watch houses, like if you go on vacation to Florida or Europe, and for people who only come out on weekends. And I’m beginning to detail cars.
What’s that?
You know, if you want your car to be superclean, cleaner than new! I get all the dirt and grease off, right down to the original surface, and then vacuum and wax. In this one garage where I work, there are customers that get brand-new cars detailed before they will drive them. I’m getting pretty good at it—it’s artistic work.
He snickers, rolls a joint, and licks it until the paper is soaked through. Yes sir, a detail man! A particularly heavy fragrance spreads with the smoke.
You want to try it, Albert? Just once? It’s the good stuff. Not the usual small-time goods.
No thanks. I’m about to light a cigar.
Hey, pass it to me, says Carrie.
Her eyes are open. Puff puff, lick lick. Back to Bryan. For Christ’s sake, Schmidtie, will you relax! This is nothing: they regularly exchange body fluids.
Shit! You weren’t kidding.
You know, Albert, if any of your friends would like some, I could get it for them. Other kinds of stuff too. Out here, rich people sometimes don’t know the ropes. They want to make a purchase, and they want the best quality, but they don’t know who to ask. I only go for the quality stuff.
Fuck off! You leave Schmidtie alone. He isn’t interested.
Carrie’s growl—it is the first time Schmidt hears it. A tigress! She would fight to defend him. Still, the tension is unpleasant.
It’s a nonissue. I don’t have many rich friends. Besides, I hardly ever see anybody.
But you know them, Albert, that’s what counts. If any of them are interested, all I need is an introduction.
Will you fuck off, you shithead? I gave you your package last night. What’re you doing here anyway?
Hey, Carrie, remember? You and I are going to show Albert that house that’s come on the market. Don’t hassle me. It was your idea.
I’m going to fix some lunch. Soup OK with you, Schmidtie?
Of course.
Now he remembers. Carrie has told him Bryan and his partner work for a builder whose client didn’t have enough money to close on a house. He said he would look at it.
Nice girl, that Carrie, and crazy over you, Albert. She’s never felt that way about me.
I’m just an old guy. I guess she enjoys having someone to look after.
Sure, like last night. I’m with her, and, right away, the party’s over. She has to go to see if you’re all right. How do you think that makes me feel?
Schmidt shrugs his shoulders. I thought I just heard her say she gave you a package last night.
Bryan rolls another joint and pats down the pouch.
She delivered it all right, he says. This stuff. That’s where it came from. One hundred percent pure Moroccan hashish. Nothing but the best! You don’t want to fool with that. Carrie’s OK. She knows when I need her. But with you it’s something else.
Schmidtie, I want to drive. Can you get the top down?
She really can’t keep her hands off the Saab. They cross the highway and head for the stretch of scrub oak beyond the railroad track. Scruffy, badly marked road: the center line is hardly visible, the edges of the asphalt have been chipped away by frost, winter after winter. The borders along it are half sand and half weeds. They are littered with debris tossed from trucks like Bryan’s and the cars of slobs who own or rent in this part of the world: paper plates, beer cans, Kleenexes smeared with lipstick, broken glass, cigarette packs, and take-out cartons from Burger King. Here and there, a busted white plastic bag surrounded by its load of rotten vegetables, empty Evian bottles, and chicken bones. It’s one way to avoid that trip to the town dump, and who wants to cart garbage to New York in the back of the station wagon and hand it to the doorman? They pass a grim old fellow walking toward them on the other side of the road. He carries one of those white garbage bags and is actually picking up the stuff! A bum scavenging for food? No, he we
ars clean garden gloves, therefore, a deranged householder. Carrie toots the horn at him, but he doesn’t look up.
What a yoyo, she cries out.
Hey, slow down, it’s here on the right.
Bryan is in the backseat, behind Carrie. His hands reach over the driver’s seat to her shoulders. Then one of them moves farther down, finds her breast, and squeezes.
Cut it out, will you? You want me to go off the road?
Schmidt negligently throws out his cigar. It’s just tobacco, but immediately he regrets the gesture. Bryan will think he’s OK, behaving just like Mr. Schmidt, when he next heaves a broken muffler pipe over to the side of the road.
They turn into a driveway, really a curving swath cut by a bulldozer. At its end the site, also raw—the contractor hasn’t returned to haul away his litter, never mind finish the grading—an odd-looking one-story house, shaped like the letter X. The dumpster placed near what should be the front door overflows with sheetboard, scraps of timber, and corrugated wrapping.
Shangri-la, says Schmidt.
Bryan whines: Don’t look at the plot, Albert. It can be landscaped any way you want.
Of course.
I swear to you. McManus didn’t clean up the land because the guy broke the contract. I have the key. You want to go in?
One entire segment of the X is a long room with two fireplaces and a kitchen that’s all counters and no walls placed toward the farther end, the other two half segments that cut across it are like separate wings and contain sequences of bedrooms and bathrooms. Oak floors with a chic finish and white walls. Even though the sky has clouded over, the house is very light.
