by Louis Begley
Schmidt has never been the first occupant of a house or an apartment. It must be a strange experience. Every nick in the paint, every scuff mark on the woodwork, would be one’s own. He walks around, opens closet doors, looks at the plumbing and kitchen fixtures as though he knows what he is doing, asks about the cellar.
It’s great, Albert. Come on, take a look.
In fact, it is a nice, clean cellar, with two crawl spaces. Basta. In another minute Bryan will whip out the contract for him to sign. He must be working on a commission.
Thanks, Bryan. Nice house. Shall we go now?
Carrie has been doing some looking of her own.
You could put me in this room, she announces, and leads Schmidt to the bedroom at the end of one of the wings. It has a door that opens on what will be the garden.
That’s a deal.
If Albert buys the house you can look after him without sleeping here. It’s real close to Sag Harbor. Right?
Bryan puts his arm around her waist.
At the Sag Harbor hotel, Carrie has a rum and Coke, Bryan has two beers, and Schmidt a brandy. During the short ride over, Bryan has smoked another reefer, sharing it with Carrie. Schmidt feels dreadfully put-upon. He asks for the check, pays with cash because it’s quicker, and gets up, saying, See you soon, Bryan. I’ll think about the house.
It doesn’t work. Bryan has left his truck sitting in Schmidt’s driveway. Carrie races along the turnpike. If the police stop her, they will find Schmidt in a car blue with hashish smoke, driven by a local waitress, with a pusher in the back. That’s front-page news for the local press. But they make it back safely.
Bryan doesn’t roar away in his truck. He follows them into the house. Carrie has gone upstairs without a word, perhaps meaning to shake him off. What is Schmidt to do? He fusses with his mail while Bryan sits in the corner of the library, working on his nails. Some time passes before Schmidt finds the solution. He walks over to Bryan, holds out his hand, and says, I had better take a nap now. We’ll see each other soon.
Bryan rises to shake his hand and sits down again.
I’m waiting for Carrie, he informs Schmidt.
In Schmidt’s room, the bed is turned down. Carrie holds out her arms to him. What took you so long?
Bryan. How to make him leave. In the end, I told him I needed a nap. But he’s still here. He said he is waiting for you.
Yeah. He wants me to go back to Sag with him.
Do you have to?
He gets crazy when he’s like this. Come on, Schmidtie.
She is already naked. Squatting on the bed, she unbuckles his belt, opens his trousers.
Later she renews her question: You still love me?
More and more.
And Bryan. You’re not mad at me?
I wish he’d drop dead.
I belong to you, Schmidtie. Please love me. I’ll be early. You’ll wait for me?
The truck is pulling out, going too fast on the gravel. He had been so deep inside her, and now she is going to get under this guy and open her legs, her buttocks. Whatever time she returns, she’ll nuzzle his neck and whisper, Let’s go to sleep, darling. Fatigue? Satiety? Perhaps it’s also a sort of modesty: wanting to be fresher when he takes her.
The photographs of Mary and Charlotte, alone and with him, that cluttered up the top of the double chest of drawers to the left of the bed are gone. They are on a shelf in the closet, easy to reach when he wants to look at them. That’s his form of modesty. The pain Mary suffered in this bed during the last weeks: Was it a form of retribution? Schmidt can’t think what grave sins she had committed to deserve it. The past is both distant and recent, and yet they all seem venial: small lies, short-lived fits of anger, perhaps pride. But it was a Miss Porter’s and Smith College alumna kind of pride, a quality girls used to be praised for. They were to have self-respect and remember who they were and how much they had to be grateful for. Mary certainly did. As for his own case, the scourge of Charlotte’s unnatural dislike, icy loneliness, the trap of Bryan and of the man, which condemns him to live in desire and without hope? If it is retribution meted out ahead of time, it must be for Corinne, confirming that there is symmetry in the Almighty’s arrangements. Of course, it was unthinkable that someone was actually bothering to balance separately billions of individual accounts. The job had become too big for the just gods who “of our pleasant vices / Make instruments to plague us.” The final solution was global: endless torment, distributed randomly, but with no one left out. It was enough to remember that all lives end badly.
One simplifies these things, especially for children. He remembers how, when Charlotte was eight, Mary and he played their LPs of Don Giovanni for her over and over and explained the plot before taking her to see it performed at the Metropolitan Opera. When they got home from the matinee, he asked her what she had liked the best. It’s when the statue comes to dinner and walks like this: ta ta ta ta, she told him, and kept on repeating, ta ta ta ta. He was delighted with her answer, and told her she had gotten it exactly right. First, Don Giovanni kills the Commendatore. Then he taunts the dead man by inviting his marble statue to dinner. Then, on top of it, he has the bad manners to forget the invitation he has issued, sits down to dinner, without waiting for his guest, and starts gorging himself. Here Schmidt gave his off-key rendition of Ah, che piatto saporito and Ah, che barbaro appetito! No wonder the man of stone walks into the banquet room angry ta ta ta ta and pulls the Seducer down into hell!
When retribution is so neatly personalized, Schmidt thinks he can understand it, perhaps even, à la rigueur, for a moment believe in the system. According to the librettist, and Tirso de Molina before him, Don Giovanni could have escaped. If he had not mocked Elvira, if he had obeyed the ghost of the Commendatore, if only he had repented! How is he, Schmidt, going to be saved? By letting go of Carrie? Sei pazzo! Not for all the tea in China! It should be possible, for a sum of money that he could afford, to buy off Bryan. And if the man reappears, he can have him arrested and put away for a good long time in a booby hatch, enough time so that, if he is let out again, it won’t matter. For instance, in Wingdale, if that place is still in business: he would call his old friend, the governor’s secretary, and ask him to speak to the right people. That fellow is obviously a dangerous public nuisance. But Bryan might not stay “bought.” He might pocket the money and laugh at him. When in the past he counseled clients against paying bribes and thought that arguments derived from moral principles or the likelihood of getting caught weren’t working, he usually concentrated on the ghastly inefficiency of such methods. You couldn’t be sure whether it was necessary to pay—the government official might do what the client wanted anyway, without the money—and if he took the money and did nothing, you had no recourse. He might now for once listen to the voice of his own wisdom. On the other hand, Wingdale has a chance of working.
But then he realizes that, even if effective, neither solution is acceptable. Carrie might find out what he has done: he can’t take that risk. It is better not to have a plan.
When he woke up—in the end he did take a nap—it was dark. He dressed rapidly, feeling the need to get away from the house to a place where there were other people. Inside his house, wherever he turned, he felt mocked: Charlotte’s presence and Charlotte’s absence, like twin masks of Comedy and Tragedy in some allegory he was unable to decipher. On any other night, he would have driven straight to O’Henry’s. That was out of the question.
Right after law school, before he had met Mary, he went out with a receptionist at W & K who was a cousin of the debutante from Boston brought so vividly before his eyes through the magic of involuntary memory as soon as he heard Gil Blackman’s fickle assistant on the telephone. The receptionist was nice to him, but not so nice as he had wished. He suspected that a senior associate, whom, as it turned out, she eventually married, was allowed to take certain liberties. During a short but shameful period, on evenings when he was working late, or she had refused to see hi
m, he would telephone her. If she didn’t pick up, Schmidt would immediately conclude that she was with his rival, and gave his imagination free rein. The thought that she might have activities outside of work that weren’t connected with dating, for instance going to a concert or the movies with another woman, never crossed his mind. The age of the answering machine had not yet arrived: he could not keep calling just to savor one more time the sound of the promise that she would call back. If she did answer, he would cover the receiver with a guilty hand, listen, and hang up after a minute or two. But to hear Charlotte! It occurred to him that unless Riker was already back from the office he would be certain to hear her voice—at least a recording of it. He dialed the number and let it ring until the answering machine took over.
Eight-thirty. There had to be a nine o’clock show in Southampton, in one of the odd shoe-box rooms into which the old movie theater that smelled of mold had been divided. Any film would do.
He parked his car around the corner. Fifteen minutes to show time. There was no line. He bought a ticket and went to look at the vans and convertibles through the window of the General Motors showroom next door. What should he do with Mary’s car? Give it to Carrie. It was absurd to let her drive an old jalopy while the Toyota was just sitting in the garage. Or he could trade the Toyota in for another car and give Carrie that one. He would lose money, and it was foolish to get rid of a car that had maybe twenty thousand miles on it, but that would be the more elegant thing to do. There was also Charlotte’s car, which she had left on her last visit. She hadn’t mentioned it in her letter. Perhaps now that she was being advised by both attorney Riker and Dr. Renata she had come to think that the car, registered in Schmidt’s name, wasn’t really hers. They must have counseled in their tactical discussions: Don’t ask for the VW at the same time you make a grab for your old man’s silver! He’ll flip out!
He looked at his watch. There was time for a quick drink across the street. He started in that direction. But in the entrance to the alley next to the bar, as if carved in stone, staring at Schmidt and registering no surprise, stood the man. He held a brown paper bag at chest level. In anticipation of the season, he wore a beige duster. On his head perched a stained gray fedora.
Get over here, you bastard, you old goat, he cried to Schmidt. I’ve been waiting for you. You and I have business to settle!
Schmidt turned tail. Once inside the movie theater, he found a seat toward the front, in the middle of the row, with people on both sides. He felt calmer when the movie ended. The man’s unspeakable filth and stench—it was that, not his physical strength, that terrified him. Like fear of rats feeding on garbage. He would overcome it.
Mary took long baths. Carrie prefers showers. There is a white wicker armchair in the bathroom. Schmidt sits in it, watching Carrie take a shower. She has returned from Sag Harbor—not long after his return from the movies. Seeing her like this is overpoweringly exciting: her body is so young, so free of imperfections. The contrast between the heft of her breasts and the elongated body that seems always at the edge of fatigue is not a defect; Schmidt finds in it an ineffable charm. It reminds him of the sadness of certain Degas dancers—that girl, for instance, with a questioning upturned face, one foot on a chair, tying her slippers. When Carrie makes love she grows so serious that in the beginning Schmidt wondered whether he was hurting her, whether she needed to be consoled. But it’s never that: she is serious because the gift she makes of herself is total, and the force of the climax overwhelms her. He has come to think that her violent, prolonged orgasms are a reward for her seriousness and generosity.
She has been washing with extreme care. Schmidt laughs at the attention she has given to her belly button. She has told him, pointing to a tiny pinprick, That’s where I wore a ring. It was crazy! Schmidt would like to know which one of her boyfriends had this wish to mark her. He hasn’t asked; he is afraid it was Mr. Wilson, although that seems so preposterous. When she finishes, Schmidt stands up and holds a towel for her, wraps her in it, and pats her down until she is dry. She has already brushed her teeth. He takes her in his arms and, turning out the lights on his way, carries her to bed. Too bad for the little guy, she whispers this in his ear, and, a moment later, I love you, darling, I can’t tonight. He dicked me for an hour. It was brutal. That asshole was so freaked out he couldn’t come. Her fingers continue. Do you still love me? You like it like this, Schmidtie?
Later, when her head is already in its nest on his chest, Schmidt tells her that he has seen the man and asks whether she knows that he has come back. She does; he has waited at the restaurant.
Carrie, does the man dick you?
You sound funny! Can’t you say Mr. Wilson? That’s his name.
Does he?
When he first came here, he tried. He got cleaned up at my place and tried and tried. No way! He couldn’t. He got so pissed he hit me. No, it wasn’t bad, just knocked me around.
What will you do if he tries it again?
He won’t. He just won’t. Not while I’m with you.
Why? How do you know?
He told me. Like you’ve got the things he used to have. He doesn’t want me to compare.
Then he will want to kill me.
XV
QUOGUE HAD FOUGHT VALIANTLY and with considerable success to stop Jews from invading the bay properties that made it such a desirable beach community in the eyes of many of Schmidt’s partners and clients. Nevertheless, Schmidt had a deep-seated, generalized prejudice against Quogue and its entire population—locals and summer and weekend residents.
To start with, Schmidt’s canon held that all townies living in the western part of Long Island’s Suffolk County were avid, mercenary riffraff: the more enterprising among them built on speculation the houses that were defacing Schmidt’s landscape, while the rest busied themselves selling cars and insurance. So far as he was concerned, regardless of geographical considerations, Quogue belonged in that part of the county. The East End locals were more likely to be found cutting lawns, servicing septic tanks, and growing vegetables (activities of which Schmidt approved and that, in his opinion, lifted them to a higher sphere of existence), unless they were fishermen, an ornery but noble and endangered order. But Schmidt’s loathing for Bryan was not at all related to Quogue’s being his birthplace. He detested Bryan for being devious and exacting access to Carrie’s body. Whether and to what degree these demands were unwelcome, Schmidt had not yet chosen to investigate.
And Schmidt’s view of Quogue was not enhanced by the presence of those very partners and clients who had houses there. They were the sort of people whose links with Schmidt Jon Riker had used to illustrate for Charlotte her father’s anti-Semitism, but Schmidt did not feel at ease with them. As a species, they were too genial and too gregarious for his taste, given to planning jolly activities at which they were sure they would have great fun together, and to relating later, in detail that suggested the gift of total recall, how swell everything had in fact turned out to be, even though Jimbo had broken his kneecap falling down the Spanish Steps and Mary Jane’s doctors were unable to cure the dysentery she caught in Cancún. It will be plain by now that bonhomie was not one of Schmidt’s characteristics. Besides, the men had used to irritate Mary by not understanding what she did, while their wives, with existences defined by raising children and good works, had bored her, made her impatient.
His first inclination, therefore, when he opened the Walkers’ lengthy, many-times-folded-over invitation to their thirtieth wedding anniversary celebration to be held at their house in Quogue on the second Saturday in May, was to decline. The invitation had been addressed to his office; he didn’t recall receiving a letter of condolence from them; the past was the past; they weren’t intimate anymore. There would be other people at the party in the same embarrassing category of former friends: couples who made up Schmidt’s circle when he was at law school or with whom he and Mary had dined regularly in the years that followed, and the flotsam and jetsam o
f divorces. As for the latter category, it was hard to predict whether the wife or the husband was more likely to have been salvaged. Looks and charm were often dispositive, the more attractive partner sailing on to other waters.
These were friendships that had bloomed long ago, when most of them lived on the Upper West Side or between Washington Square and Gramercy Park. At that time the grand firms for which the men worked paid young lawyers pitifully low salaries but the old partners fully expected the associates and their wives to dress up like Mommy and Daddy and live like miniatures of Mommy and Daddy, on the assumption that everyone had a small trust fund that made that sort of thing possible. Therefore, they coped; knowing how to cope was a tribal skill, like knowing how to rig a sailboat. Sometimes two couples—inseparable, good looking, and exuberant, with their perfect, picture-pretty, towheaded, and exuberant children—would jointly rent a large house near the beach in Amagansett or on the north side of the highway in Water Mill. The husbands had all been law school classmates, give or take a year. They would ask strays like Schmidt to come out on the train with them for a weekend of corn on the cob, gin, and watching the children play at the edge of the surf. It was during such a weekend at the Walkers’, to which Ted Walker had invited him, that Schmidt was able to dazzle Mimi, Walker’s willowy Philadelphian wife, by poaching for her a whole salmon, and then decorating it with rich-looking, yellow mayonnaise he had made from scratch in a bowl, just stirring peanut oil into egg yolks with a little whisk. Anyone other than Schmidtie would have simply reached for a jar of Hellmann’s, became the universal many-times-repeated comment.
Still, why should he go to that party? Did he any longer care about them or they about him? One couldn’t begin to explain over a drink or a plate of cold roast veal the games life had played with the Walkers or with him since they had drifted apart, soon after his marriage to Mary. And the rest of that group! He expected it would be a challenge even to recognize half of them, requiring instant restoration of hair color, if not of hair itself, airbrushing potholes left in the skin by removal of little cancers, whittling down bellies and rear ends. Nevertheless, after breakfast, as he read the text of the invitation—it was really an illustrated family history, punctuated at every turn by exclamation points, with pictures of the Walkers and their children at various ages—he was overcome by curiosity. Ted and Mimi’s story seemed so happy and their lives so wonderfully simple. What was that like? How did they manage it? He should find out: it would be a sociological expedition of a sort he would not be easily able to undertake if Carrie should accept his various imprudent suggestions that they live together and she quit her job. It was a buffet dinner: he could leave when he wanted. No one would miss him.
