The Emperor's Children

by Claire Messud

  Or was this nonsense? Simply an ordinary case of a young Turk needing to slay his father—anxiety of influence, as her college profs would have called it—because why else did Seeley want to meet the man? She could see, now, Marina’s back floating up ahead, the skinny arms contriving elegantly to gesticulate in spite of the crowd. But before she relinquished her train of thought, she wanted to grant Seeley the benefit of the doubt. God knew, she could be irritated by her mother, but she still loved her. So, too, Seeley could both admire and despise Thwaite, and could despise him all the more for having earlier admired him. It would explain his desire to meet him; and didn’t make of him any more a monster than she was herself. It seemed that Seeley wanted her to entertain grandiose fantasies about him; he encouraged it. But that, perhaps, was as much a sham as, if not more so than, Thwaite’s desire to stand against the establishment even while accepting its award.

  “Daddy’s downstairs,” Marina breathed. “Promising to take us to the Oak Room at the Plaza. And then maybe back home with a crowd, if it seems fun. I know it’s a school night, but come on, Danny, say yes?”

  “Could Ludovic Seeley come, too? He’d like to meet”—Seeley caught up with them, laid the feathery, breathtaking hand upon her waist—“I was just saying, Ludovic, that you’d like to meet Marina’s dad.”

  “I certainly would. He’s a—an important figure in my formation.”

  “Don’t tell him that.” Marina laughed. “It just makes him feel old. Then again, he’s a sucker for flattery, so maybe you should. I leave it up to you.”

  Which was tantamount to an invitation. The trio moved with the tidal swell, to the paved plaza outside the ballroom, and thence to a waiting town car among town cars, distinguishable only by its dapper driver.

  “Hey, Hussein, can Ludovic sit up front with you?” Marina asked; and to the others, “Daddy just has to take a few more pats and plaudits, I’m sure, before he can break away. He won’t be long.”

  “You don’t smoke,” observed Seeley to Marina, as they waited against the car, bathed in the evening’s warm breeze.

  “Is that a surprise?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Besides, how do you know I don’t?”

  “Because even I could do with a fag after that.” Seeley nodded back toward the dispersing crowd, among whom the bird of paradise was even now visible.

  “If you’d grown up in the fug of it like I did, you wouldn’t pine for it, believe me.”

  “Fat Al smoked, didn’t he?” offered Danielle, eager to be of the banter.

  “Mm-hmm.”

  “Who is Fat Al? A departed house pet?”

  “Close. My almost fiancé. Once.” Marina made a face, waved her arm. “Off in the ether somewhere now. Either smoking or not smoking, I don’t know. But not my business anymore.”

  Seeley bit his thin lip. “Was he actually fat?”

  “Depends on your standards. Looking at you—I’d say you would have called him fat.”

  “He was fat,” said Danielle. She thought they both looked a little surprised; as if they were in the process of forgetting that she was there. “He wasn’t obese, but he was definitely fat. Marina used to grab his flab and say it was why she loved him.”

  “I see,” said Seeley.

  “Here comes Daddy,” Marina said, and they all turned to watch the great man saunter across the plaza, his tie shed and collar unbuttoned, his glinting hair all but aloft in the wind. He was surrounded by well-wishers who fell away one by one as if choreographed, without apparently disrupting his gait. A lit cigarette stuck in the corner of his mouth, he smiled, though for whom it was not clear.

  “Like some kind of god,” whispered Seeley. Danielle looked at him, and looked at Marina looking at him, and wondered what on earth he was really trying to say.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Enough About Us

  He just seems a little creepy to me,” Marina explained as she stepped out of the path of a zealous Rollerblader. “I can’t quite put my finger on why.”

  “Who?” Julius was having trouble following. The night had been very late, the sun’s glare oppressed, and he was concentrating on not vomiting, although he hadn’t had any breakfast. Perhaps because he hadn’t. Instead, he’d lingered under a scalding shower, and knew that his bright skin and gleaming hair now gave no indication of his suffering. That said, Visine hadn’t really helped his eyes; and his nose, as so often now, itched and ran.

  “What do you mean, ‘who’? Are you even listening, Jules?”

  “Just tired, that’s all. Don’t give me that look. Tell me who.”

  “My cousin. Frederick. You know what his mother calls him? Bootie. He’s an adult, for God’s sake. He could put a stop to that.”

  “Booty? As in ‘Shake Your’?”

  “I don’t think he’s done much shaking, to judge by its substantial size.”

  “Hey, girlfriend—you lived with Fat Al and claimed he was sexy.”

  “For some reason he’s on everybody’s mind at the moment. You’ll be interested to know that my current attraction is positively slight.”

  “That’s new. I want more on that. But why does the cousin creep you?”

  Marina went on to explain that on the evening of the awards dinner, when everyone had gone back to the apartment, late, around one-thirty, and sprawled in the living room—just six or seven people, pretty drunk, by then, in a festive way—she’d gotten up to get some water and had found him lurking in the darkened kitchen. Just standing there. “Sorry, did we wake you, I asked him, and he said no, no, he hadn’t been asleep, he was just getting a drink, but then he stood there, he just stood there without moving, no drink visible, and he looms, you know, with these thick glasses and scary eyes, and he was staring at me like a space alien, so finally I said did he want to come join us—weird enough in itself, but manners dictated—and he says yes. Isn’t that creepy?”

  “Why?” Julius yawned. Their slow pace across the park—he’d come to her neck of the woods, most generously—was exhausting him further. He felt as though he were swimming instead of walking. They were not far from the museum. “Isn’t the kid entitled to a flash of glamour? I mean, he’s from Buffalo or something—”

  “Watertown.”

  “And he’s young, young. Remember what it’s like? He’s scared of you.”

  “That’s what my mother always said about spiders.”

  “Seriously. Think about it.”

  Marina thought. “I was never scared. Not of people. I was brought up not to be.”

  “Maybe that’s your problem.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  Julius shrugged. “I think I need some coffee, before I take in any art.”

  “I’m not going to pick a fight about that one, because I don’t see you enough, and I can’t afford to. But don’t think it isn’t noted for the record.”

  Julius, too, felt there were certain distances between them that there was little point attempting to bridge. Sometimes you had to deal with Marina as though she hailed from a foreign culture—which, up to a point, she did. “Good to know you don’t change. Now find me a coffee shop.”

  “On Madison.”

  “I don’t know how you can live up here.”

  “I don’t. I live on the other side of the park.”

  “It’s all death. Same thing.”

  “Says the oracle, lately of the projects but now from Chelsea’s exclusive loft heaven.”

  “Ooh, aren’t we bitchy?”

  “Well, you haven’t invited anyone around, and there’s got to be a reason.”

  “Really?”

  “Danielle and I have been thinking we’re not male enough, or not gay enough, for your David.”

  “Please. Don’t be ridiculous.” He didn’t want to have this conversation either. If she didn’t understand, how could he explain? When someone moved away from his hometown to take a new job, his family and close friends didn’t feel slighted. They fe
lt proud of a man’s accomplishment. And wasn’t a relationship—for God’s sake, in Julius’s life, the accomplishment of a relationship, already of two months’ standing—something of which Marina and Danielle should feel supportive and proud? There was a cost, he thought wearily, to everything.

  “We prefer to think it’s not because you think we’re dull.”

  Julius sighed. “David’s really busy. He has an important job, unlike you or me. He doesn’t have that much time for socializing, and when he does have time, there are a lot of people he needs to see.”

  “Wants to, you mean.”

  “Fine, wants to. What’s wrong with that?”

  “You’d just think he’d want to meet his lover’s oldest friends. Not necessarily even hang out with them, but meet them.”

  “You know what it’s like: we’re finding the rhythm of our relationship, just the two of us. There’ll be time—lots of time—for everyone to meet, and to become friends.”

  “It’s been months already, Jules.”

  “Just two.” He paused. “Remember the Natasha/Pierre distinction?”

  “Christ. How could I forget?”

  “Well, remember what happens to Natasha at the end? And nobody ever likes it, they all say ‘But where did the real Natasha go?’ But the point is that she likes it. She’s happy. That’s the point.”

  Marina sighed. “How many times do I have to remind you, Julius? I haven’t read the fucking novel.”

  When they were settled in a booth—its aged vinyl and Formica dizzying to Julius’s parched eyes—Marina chose to forgive him, largely, he thought, because she wanted to keep talking. Apparently their brief exchange on the sidewalk had given her sufficient information about his new life, because she asked—for a long time, at least—no further questions.

  “So maybe I’m interested in someone,” she confided, leaning toward him with almost menacing excitement.

  “So you implied earlier. Who is he, that he can meet your exacting standards?”

  “Weirdly, he’s slight, and losing his hair, and very, very dry—his sense of humor, I mean—”

  “Sounds great.”

  “Spare me the sarcasm.”

  “No, about the sense of humor—I meant it. Not the bald shrimp part, of course.”

  “Not a shrimp. Tall and skinny—or rather, slender. That’s the word for him, I think.”

  “Gay?”

  Marina sat back sharply. “No! At least, I don’t think so.”

  “Sounds gay.”

  “No. I’m pretty sure he’s not gay. Australian, so a little hard to read, you know.”

  “Australians are macho, or they’re gay. Or they’re macho and gay, Village People style.”

  “Stop it.”

  “Sorry. If you think he’s straight, he’s probably straight. What does he do?”

  “Well, that’s the thing.”

  “What’s the thing? He’s a porn star or something?”

  “Not funny, Jules. Give it up. No, the thing is, he might employ me.”

  “Employ you? Who in their right mind would employ you?”

  Marina grimaced.

  “Okay, okay. You clearly can’t be teased on this one; so tell me the whole story. I had no idea you were looking for a job. Begin at the beginning for me? Did you meet him at an interview?”

  Marina explained how she had first met Ludovic Seeley, and seen him again at the dinner; how he’d come along afterward, had sat next to her at the Oak Room, how they’d found much in common, from their admiration for Anne-Sofie Mutter to a predilection for sushi to a distaste for online shopping, because the experience of savoring an item, the use of all five senses, was essential. “And he’s setting up this magazine—it launches in September—called The Monitor, and he asked, suddenly, just offhand, in the limo on the way back home, whether I’d be interested in a job.”

  “What kind of a job?”

  “Not sweeping the floors, I don’t think. Danny had recommended me to him, but he said I was even more riveting—‘riveting’ was his word—than she’d made me out to be.”

  “So what now?”

  “He suggested an interview. A formal sort of meeting. But it was just in passing, and we were pretty far gone by then, all of us—several bottles in, you know—and then at the end, when he left, he said only ‘Let’s be in touch,’ so now I don’t know whether I should call him, or maybe he said a time and I’m just blanking, or—”

  “Do you want to go to bed with him or work for him?”

  “Couldn’t I do both?”

  Julius recalled his week of working for David: the thrill of it, the glances, the first brushing of their fingers, the enhanced tension of their first kiss on account of their roles. “No law against it. But not the best way to begin, maybe. Muddies the waters, and all that. Causes trouble down the line. Or straightaway, even.”

  “How so?”

  “It’s not my business, but I thought you didn’t want a job. At least, not till the book was finished.” Noting her furrowed brows, he went on, “Though maybe that’s changed?” Always, it seemed, he was accommodating. Trying to figure out what other people thought and expected, what they hoped for. Even now, even this, was about gauging what Marina needed from him. He hated it. As if he were the poor relation. It seemed that the only life that he had, all of his very own, was his secret life, and he could keep it safely his only by keeping it secret. Marina would never know about it, and if she did, she wouldn’t care. She was too mired in the trivial back and forth of her own days. The endlessly unwritten book.

  “If you kept in better touch with your friends, Jules, you might know these things. It’s been a huge crisis for me, these past couple of months, whether to get a job or not.”

  “Please.” He rolled his eyes significantly. “No more about how I don’t do enough for you. I’ve been available nonstop for ten years to hear about these things. And if I’m a few weeks out of touch, you break my balls about it? Please.” He shook his hair as if chasing a gnat. “So tell me, why the crisis?”

  “What do you mean, why? You’ve had successes, so maybe you can’t know what it’s like.”

  “Please. Again, please. Don’t talk to me about lack of success. My career has been going nowhere for the past two years, and until recently, I couldn’t even claim to have had a decent relationship.”

  “If you know so well, then stop being so flippant about my life. I’m thirty and unemployed, and looking pretty unemployable, as time goes on. Even my dad seems to think it would be a good idea. But it can’t be a stupid job, not something utterly menial and meaningless. Not something I take on only because I claim to need the money, or to get out of the house, or—”

  “Nothing like temping, for example.” Julius said this for his own ironic satisfaction.

  “Exactly. Nothing completely stupid.”

  “And you’re sure this wouldn’t be? Is it writing, editing, what?”

  “I don’t know yet.”

  Julius winced, passed his hands over his face. Her stubborn, puppyish eagerness caused him almost physical discomfort. “Just tell me,” he said. “Tell me that you’re not wanting this mysteriously undefined job just because he’d be giving it, this skinny bald guy with the silly name?”

  “Totally not.”

  “Okay, if you say so. Now tell me that he’s not offering the job just because he wants to get in your pants.”

  “That’s beneath you, and I’m going to disregard it.”

  “Tell me one other thing.”

  “What?”

  “How does Danny feel about this guy?”

  “She says he’s huge in Australia, very smart but possibly a tad slippery. Ambitious, too. Young for how far he’s got.”

  “That doesn’t really answer my question.”

  “I don’t get you.”

  “How does she feel about him?”

  It was Marina’s turn to put a hand to her face, which she did in a fluttery way, bringing her fingers to r
est on the silver chain at her throat, with which she began to fiddle, attempting to bring it up over her chin. “I don’t think she feels anything about him at all. They met in Sydney, she ran into him here, she’s thinking of making a program that would feature him—something about iconoclasts or something.”

  “But she doesn’t fancy him?”

  “I don’t think so.” She looked at the table, at the window, as if wracking her brain. “No. She’s suspicious of him. She doesn’t fancy him, as you put it. She’d have told me, if she did.”

  “Does she tell you everything?” Julius couldn’t keep the sarcasm out of his voice, but Marina did not rise to it.

  “Everything to do with that, yes.”

  “So who does she fancy?”

  “I don’t know. Nobody. She hasn’t been interested in anyone for ages. Since that grad student who ran off and got married.”

  “If you say so. Maybe she should go out with your cousin?”

  “Very funny.” They were silent for a moment. Then Marina reached for her wallet. “Art-time, now. Enough about us.”

  Us? thought Julius. Us? But he let it go. He even allowed himself to feel a rush of tenderness for Marina, who seemed to him so oblivious, so simple and oblivious. It was good to see her, easy, like going home. Familiar even in its irritations. He’d missed her. “If you want to see the guy, I vote you call him,” he said. “No point in playing the shrinking violet. It won’t get you anywhere. And the job will either pan out or it won’t. Either way, you’re no worse off.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  A Helping Hand

  Murray didn’t have to make up any excuse in order to meet Danielle for a drink: Annabel was rarely home before eight; he had a lunch engagement with Boris, over from London, and she knew how he was. If Murray wasn’t home when she got in, Annabel would assume he was still “at lunch” with Boris. And would make sure there was some supper left on the counter, in case he wanted it. Murray had always been grateful for her independence, and grateful, too, that he knew not to take it for indifference. Increasingly, in the years since Marina had gone off to college, and most of all now that Marina seemed to have come home again indefinitely, Annabel had devoted herself to her good works in the law, had found fulfillment in the sundered and unsettled families of the underprivileged. Sometimes Murray teased her, lamented that she’d forsaken him for a bony, battered housewife or burly, knuckleheaded truant. But it was in jest only: they had attained, he told anyone who asked, an optimal balance between independence and trust-filled union. She didn’t need to know where he spent every hour—certainly not when he was traveling, on lecture or book tours—because she knew that he came home at night to her. And he knew that the world’s unfortunates could never really supplant him in her heart. They still had great sex, often enough to reassure them both. And besides, what was a simple drink with a friend of Marina’s, other than the healthy manifestation of a father’s concern for his dear girl?