Florence Gordon

by Brian Morton

  Emily couldn’t be the Angel in the House for Justin. She couldn’t save him. She didn’t know whether he’d be able to save himself. All she knew was that she couldn’t save him.

  94

  When Emily looked up, she saw that she was right outside La Lanterna, the place Florence had picked. She was excited to be seeing her—excited and a bit repulsed. She felt as if she’d learned something from Florence, but something she wasn’t sure she’d wanted to learn.

  She wasn’t, of course, intending to tell Florence about how she’d channeled her spirit in order to find the strength and the bluntness and the coldness to do what she needed to do. Florence, who had never asked her a personal question, not a single one, wouldn’t care. And yet Emily thought it was possible that her debt to Florence might be visible on her face, and that Florence, somehow, might understand, and might, without even knowing why, feel a little closer to her now.

  95

  Sitting at a table near the window, Florence could see Emily on the street, pulling out her phone, looking sad—stricken, really—and then looking . . . Florence couldn’t tell. Resigned? Determined? In any case, something other than stricken.

  If Emily had been reading a book, or a letter, and Florence had seen her facial expression change like that, the sight would have been intriguing—you’d want to know what could have affected her so strongly. But her phone? She’d probably gotten news about a party, and then realized she wouldn’t be able to go, and then decided it didn’t matter.

  At another time, Florence might have found this a fit occasion to lecture Emily about the importance of resisting the brain-corroding allure of the new technologies. But her encounter with Saul was still weighing her down: the pathetic failure of his life and her own cruelty in exposing it. She didn’t have the strength to lecture Emily about anything.

  She’d been hoping that seeing her granddaughter would cheer her, but as she watched her climb the steps outside the café, the hope disappeared. There had been times when she’d felt close to the girl, but not now. The little scene on the street, the phone pantomime, had reminded her of how far apart they were, in terms of how they lived and what they valued.

  96

  When Emily got her first sight of Florence, she was shocked.

  Actually, that’s not true. When Emily got her first sight of Florence, she didn’t register it at all, because she didn’t realize it was Florence. Entering the dimness of the café from the bright midafternoon street, Emily had vaguely seen some decrepit old lady in the corner, and it was only when she passed her eyes over the place a second time that she recognized her.

  After Emily sat down, looking at Florence closely, she couldn’t be sure why she’d mistaken her for someone else. She looked the same as she always did. Her hair was still carefully set; her clothes were still severe; her posture was still uncompromising. What was different? Nothing.

  Florence asked for the papers, and Emily gave them to her. They talked for about ten minutes, but not about anything that mattered. Every time Emily tried to say something half meaningful, her grandmother rebuffed her.

  Emily’s research over the past week had involved the life of Shulamith Firestone, a radical feminist writer and activist who’d been dragged down by mental illness and had retreated into private life. When one of her books was reissued a year earlier, Florence had written a moving tribute, which Emily had read just the other day. She mentioned it now, and Florence brushed her hand through the air dismissively. “If you want to talk to me about Shulie,” she said, “come back to me after you’ve read her books.”

  Emily tried a few other conversational openings, but Florence didn’t respond. It reminded her of the way things had been when she’d first started working for Florence, and Florence wouldn’t even let her in the door.

  Emily’s idea that Florence would somehow sense what she’d just been through with Justin, somehow sense that she’d drawn upon what she’d learned from Florence to do what she needed to do—she saw now that that had been pure fantasy.

  She could deal with that. She didn’t need her grandmother to mystically intuit what she was going through. But something else was happening here, something harder to deal with. Something was going on with Florence. The only way Emily could put it to herself was that it felt as if Florence was breaking up with her.

  Emily excused herself and went to the bathroom, where she sat in the stall and tried not to cry. She wasn’t even sure why she was feeling this way. Why am I so needy? When did I start to need her?

  She put her head in her hands and thought. As she thought, she came to a realization.

  Her grandmother was looking spiritless and wan and remote, but she’d been looking that way before Emily even sat down with her.

  Think about it. Put it together. The way she’d sat onstage, immobile, while Willa Ruth Stone attacked her; the way she’d tipped her head back, exhausted, in the restaurant afterward; the way she’d looked in the corner here in this café, shrunken, when Emily came in. It wasn’t that Florence was rejecting her. Florence was dying.

  97

  When Emily got back to the table, she asked Florence if she was all right.

  “Of course I’m all right. Are you all right?”

  “Are you sure there isn’t anything I can help you with?”

  “You have helped me.” She held up the sheaf of papers.

  “I’ve just had the feeling . . .” Emily said.

  “Enough of these feelings,” Florence said.

  They’d started to mean more to each other over these past weeks. Emily knew that it wasn’t an illusion. But she kept wishing they could reach a point where Florence would let her guard down once and for all.

  Florence put her hand on Emily’s.

  “You’re not the worst granddaughter a woman could hope for,” she said. Then she called for the bill.

  98

  At home she rested, and then she worked on her book. She tried to pick up where she’d left off, with an account of a debate she’d had with the historian E. P. Thompson, a debate in which Florence had tried to open a genuine exchange of ideas about women and history, but without success, her efforts perpetually checked by Thompson’s pseudo-poetic bluster about the ghosts of utopia and the serpent of empire. But after a few paragraphs she found herself drifting further into the past, finally writing about a few childhood memories of her mother. They had no connection to anything she’d written about so far—she’d always intended to leave her childhood out of the story—but now she was filled with the desire to record things that no one else alive would know.

  Normally, when she was working on a book, she didn’t ask herself to stick too closely to the plan. She liked to leave room to surprise herself; she liked to let herself wander off course. Today, she thought that if she let herself wander off course with this memoir, she might not live long enough to complete it. The thought left her shaken for a minute or two, but then she told herself that this is always the case: you never know if you’ll live long enough to complete anything.

  She returned to what she was writing, a memory from the age of five or six, watching her mother fold laundry in their apartment in the Bronx.

  99

  Janine was going to a convention at a conference center in Tarrytown. It was something she’d been looking forward to for weeks. The keynote speaker was Angela Duckworth, a young star in the field, who was studying persistence and perseverance in children and adolescents. She too was a guru of grit.

  Lev had gone up early. He was staying there for the weekend, but Janine was just going up for the day. She didn’t want to have to consider whether or not to sleep with him within the tristate area.

  She’d floated through the early morning. It was a strange, self-defeating habit she had: sometimes when she absolutely needed to be punctual, she’d start to get ready long before she had to, but then fritter away the time, checking her email, trying on clothes, checking her email again.

  “I’m going to be
late for this thing.”

  “How do you get there?” Emily said.

  “I’m not even sure if it’s Penn Station or Grand Central. I think it’s the Metro-North train. I don’t know which—”

  “Why doesn’t Dad drive you? He’s got the Zippy car.”

  Daniel had rented a Zipcar to take Emily to look at some colleges in the area.

  “Dad’s got better things to do.”

  “Look at him. It’s not like he’s figuring out a cure for anything. He’s just sitting there reading the sports page.”

  Janine had had no intention of asking Daniel, and it had been clear that Daniel hadn’t expected to be asked. You don’t ask your husband to give you a ride to a conference where you’ll be spending time with the man you might be leaving him for. That was one of the rules of marriage.

  But she was so anxious about getting there on time to see Angela Duckworth that it just came out.

  “Could you?” she said to Daniel.

  He sprang up instantly. He had a strange grin on his face. He looked like a demented jack-in-the-box.

  “Yes,” he said. “Yes. That’s a great idea. I’ll just drive you right up there.”

  He had an air of jumpy intensity, as if he wanted to grab her by the neck before she changed her mind.

  On the spot Janine invented a theory that there isn’t a wife in the world who doesn’t, in some tiny spot of her consciousness, carry the fear that her husband might murder her someday; and the face that Daniel was showing her now—this face of eager tense elation—was what she would see in the last moment of her life if her fear were ever to come true.

  “Let’s go. Or you can freshen up or something, and I’ll bring the car around.”

  Bad idea. Don’t go with him.

  But this was Daniel. You couldn’t be afraid of Daniel.

  “Can I come?” Emily said.

  “Why?” Daniel said.

  “I love to take a turn in the afternoon.”

  “What?” Daniel said.

  “That was something some French girl said in a short story.”

  “Don’t talk like a French girl. And no, you can’t come. Mom and I need some alone time.”

  She and Daniel went down to the car.

  Don’t get in.

  She got in.

  Daniel liked to drive, but she’d always only half liked to ride with him. It was an activity in which another side of him came out. You would have thought that Daniel would be a cautious, sober, defensive, old-man-ish driver, but instead his driving was caffeinated and aggressive. It always felt a little chancy to her, but he’d never had an accident, and she’d had three.

  As they passed under the George Washington Bridge and breasted the Cloisters, he started to pick up speed. She didn’t like going this fast, but she didn’t say anything. Then he started weaving through the traffic, going twenty miles an hour faster than anybody else.

  “Hey, cowboy. Let’s get me there in one piece.”

  “You’ll get there in one piece. Precious cargo.”

  The Henry Hudson Parkway is a narrow highway. He zigzagged around four cars, changing lanes so quickly she started to feel ill.

  “Come on, Daniel. What are you doing?”

  “This is how I drive in New York. You have to drive different out here.”

  “You don’t have to drive differently. You drive fine the way you drive at home.”

  “Fine for Seattle isn’t fine for New York. Fuck.”

  The car in front of them had braked abruptly and he had to shoot into the right lane.

  “There’s a different pace out here,” he said. “The thing about New York is that everybody on the road thinks of himself as a star. And they drive like stars. Maybe they are stars. A lot of dentists are stars around here, you know. They think you have to get out of their way.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?”

  Now they were on the Saw Mill Parkway, and he must have been pushing ninety miles an hour.

  “I believe they still have speed limits in New York,” she said.

  She would have been yelling at him but she was feeling too guilty. She didn’t think she had the right.

  He took an envelope from his jacket pocket and pushed it into a slot in front of the instrument panel so that it blocked their view of the speedometer.

  “Don’t you want to see how fast you were going before we died?” she said.

  “Don’t need to look. You just have to trust the force.”

  “So what are you doing? Are you making a point?”

  “I’m not making a point. I’m driving.”

  “Do you want to kill us?”

  “Why would I want to kill you?”

  “That’s not what I asked.”

  “I’m just driving.”

  “If some coked-up superstar dentist swerves out of his lane while you’re going ninety, what’ll happen to the kids? Don’t you care?”

  “You’re going to be fine. Don’t worry about that. But you’re right. I respect the sentiment. It’s important to treasure the things you have.”

  “Daniel! Slow fucking down!” She was yelling now, guilty or not.

  “Don’t be a nervous Nellie,” he said.

  They reached the conference center more quickly than she would have thought possible. She was comfortably on time for the Angela Duckworth talk; she might even catch the tail end of the welcome reception.

  “Okay,” she said. “Thanks.”

  But instead of letting her out and driving away, Daniel was taking the key out of the ignition.

  “You know what?” he said. “I’ve never really met any of your colleagues.”

  And he got out of the car.

  The reception room was just past the lobby. She was almost trotting in order to keep up with him.

  He stood in the wide vaulted doorway and scanned the crowd.

  Lev was in the middle of the room, talking to a man she didn’t know.

  “That must be your boss,” Daniel said. “I want to tell him what a great job he’s doing.”

  Daniel walked quickly toward Lev. How did he even know which one Lev was? Maybe because Lev was obviously the person who radiated authority? Maybe because Daniel had some weird sixth sense? Maybe because Daniel had looked him up on the Internet?

  Unlikely. Daniel never looked anything up on the Internet.

  She saw herself throwing her body between Lev and Daniel to make sure no one got hurt. Alternatively, she saw herself sprinting out the door and leaving them to their fate. She chose a middle course and just stood there. She wasn’t sure she could have moved even if she’d wanted to. She had the odd feeling that she was watching something that had already happened.

  Daniel had joined Lev in the middle of the room. The other man was gone. Daniel was pumping Lev’s hand, and Lev was regarding him with what looked like the usual Levian friendliness. It was impossible to tell if he was in the least uneasy.

  Daniel was boring into Lev with a smile the intensity of which Janine wouldn’t have been able to describe. He was standing too close, like someone who lacked the usual social boundaries.

  A bearded server blocked Janine’s view, holding out a tray of crackers with dabs of pâté. Janine smiled and shook her head and he moved on, but a moment later someone else appeared—a woman named Greta, a zestful apostle of “learned optimism” whom Janine had met in Pittsburgh.

  “You again?” Greta said. “We have to stop meeting like this!”

  Janine tried to make conversation with Greta while watching Daniel and Lev.

  Daniel normally liked to keep his distance from everybody, but he seemed to be crowding Lev, forcing him back. Lev was taller than Daniel but somehow Daniel was dominating the space.

  Daniel was so unlike most of his colleagues on the force that sometimes she liked to tell herself that he was a police officer only in name. But now she was reminded that he had at his disposal a physical vocabulary that was foreign to her own professional world. />
  Lev was moving backward, but so gradually that she wasn’t sure he was even aware of it. As they spoke, Daniel would move up slightly, and Lev would step back, and then, when his weight was on his back foot, Daniel would move a little closer, so that Lev had to step back again.

  A million years ago, Daniel had taken her to a SuperSonics-Bulls game. Everybody went crazy when Michael Jordan dunked the ball and Dennis Rodman snatched rebounds, but Daniel pointed out the more subtle things they were doing: obstructing the path of some hapless SuperSonic before the Sonic even knew where he wanted to go, closing up a lane to make sure that a Sonic had to take his shot from a bad angle. He showed her how good players make lesser players move in the direction of the good players’ choosing.

  Off in a corner of the room, there was an upholstered yellow chair.

  He’s going to make him sit in it.

  The two men were still ten feet away from it, but as soon as she noticed the chair, she knew.

  Somehow Janine was still talking to Greta. Remarkable how you can nod at the right places without listening to a word a person says.

  She felt as if she should rescue Lev, but she didn’t know what she’d be rescuing him from.

  She didn’t want him to sit in the chair. Somehow, sitting in the chair seemed like an awful fate.

  Lev had taken two crackers from the server and was holding one in each hand. Now he transferred one of them so that he was holding both in his left hand. With his freed-up right hand he pulled out his wallet.

  What the hell was going on?

  He was holding out his wallet and trying to take something out of it at the same time, until Daniel finally took the wallet, removed whatever it was, and gave the wallet back. She felt as if she were witnessing a mugging, except that both of them were smiling. She had no idea what was happening until she realized that it was a photograph. It must have been a photograph of his daughters.