by David Gates
“We understand,” I said.
“I, for one,” my mother said, “am going to drink your toast.” She picked up her wineglass, drained what was left, said, “Cheers,” and held the glass out to my husband. “How about one of those happy returns?”
We gave her our bedroom and I took my brother up to my study and turned down the covers on the brass bed. “She scared me tonight,” he said.
“She was a little rough with you,” I said. “Probably she’s just tired. I know she’s been stressing about turning seventy.”
“No, that thing about the Devil. That doesn’t just pop into a person’s mind.”
“Come on, she was joking.”
He shook his head. “There was something going on. I could feel it in the room.”
“Please don’t get weird with me.” I remembered that my husband had said something about an exorcism. “I’m sorry, I know you believe what you believe.”
“You felt it too,” he said. “Don’t lie.”
“What I felt,” I said, “was that you and Mom were doing your usual. You were probably scaring her.”
“What, with big bad Jesus? Somebody got scared when I was about to pray. That wasn’t, like, even her voice.”
“God, you seriously think this.”
“We need to pray.” He went down on his knees and tried to pull me down with him.
I jerked my hand away. “I can’t watch this. It’s like seeing you shoot up. I’m going to bed.”
Down in the basement, I washed my face, brushed my teeth and went in to my husband. He looked up from his book. “You were right,” he said. “It’s perfectly tolerable down here. I have now officially stopped feeling sorry for any of our houseguests.”
I sat down on the bed; he put a hand on my back and began to stroke up and down. “He’s completely insane,” I said.
“He is a curiosity. I suppose he’s normal enough out there in America. Well, I’ll have an opportunity for further study when I drive him back to the airport.”
“I think he’s terrified all the time.”
“I thought you said he was insane. You need to make up your mind.”
After he went to sleep, I lay there and prayed that if something evil had entered the house, we would be delivered from it—and wasn’t that what the Lord’s Prayer said? I might as well have stayed up there and got down on my knees with my crazy brother. My pillbox of buds was in the room where he was staying; I prayed that he might go through my desk and discover it, as if that were how the evil had gotten in. I prayed for the sound of a toilet flushing. I heard only the lowing and the clattering of a train passing through, down along the river.
—
Oh my—that was a little gothic-y. Let’s get a grip before we have my mother sucking cocks in hell.
—
She stayed for another couple of days, I assume so she wouldn’t have to ride back with my brother. For much of the trip to LaGuardia, he and my husband had apparently chatted about the best cars to drive in those Colorado winters and his job at CompUSA, steering clear of Jesus and the war. “He says in ten years we’re all going to be walking around with computer chips in our foreheads,” my husband told me. “He seems a little conflicted about it, working where he does—as am I. When the Antichrist gets here, I want that young man on my team.” My mother and I went to hear his trio play at the restaurant, and she pleased him by requesting “I’ve Got the World on a String.” “Why don’t you come up and sing it?” he said. “What’s your key?” “Good lord, no,” she said. “I can’t sing a note.” He persisted—the place was practically empty, she was among friends—and she finally got up and proved it. She came back to the table blushing like a proud little girl. She still talks about it.
After my brother scared me about the Devil—all right, after I scared myself—I put the buds away in the freezer, inside a box of frozen green beans I’d bought for just this purpose. Hardly food that would tempt a hungry hubby. Now I looked forward to that drink when I got home from work, but I have to confess I’d begun to enjoy my job. I must have been the first managing editor to get Samuel Beckett into The Pennypincher—“What goes by the name of love is banishment, with now and then a postcard from the homeland”—or to pass along, thanks to my old researcher skills, the Fun Fact that when a hydrogen bomb explodes, it momentarily creates every element in the universe. I was sure the publisher would freak out, but I don’t suppose he ever read the filler—who did? I understood that The Pennypincher’s new edgy sensibility wasn’t a triumph I could share with my husband, but I was so lost at this point that I felt sorry for myself about it.
In June I drove over for Andrea’s wedding, without the huz, who had a wedding of his own that afternoon, playing cocktail music until the real band started up; he said he couldn’t in good conscience deny the boys a chance to make two-fifty apiece—read that as you will. Andrea, I saw, had lost some weight, and the groom—an only-once-divorced theater publicist, with an eight-year-old son as his best man—had just a little gray hair at the temples. Lightly worn, Andrea called him. “I’m sorry your husband couldn’t make it,” he told me. “An architect and a musician. He must be very creative. And you’re a writer.”
“Yes, we’re a nest of singing birds,” I said. “Andrea looks lovely.”
“Doesn’t she? You know, when we’re back from Hawaii, we should all have dinner. You still come down to the city, don’t you?”
“Not as often as we used to—but sure.”
“Superb. Sounds like a plan. We’ll get you back in circulation.”
At the reception, Andrea had seated me next to the groom’s son; luckily, he spent the dinner talking to her mother, on the other side of him, who showed him how to fold a dollar bill into a shirt with a collar. A couple across the table, apparently old friends of the groom, tried to include me in a conversation about The Sopranos—which I’d never seen, so I had to go into interviewer mode. After the cake, Andrea came over and pulled up an empty chair.
“I think you scored,” I told her. “He seems very nice.”
“Older men, right?” She pumped a fist. “Listen, we have to talk about that job of yours. What are you doing?”
“What I can, apparently.”
“This cannot be allowed to continue,” she said. “I’ll be back in three weeks, and you are to call me.”
“I doubt there’s much you can do. I fucked myself living in the boonies.”
“What happened to your book?”
“You didn’t see the review in the Times?”
“Somebody’s being difficult,” she said. “It’s so out of character.”
“This is your wedding,” I said. “Let’s get on to something upbeat. Where are you guys going to live?”
“No,” she said. “You call me.”
—
His daughter had phoned to apologize, to both of us, as soon as we were back—it had been a terrible week, which was no excuse, she fucked up everything, Madeleine was furious at her (which I doubted), she was furious at herself, she never got to see us and now we’d probably never want to see her, and now she was being all abject, which she realized was unattractive…
“What a performance,” he said after they’d hung up. “I hope Madeleine can keep her from rending her garments. Otherwise she’ll be hitting the thrift stores again.”
“Why do you have such contempt for her?”
“I wouldn’t call it that. Just fatherly skepticism. There is a history here. She’s basically a good girl.”
“She was humiliated.”
“And appropriately so, wouldn’t you say?”
“I think we should have her come here for a few days,” I said. “I mean when this has blown over a little. The two of you need to spend more time together.”
“Aren’t you a saint. Then again, you’ll be safe at work all day.”
“I think you’re afraid of her.”
“I’m just not sure I have the energy for it. Would you like some coffee?” He starte
d for the kitchen, then turned around. “You’re right,” he said.
She only got a week’s vacation, but she agreed to come east over the Fourth of July, stay with us for two nights, then have a night with her mother before flying back. Her father drove to LaGuardia to get her; I’d made a big chicken-and-avocado salad, with goat cheese, olives and vinaigrette, and I was on the deck with my earphones, on my third drink, watching the sun go down, when I finally heard them coming up the driveway. She set her bag down and I hugged her; I could feel the clasp of her bra under her T-shirt and realized I was working my thumb under it. I moved the thumb away, she hugged me tighter, then let me go.
“And no welcome for me?” my husband said.
I kissed him on the lips, medium light. “You must’ve had a trek,” I said.
“I’d forgotten that every drudge in New York would be trying to escape tonight. Well, one shouldn’t call them drudges. Fellow Americans. How many drinks are you ahead of us?”
I held up two fingers. It depended on how you counted.
“We’ll be up with you in no time.”
“Dinner’s ready whenever you want it,” I said.
“First things first,” my husband said. “I think I speak for both of us.” He went over to the marble-topped iron table where I’d set glasses, bottles and the ice bucket.
“How was your flight?” I said.
“I never know the answer to that,” she said.
“Late,” my husband said.
“Well, you’re here,” I said. “Okay, I’m being inane. I’m glad you’re here. Your father’s glad too—he’s being grumpy.”
“I need to go put my shit away,” she said. “Am I down in whatever it is?”
“Not yet,” he said. “Old joke.”
After dinner, I noticed him nodding in his chair; he woke himself up by spilling his drink on his pants leg. “Christ Jesus,” he said, jumping to his feet. He took the empty glass off the cushion and set it on the floor. “I guess that’s all for the old man.” He ran his hand along his thigh and looked at it. “Hell. I’ll see you ladies in the morning.” We watched him go up the stairs, his hand on the banister.
“He’s tired,” I said.
“He’s old and drunk,” she said. “It kind of breaks my heart. I don’t know, I guess he’s seen me in worse shape. You too—I mean, you have too.”
“We all have our moments,” I said.
“Yeah, but that was a pretty sick display,” she said. “I mean back in Portland.” We arranged ourselves on the sofa, as we had that first time, cross-legged at opposite ends.
“Listen,” I said. “I’ve got some dope. Do you want any?”
She shook her head. “I stopped with that after—oh. You don’t mean dope dope. Yeah, I could.”
I went to the freezer and brought back my stash and my one-hitter, a metal tube made to look like a cigarette.
“This thing’s cold,” she said.
“Here.” I took it and breathed onto it in my cupped hands, then loaded it for her. “You want to sit over closer?”
She came and sat cross-legged beside me, our knees touching. “This isn’t very comfortable,” she said.
“What if we did this?” I uncrossed my legs and stretched them out while I took her shoulders and moved her to sit with her back against my chest.
“God, how sketchy is this?” she said. “If he comes back down, he’s going to really think we’ve bonded.” I put the one-hitter between her lips and lit a match.
“Nice,” she said, after breathing out the smoke. I felt her head relax onto my breasts. I put my nose in her hair—it smelled of the drugstore shampoo I’d put in the downstairs bathroom—and she twisted her head up to look at me. “Aren’t you doing any?”
“It’s for you,” I said. “Sometimes it makes me a little paranoid.”
“Come on.” She put it between my lips. “I won’t let that happen.”
When I began to feel it, I straightened up and said, “Music?”
“I don’t need it,” she said. “If you want.”
“I’ll go put something on, okay?” But the movements involved in getting up seemed too complicated. “Maybe not,” I said after a while.
“Yeah, don’t.” She edged back, pushing her narrow hips between my thighs, and I spread them wider.
“Are you okay about this?” I said.
“Aren’t you?” she said. “We can be close. I mean without doing anything.”
“I think I am sort of doing something.” I could feel myself getting wet.
“Oh.” She breathed out. “Thank God. Can I just kiss you?”
She twisted herself around to be on top of me and my mouth was grinding into hers. “We need to go downstairs,” I said. “Can we?”
—
Afterward, she lay on her back with her hands over her eyes. “I just want you to know,” she said, “this is the weirdest thing I’ve ever done. I can’t even imagine what it’s like for you.”
“It wasn’t like you did it,” I said. “I mean, we both did.” I sat up and reached down for my clothes. “God, I really, really don’t want to do this, but he doesn’t sleep that well, and if he finds me not there, you know? Are you going to be okay if I go up?”
“I guess so,” she said. “You probably need to go process. Is this the first time you…”
“Actually no. Did I seem like it?”
“I wasn’t even thinking about that.”
“Is this going to fuck up your thing with Madeleine?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “You better go.”
“Kiss good night,” I said.
“Isn’t that a little mooshy?” She raised her head to give me a peck, then lay back down and covered her eyes again. “So is one of us going to say it?”
“What would we say?”
“Nothing. I’m just being crazy now.”
“Oh.” I put on my T-shirt, found my socks. “That really would be a first. For me.”
She propped up on one elbow to face me, her long breasts touching the mattress. “What about my dad?”
“I’m just not very expressive,” I said. “I mean, I do. I just—”
“Okay, this is a little too much, all right?”
“We are in deep shit, aren’t we?” I got up, pulled on my jeans and stuffed my underpants in the pocket. “Was that enough of a confession?”
“Madeleine always says I have no filter,” she said. “You really better go. Tomorrow’s going to be one strange day.”
—
The next day was the Fourth, and my husband draped his Japanese flag over the railing of the deck; it used to piss people off in Rhine beck, but no one could see it up here. He told us he would make breakfast and set out bowls and a box of Cheerios; he was in high ironic mode. You’d think he would have seen it all over us, but he was so far away.
He took her for a father-daughter expedition—“No interlopers allowed,” he told me—up to Hyde Park, to see the Roosevelt mansion, and also Val-Kill, where Eleanor used to fuck Lorena Hickok, though he didn’t mention that as a reason for going. He did try to do everything right with her, as I hope she knows. In the afternoon, he listened to a ball game on the radio while showing her his latest paintings and letting her try to do his portrait in charcoal: in high school, she’d wanted to be an artist. His Mets beat the Reds seven to two, so that was good. As always, he refused to watch what he called “the fury of aerial bombardment,” though from the deck we could have seen the fireworks displays from towns up and down the river. Instead, he’d planned a double feature for us: The Parallax View to be followed by The Manchurian Candidate. It wasn’t a strange day, particularly. They’d stopped to buy steaks at the organic supermarket in Poughkeepsie—you remember the one—which he grilled for us like a real husband and father. “Dig in,” he said. “Grub first, then ethics. I forget who said that.” I’d been noticing that he was starting to repeat himself. While we ate, he and I made her talk about her music, as if we were M
om and Dad. Proud, but concerned, but proud. He fell asleep during The Parallax View; I stopped it and she and I helped him up to bed. “Let’s not watch the rest,” she whispered as we came back downstairs.
“I’ve seen it,” I said. “I can tell you how it ends.”
She put both arms around my waist. “Yeah, we both know how it ends,” she said. “I don’t care, do you?”
We put her on the train the next day, to go stay with her mother before her flight on Sunday afternoon. I packed a bag on Sunday morning, while he was in working, enough stuff to last me, and left a note: Had to go to the city. Will explain later. That would be quite the explanation. I waited where she’d said, at the corner of Sixth Avenue and Eleventh Street, in front of Ray’s Pizza, and she got out of a taxi with all her things. “I can’t believe we’re really doing this,” she said. “So now what?”
5
The other day I went with Andrea to a memorial for the Newsweek writer, who’d somehow managed to make it to seventy-six, because who wouldn’t be curious. The family funeral and the cremation had been a month ago, but, this being New York, it had taken time to line up the venue and the speakers. We sat in the back of St. Mark’s Church-in-the-Bowery and people told stories about old days I hadn’t been around for at a magazine that no longer existed. Crashing a cover when Frank Sinatra died, then heading out to a dive near the Lexington Avenue subway at six in the morning. The headline they’d rejected for the writer’s Linda Lovelace obit. The Friday night when he got a stupid edit and stomped a metal wastebasket flat. The still older days at 444—the address on Madison, before the move to Fifty-Seventh Street—drinking at a bar called the Cowboy with people called Ax and Shew. A middle-aged woman, all put together, got up and told about the note he’d put in an interoffice envelope after she’d written her first takeout: A star is born. I didn’t recognize her as my onetime rival, until Andrea whispered her name. It seemed brazen of her to be up there speaking in front of the wife, who sat in the front row waiting her turn. It was as if we were already in a place where we no longer saw through a glass darkly, but he’d probably taken his secrets to the urn.
The wife spoke last. She looked like somebody’s grandmother, which I guess she must have been, since a boy in a blue blazer was sitting there with what looked to be the family. Even in his last years, she said, he’d never stopped keeping up with the new books, and he’d given her the encouragement to sit down and write her memoir of growing up in Washington during the Kennedy years—which, she said, peering over her glasses to milk the laugh, was still in search of a publisher.
