Schmidt Delivered

by Louis Begley

  You may, perhaps, decide to call me in the near future, but I don’t know when that will be, and I wish to tell you, before you see Renata Riker, what I would have said had you given me the opportunity.

  First, as I once tried to make clear, not very successfully, I would have said again that the break in your and Jon’s marriage gave me no satisfaction. I wished you well. I hoped you would be happy together. I have grieved over Jon’s failure at the firm—I don’t know how else to describe what happened without being unfair. Therefore, I can assure you that I would rejoice if what was broken was somehow mended in conditions that I could consider honorable. Having heard you on the subject of the financial discussions between you and Jon, that means to me one thing only. Jon has to return the property that came from your family, so that, to put it very crudely, it’s crystal clear he wants to keep you, and not your money and you.

  Second, so that you and the Rikers might know where you stand with respect to any inheritance from me, I would have informed you that I will take steps next week to make sure that any money or other property I may leave you will be in trust. Its conditions will entitle you only to that portion of the trust income that the trustee may in his absolute discretion decide to distribute to you, and, of course, to emergency help also at the trustee’s discretion. After your death, the property will continue in trust, on the same terms, for the benefit of your children until they reach the age of thirty, at which time the trust property will be divided among them. Should you have no children, Harvard University will inherit. I will, however, quite obviously retain the power to liberalize the conditions of the trust if, before I die, your family situation and your conduct lead me to believe that such a change is appropriate.

  I would like to remind you that when I married your mother, she had almost no money. That was my situation as well, except that I expected to inherit from my father. As it turned out, my father left me no money, just some odds and ends. He disinherited me. Money was never an issue between your mother and me—we took it for granted that one should be forthright and scrupulously fair, and acted accordingly. Such money as I have is money I have earned and saved, or in the end inherited indirectly from my father through my late stepmother’s generosity. You know all this, but it may be of some use to repeat it. In fact, quite unexpectedly, late in life, I am rich, to be sure in a minor sort of fashion. I do not wish that circumstance to twist and denature your relations with men. Men in general, not especially Jon Riker, although that is how you and he and Renata may interpret my intention. It goes without saying that I will not make additional significant gifts of money to you, while I am still alive, if there is any reason to think that you are not the true recipient of what I give you.

  He signed, Your father. Years of revising draft after draft of legal documents, whether prepared by him or his younger colleagues, had made him quite unable to fold the two sheets of paper he had covered with what his old secretary would have called Mr. Schmidt’s neatest scrawl, stuff them into an envelope, and seal it. He took another turn in the garden, redolent of fresh grass now that the lawn had dried, and reread what he had written. The only changes he could think of were stylistic. They weren’t worth the trouble of making another fair copy. Charlotte wouldn’t care and neither would any of the Rikers. Jon’s drafting had never been quite up to Schmidt’s standards, a failing he thought was not significant enough to mention when he pushed for that boy’s election to the partnership.

  Nobody had used Mary’s Toyota for a month or so. He patted it, as he might have a dog or a horse, and tried the ignition. The engine hesitated and then started vigorously, as though awakened from a light sleep. Really, her car was in excellent shape. He slammed the door shut, drove to Bridgehampton, and put the letter in overnight mail. Mary might have told him to express his intentions differently, but, like it or not, he was set in this mold; he could not break it alone. As to the substance, he had no doubt she would have approved.

  Carrie asked: You feeling sick or something?

  They were at table, having dinner. I’m blue, he replied. That’s all.

  Jeez, Schmidtie, I thought I got all that blue out of you. Your little guy was happy, that’s for sure. Isn’t that why I got a gold medal?

  She pointed to the scarab pin. She was wearing it on his old shirt. Black tights under it. He knew how long her legs were under the table. Stocking feet touching his, toes wiggling. Her elbows on the table, she stared at him making round eyes because she knew that made him laugh. Pacts must be respected. He came through with a chortle and blew her a kiss. At once, she was in his lap.

  Honey, tell me what’s wrong. You’re still mad at me.

  I’m not, really. Promise. I have Charlotte troubles.

  You said she was coming on Friday.

  She isn’t anymore.

  Then he told her about the telephone call, leaving out what related to her because of the small lingering hope that it would be good later if she and Charlotte were able to be friends. Besides, he didn’t want Carrie’s feelings to be hurt. It was useless, he thought, to mention the letter. It wasn’t likely that this adorable child would need to worry about trusts dreamed up by choleric fathers and their lawyers.

  You’re going to be mad at me if I tell you what I think?

  I wish you would.

  She turned his face toward hers and kissed him. It was a long kiss. When she finished, she said, I think she doesn’t know where her head’s at. She’s mixed up. You should like let up on her. She’ll figure it out.

  Thank you, said Schmidt. Do you think I was wrong to make such a big point of her getting her separation agreement worked out?

  No. She talks tough but I think she’s kind of scared of him. I think maybe it was good.

  Suddenly she jumped up. Schmidtie, you want to go dancing? There’s this cool place in Southampton. Come on, you’ll love it. I swear you will.

  Lovey, I can’t do those dances. The last new step I learned was the twist. You don’t want to drag an old fool like me out on the dance floor.

  He was going to add, Why don’t you go with some of the kids at O’Henry’s, but the memory of Bryan’s words stopped him in his tracks. An almost pout appeared on Carrie’s face and then changed into a smile.

  Schmidtie, what do you say I go with Jason? Will that make you go crazy?

  IX

  EXCUSE ME, said Mr. Mansour, that’s exactly where you’re wrong. You know why? I’ll tell you. It’s what I’m always telling you. Because deep down inside you think everybody reacts just like you—no, excuse me, I know you also think you’re better than anybody else, and so forth and so forth, but your first instinct is you think they don’t care about money. Just like you. Believe me, that’s a mistake. Most people care a lot.

  No, you excuse me. I care about money. I’ve always worked hard for my living. I stopped working because I had to. I don’t throw my money around. I’ve always had a professional adviser manage my savings and everything I’ve inherited. I pay attention. I’m very grateful I can afford to live the way I do.

  Live the way you do!

  Schmidt had obviously tickled Mr. Mansour’s funny bone.

  Yes, exactly. I’m glad to live the way I live. The way you live, Mike, is something practically nobody can imagine. If the general population knew how you throw your money out the window, the way you burn it, they would stone you. Or they’d get little men in white coats to take you away and lock you up—for good.

  You’re wrong. You know who the American people like? Blonds with big tits and guys like me, with more money than they can imagine. You want to know something? Listen, my wealth grows so fast it doesn’t matter how much I spend. In fact, you can make the case that if I double the amount I spend and spend like that until I’m one hundred I will still die rich—richer than I am today.

  Exactly. That’s why the way you live has nothing to do with me. Anyway, that’s not the issue. I think the letter I wrote to Charlotte shows I do care about money. It shows I’
m serious about it.

  Your letter is OK. I’m glad you showed it to me, although the fact is you should have showed it to me before you sent it. What were you trying to accomplish? You and I should have discussed the whole strategy. That’s the question: What is your real attitude? Excuse me—Mr. Mansour raised his hand, fearing an interruption—excuse me, that is the question. The way you described your meeting with Jon’s mother, the shrink, you didn’t handle her well at all. What’s her name, Renata? You know why? You felt guilty you wrote that letter to Charlotte and embarrassed that Renata had read it. Period. Am I right or am I wrong? You were embarrassed even though when you wrote the letter you expected Charlotte to show it to her. You let Renata see all those feelings of guilt sticking out of you like toothpicks. So what happens? Renata doesn’t take you or your letter seriously, and you confuse her, Charlotte, and Jon. You should’ve let me handle the whole thing. I could make them understand what you think you want—I say what you think you want, because the fact is you really don’t know, you’re all over the place—and make it come together. I’ll tell you something. You can’t get anyplace unless you know where you want to go. That’s my rule number one.

  I think it’s clear where I want to get. Believe it or not, I’m not against Jon. I am in favor of marriage, kids, the whole thing. But they won’t be able to get their hands on my money unless they first settle between them the mess they’ve made over the money I’ve already given. That’s what I told Renata. That’s what I think—and where I stand.

  That didn’t come through from the way you’ve told me about it. The way I heard it, you let that shrink figure out that you’ll do anything she tells you will make Charlotte happy. Only you’ll do it holding your nose because it’s Jon. So the shrink says to herself, I don’t need to worry about this big goy, he’ll do anything I want, all I have to say is jump through the hoop or you’ll make your daughter unhappy. I hate to tell you, she thinks you’re soft. Weak. I bet they do too. Your daughter and Jon. I don’t know if Renata thinks you’re stupid, but she definitely thinks you’re weak. So what are you left with? Strictly nothing, except, one, you’re once again a bad guy, and, two, you’ve showed them you’re still down on Jon. Why? Because you don’t like Jews—that’s right, don’t make that face, that’s what they’ll be saying about you—and on top of that he embarrassed you at your old law firm. So they don’t need to pay any attention to you. You need proof? OK. Have they signed a separation agreement? No. Has she moved back into their old apartment? Yes. Has he signed over to her the property? No. Has he made any other compensation? No.

  I don’t know for a fact that he hasn’t.

  I do. You want to bet? Fifty cents? A thousand dollars? Come on, I’ll give you odds. You don’t want to bet? You’re right, you’d lose.

  And what was Mr. Schmidt to make of having Mr. Mansour in his corner, giving him big-time-tycoon-deal-maker advice on this most intimate of subjects? When Schmidt thought about his relationship with Mr. Mansour, as he had done, intermittently, over the preceding weeks, he was forced to accept the peculiar fact that he had become attached to him and that, within limits that were as yet ill defined, had come to trust him. “Attached” was perhaps the wrong word: he was attached to Gil Blackman and dared to believe that Gil was attached to him. Oh, so much more loosely, of course, for reasons among which Schmidt counted his own relatively smaller power of attraction and the richness of Gil’s life. The imbalance was ancient and a source of grief. Schmidt accepted it, out of an instinct for self-preservation, and out of habit, so as not to be demoted to a position that was even more subordinate. He had learned to rein in his expectations. Gil had many friendships and attachments, but he was Schmidt’s only friend. Such was in any event Schmidt’s opinion. That put Gil in the same relation to Schmidt as he, Schmidt, was to Mike Mansour, if Schmidt were to believe Mike Mansour’s repeated asseverations. An annoying symmetry, since Schmidt’s feelings for Mr. Mansour were not those he hoped Gil had for him, one that led directly to an open question: What was the strength of Gil’s feelings about his old roommate Schmidt? That was unclear. At least, Schmidt had come to understand his own feelings toward Mike Mansour. He liked Mike Mansour the way that, in the past, he had liked clients with particularly infuriating problems. The common denominator when it came to them was Schmidt’s satisfaction with his own skill in managing them and the amusement he derived. Keeping the ball in play over Ping-Pong tables of varying shapes and sizes. He had to admit that Mr. Mansour held up his own end of the game pretty well. In fact, he had a mean serve and a pretty good backhand. Besides, Schmidt had not been wrong when he thought, at the outset, that Mr. Mansour might provide Carrie and him with a form of society. As for trust, and the limits of trust that had to be assumed, they could not, in Schmidt’s opinion, be separated from the view one took as to why Mr. Mansour should have elected him, of all people, to be a friend in the first place—before discovering that Schmidt was much more, Mansour’s “best friend.” Making all due allowance for his own bent for self-denigration, Schmidt had concluded that there could be only one reason: he amused Mr. Mansour much as dwarfs had amused the Spanish court in the time of Velázquez. He was Mike Mansour’s new toy! Certainly, Mr. Mansour had known and dealt closely in his business life with a dozen lawyers as good as or better than Schmidt, if you took legal ability and professional standing as the criteria of election, and, in fact, these must have played some role, since Mr. Mansour, early in their acquaintance, undertook on more than one occasion to test Schmidt’s form, putting him through tests that made Schmidt think of field trials, after each of which he wondered whether Mr. Mansour would produce a dog biscuit—or would it be a piece of halvah—on the outstretched palm of his hand and scratch him behind the ears because he had pointed so well. The trials didn’t include fetching or coming to heel; for all his deep psychological insights, Mr. Mansour had no assurance that Schmidt would obey, and might be content not to put that to a test. But perhaps it was precisely this suspected tendency to be insubordinate that had distinguished him favorably from the other legal retrievers, the not-quite-Schmidts, whom Mr. Mansour was happy to keep in his kennel but not on his hearth rug. Yes, it was worth Mr. Mansour’s taking trouble to have at his side, in a relation of startling intimacy, someone as respectable, maybe even presentable, as Schmidt, over whom he had no hold, who was there of his own free will. To that extent he could be trusted. As for the effect of Carrie’s special attraction, on which Schmidt had placed a silent bet against himself, Mr. Mansour had proved it sufficiently. But, according to Carrie, since the fiasco in New York Mr. Mansour had decided to stay discouraged. When Schmidt asked her whether they should accept the invitations that continued to be extended, she said, Why not? He’d rather die than try that stuff again. She added, inconsequently, Can you imagine it? Jason would kill him.

  Therefore, as friend to friend, Schmidt said to Mike, All right, Professor. What wonder drug do you prescribe?

  Nothing. A strict diet. Don’t do a thing. Let them come to you.

  And then?

  You hear them out and say you’ve got to think about it. That means you and I talk it over before you make a move.

  That’s the sort of advice I used to give to my clients about negotiations, Mike. You could have been a good lawyer. But this isn’t a negotiation. It’s about helping my daughter, about her feelings, about my relationship with her.

  You mean I could be a great lawyer—the greatest. How do you think being a lawyer compares with building businesses like the ones I’ve built? There is no comparison. Being a lawyer would take such a tiny part of my brain you couldn’t even see it and I wouldn’t miss it. The question is how you get some movement. That’s not law. It’s life. You don’t get a cat to eat by pushing food at him. You let the cat take his own time. When he’s hungry he’ll go for it. Same thing with your daughter. OK? Remember that. Pas de problème.

  Good for Mr. Mansour. Schmidt had been asleep, taking a nap, when Renata called. B
etween her and Charlotte, he sometimes thought they must have remote perception sensors rigged somewhere in his house to alert them the moment he closed his eyes, when he would be at his most vulnerable. Sexy voice, that much he had to admit, especially for a shrink whom he thought he had learned to detest. It has been such a long time, she told him, such a breach of the promise they had made to each other to work hand in hand to make the children happy. Both Schmidtie and she had been punished for it, but it wasn’t too late. The children still had their lives before them; nothing was irretrievably damaged or lost. But they could use help that only Schmidtie and she, working together, could give them. She went on like that while he huddled under the covers, on the verge of hanging up and then leaving the telephone off the hook—if upbraided for it later he could claim the line had gone dead—wondering whether she had lost her pre-Columbian looks, how those varicose veins, invisible under her wool tights, that she had massaged so attractively at their first meeting, had progressed. Ha! Two cases of varicose veins in his life: Dr. Renata and Mrs. Gorchuck. It wasn’t as if he had to hang on every word. The question, when she got around to it, was no surprise: Will you come into the city to see me, Schmidtie? We need to talk. I’m back at work, but Thursdays are open, as before. Schmidtie could invite her to lunch at that nice club of his, the one where they have those little café filtre machines. The rejoinder was impossible to resist. You’d be disappointed, he told her, they’re gone, the club has bought a big central espresso machine, no different from Starbucks. What a pity! she said. But she had only been trying to show him she remembered every pleasant detail of their last meeting while he acted so angry, so full of destructive feelings that were the opposite of what they both needed for the most important job of their lives.