by Frank Conroy
"She's not here, but she says he's crooked."
"Politics." Dennis touched his mouth with his napkin, and would say no more.
"Well, you haven't answered," said Claude.
Dennis sighed and looked away, but Pat leaned over the table, speaking softly. "Sure he's a crook, lad. He's the mayor of New York City." The two men laughed.
Claude looked down, flushing.
"There's one honest man at that table," Pat said. "Senator Barnes. And look how His Honor toadies to him."
"He's my grandfather," Peter said.
"Is he now?" Pat sucked his teeth. "Well, that's something to be proud of."
"If he's a crook," Claude went on rashly, "how can you work for him?"
Pat raised his wine glass in a mock salute. "The answer to that question is, we don't work very hard." Again the two men laughed, and this time Peter laughed with them. Claude gave it up.
He saw Catherine flit over to her mother's table and then back to her stepfather's. There was an odd quality to her gaiety, a certain brittle-ness, a sense of tension as if she were wound up too tight, her eyes and teeth flashing in the candlelight. She caught Claude's eye and indicated the stage with a quick toss of her head.
"Time to go," Claude said.
"But I haven't finished my ice cream." Peter sank his spoon into the parfait glass.
"Okay, but hurry up."
Now, with a great bustle of comings and goings, one flock of maids cleared the tables while another served coffee. It seemed there were as many maids as guests. The wine stewards moved along gravely, serving champagne. A rolling cart of variously shaped bottles—brandies and liqueurs—was brought in from the library. As Claude and Peter started toward the stage, the toasts began.
Dewman Fisk rose to toast his father-in-law, Senator Barnes, as the devoted father of three beautiful daughters, as a distinguished lawyer, and, despite his retirement, as the "continuing conscience of the Senate." George Balanchine rose to toast both the mayor and Dewman Fisk for their noble and enlightened efforts in support of City Center and the City Ballet, making the point that the cooperative mix of private philanthropy and municipal support would provide an example for the rest of the country. Nelson Rockefeller rose to toast the hostess. A few others spoke, but Claude stopped listening when he reached the piano. He set up Peter's music on the stand as the boy opened his violin case.
Claude had been unable to convince Catherine to play the flute. "I'll be too busy," she had said. He'd masked his disappointment. After a good deal of thought, and recognizing the expressive limits of Peter's playing, Claude had picked an extremely simple, and he thought elegant, piece by Purcell called "Music for a While." He'd transcribed the countertenor melody of the song for Peter and instructed him to play without vibrato, so as to approximate the sound of the fretted violins of the period. At the first rehearsal Claude had realized the wisdom of his choice. It was early music, pre-Bach, cyclical in form and contrapuntal in style. It had only to be played flatly and accurately to tick along like a Swiss watch, revealing its delicate structure and cool lyricism all by itself. Interpretation was not necessary.
Claude and Peter sat together on the piano bench, waiting, watching the glittering scene. After the toasts, everyone seemed to start talking at once. Blue cigarette smoke spread like cirrus high above the guests. Catherine got up from her side, closing the door behind her.
"It's funny how far away they seem when you're up here," Peter said.
"Nervous?" Claude asked.
"No." He seemed, indeed, quite calm. "I told you Dicky would get drunk. Look, he spilled something. He went to your school, you know. He plays lacrosse. Big goon. He has a crush on Catherine, but she won't even talk to him."
"Who does she talk to?"
"No boys, that's for sure," Peter said, and Claude felt relief. "You know how stuck-up she is."
"Yes. I do."
Dewman Fisk stood and tapped the side of his glass for silence. "And now," he announced, "a brief period of entertainment from the children." Scattered applause. Tappings of glasses in approval. "First, my son Peter will play the violin, after which time Catherine will present a short tableau vivant drawn from classical mythology." Much applause, especially from the ballet dancers. "Peter, you may begin."
With a sigh, Peter rose, took up his position near the curve of the grand piano, adjusted the music on his stand, tucked the violin under his chin, and tuned up rapidly to Claude's soft A. The child had an accurate ear, at least, for which Claude was grateful. Pointing at the crowd with his bow, Peter shouted out, " 'Music for a While,' by Henry Purcell." The room fell entirely silent, except for distant noises from the kitchen.
The moment he laid his fingers on the keys Claude was oblivious of his surroundings, aware only of Peter, into whose magnified eyes he stared fixedly. The feel of the keys, the topography of them—so familiar, so constant—launched him into a trance, like an infant at his mother's breast or a true believer before the moment of communion. He paused, imagining the music in his mind, and then began to play. Four bars of introduction, a nod to Peter, and they were launched, the stately bass figure ascending smoothly, the top line of the piano fitting the free melody of the violin, the inner voices moving effortlessly, all of it spinning into the languid air. Peter played confidently, not bothering with the music. Claude heard the words to the bittersweet melody in his mind:
Music,
Music,
For a while,
Shall all your cares beguile.
Shall all, all, all,
Shall all, all, all,
Shall all your cares beguile.
It was going so well Claude introduced the slightest rallentando as they approached the cadence. Peter followed with uncharacteristic smoothness, and then gave a lopsided smile as they held the last chord. "Terrific," Claude whispered when it ended.
Peter put his violin on top of the piano and turned to the audience to acknowledge the applause. He placed his forearm rigidly across his waist and bowed twice. Then he stepped back and swept his arm up to indicate Claude. This formal gesture got a little laugh through the applause as Claude half stood at the piano and nodded to the crowd. Mrs. Fisk came forward to wait at the foot of the stage as Peter descended, folding him under her arm, kissing the top of his head, and shepherding him back to her table, giving quick squeezes that hunched up his shoulders.
Suddenly the stage lights went out. Claude sat in the darkness and watched all the lights at the opposite end of the room come on. Catherine, barefoot, wearing a white knee-length toga and a green cape, ran from the dressing room and leaped onto a coffee table in front of the fireplace.
"Hark!" she cried, and all heads turned in her direction. "Hark to the story of Daphne and Apollo!" She spread her arms, her voice ringing out strongly. "I am Daphne, and my father is Peneus, god of the river. He allows me freedom to do what I want, to run in the deep woods, my hair full of leaves, my legs and arms cut by brambles and thorns, my heart wild as I hunt, like Diana. I am free!" She jumped gracefully from the table, ran to the side of the room, and mimed shooting arrows in the general direction of Central Park. Then she froze, staring at the audience. "What is that noise?" From the corridor to the kitchen came the sound of running (Claude knew this was Charles, the chauffeur, running in place, having picked up his cue). "It is Apollo! Chasing me!" she cried, and ran in a zigzag pattern toward the tables.
"Do not fear" came the muffled shout of Charles. "Stop and find out who I am. No rude rustic or shepherd, I am the Lord of Delphi, and I love you."
"I know," said Catherine, addressing the audience as she strode back and forth before them, her eyes glittering. "I know the message of the nymphs to Prometheus. May you never, oh never, behold me sharing the couch of a god. May none of the dwellers in heaven draw near to me ever. Such love as the high gods know, from whose eyes none can hide, may that never be mine. To war with a god-lover is not war, it is despair." Now she ran, legs flashing, through the tables, weavi
ng in and out toward the stage. From the pantry, Charles increased his tempo. This was Claude's cue to go to the wings, which he did. Isidra was on her knees, her right hand on the handle of one of two long, blue cardboard cutouts shaped to represent waves, which stretched across the back of the stage to the opposite wing, where another maid knelt in a similar posture. Isidra looked up, her expression entirely blank, and Claude nodded.
"As fleet as I am, he is a god and he will catch me sooner or later," Catherine cried as she ran up the steps to the skirt. She screamed, and it raised the hair on Claude's arms. "Help me, Father, help me!" She extended her arms to the rented scrim, which represented a river, and Isidra began pulling and pushing the handle. The two long cutouts passed back and forth in opposite directions, creating the illusion of water. "My father is too deep in the river to hear me." Now her movements to stage center became stylized, slow motion. "A dragging numbness comes upon me." She stopped and faced the audience. "Now my feet send roots into the sandy earth. Bark encloses me. Leaves sprout forth. I have changed into a tree, a laurel."
She grasped the edges of her cape and slowly raised her arms. Slender laurel branches had been sewn into the material. "Apollo watched the transformation with grief," Catherine said. " 'O fairest of maidens, you are lost to me,' he cried. 'But henceforth with your leaves my victors shall wreathe their brows. You shall have your part in all my triumphs. Apollo and his laurel shall be joined together wherever songs are sung and stories told.' "
This was Claude's cue, but it took him a moment to react, so fascinated was he by her image. She had swept through the recitation with a kind of recklessness, an abandon that now seemed to infuse her with power. Her small white figure under the lights seemed to radiate some fierce and intangible energy. When she turned her head, looking for him, her gaze was so intent, so focused, it felt almost like a blow. Startled, he looked around at his feet for the wreath, found it, picked it up, and proceeded onstage. He approached her slowly, holding the wreath before him, bringing it to her outstretched hand, which she then laid upon it. He could see drops of sweat at her temples, glistening there, her cheeks flushed, her lips slightly swollen.
"Thus the wreath," she cried, her dark eyes sharp, seeming almost angry, "is carried to the champion."
A buzz in the audience as Claude bore the wreath down the steps, across the open space, past the first tables and up to Dewman Fisk. The man's face seemed even more long and melancholy, as if his head had been pressed from either side by some great vise. His eyes were dull, unfocused. As Claude placed the wreath on Fisk's head, he thought he saw a faint welling of tears.
As the applause started, Claude remembered to step out of the way, out of Catherine's line of sight. "I want to see him," she had said. "And you watch his lower lip. See if it quivers." It was not quivering.
Catherine stepped backward and the curtains were drawn jerkily, two or three feet at a time, until with a final swing they joined.
Claude did not speak to Catherine again that evening. When she rejoined the party, still dressed in the toga, the green cape (with the laurel branches removed), and new gold sandals, she was surrounded by a knot of men, pressing her with champagne and conversation, and he could think of no way to approach her.
Mrs. Fisk and Peter withdrew, presumably to retire. Senator Barnes, tall, white-haired, with very light blue eyes, drifted into the library with Dewman, the mayor, Nelson Rockefeller, and a dozen other men. The ballet dancers, the other guests, and Catherine with her entourage milled about in the living room. Claude tried to catch her eye to wave goodbye, but she was constantly in motion, talking and laughing with great animation, spinning from one face to the other.
The candles were beginning to gutter, and as the staff began discreetly to clean up, Claude went to the cloakroom for his coat. Balanchine was there, staring into a mirror and rubbing the hair back over his ears. He caught Claude in the glass.
"That was well done, young man," he said. "Very professional."
"Thank you, sir." Claude left, crossed the foyer, and slipped out the front door. He buttoned his coat up to his neck and walked home.
10
THAT WINTER Claude saw a movie called A Place in the Sun, with Elizabeth Taylor and Montgomery Clift, and was swept away. He fell in love with Taylor, and, without knowing it, with Clift. The story—poor boy falls in love with beautiful rich girl, but the relationship is doomed because of his previous affair and impregnation of a poor factory girl (Shelley Winters)—struck him as profound and tragic. His heart seemed to twist as he saw the two young people, before things got complicated, flirting over a billiards table, water-skiing on a bright lake, riding horseback through the woods, dancing, kissing. He was drawn back to the Loew's Orpheum again and again, until he could play the entire movie in his mind, from the first frame to the last. (The only fly in the ointment was the soundtrack: sentimental strings, unimaginatively arranged, playing a schmaltzy love theme with a two-bar melody that didn't go anywhere. After a while he didn't even hear it.) It never occurred to him that there might be a connection between the movie, which had the power to make him weak at the knees, and Catherine, who could do exactly the same thing. It did not occur to him that his adolescent desire for Elizabeth Taylor was mixed up with a yearning for the rich, secure, gentle, and civilized world in which the Taylor character and her family lived This, he imagined, was the real world the world as it should—be secure love drenched and safe There was an almost unbearable beauty to the image of Taylor languishing sadly under a lap rug in a bay window, autumn leaves swirling in the air behind her, dreaming of her lover in his jail cell. As well, Claude was moved by her father's tactful concern.
When the movie crossed the street over to the Loew's Eighty-sixth for a second run, Claude took Ivan to see it, forgoing the balcony to sit downstairs, very close to the screen, in which, had he been able to arrange it, he would undoubtedly have wrapped himself.
Afterward, outside on the sidewalk, Claude still deep in the movie's spell, Ivan thought it better to say nothing for a while. They walked up toward Prexy's.
"What'd you think?" Claude finally asked.
"I enjoyed it. The script was intelligent. Good direction, good acting."
"Isn't she beautiful? I used to think Jean Simmons—did you see her in Blue Lagoon? Just incredibly lovely. But now I don't know." He gave an apologetic little laugh. "I can't get this movie out of my system. I've seen it four times now."
"It's very romantic," Ivan said. "Much more so than the book. Dreiser is interesting. Possibly the clumsiest writer that ever put pen to paper in terms of style. Just awful. But the ideas and the structures are wonderful. There's a part when he's working in a big fancy hotel. It's not in the movie. Somehow the hotel becomes a symbol for the city and the whole hierarchical capitalist system. It's marvelous. You'll like it. Not in the same way as the movie, of course."
"I know it isn't real," Claude said. "But it gets to me."
"Movies can do that."
Claude was seldom home, but it became clear that Al was now a frequent visitor. If the intensity of the first encounter between Al and Claude's mother had been a mystery, no less puzzling was the way he seemed to be helping her, guiding her with great patience back to something like normalcy. It had taken only a couple of weeks to persuade her to get back to driving the cab for at least part of the day, with the late afternoons and evenings reserved for her "project," as they came to call it.
One night he came home to find them drinking beer at the kitchenette counter (she had stopped keeping whiskey in the apartment), working with pencils and paper, drawing up budgets.
"He ain't as bad as some of them," Al said, referring to Mr. Skouras, the landlord. "Now you at least making the rent, he pulled those eviction papers. You chip away at that back debt twenty dollars a month, I bet he'll go for it. Give you the time."
"Yes, maybe," she said. "But that means driving ten or twelve hours a day again. I'd have to give up the project."
&nbs
p; Al looked thoughtful.
"I'm getting the goods on those crooks. I don't want to stop now."
"I can see that." He nodded and rubbed his thumb on the side of his bottle of Pabst Blue Ribbon. "You put in a lot of work here."
Claude had sensed that telling his mother he'd actually been in the same room with the mayor or that he'd talked to the man's bodyguards would only excite her unnecessarily, perhaps setting her off on some manic spin. The thought of her showing up at the Fisk mansion, hurling accusations and demanding justice, made his blood run cold.
"Tell you what," Al said. "How about another driver? Keep that medallion on the street, making money two shifts."
"Oh, sure. How am I going to find an honest hackie? I'd get robbed, and the way they drive, it would ruin the car."
"I used to hack," Al said quietly. "I got a chauffeur's license. Kept it up, for some reason."
She put down her beer and stared into his fox-like face. "You mean you? You'd do it?"
"Sure. For a while. Till you get even. Four or five hours a night. The usual split. "
"Well, that would be great." She smiled. "Great."
"Then it's settled," Al said. "Let's go over the numbers again, see how they come out now."
Claude had gotten so used to the towering piles of newspapers, magazines, files, and cardboard boxes of correspondence that he only gradually became aware that they seemed to be getting smaller, the paths between the stacks growing wider. He interrupted them one afternoon as they sat on the floor, Emma with a ledger, Al methodically going through a large mound of papers spilled out between them. He would pick up five or six papers at a time, glance over them, and hand them to Emma one by one.
"This is cement contracts," Al said.
She took the paper and, twisting, dropped it into one of a number of large numbered cartons behind her.
