Christmas in Austin

by Benjamin Markovits

  Almost as a relief from these feelings he tried to think about Elsa. The judge had a ranch house near Brenham, and once or twice when they were kids the Essingers got invited out there for lunch on a Saturday afternoon. The Kirkendolls smoked their own brisket and sausage. There was a lake on the property, and on one of these occasions the judge suggested to Elsa that Paul might be interested in going for a row. He was about fourteen years old. What was embarrassing was just the careful way nobody teased them (not even Nathan or Susie) as Elsa offered to walk out to the lake and show him the boat. It was after lunch, still light, but pretty late in the year—November maybe. The grass looked like the grass looked now, pale and dead. Elsa let him take the oars, even though it was her boat, and praised the way he handled them. She said something like, “It’s so nice just to sit back and let someone row you around.” Paul felt like he was being condescended to, or not exactly that … pleasantly managed, just because he was a boy, which disconcerted him but he also found himself responding in predictable ways. He tried very hard not to splash her.

  From these thin memories … maybe four or five of them of equal quality, a relationship that had lasted almost thirty years was constructed. It didn’t add up to much.

  Nathan with a glass of champagne in each hand passed him on the veranda and then stopped. Large bright pots of plants stood against the brick wall, between the windows. He said, “I’ve been assuming you’re willing to drive.”

  “I don’t mind driving,” Paul said. “I’m pretty much ready to go right now.”

  “Where’s David?”

  “Flirting with some … I don’t know. I don’t know why I said that.”

  “You all right?”

  “I don’t know,” Paul said. “I seem to be going through a period where I’m annoying to waiters and … other kinds of service personnel. I don’t know if it’s an indication of anything.”

  “Are you nice to them or are you a jerk?”

  “I’m extra nice, that seems to be the problem.”

  “Listen,” Nathan said, “I’m supposed to deliver these,” (he held up the champagne flutes) “but I want to talk to you. Give me a minute, okay. Don’t go anywhere.”

  Paul waited a minute, then he saw Elsa coming out of the French doors leading a small group of people, including the woman from KXAN and Sandra Bullock. She had a sensible handsome famous face, though partly she just looked familiar, like one of his sister’s friends.

  He walked up to them and Elsa introduced him. “This is Paul Essinger, who I grew up with. He’s a famous tennis player.”

  “Oh really?”

  Sandra was wearing high heels; she seemed somehow delicately poised.

  “I wasn’t very good,” Paul said. “And then I retired from not being good a couple of years ago.”

  “What do you do now?”

  “Nothing much. Am I right in thinking your mother is German?”

  “Yes.” Her manner was the manner of someone who is always polite. She tolerated conversation but you didn’t get through.

  “Me, too. We speak a kind of mishmash at home. At least, we did when we were kids.”

  “Pass the Apfelmus,” she said, and he thought for a second, maybe …

  Elsa touched him on the elbow. “I’m just giving a little tour of the grounds. My dad is very proud of what he calls his English garden.”

  “I didn’t know you could grow an English garden in Texas.”

  “You can’t. Come join us.”

  Paul said, “I’m just waiting here for somebody, I’ll find you,” and he let them go. Feeling for reasons he couldn’t totally understand an intense sense of foolishness. Either because he was the kind of person who chose not to walk around an English garden with Sandra Bullock … but if he had, and left Nathan in the lurch, just to hang out with a group of people that included somebody famous and beautiful, he would have felt … but if you turn this kind of thing down, you should just turn it down, and not mind. If you want to stand on principle. But either way he knew he would have felt like a jerk. This had happened to him before, but the intensity itself is kind of useful, eventually it burns itself out. He waited by one of the potted plants for his brother.

  *

  The judge had been talking to a woman in a wheelchair, when he saw Nathan. “Nathan,” he called out, “Come here, I’d like you to meet … Texas royalty. This is Carrie-Anne Jennings,” he said.

  Nathan reached out his hand, but he had to bend down and Mrs. Jennings had folded a wool blanket or a kind of poncho over her lap, from which she had to extricate herself. It was an awkward beginning, and the judge himself looked bright and lively but uncomfortably thin. You felt in his presence that you were refraining from asking the obvious questions, and Nathan remembered that Bill had told him something, three or four months ago. He tried to remember what. Lung trouble, maybe; in any case he had a kind of post-op brittleness. Kirkendoll was never a big guy, he had the natural upright dignity of small men, but now for the first time he looked elderly. He held a glass of champagne and the glass trembled. Part of what surprised Nathan is that he found himself feeling actual sympathy for him, when the judge had always been a figure in his life that you faintly resented, like a fact.

  “This is a grand affair,” Nathan said. His intercourse with Kirkendoll involved a certain amount of young fogy-ism. Nathan saw it as a form of politeness or respect, and their small talk included discussions of wines and watches, handmade shoes and tailored suits.

  “I don’t go to parties anymore,” Mrs. Jennings said, “unless it’s one of Kirk’s.”

  “Ask her to tell you stories about her father,” the judge said and excused himself, but after he had gone, she told Nathan, “Push me outside. I want to smoke.”

  This required some careful maneuvering—they were stuck behind the grand piano. But he got her out in the end, through the French doors, and wheeled her to a quiet spot on the veranda. The porch ran all the way along the house, and Nathan said, “Tell me about your father.”

  Mrs. Jennings was trying to light her cigarette—her matchbook had slipped out of her hand. Then she found it and lit it and sucked in, and said, “We don’t have to go into all that.” But that’s what they did, Nathan was good at getting old ladies to talk. Her father was Bishop Kimball, presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church and one of the founders of St. Stephen’s school. She herself still sat on the board. For the first few years (“We’re talking about the Fifties now.”), they didn’t have any classrooms to teach in. Students and staff built much of the housing themselves; they lived in cabins. It was also the first boarding school in the South to integrate. She was nine years old at the time. Her father got death threats, and a man in a suit started walking with their nanny, who was of course black, to drop them off and pick them up from school. “We lived in Westlake Hills. In those days, there wasn’t anything there. Now to make that walk you’d have to fly over the highway.”

  “There’s a little shed, which we called the playhouse, in our backyard. My parents bought the house in something like seventy-five, the old woman who lived in it had died, and her servant lived in that shed.”

  Nathan felt bad about using his kids for conversational purposes but he did it anyway. She said, “Yes. Yes.” Her voice was deep but had a quaver in it.

  “Last night my daughter wanted to sleep in the shed. Out of indignation, I suppose you would call it.”

  “And did she do it?”

  “She lasted about half the night.” And then, changing the subject: “The judge looks well.”

  “They’re going to have to try harder than that to kill him.”

  She had a large, unlovely, unembarrassed face. Nathan liked her; it was difficult to imagine what she might have looked like when she was young. Soft and glamorous, maybe, that was the style of the day. Then a woman said, “Carrie-Anne!” and bent over to kiss her, and Nathan offered to get them both champagne—the waitresses didn’t seem to be making the rounds outside. He ran int
o Paul on his way back, then he delivered the drinks. The judge was standing on the other side of the French windows and watching them.

  Nathan stepped inside. “It’s a wonderful house,” he said. “I’m glad I got to see you. You look well,” and the judge frowned at him.

  “I’m half the man I was.” He meant this literally—they had taken out one of his lungs. “I don’t like to stand around in their smoke, but then when I’m around they don’t want to smoke.”

  “Are you enjoying the party?”

  “I like to see people have fun.” You had to lean in to hear him (his accent was gently Southern), and somehow the tone of the conversation had shifted. His frailness itself produced a kind of intimacy, and changed the footing.

  “How’s Bill?” the judge asked.

  “I don’t know if you know, but Rose, his sister, died. She went into the hospital just before Christmas and he flew out to see her—she lived in Yonkers. Now he’s sticking around to arrange the funeral.”

  “I didn’t know. He calls me on the phone maybe once a month. More since my operation, but I’ve gotten slack about returning people’s calls. You assume they’re all well-wishes.”

  “That’s all right, he’s all right. You know my father. He spends his life expecting some kind of disaster, so when it comes … at least he’s prepared for it. But I’m worried about what happens next.” Nathan had said all this before, to other people; but still it felt like a confession or offering, part of the price you pay for this kind of relationship. “Rose was divorced. Her ex-husband has remarried and has a couple of young kids, and I think there’s going to be an argument about the money. I don’t want Bill to get caught up in it.”

  “If there’s anything I can do, you’ll let me know.”

  “I will,” Nathan said, and then, after a moment: “Right now, I’m wrestling with my own stupid problem. Some of my students have put out a statement on gun control, in response to Sandy Hook. They’re looking for signatures. I approve of the sentiment but some of the legal reasonings have given me pause. These petitions are very clumsy expressions of whatever you want to say. I don’t like signing them.”

  “I agree,” the judge said.

  “You heard that Mannheim’s retiring.”

  “Yes, I heard.”

  “Someone from the DOJ has been in touch. I’m sure they’re looking at several people.”

  “You’d be a strong candidate.”

  “I don’t like putting anything on record that I haven’t written myself.”

  “I think that’s wise.”

  In spite of himself, and his real opinion of Kirkendoll, he felt something of the disquiet you feel after the confessional—which can only be relieved by more confession. But other people were joining them, greeting the judge, introducing their wives. Nathan said, “Let me know if you want to come Boston. We’d love to have you talk at the law school.”

  “I’ve cut back on all of that recently. But the new year is a new year.” Then he put out his hand, their time was up.

  *

  Nathan looked pleased by something when he finally returned.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. In his green Armani suit, with a linen shirt and a pale blue tie … he spent money on clothes, but there was also something about the way he walked or stood that made his shirt come out of his pants and his tie hang crooked. Fine things couldn’t contain him. “The judge introduced me to the kind of person you can’t easily escape. But I wanted to talk to you. I’m worried about you.”

  “I’m okay. I just want to go home.”

  “Give us a minute. It’s easier to talk here than at home.” And then: “The champagne is better.”

  “You’re more charmed by all this than I am.”

  “Oh, fuck you,” Nathan said.

  Paul didn’t answer. He had been waiting by the potted plants for about ten minutes.

  “Listen, I want to talk to you, but I don’t want to talk like this.”

  “Like what?”

  “This isn’t an argument about lifestyle. And I don’t want to turn it into a conversation about me.”

  “Who does?” Paul asked.

  “But I don’t know how worried about you we should be.”

  “I’m fine. Not at all. Let’s go home.”

  “I don’t think you’re fine. And I don’t think you’re in a position or emotional state to assess your own position or emotional state.”

  “Well then what’s the point of talking to me about it?”

  Nathan looked at his brother with a certain amount of amusement.

  “All right. Let’s get out of here.”

  “Look,” Paul said, not moving. “You get something out of this kind of thing that I don’t get anymore. I don’t want anything from these people.”

  “What people are these? I said leave me out of it.”

  “Okay.”

  “Some of the people here are serious people. You underestimate … what it takes to be a person of influence.”

  “Okay,” Paul said. He knew that he had somehow turned the conversation around and forced his brother to explain himself.

  “All of us were born into enormous privilege.”

  “I’m aware of that.”

  “I’m not sure you are. We’re in a position,” Nathan began, and then he said: “We have the chance to live unusually good lives.”

  “I don’t know what that means.”

  “Because you haven’t thought about it. It means material comfort, it means having available to you a range of experiences, like travel, like art, like seeing your kids as they grow up. It means playing a role in public affairs, it means doing actual and significant good.”

  “Not everybody wants to be Judge Kirkendoll.”

  “Because they don’t want to do what you have to do.”

  “Because they don’t want it,” Paul said.

  “Well maybe they should. Because if we’re not going to do it, who will?”

  Nathan’s phone rang. Normally he wouldn’t answer it, but he was angry or upset enough to take it out, and Paul told him, “I’m going to find David,” and left him to it.

  Clémence was on the line. “I wanted to talk to you before you got home.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing’s wrong, I just wanted to warn you. Susie had a conversation with Ben about the playhouse. He says he threw the stones.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “It was supposed to be a joke, I think. It got out of hand.” And then, when he didn’t say anything, she said: “You’re not saying anything.”

  “I’m trying to think it through.”

  “You don’t have to think it through. Susie said Ben’s very upset, he knows what he did and she doesn’t want us to talk to him about it. She’s going to talk to David and they’re going to figure it out.”

  “That’s fine but that’s not our problem.”

  “Nathan.”

  “Does Julie know?”

  “Yes, I told her.”

  “How is she?”

  “Basically relieved. Before she thought something had happened that was genuinely scary, now she’s just mad.”

  “Is she allowed to say something to him?”

  “We’re all allowed. Susie asked me as a favor. I said okay.”

  “That’s fine, you can do what you want.”

  “Nathan. If you want to get mad at somebody, get mad at me.”

  “I’m not mad at you.”

  “We’ve got three days left here and then we can go home.”

  “That’s not how I think about it,” he said.

  David was a little drunk as they walked to the car. He smelled of cigarettes, he’d had a good time. He said, “I don’t mind sitting in the back,” and Nathan said, “That’s good, because you’re sitting in the back.”

  Paul felt cheerful again, something had shifted. Nathan still looked like he was pissed off about something so Paul could be the guy who didn’t mind. The car was pa
rked three or four blocks away, there weren’t any sidewalks, so they walked in the road, in the sunshine, with dry bits of leaf in the asphalt crackling underfoot. He said to his brother, “I passed up my chance with Sandra Bullock waiting for you.”

  “Then you’re an idiot,” Nathan said.

  *

  When they got home, Susie was feeding May in the living room rocking chair. She could see them walk up (one of the side windows overlooked the front steps) and she half-called out to David when she heard their voices in the hall.

  May kept falling asleep on her breast; it was more or less time for her afternoon nap. She hadn’t finished feeding, and Susie thought, I should wake her up, but she liked feeling her weight and it was a hassle to do what you had to do: shake her a little, pinch her until she opened her eyes and sucked for a few seconds and fell back asleep … then you had to go through the whole thing again. So she let her lie there for a minute. Her eyes were closed with what seemed like an intense muscular effort.

  When David came in, Susie said, “Close the doors.”

  He could tell that his wife was in a particular kind of mood. The baby on her breast gave her a sense of authority, and she said, “I want to talk to you about something. Don’t make me shout.”

  She meant, come closer, so he sat down beside her on the bentwood armchair, and inched it around. The truth is, he liked to see her nursing. She wore old canvas shoes and loose blue jeans (because she hadn’t yet lost the baby weight) and a thin cotton blouse, which was covered in some kind of Indian pattern and easy to pull off the shoulder. She looked in other words like an American mother of a certain class, upper-middle, vaguely hippieish, but at the same time financially comfortable and modestly old-fashioned. So that what had survived from hippiedom was really just an aesthetic sensibility, which David had always found attractive, and which mapped pretty well onto his own mother’s English and small-c conservative tastes and preferences—for tea served in a teapot, for homemade jam, for bright comfortable clothes. He had been married to Susie for thirteen years, and whenever she had a baby, for the first ten or twelve months afterward (while she was still nursing, and before she began her diets) he noticed in himself a spike or renewal in his sexual interest, which wasn’t often reciprocated.