by James Lasdun
I happened to be on Route 17 just then. There was a discount liquor store in one of the malls along the highway where Caitlin and I often stopped for supplies. On impulse, I pulled off into their parking lot, marched through the automatic doors into the glittering interior, and before I could change my mind, bought a bottle of expensive vintage champagne. It would make a suitable mea culpa, I thought, carrying it back to the car; an eloquent statement of confidence in Marco’s ultimate victory.
A peculiar clarity seemed to distil itself in me as I drove on. I was in front of that campus star chamber again, only this time I was on the offensive, attacking my interrogators with the icy fluency one commands during these purely imaginary exordia. They were reactionaries in the guise of progressives, I informed them; puritans whose obsession with female victimhood masked impulses as controlling and infantilising of actual women as the code of gentlemanly ‘chivalry’ that the pioneer feminists had diagnosed two centuries ago as the male sex’s insidious means of female subjugation. I accused them of trying to bring back shame as an instrument of social control, of wanting to recreate a world in which a word, a rumour, an anonymous posting, could once again destroy an entire life. They’d trapped themselves, I declared, in the escalating logic of hysteria that ends, unfailingly, in the witch hunt … I was aware of flaws in my own logic; weaknesses, exaggerations, but the awareness had little effect on the sense of exuberant vindication. It was as if the visions of some feverish genie had started wafting out of the wrapped bottle on the seat beside me, and into my brain.
10
I’d intended to arrive early at Marco’s but I hit traffic at the Holland Tunnel and again at the Brooklyn Bridge, and by the time I got to Bed-Stuy the party was in full swing.
Alicia’s partner answered the door, wearing a long green apron over her jeans, with the words wi-cook.com printed on it.
‘Hi, Erin,’ I said, pleased with myself for remembering her name.
‘Actually, I go by Eric now.’
She stared up with a mild but steadfast look. The tuft of beard at her chin, or his chin, was neatly combed and trimmed. His hair, shaved at the side, glinted in the street light.
‘Ah, okay,’ I said, trying to project an attitude of nonchalant approval. ‘Right!’
It seemed to pass muster. At any rate a hospitable smile spread over his face.
‘Come on in. Hey, champagne! Would you like me to put that in the refrigerator? I’ll tell Marco you brought it. He’ll be super happy.’
I hung my pack in the entranceway and followed him in.
‘I’ll get you a drink,’ he said, still smiling solicitously. ‘Gin and tonic, right?’
I nodded, a little surprised at his affable warmth.
There were thirty or forty people packed into the suite of dimly lit rooms, with a din of excitable voices making themselves heard over loud music. I glimpsed Hanan in a sleeveless white top at the far end. Alicia, wearing the same caterer’s apron as Eric, came up with a tray of canapés – elaborate confections that looked like combinations of sushi rolls and cream puffs. I asked about the matching aprons. She gave her bubbly laugh and told me she and Eric had started a catering and party management company.
‘This is our first gig. Daddy invited all his most important friends, so we’re trying to make a good impression!’
‘Well, these certainly look impressive,’ I said, taking a canapé. It had a custardy texture; I tasted shrimp in it, and horseradish, and possibly banana.
‘Delicious!’
‘Thanks!’
She hovered, unpractised at detaching herself.
‘I thought you were going to grad school,’ I said.
‘Oh. We want to see how things go with the business first.’
I remembered a conversation we’d had when she was still at Vassar. She’d told me she hoped to work at the State Department one day.
‘You don’t want to be a diplomat any more?’
‘No, I do, but right now I kind of feel this is more important. Eric needs to make money.’
It wasn’t my place to inform her she had her priorities wrong. Instead I embarrassed myself telling her the story of Nancy Reagan’s reply to the diplomat who asked what she thought of Red China – ‘I think it’s all right on a yellow tablecloth’ – to which Alicia responded with a puzzled laugh that made me feel at once old, condescending, sexist and mildly deranged.
I caught sight of Marco in the next-but-one room along, where the giant TV was splashing colour on people’s faces. He didn’t look as gloomy as I’d been expecting; certainly not suicidal. In fact, he looked remarkably well: holding court in an untucked lime shirt with a half-dozen energetically gesticulating men and women grouped around him. Eric, passing them with my drink, paused to tell him something, pointing in my direction. Marco looked towards me and raised a hand in greeting, giving Eric’s shoulder a friendly squeeze as he let the hand drop.
‘Your dad looks well …’ I said to Alicia.
‘He’s great. He actually took the weekend off, which he never normally does. We’ve all been hanging out together.’
Eric came up with my drink.
‘You need to keep circulating, girl,’ he said to Alicia, cuffing her on the back. She laughed, and they went off.
I looked for someone to talk to. The guests were a mixture of mostly white people in their fifties and sixties and a more diverse younger set – Hanan’s friends, presumably. They weren’t ostentatiously glamorous but they had an air of relaxed confidence very unlike the mid-level freelancers and adjuncts I mostly hung around with. It would be a powerful thing to have a crowd like this on your side, I felt, taking in their well-made outfits and upbeat chatter. On the other hand they looked like they could give you a very cold shoulder if your stock happened to fall for some reason, or even looked in danger of falling. It didn’t surprise me that Marco hadn’t wanted to share his troubles with them.
I moved in his direction, passing the TV, on which pundits were pantomiming the scandalised incredulity that had become the default facial expression among commentators during this campaign. The cause was more misogyny; on this occasion leaked tapes of the Republican candidate bragging about assaulting women. Seeing me, Marco turned from the tight throng surrounding him and grabbed my shoulder, hugging me with unusual warmth.
‘Really touched, really touched by the champagne.’
I smiled, glad he’d understood the gesture even though he clearly wasn’t in any imminent danger of blowing his brains out.
‘It’s a new day, right?’ he said, staring into my eyes.
I nodded, not sure what he meant. He gripped my arm.
‘You heard the news, I assume?’
‘You mean … about these tapes?’ I gestured at the TV.
‘What? Oh, well, yes, the guy’s obviously toast, but no … Oh, hold on …’ He detached himself from me. ‘Chiara!’
A woman with vigorous features and hair piled in a dishevelled updo had appeared next to us. She and Marco embraced warmly and began speaking in Italian, Marco with his mother’s sinuous Milanese accent. I realised I’d never heard him speak Italian before; it was like having an entirely new side of his personality revealed; subtler and more cunning than the one I knew. He broke off to introduce the woman; a film-maker who’d made a documentary about the trafficking of women refugees that had won great acclaim in Europe and was about to come out in the States. The Cinema Collective, of which Marco was a board member, was involved in its release.
‘It’s getting serious attention,’ Marco said. ‘Chiara’s going to be on Charlie Rose next week, and Leonard Lopate …’
They began speaking in Italian again. I moved away, wondering what Marco’s news could be. Some major development with his own documentary, I guessed, judging from the happy atmosphere of his household. Across the room I saw Hanan leaning against a door jamb in a cluster of people, listening thoughtfully to their conversation. I caught her eye, and after a momentary blankness she smiled,
flashing her even teeth.
‘Oh, hello!’
We exchanged some pleasantries. I thought that would be that, but she stepped towards me, her coutured silk top catching the light in ripples like sculpted drapery.
‘Actually, I wanted to talk to you.’
She spoke in a quiet, intimate tone, as if we knew each other better than we really did, and evidently confident that I would acquiesce in the change of register. It crossed my mind that she might be wanting to question me about that message of Julia’s on the answering machine last month, and I realised I still hadn’t asked Marco what he’d told her. But I was on the wrong track entirely.
‘Marco says your wife gave up her career when you and she had children … Is that really true?’
I was surprised: aside from the unexpectedness of the question itself, I didn’t think Caitlin’s existence had registered on Hanan.
‘Well …’ I said, warily, ‘she did continue working from home on other things …’
I’d learned from experience that some people regarded Caitlin’s decision to quit her career as an occasion to deliver a stern lecture – to Caitlin herself, or to me if she wasn’t around – and I didn’t want to hear one just then.
‘Anyway, it wasn’t based on any particular belief about child-rearing. It was just that she preferred being around the kids when they were growing up, and we were living a pretty frugal life out in the country, so we could afford it …’
Hanan nodded.
‘How does she feel about it now?’
She tilted her smoothly angled face up towards me, closing her lips as she waited for my answer. Her interest, which seemed genuine, puzzled me.
‘She fluctuates. Sometimes she regrets it. Sometimes not.’
‘What are her main regrets?’
‘Well, there’s a big void now that they’re gone, but she’s doing her best to fill it …’
It occurred to me, suddenly, why Hanan was asking.
‘Hanan, are you thinking of, I mean—’
‘I’m pregnant,’ she said.
I tried not to appear too astonished. She laid her hand against her shoulder, her long red nails fanning out.
‘It was an accident. But assuming I keep the child, I’d love to talk to your wife.’
‘Of course,’ I said. ‘I’m sure she’d be happy to talk any time.’
She smiled, and turned back to the other people. I wandered off to get another drink, trying to sort through the many and somehow staggering surprises contained in Hanan’s words. How cosmically harmonious Marco’s household had become since I was last there! I supposed I was going to be adding the imminent patter of tiny feet to the list of things we’d be toasting with that bottle of Krug. The thought trailed a slight caustic burn in its wake. An irrational annoyance at Hanan’s questions seemed a part of it; as if she’d been trying to reduce Caitlin’s difficult process of figuring out full-time motherhood to some kind of lifestyle option one could simply select like a new car or fridge. But it was more than that. There was some animus against Marco too. A resentment of his seeming invincibility; his amazing capacity for continually reviving and expanding his field of operations. And once again, as I saw this, I felt the dismaying pettiness of my reflexes. What was the matter with me, I wondered, that I could only fully sympathise with him when I thought he was on the ropes? Why did the prospect of Marco victorious, Marco the loved and honoured paterfamilias with his troops of friends, his unstoppable career, fill me with such peevishness?
‘There you are. You vanished!’
I turned from the drinks table. Marco was in the kitchen doorway, standing with a switched-on look in his radiant shirt.
‘Sorry,’ I said.
‘That’s okay, but I wanted to hear your thoughts.’
‘About …?’
‘About Julia,’ he said, as if it should have been obvious.
‘Julia?’
‘You didn’t hear?’
‘No …’
‘I thought you must have heard.’
‘What’s happened?’
He stepped close to me, glancing over his shoulder.
‘She killed herself.’
‘What?’
‘My dad called me yesterday. She jumped in front of a train.’
‘No!’
He put his finger to his lips.
‘I haven’t told the gals yet. Not sure how they’ll react.’
‘I don’t believe it! I was just …’
‘I know. I know. It’s terrible.’
‘I was just with her! She didn’t seem … I mean …’
I stepped back, leaning my weight against the table.
‘Beyond terrible,’ Marco said quietly, glancing again over his shoulder. ‘I feel awful. Really … shattered.’
‘When was this?’
‘Night before last.’
He told me what the papers had reported. She’d jumped in front of a train coming out of the tunnel at Russell Square. A feeling of horror lurched through me as he described it; I felt myself cringe as if to ward off a blow.
‘Poor woman,’ he said. ‘But …’
He gave an odd, slow-motion shrug, hunching his shoulders high and holding them there.
‘What?’
‘Well, I just wish we didn’t live in such an extreme, black-and-white universe, where the slightest transgression gets you vilified for all eternity … Perhaps I wouldn’t have fought her so hard. You know what I mean? Not that I’m going to blame myself for this. I’m just not. But maybe we’d have been able to talk it over, or something …’
I wasn’t sure what he was getting at.
‘I mean, who knows, maybe I did do something I shouldn’t have, back in that hotel. I know we were both totally hammered, so it’s a possibility. A possibility. But it’s not a possibility you can entertain in this particular universe. Not unless you plan to spend the rest of your life as a leper.’
‘What are you saying?’
‘Nothing. I’m just acknowledging that I can’t pretend to know precisely what happened forty years ago in some cruddy Belfast hotel where two people, one of whom technically speaking was me, went upstairs with certainly every intention of fucking each other’s brains out … I mean, can I?’
He gave a peculiar smile. It seemed intended to be rueful, but some other emotion was hijacking it, warping it into something weirdly triumphant.
‘You seemed pretty sure a month ago …’ I said.
‘Well, you have to take a position, don’t you? I was pretty sure. I still am. Seriously. But …’ He shrugged again. ‘Anyway, look, I didn’t mean to spring this on you. I assumed you’d heard. I thought that was why you brought the champagne.’
‘No!’
He stared a moment. As was often the case with him, the workings of his mind were transparently visible on his face as he took in my appalled expression. I could almost see the cogs turning as he realised what he’d said. He nodded apologetically.
‘No, of course not. Sorry – I’m not thinking straight. I’m in shock, I guess. You are too, by the look of it.’
He put a hand commiseratingly on my arm. I found it difficult to look at him at that moment. To my relief, Eric appeared, wiping his plump fingers on his apron.
‘Marco, they’re about to start the debate.’
‘Ah, okay.’ Marco resumed his normal tone. ‘Let’s get everyone in there, if we can. Otherwise we can bring another TV from upstairs. Turn off the music, would you? And get that lazybones daughter of mine to top up people’s drinks.’
‘Will do!’
The boy strode officiously back into the main living room. He appeared to have changed personality as well as gender. There was no trace of the old malcontent in his new role as Marco’s steward. His flourishing air seemed a rebuke to certain murky, residual prejudices lingering in me.
‘We’ll talk more later, okay?’ Marco said.
I nodded.
He moved away, but then stepped back, gripp
ing my arm again and flashing a conspiratorial grin.
‘Think she’ll stop persecuting me now?’
‘Who?’
‘Julia!’
His eyes scanned mine, searching for the smile of cynical humour we’d shared so often in the past. I could smell his cologne, and the bourbon on his breath.
‘I wouldn’t count on it,’ I said.
He gave a loud laugh, evidently taking my unamused tone as ironic, and disappeared into the other room.
I went down the corridor and lifted my backpack off the coat hook, half-intending to keep going, out through the front door and back to my car. But aside from the fact that I could ill afford a hotel, I detected something artificial in the impulse, theatrical. I could sense already that it wasn’t going to work to cast myself as a figure of blameless rectitude affronted by Marco’s callousness. Whatever flaws I have in my moral make-up, the self-exculpatory urge has never been among them. All the same, I couldn’t face going into the living room just then. I turned back towards the staircase. Alicia was coming the other way, carrying a tray of glasses. I held my pack up, pointing to the landing.
‘Just putting my things upstairs …’
She laughed, as if I’d meant to say something funny again. My daughter, two years younger, had the same habit of compliant laughter, and an urge to warn the girl against her own obligingness briefly seized me. Marco was probably right about me being in shock. I was certainly in a state of confusion.
Up in the guest room I sat on the bed and tried to comprehend what he’d told me. There was something unassimilable about it. It was at once too large and too remote to take in. Julia’s face appeared in my mind, obstinately alive; staring at me again in the stark light of her living room. Again I had the feeling of having missed something. What, though? It wasn’t as if I’d failed to notice she was unhappy. And I didn’t think I’d glossed over any of my own stumbles or gaffes either. And yet I couldn’t connect anything I’d observed to this staggering piece of intelligence. The violence of the act seemed a deliberate challenge, daring one to imagine for oneself a state of rage or despair of an intensity requiring nothing less than the impact of a hurtling train against one’s frail body to alleviate it.