Fools

by Joan Silber

  He was sorry that he hadn’t seen fit to be nicer to her; the dead can get you that way. He let women go too easily (a number of women had mentioned this), and he did act as if he were the only person in the so-called first world untainted by privilege. Liliane could probably tell this about him already.

  So this was the plan. Rudy would take Liliane on a fascinating excursion, nothing too exhausting, and then Deedee would join them for a pleasant, cozy cocktail in the late afternoon. He called Liliane at her hotel and told her they were going to skip the obvious spots and get into real neighborhoods instead.

  “I’m not sure,” Liliane said. “Can I call you later?”

  He was depressed when he hung up. What else did she have to do? He’d had in mind Jackson Heights, in Queens, which had as many South Asians as Mumbai, or was that an urban myth? Rolled leaves of beeda and beaded saris in the store windows. The Patel Brothers Supermarket, bins of okra and bitter gourds and pomelos, sacks of rice in three dozen varieties, rosewood rolling pins, round brass thali trays. Would she like that? An India of plenty—maybe that was the wrong message. No, she would like it.

  Or maybe a Moroccan neighborhood? Her husband was Moroccan. There was a teeny area in Astoria, there was a restaurant people liked.

  Or maybe she would like to see where he grew up. Rudy had lived his first eighteen years in an East Village apartment his parents had cleverly subdivided, with a room for him with his own “treehouse,” aka a loft bed. His parents both worked for a left-leaning radio station—they were a stormy couple and were enchanted but neglectful parents. In his teen years his mother had begun to die, slowly and fitfully, from leukemia, and he and his father had cooked for her and played her favorite music all day and night, Otis Redding and John Lennon and Country Joe and the Fish. Now Rudy’s father lived upstate, with a new wife, but the old neighborhood on Second Avenue was not all that changed.

  He would give Liliane a day or two, he didn’t pressure people. What if she said no? Either she would or she wouldn’t. What were the chances of her ever giving a penny to Hansen’s Hope? He’d say thirty percent. Sometimes he still thought like an investment banker. It would help his case to know more about the husband. She used her own last name, so the man couldn’t be Googled. And how many Moroccan sheikhs were there? A search brought up religious leaders, which could not be right.

  It was ridiculous that the roof of a building that housed sick children in Tamil Nadu was still leaking because he hadn’t coaxed the funds out of a bored and overdressed old woman. He hated the way the world was set up, and he was sorry nobody wanted to overthrow these people anymore. He was sorry he couldn’t just squash her flat and drain all the money out of her, he really was.

  Rudy was not in the best mood when he went out that night. He spent too many hours in a bar on Rivington Street, where he kept having one more beer to get over being pissed off (famous fallacies of the already-drunk) and he got into a conversation with some lunkhead who was holding forth about the Ground Zero Mosque, did it have to be in that spot, and who really, really was paying for it?

  “It’s called Park51,” Rudy said. “That’s its name.”

  “That’s what the Muslims call it,” the guy said. “You don’t happen to be a Muslim, do you? By any chance?”

  Rudy thought of Liliane and was sorry she had to see his city at this particular inglorious moment. “I’m the rich terrorist who’s pouring all my piles of gold into the project,” Rudy said. “Can’t you tell?”

  “Very funny,” the guy said.

  “I’m a riot,” Rudy said. And then he got up and left, lunkishly.

  He thought, as he walked to the subway, that Liliane must find it complicated to be, essentially, a Muslim in disguise. If her wedding was in a mosque, she had to have converted. He knew that much. And then the woman had flown three and half thousand miles all the way to New Fucking York to hear the bigoted crap you heard on every corner now.

  Liliane was cheered by one thing in New York, the prices were very good here. Not all the styles in shop windows were that nice, but she had learned to find her way through Bloomingdale’s and had picked up a perfect sundress and some wonderful voile shirts she bought in three colors. Her euros went far, and just because she’d lost money didn’t mean she didn’t have any. What to get for her son, Emile? He was remarkably indifferent to clothes. Ahmed was the only one who’d ever bought him anything he liked. He still wore an ancient, stretched-out alpaca turtleneck his stepfather had given him. Ahmed himself had a tendency to give away whatever you gifted him with. Liliane had seen a drummer onstage in the club wearing an Armani sports jacket she’d bought Ahmed for his birthday. Ahmed managed to not let her or anyone be insulted either—he was so jolly and righteous and certain.

  Bloomingdale’s had absolutely nothing that Emile would like, but she bought herself a very pretty cuff bracelet, chunks of coral and turquoise set in brass. It cost more than she meant to pay, and once she had it in her shopping bag, she was cranky and morose and regretful. She kept it anyway, as if she were defying herself.

  Later, before she went to bed, Liliane was very happy to see a text message on her phone from her son. The cheeses were going well, which meant he was selling enough so they didn’t all go bad. Emile’s ambitions were modest. He had a boyfriend who was an architect, not getting much work these days, but they didn’t live together, and Emile seemed to feel no pressure to earn more and be richer.

  Liliane had always wanted to be richer, though she had stopped being a gold digger after a certain point. When was that point? It was after she ran off with cash from the American clarinet player, and it was not because she felt bad about him. What did he need money for? Just to drink himself to ruin.

  How terrific she had looked then, in the clothes that were chic enough to get a better catch. The catch she drew was an affectionate and generous man in his forties, who was a vice president of Carrefour and was divorced from a much dumpier woman. He seemed delighted to be with someone like Liliane, beautiful and full of fun, and he was not the worst lover either. But he was used to certain habits of command. He liked to summon her to come to him at two in the morning, he liked to tell her what to wear when they went out, and he fell into a vile, ugly outburst in a taxi once after she’d disagreed with him in front of his friends. “Inequities of wealth erode civility,” her friend Yvette, who was a Marxist, said. To suffer indignities from a man you were crazy about was not unusual, even for Liliane, but to be maltreated by someone you didn’t love was degrading. She had expected much more triumph in the arrangement, which, in the end, did not suit her at all.

  And so she had gone from one barely solvent boyfriend to another, until the big surprise of her pregnancy, but at least she’d liked these men. She hadn’t known she was any sort of purist, but it turned out she was.

  Rudy waited for Liliane to call the next day, and she didn’t. She doesn’t hate you, he reminded himself, but maybe she did. He remembered a very odd look on her face when he hugged her good night. Oh, fuck, he thought—didn’t he know better than to go around hugging Muslim women? What was the matter with him? He’d been to Malaysia, Sumatra, and north India, where you didn’t even shake hands—what was the matter with him?

  But the next morning, he wasn’t in his office for five minutes before Veena, his assistant, told him Liliane was on the phone. “You must to show me the real city, not only the expensive parts,” Liliane said.

  “At your service,” he said. “Ready when you are.”

  “The real city,” she said.

  What does a person want most? Rudy had been trained to think about that when cultivating prospects. He thought that Liliane, who always looked so beautifully put together, so effortlessly splendid for her age, probably wanted admiration. Nobody wears satin pants and mascara just for herself. He could bring some guy friends with him, just to hover around her, but that would make the outing less official, and he had only so much time to make his pitch while she was here. What a weir
d profession. At his jobs for colleges, he’d helped make “gift charts” in pyramids of how many donations they needed in various sizes, but HH was more of a by-the-seat-of-your-pants operation. His research on Liliane’s assets had only shown a small French firm that moved property around, in a somewhat hyperactive way, and he was pretty sure there was more than that. The bad news was that there was no record of her giving big bucks—big euros—to any charity. Perhaps he would be her first. The one you never forget.

  He didn’t even believe in charities. What people needed was justice, not handouts. He’d been raised by Leftists, he knew all that. But death was catching up with the lepers before India had enough free health care. Nothing could stop death, but coins could be thrown back at him to slow him down.

  In Rudy’s club days as a teenager, he’d dated a girl who loved to come out of some venue at five in the morning, all spangled and sweaty and disheveled, and leave a twenty-dollar bill on the ground, for anyone on the street at that hour to find. It was something she liked to do before she went home, she thought it was lucky. Rudy, whose mother was starting to get sicker at this time, thought the girl didn’t know a fucking thing about luck, but then he started leaving bits of money too. He’d tuck it in a subway grating or a sidewalk crack, a five or a ten, and hear himself think to it, Please.

  A modern NGO did not beg for donations by claiming they would bring luck, though all over the world people left offerings around statues for luck. He’d heard Deedee talk about “blessings,” but surely she knew not to say that to Liliane. It would not be good to get Liliane laughing in the wrong way.

  Rudy had been thinking of Coney Island for their outing—funky, colorful, not too dangerous anymore—and was looking up its attractions on the computer at his desk at HH when Veena buzzed to tell him that Liliane was here—right here, now—in the office. This was a very good sign. Donors liked to think they owned the place, that it was theirs to pop in on.

  But she was apologizing even as Veena showed her in. “You will think I am terrible,” she said. She was canceling their outing, to go instead to some country house upstate with her friend Barbara.

  Surely she would stay for a minute and have a nice cool glass of iced tea?

  Well, she might just do that.

  “That’s so good, I need a break,” he said. “I’m getting grief from one of the centers about their roof that never gets fixed.”

  “Yes, well, a roof.”

  “I’d love to see the place fixed because a couple is going to get married there soon. Bamala and Pandi. They were engaged as children but then Bamala was thrown out of the village when she came down with leprosy. Years later they met again, by chance. It’s a great story.”

  Didn’t he used to be better at this?

  “It’s like a story out of a Bollywood movie,” he said. “Love lost and found.”

  He showed her their pictures on the computer. Pandi had a mustache and wore a white short-sleeved shirt over a wrapped plaid dhoti, and both he and Bamala, in her flowered cotton sari, were glowering into the camera.

  “What is the church behind them?” Liliane asked.

  “This center is run by a Congregationalist mission. They’re a very dedicated bunch, very hardworking. People can do the right thing for whatever reasons they want. That’s what I think. You know what I mean?”

  She appeared not to. Veena brought in the tea then—what the hell had taken her so long?—and Rudy was grateful for a pause, while he figured out another route.

  He was getting nowhere fast. The last time he had felt this bungling was in India, where he got things wrong all the time. What did he know about money? How had he managed to pick jobs where he had to count it and watch it? Maybe his idiocy was not to adore it enough. Maybe he had to be punished for lack of devotion to the force that ran the world.

  Liliane hated the iced tea, full of sugar and ice cubes.

  “Did you ever go to Morocco, with your husband?” Rudy said. “Is that where you were married?”

  “We had a very splendid wedding,” Liliane said. “I was carried into the room sitting on a cushioned table. Gold jewelry all around the face and, you know, henna designs on the hands and feet. My husband was on the shoulders of his friends. And wonderful music, long trumpets and much drums.”

  One of his cousins had had a wedding like that. She’d seen the videos at his sister’s. Could anyone imagine her in a getup like that?

  “Bamala and Pandi would be happy to just have a roof that didn’t leak.”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “We lost a few of our donors last year because they’d had money invested with Madoff.”

  “What a liar he was,” Liliane said. “A grand liar. Maybe he enjoyed to lie.”

  “I’d love to see someone give a gift in a spouse’s memory, like the Shah Jahan gave the Taj Mahal for his Mumtaz. It would be an act of love.”

  What does he know about love? Liliane thought, in secret fury. He has no idea whatsoever.

  She was thinking of the two times she had suffered most for love. One was when Emile was two weeks old. He would not let her sleep, not for a single second, and she was alone and broke and helpless in a hideous new way. The man who’d fathered him had run off with a girl from Frankfurt before Liliane had even known she was pregnant. A friend who showed up with some nice hot food thought Liliane should maybe think of giving the baby up to the care of the state, and Liliane had spit at her. Quick as that: a sudden spewed froth of saliva that hit her in the cheek. What a dramatic thing to do, and it lost her that useful friend. An act of love.

  The other time had to do with Ahmed. Once, when they were first living together, she was sure he was still seeing another woman. Someone left over from before, a woman who sang sometimes at the club. He would come home in the early hours of the morning, he would decide he had to shower before he settled into bed, he would fix her a very lovely lunch the next day. She was afraid if she raged at him he would feel compelled to leave, and so she kept silent, she said nothing—she lived in a hell of patience, unlike anything she’d known, until he gave the woman up.

  She could still remember his body in bed damp from the shower, his wet head on the pillow. Her silence was a sign (to her: there was no one else to see) that she was humbled, by this time, from the hard years. She could have found another man but not another Ahmed.

  He used to bring home leftover food from the club to stretch their budget. Emile was a big eater. When had he started to have money? Not then. But he’d never been stingy. He’d had the club owner’s love of grand gestures, buying champagne when the musicians’ wives showed up, sending cribs and strollers to their new babies. Anyone could get a handout from him.

  But he had hoarded those real estate properties, salted away his hidden riches. He must have loved to think of those assets growing in the dark, buried like bulbs till their season. When did he ever plan to tell her? Now she was rich because of him, which she sometimes forgot, thinking like a rich person that she had what she had from being worthy.

  In her poorer days she’d been wily when she had to be. With nothing to eat in the house, she used to walk through elegant neighborhoods with her good haircut and good coat, and some perfectly decent men bought her meals. She was young and took chances. But she never sat down with anyone dangerous, she always knew how to judge, she had never been stupid or reckless.

  “And older donors sometimes leave bequests in their wills,” Rudy said. “That’s another beautiful gesture.”

  What? She could hardly believe he’d decided to say this to her. How fast did he think she was on her way to dying?

  “When people come to visit the Taj,” Liliane said, ”they don’t want to see the poor people?”

  He looked confused.

  “In France I give to the homeless.”

  “On the street. Me too.”

  “No, no,” she said. “Not little coins. I am a major donor to a fund we have that helps the homeless musicians, you know, the ones w
ho play and beg. Some of them are very good!”

  “That’s wonderful of you.”

  “I have given to them more than I ought to. Nothing left. I’m glad.”

  “Many of our lepers,” Rudy said, “are found living on the streets. Well, I can’t call them our lepers.”

  “They’re yours, not mine!” she said, laughing.

  “All our cities,” he said, “are full of suffering. New York too.”

  “I very much am looking forward,” she said, “to getting out now to the countryside. The mountains are cooler, yes? It will be peaceful.”

  “You’ll have a great time with your friends, I know,” he said. “We’ll miss you, but I wouldn’t want to keep you from going.”

  He’d given up, she could tell. He knew when defeat had arrived. He pushed back his hair and rubbed his eyes, as if he were already alone.

  But that was not the end of the story. Liliane realized she’d better say goodbye, since she probably wasn’t going to see Rudy again before she went back to Paris. It actually had been a pleasure, hadn’t it, despite his having made an imbecile of himself trying this way and that to work her. She thought she might leave just a token donation, out of politeness, and because she was not heartless.

  Rudy said, “You know, maybe Bamala will have henna on her hands for her wedding like you did. They do that in India too.”

  Could he not stop? But Liliane found herself holding out her own hands, as if a design were on them. As a child, she’d had to hold them like that when her father smacked them with a belt buckle to punish her, but that was another story. One probably familiar to this Bamala. Human life had always been atrocious; no one had to tell Liliane that.

  “I hope her wedding day is as beautiful as mine was,” Liliane said.

  Ahmed had always said he hated the stinginess of the French. When Liliane left the office, she had signed away fifteen thousand dollars on her credit card. Quite a heady sensation, she noticed. She hadn’t known she was going to do that. Rudy had probably hoped for much more—who knew what most of those donors gave?—but his face had been very tender with thanks and he had said it would greatly help one badly leaking roof.