Schmidt Steps Back

by Louis Begley

  Schmidt’s first sight of Alice was at her marriage to Tim Verplanck, a young associate at W & K who had become his favorite. It took place at a church in Washington, Alice’s father being then French ambassador to the U.S. That afternoon he danced with her at the embassy reception. She had white freesia in the coils of her hair, which was the color of dark old gold, and wore a veil of billowing ivory lace that Mary had said must have been her grandmother’s. In the coming months and years there had been dinners—Mary would have remembered how many, it was the sort of thing she kept track of—at the Schmidts’ apartment when, according to W & K custom, they entertained associates who worked for him, with their wives or fiancées; there had been also the annual office dinner dances for all lawyers and wives and, after Tim had been taken into the firm, much smaller dinners for partners and wives. Each time Schmidt had been taken aback, truly bowled over, by her beauty, her chic, and her bearing, so perfectly erect, her head held high, the rich mass of her hair twisted into a chignon or gathered by a clasp over the nape of her neck. She had the imperturbable good manners of a diplomat’s daughter. Her vertiginously long and perfect legs had a prized place in his memory. An opportunity to inspect them had been offered to the entire firm when she came to an office function wearing a fire-engine-red miniskirt and black mesh tights, no other office wife being attired in anything remotely so eye-catching. But Schmidt was able to swear that he had not coveted her then or at any other time while Tim was alive, office liaisons, not least adulterous ones, being taboo for him and, he believed, all other decent men of his class and generation. There was another, unavowable reason: while Mary lived, all the women who had excited him had something louche about them. They were women he had picked up at hotel bars, a law student with whom he had inexcusably smoked pot while on a recruiting trip to the West Coast. The one exception would have been the half-Asian au pair who had looked after Charlotte. That shy and polite girl had offered herself to him so innocently, and yet with such explicit urgency, that prudence and principles flew out the window. But even if he had allowed himself to become aroused by Alice, he would not have dared to think of her as someone who might assent to an afternoon’s copulation on her living room sofa or in a Midtown tourist hotel. It was the sort of proposal she would have repelled with scorn. She was in love with Tim, that was obvious, and even if something had gone awry between them, which he had no reason to suspect, she was too splendid, too proud—had she been a man he might have said a chevalier sans peur et sans reproche—for some squalid affair with Schmidt or another married partner of her husband’s. Then she disappeared from Schmidt’s horizon. In fact, the whole family dropped out of sight when Tim took over the direction of the firm’s Paris office, Alice and the children naturally joining him. He showed up at the New York office rarely, much less frequently than his predecessors, who had all been punctilious about staying in touch, regularly attending firm meetings in New York and pacing the corridors on the lookout for open doors whereby partners signaled that a visit would not be unwelcome. It was a useful way to keep a finger on the firm’s pulse and be sure nothing was brewing that would affect the Paris office.

  So it happened that when he called on Alice in Paris in April 1995 to offer his condolences in person after Tim’s shocking and completely unexpected death, he had not seen her for thirteen years or more likely longer. It seemed to him that she was even more beautiful: her aspect was more womanly, gentler and less haughty. The gamine had grown up. Astoundingly—in moments of subsequent bitterness he would think absurdly—he had fallen in love at once, without his lips ever having touched hers, without a single embrace. Call it late-onset puppy love; he believed it would have happened just as certainly if he had been blindfolded and had merely heard her laughter again. And now, after the hiatus of another thirteen years since that April meeting, it seemed to him that his love was intact. If there was happiness in store for him, it had to be a future shared with her.

  She traveled light like a young girl, with a single smallish suitcase decorated with red decals to make it easily recognizable on airport conveyor belts and a carry-on shaped like a sausage that she hadn’t bothered to zip up, so that a great number of French magazines and newspapers, and what looked like manuscripts, peeked out from it. He carried her bags upstairs and showed her the room she would stay in. It had been Charlotte’s: sunny, with the bow windows looking out onto the back lawn and garden and, beyond the boundary of the property, the great saltwater pond whose population of wild geese no longer migrated. Alice exclaimed over the loveliness and said she must have a complete tour of the house and the garden. But first she would like lunch, then a bath, and then a long nap. After lunch, however, she changed her mind and said they had better look around before it got dark. When they had finished and were standing at the door to her room, he said, You like this place. You might like living here.

  She didn’t answer but remained motionless. Wondering whether he had guessed what she wanted, he put his arms around her. Her mouth tasted of the lunch; her hair and her clothes smelled very slightly of sweat and other odors that told the story of the hours spent in airports and on the plane. The unmediated intimacy excited him like a stolen sweet. He prolonged the kiss, but just as he felt himself harden she pulled away.

  It’s bath time, she said very quietly. Where will you be?

  Right there, he said, pointing to his room, directly across the hall. I’ll be pretending to read and listen to music.

  May I come to see you?

  Schmidt turned up the upstairs thermostat slightly and settled into the red armchair in his room. Ordinarily he kept the house on the cool—some would say downright cold—side, but Alice wasn’t yet used to the cold of a wooden beach house pounded by North Atlantic gales. Or to sharing it with an old fellow with a lifelong habit of scrimping on heating oil. On his night table were a desperately sad novel by a Russian Jew set around the time of the battle for Stalingrad and a stack of unread issues of the New Yorker and the New York Review of Books that had been accumulating since right after Election Day, when he left on an inspection tour of Life Centers operated in Central and Eastern Europe and some states of the former Soviet Union by Mike Mansour’s foundation, of which Schmidt was still the head. He was finding the novel so powerful that he had to pace himself in absorbing its terrors; he didn’t think he was up to another scene of human degradation just then. Were the clean-cut, affable Ukrainians who received him at the Kiev Life Center familiar with that tale of horrors—horrors that must have engulfed their grandfathers if not their fathers? Before going to sleep the night before, he had put down the book just as an old Bolshevik, a commissar of superior rank, was being arrested for reasons he didn’t understand. A much younger commissar slapped him repeatedly just to break his prisoner. For the moment, the most Schmidt could handle was to listen, while his mind wandered, to the Connecticut classical music station to which the radio was always tuned. Alice drew him to her powerfully, yes, but what he felt for her was far beyond sexual attraction. It was love, albeit an old man’s love. He wanted to keep her at his side. He had offered marriage, which he devoutly wanted out of a belief, which he knew was contradicted by experience, that marriage held out a promise of stability. But he had told her he was prepared to settle for living together anyplace, on any terms she might wish. And the offer of himself was on a satisfaction-guaranteed trial basis, with assurances he would creep away quietly if she found him wanting. Was it fair, was it reasonable, to propose marriage or some other form of cohabitation with a man who had just turned seventy-eight to a woman who was sixty-three? The only honest answer was no, but he didn’t want to take no for an answer and thought sincerely that arguments against his suit might be overrated. He had fully disclosed the risks, which anyway were obvious, going so far as to say that were he her father or brother he would advise against her taking them. But it was up to her. As for the wisdom of his own position, although marriage was what he ardently desired, he knew full well the penalties fo
r entering into one that fails. In the worst case, you live with a cell mate slowly becoming your enemy and, on average, with someone more or less annoying. This was to say nothing of the physical intimacy that cohabitation made difficult to avoid. Bad enough for the woman, feeling obliged to submit to an unattractive old fellow’s groping—Schmidt did not exclude himself from the thesis that all old men are intrinsically unattractive—and rather worse for the man called upon to take the initiative and accomplish repeatedly the miracle of penetration. A voice reminded Schmidt that divorce laws had fixed those problems. One could agree in advance that the unhappy husband or wife could cut and run. Perhaps his questions could be answered definitively only after the fact; it was a case of proceeding at your own risk.

  Schmidt abruptly ended these ruminations. She was beautiful, fragrant, and more desirable than any woman he had known, with the sole exception of Carrie, Hecate herself, who had come to him in the form of a twenty-year-old Puerto Rican waitress. For two years indelibly marked on every nerve in his body she had been his mistress. The idyll had ended just as one would expect. She had found a blond giant gentle as a lamb and went to him with Schmidt’s blessing, carrying a child whose paternity was to be uncertain. As for Alice: she may not be a magical creature of the night, but she was his type! Who is to say that the game is not worth the candle? Cowardice, he knew only too well, carried its own penalties: sour solitude and despair. Concerns about being unfair to Alice were balderdash. She was a big girl. A moment ago, she had asked whether she could come to see him after her bath. That was hardly an ambiguous gesture.

  At breakfast, he had not so much as scanned the first pages of the Times. Now he retrieved it from the kitchen and soon found the only piece of half-decent news: Al Franken continued to lead the deplorable Norm Coleman in the Minnesota recount, but only by fifty votes. Recount! Schmidt had hoped never to hear that word again, after that interlude of thuggery carried on all the way up to the Supreme Court that had put W in the White House. Other than that, only tales of horror and perplexity. The day before, Hamas had fired a rocket from Gaza that reached eighteen miles deep into Israel killing a mother of four. According to the UN, the Israeli assault on that wretched strip of land had already killed three hundred seventy Palestinians, of whom sixty-two were women and children. What did those figures prove, other than the futility of killing large numbers of Palestinians? It had hardly broken their will to fight. On the other hand did Hamas try to spare Israeli women and children? That issue was not touched upon by the Times. Would Hamas and Hezbollah settle for anything less than pushing Israel into the sea? Probably not, but if they pushed hard enough, the Israelis would drop the bomb. Just where they would drop it was a good question to which he was willing to bet not even Mike Mansour had an answer. And if the Iranians too got the bomb, they would surely use it on Tel Aviv in response, a catastrophe for the Jews on the scale of Auschwitz, whereupon the Israelis would nuke Tehran and Kharg Island, the latter move starting a chain reaction of chaos for every country dependent on Iranian oil. Wouldn’t someone—Russians or Pakistanis or the Chinese, or even North Koreans—come to the aid of their Iranian and Arab friends? And do what? At that point Schmidt gave up. He didn’t know, and he wasn’t a Times columnist required to pretend that he did. With any luck he’d be dead before the answer was revealed. Another article touched on a subject nearer his old expertise. The SEC was sticking to its guns defending mark-to-market accounting, which required financial institutions to write down daily the assets carried on their balance sheets to whatever amount a buyer would be willing to pay that day. Schmidt adamantly believed that if the rule were suspended or abolished, the banks would rob the public blind. Anyone who had ever dealt with them had to come to the same conclusion. There was, however, a reasonable counterargument that the journalist hadn’t mentioned. It held that an asset wasn’t necessarily worthless just because there were no takers for it at a given time. Should such an asset then be really written down to zero on the bank’s balance sheet? It would be the same as saying that your house on a shady street in Scarsdale, for which you paid two million dollars three years earlier, was suddenly worth zero just because the Dow had crashed and for the moment no buyers were to be found. Another headaching puzzle. Perhaps Mike Mansour had the right answer. When Alice and he saw Mike at dinner that evening, he might ask him. The great financier was never short of convictions or shy about pronouncing them. One could mock Mike’s high-roller style, but when he opined about financial matters, it was well to pay attention. Schmidt had learned that lesson in October 2007, when Mike told him to sell shares and buy treasuries and gold.

  Had he dozed off? How long had she been in his room? He became conscious of her presence only when she said, Knock knock, it’s the lady from Paris. So silent when she moved, so like his cats, and his lost Carrie, Alice stood before him smiling, barefoot, toenails painted a red he found heart-rendingly gallant, clad in a beige sweat suit that he realized, when he put his arms around her, was made of a cashmere so soft it felt as if he were touching her naked body. He tried to kiss her, but she turned her head and said, Schmidtie, I’ve come for a serious talk. (That was the name she had discovered by which his friends called him; he disliked his given name, Albert, and its odious diminutives.)

  Of course, Alice, he said, we can have a serious talk, but will you allow me an opening statement?

  She nodded.

  It’s very simple: I love you. I’ve gone over everything I told you when I saw you in October. I meant it then, and I mean it now. Please give me a second chance and live with me wedded or in sin, here in this house, or in New York or Paris—or anywhere, so long as we are together and I give full satisfaction.

  He wasn’t sure what kind of response he expected, but he was relieved to see her smile. Schmidtie, was that the opening statement or the conclusion? What do lawyers call it? Prayer for relief?

  A bit of both, he answered, but please remember that I haven’t rested my case.

  Then go ahead and rest it, Schmidtie. She giggled. Don’t keep me waiting.

  He took one long step approaching the armchair where she sat. Sinking to his knees, he put his arms around her legs and pressed his face against them.

  Wait, wait, she whispered, I too have something to say. I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t like you, if I didn’t want to be with you. But thirteen years have gone by. At our ages that is like a lifetime. Do you remember how you told me I shouldn’t tie myself to an old man? Now you’re even older. But I’m not afraid of that, Schmidtie. I’m more worried about what you will think of me. Now I’m old too with an old woman’s body.

  His notion of what the occasion demanded moved him to protest. He told her that she had not changed, that she was still the magnificent blond beauty he’d fallen in love with, that she had never been more desirable. The wonder of it, he realized, was that he was telling her the truth.

  Hush, Schmidtie, she said, I know you’re chivalrous. Do you also have to be silly? Have you asked yourself what you’ll find when I take off my clothes?

  She took his hand and guided it under her top, pressing it to her breast. Can you feel how it has changed? It’s flabby. My whole body has changed. Puff and flab.

  He renewed his protest, but she said: Shush! This afternoon will be all right, because it will feel new, like doing it the first time. But tonight, and then tomorrow? You’ve such good manners that you’ll probably try to make love to me every day while I’m here. But it will feel like a chore, not because you don’t love me or don’t want to give me pleasure, but because we’re old. What will you do? Use those pills? On the sly, of course. You’re so very proper.

  Oh, Alice, he whispered. No more talk.

  But I told you that we must talk. How can we just forget that dreadful party in Water Mill? And then you had me come to London. For what? To berate and humiliate me. To make sure I knew that you were in a rage? And that awful loveless sex that followed. More like rape. And then all those years of silence, unt
il you reappeared out of nowhere. Why? Because you had figured out that I’m available. Am I right?

  Alice, we both know what happened thirteen years ago. I was a fool. An idiot. I’ve admitted that, I’ve begged your pardon for it.

  And I’ve told you I’m not angry, not anymore. I accept my share of blame. But let’s make sure that this time we don’t stumble. I couldn’t bear it.

  She had done nothing to make him take his hand away from her breast, and he had kept up the caresses, extending them to the other breast. Equal treatment. She began to moan.

  Wait, wait, she said. Listen. Please, no more talk about the future. Not now. Don’t make me think you are foolish. Let me propose marriage to you. When I think we are ready.

  I promise, he answered. I promise.

  II

  ALICE WAS ASLEEP, lost in such great depths that he was able to turn on the lamp on the dresser and collect his clothes without disturbing her. The little noise she made in response was, he thought, a moan of contentment. Then she buried her head under the pillows. There was nothing surprising about sleeping so soundly after a night in the plane followed by sex that had ended in an exuberant climax, but he couldn’t help taking it as proof that he was a good host. The thought made him feel proud even though he knew it was childish. He too had sunk into slumber but only for a short while. He awoke to find an arm thrown around him. Her body was glued to his. All that ardor, her unabashed concentration, as if she’d been straining to hear from afar some impossibly high note that would set off the explosion of joy! That was also how he remembered their first time. Eyes closed, body arched, she had abandoned herself to pleasure, on her own terms and as frankly and completely as Carrie. Certain gestures that Carrie had taught him were now brushed away, without comment or anger. How little they mattered, whether welcomed or banned! The protocol of making love to Alice was in reality not unlike the one he and Mary had adhered to during more than thirty years of a decorous and mostly affectionate marriage, but the result was profoundly different. Mary had almost never reached an orgasm. Buried somewhere inside her, he was convinced, was the fear that doing so would give him the upper hand. She’d sooner settle for adolescent pleasures of making out on the living room sofa, foreplay prolonged beyond reason, and, after the act, a clammy letdown. Probably she thought that the corollary—his feelings of guilt or humiliation—were well deserved. Shameful to make comparisons, he knew that, but could he avoid them? Alice and he would never reach the terrifying fury he had known with Carrie, but Carrie had brought him to the outer limit of his body’s endurance. He didn’t think that he could have followed her there much longer.