Schmidt Steps Back

by Louis Begley

  He went down to the kitchen, fed the cats, made himself a cup of tea, and drank it while he finished reading the arts section of the Times, which he had left downstairs. Then he washed in the guest bathroom so as not to disturb Alice and dressed for dinner. He looked at his watch. There was no hurry. Alice could sleep another half hour and still have plenty of time to get ready. Back in the kitchen, he poured himself a bourbon and cut a chunk of the Manchego he had bought for lunch. So armed, he went out on the back porch. An exquisitely drawn new moon hung over the pond. There was no wind, and the only sound was the distant rumbling of the surf. The temperature had dropped considerably, the outdoor thermometer reading only twenty degrees, and before long the cold began to get to him. He retreated to the kitchen.

  The Connecticut station was playing Beethoven’s Ninth. The music enveloped him, insistent, questioning, and premonitory. During an intolerable pause, the fate of every living being remained suspended, uncertain. Then, in a leap, came the exultation of the summons to joy. He responded with assent: yes, joy and gratitude. As though she too had been summoned by the triumphant crescendo, Alice appeared in the door, regal and slender in a floor-length black velvet sheath that left her shoulders bare. Some small part of Schmidt’s admiration yielded to perplexity. Was it a mistake, her wearing a dress she must have bought many years ago, when she still had a young woman’s skin? Would he dare suggest as much? Did she even have with her another dress she could change into? He walked toward her and opened his arms. Vast relief: Alice’s shoulders were smooth and creamy. He kissed them, inhaling deeply, wanting the smell of her body to fill his lungs. Such unexpected and undeserved good fortune that she should be so beautiful, that his lips should be so welcome, that she should be smiling at him!

  Schmidtie, look at me, she said, don’t just stand there and nuzzle. Do you think I look all right? I want the truth: can I get away with this if I throw something over my shoulders?

  “Something” was a scarf made of two lengths of silk of different colors, emerald and wine red, sewn together, that she held out at arm’s length.

  You’re sure it’s all right? she asked. I don’t want to embarrass you.

  He smiled and nodded.

  With or without the scarf you’re perfect.

  He had let the Audi’s engine run for ten minutes with the heater turned on. The interior would be toasty now. If only they still made front seats like those of the Nash he used to borrow for heavy dates at college, Alice would be pressed against his side, perhaps nibbling his ear. Instead, her hand was on his knee, communicating by varying degrees of pressure momentary panic at headlights that she was sure were blinding him, the menacing bulk of tailgating SUVs and pickup trucks, and, at intersections, unseen cars surging out of the night to join the flow of traffic.

  We’re almost there, he said to soothe her.

  It’s all right, really. Excuse me. What will the party be like?

  As such events go, not bad. You’ll get an excellent dinner. And very good wine. Mike doesn’t skimp on quality or quantity.

  He had noted the power of her memory. She forgot nothing—not a single telephone number or date. She would have remembered what he had told her in Paris about Mike’s billions and how they continued multiplying in years when others lost money; his beginnings as an Egyptian Jew whose family had fled Nasser; as well as the work of the foundation at the head of which he had placed Schmidt. As though to prove him right, she reminded him that in Paris, when he regaled her with stories of Mike’s antics, his tone had been acerbic. Had that changed? Yes, he replied. I’ve changed and he has changed. He has been an extraordinarily loyal, close friend. On top of that, I owe him a huge debt of gratitude. Without the foundation job I wouldn’t have made that trip in ninety-five to inspect the foundation’s offices and I wouldn’t have seen you!

  Mike has been twice married and divorced, he continued, but in all the years I’ve known him he hasn’t had an official girlfriend. There is a lady in his life now, but it’s a closely guarded secret. She’s Caroline Canning, a biographer married to a novelist. She and her husband are always there, at all his parties, and even at small, intimate dinners. You’ll surely see them tonight.

  Is the novelist husband Joe Canning? Alice asked hesitantly. He’s one of our authors.

  That’s the one, replied Schmidt. I hadn’t realized he was published in France. Let’s see … who else will be there? Gil and Elaine.

  And we are to have dinner at their house tomorrow.

  Glancing at her sideways, he saw that she was biting her lip.

  After a silence that seemed to him very long, she spoke again. Schmidtie, she said, I’m so worried about all this. We will be opening a wound that’s barely healed.

  No, we won’t, he replied. Please don’t worry. The Blackmans want my good. They want my happiness. They will make you feel welcome. You’ll see.

  He took her hand, kissed it, replaced it on his knee.

  He hadn’t told her, and wasn’t sure that he would ever tell her, that Gil, from whom he had almost no secrets, had pleaded with him not to be undone by the loathsome Popov, the bizarre incident in Water Mill, and the fiasco in London—to hang on to Alice for dear life. She was, Gil had said, his one chance for happiness. Had he listened to him, the wound would have healed long, long ago. But as it was she might take offense, perhaps unconsciously, at Gil’s intrusion into her privacy. He had to be careful not to allow that to happen.

  Slowing down, he turned onto Cobb Road. The rest of the crowd, he added, is hard to predict. Mike claims this will be a small dinner. Two tables of twelve. But Mike is always on the lookout for new best friends. That’s how he picked me up. One might encounter anyone. He has a weird sense of humor and not much regard for what others think, and people can’t resist his billions. It’s like catnip. You’ll see for yourself. And now we’re really there.

  He turned left on Flying Point Road, then right into a driveway, and lowered the window on his side. A guard appeared from the darkness and called out, Good evening, Mr. Schmidt, and Happy New Year to you and the lady. Please drive up to the front door.

  Same to you, Carter, Schmidt shouted back. Carter was a good man. He’d park the car so its nose pointed in the right direction for departure and relieve Schmidt of the need to back out of the long driveway, a sport Schmidt had once thought he excelled at. Now he did his best to avoid it, fearing not so much the pain he felt turning his head the necessary number of degrees as the breakdown it caused in hand-eye coordination.

  A sense of great calm had descended on Schmidt. Alice was seated on Mike’s right, and Gil was on her other side. That Mike had made her the guest of honor was an elegant gesture. He knew less than Gil of his and Alice’s history but had been from the start in favor of the nice lady in Paris. Even more important for Schmidt, however, was that Alice and Gil were talking and laughing with great animation. Schmidt thought that he too had been treated well in the placement. He was between Elaine and Caroline, whom he had come to consider, like Mike, his true friend, at a safe distance from all three of the deeply tanned women with big white teeth and lacquered blond hairdos. He didn’t know them any more than the two massive men or the third one, pale as paper and emaciated. On the contrary, those three couples—clearly they were couples even if he didn’t know which woman came with which man—seemed very well acquainted. Something about them, however—the long pastel dresses? the gaily colored bow ties and cummerbunds? the Florida tans?—was eerily familiar, like the refrain of a song one remembers after the rest of the words have been forgotten. Eureka! The common denominator was the Meadow Club. Did that bastion of what the Hamptons had once been now open its gates to the occasional superrich Jew? Tsk tsk! If that was the case, Mike was giving his new toy a whirl by inviting a clutch of his fellow members. Come to think of it, while drinks were being served Schmidt had observed more Aryans than representatives of the Chosen. He could be sure only of the master of the house, Gil and Elaine, Joe Canning, if indeed Jo
e was present, Bruce Holbein and his chatterbox wife, and fifty percent of Alice as counterweights to the club goyim! Schmidt was convinced that Caroline was a shiksa. That and nothing else explained why she put up with Joe. She was expiating the sins of her Jew-baiting mother and father, brothers and sisters. But where was Joe? Schmidt hadn’t spotted him in the living room while he was drinking his two martinis and making sure Alice was not stranded, but then he hadn’t exactly been looking for him. For all he knew, Joe, true to his furtive ways, had been lurking behind a ficus plant. By now, however, he should have come out of hiding. Was anyone else missing? The chair on the other side of Caroline was vacant. He turned toward her with a questioning look.

  That’s Joe place, she told him, as though to forestall a question. He gets more and more uneasy dealing with groups he doesn’t know, so I asked Mike to let him have his vodka in solitude in a spare room. Mike is such a good sport! He installed Joe in the study off the front hall and brought him a carafe of vodka and a bowl of caviar with his own hands!

  Mike has every reason to bring Joe caviar, said Schmidt’s inner voice.

  I could tell Joe was pleased, Caroline continued. He’ll be along in a moment. Yes, seating him next to me at dinner is another of Mike’s kind indulgences. In Joe’s family, and among his parents’ friends, husbands and wives always sat together. He finds that to do the same makes him more comfortable.

  I see, said Schmidt.

  Come on, Schmidtie, don’t you think it’s sweet? In society, things are done this way or that way. Before you know it you have a rule no one dares to question; you just go along. Joe doesn’t think he needs to conform. Anyway, we all accumulate peculiarities as we grow older. Perhaps even you, Schmidtie!

  Surely, he answered.

  But I bet you don’t always know what they are. The thing about Joe is that he knows. He really knows! Probably it’s what makes him such a good novelist. By the way, the one he’s working on is terrific.

  What good news! We haven’t had a new Canning for at least two years.

  Three, she corrected him. He says that he now enjoys writing more slowly. Also eating ice cream slowly. Before, he always tried to eat it while it was cold, before it melted. It turns out that he likes it liquid. Actually he’s very busy just now. Gil and he are working on a film treatment of his first novel, the one that mirrors his grandmother’s life. It cuts pretty close to the bone, so he is very touchy about it. I’m keeping my fingers crossed.

  Schmidt had heard about the project from Gil and would have liked to ask her whether there was anything Joe wasn’t touchy about. But before he could speak, she tapped his hand and said, Ah, here at last.

  Canning was heading toward the table. One might have said he was sauntering over if he hadn’t been slightly dragging his left foot, possibly owing to a small stroke or a back problem or, as seemed more probable to Schmidt, the acting out of his reluctance to draw nearer. At last, he deposited a kiss on the top of Caroline’s head and sat down looking straight through Schmidt and disregarding the hand that Schmidt had held out. This was par for the course. What a preposterous man: a lawyer doing something or other in the management of an insurance company who remakes himself into a writer, divorces a wife as unpleasant as he, and promptly marries this splendid lady, who is to boot a noted and respected biographer! He pulls off that coup even before publishing his first novel, which makes him famous, and remains as appalling ever since. Why does he have to go through some variant of this insulting routine each time we meet? He retracted his hand.

  Joe, said Caroline, Schmidtie’s here, he’s been trying to greet you. And on the other side of him is Elaine.

  Yes, yes, Canning answered peevishly, even in my diminished state—non sum qualis eram—he! he! I can still recognize my old acquaintance from college and law school, and also the wife of my occasional collaborator, himself a college acquaintance. I see them here often enough. Shall we say each time I set foot here? What would that be, twice a day? Or does Gil now count as a friend? I can’t tell.

  This could have been taken as a cue for Elaine to assure both Cannings of Gil’s and her devotion, or for Schmidt to throw his glass of red wine at the novelist, if that could be managed without splashing Caroline. But Elaine said nothing, and Schmidt didn’t take the bait, only saying to himself, Goddamn Canning, he has gotten under Elaine’s skin, a feat hitherto thought impossible. Out of compassion for the polite and clever Caroline, he spoke to Canning: I’m very glad to see you, Joe. I’ve just returned from Europe. It’s been quite a while since we last met.

  It really doesn’t matter. One doesn’t pay attention to such trivia.

  His voice trailed off, but he went on staring at Schmidt. Could Canning be waiting for an answer to some question he thought he had put? Schmidt had had more than enough of him, and since inexplicably neither Elaine nor Caroline seemed ready to redirect the conversation, he decided to do it, even though Caroline was left with only her husband to talk to. But that was her business. Mike and she had good reasons for indulging Canning’s whims, including where he was placed at table, and for suffering the minor consequences, but Schmidt emphatically did not. You could count on Canning to make you disregard duties of friendship.

  Taking advantage, therefore, of a pause in her conversation with the emaciated Meadow Club stalwart on her left, he said, Dear Elaine, I’m so glad and so grateful that you’ve asked Alice and me to dinner tomorrow. She was a bit nervous, but I think I’ve reassured her, and being able to talk to Gil tonight should make her see it will be all right. I want nothing more than for you and Gil to get to know her well—and to like her.

  Of course, it will be all right, my darling Schmidtie. Elaine took his hand and squeezed it.

  It was necessary to speak to her about Alice, and now it was done.

  Thank you, Schmidt said, however many times I say that to you tonight it won’t be enough. Let me ask you about the girls. We may not get much of a chance to talk about them tomorrow. How are they?

  The girls were three in number: Lily, Elaine’s daughter from a brief first marriage, and the two she’d had with Gil. Girls! That was what they used to call them twenty years earlier, and even then they were already young women. Schmidt was fond of them, his interest wasn’t feigned, and getting Elaine started on that subject had an inestimable advantage: so long as he interjected the occasional “really” or “how extraordinary” or “I had no idea,” she would do the rest. She would talk until something or someone obliged her to stop. The trick was to avoid saying anything that would make her feel she needed to reciprocate by speaking about his daughter, Charlotte. He managed it well: Elaine chatted away while he listened for the peals of Alice’s laughter. It was a couple of minutes short of midnight when Gil rose to toast the host, as well as the president elect, and the New Year, which was bound to be happier than the one just ending. Horns were tooted by the staff, none having been provided for the guests. Then Mr. Mansour took over. He began to orate, his voice rising as he expounded his theory, which in other versions he had revealed to Schmidt more than once, to the effect that Obama’s presidency, however much he personally wished it to succeed, was doomed.

  The question is, he insisted, the question is can he make American politicians do his will. The last Democrat able to accomplish that was LBJ. He’d grab them by the balls—begging your pardon, Alice—and they said, Yes, Mr. President, before he’d even begun to squeeze. Pas de problème! But Obama is black! Black in the most racist country in the world.

  Now wait, Gil interrupted, this racist country just elected him president! By a landslide!

  The question is, the great financier continued, whether it knew what it was doing. I tell you that too many of those who voted for him didn’t have a clear idea. Now they’re saying the White House is going to be the Black House, and they didn’t sign up for that. Not for having the whole picture changed! All right, Barack, Michelle—I say chapeau, she’s some woman—and the cute little girls, perhaps we could give
them a pass, too. But the mother-in-law, and who else, the homeless half sister, the half brothers, the whole smaila! How do you say it here: the whole mishpucha? Excuse me, Plumber Joe won’t stand for it. Obama has to be such a good guy that his hands and feet are tied. You watched him debate McCain? I’ll grant you that McCain is a schmuck, totally nuts, too much time in the Hanoi Hilton, too much time in the sun, whatever. You saw him smirk whenever Obama talked? Not once, not twice, but every time. LBJ would have said, Wipe that smirk off your face or I’ll tear your head off. Barack can’t do that. You can’t have a black man telling off the Man. Please, there is no place here for angry black men! Obama has to be polite and make nice, and you know what they say about nice guys—they finish last.

  In the free-for-all that followed, Gil shouted at Mike, Mike and the Meadow Club crowd shouted at Gil, while Alice laughed and laughed, and Schmidt wondered about the sound of Michelle’s laughter.