Schmidt Steps Back

by Louis Begley

  What do you think of Mike’s predictions, Schmidt asked Caroline.

  Well, you and I have heard them before. I’m afraid he may be right about American racism. But I’m even more worried about something else: does Obama know how to manage. He and his people ran a brilliant campaign. Will they show the same talent for governing? Honestly, I’m hopeful but scared.

  Of course you’re scared, said Schmidt. We’re standing at the edge of an abyss.

  A line of guests had formed waiting to thank Mr. Mansour. Caroline had moved on, and Schmidt found himself standing next to Elaine. She had something to tell him that would explain Joe’s being even more unbearable than usual.

  It’s awful, she said. Gil is so thrilled about the adaptation of Joe’s first book, but he is also worried sick. Just this month, while you were away, Caroline took Joe to see a neurologist in the city—the best, he was Mrs. Astor’s doctor. Anyway this man thinks that Joe is in the early stage of Alzheimer’s.

  He’s always been odd as well as unpleasant, Schmidt answered. Was there something new, something out of character, that gave her the idea?

  He began to have trouble writing checks. Apparently he’d always been really meticulous about his checkbook. He would never let his secretary or even Caroline get near it much less write the checks. He has to do it himself, go over the statements, reconcile deposits and payments. Then suddenly he couldn’t. He’d get stuck. Unable to do the arithmetic. He noticed it himself. Not long after, he took his car to the garage they use in Springs—he’s been there a thousand times—and he got lost. Absolutely lost. Going around and around in circles. Finally, he stopped at an intersection and called Caroline. He’s always been forgetful about day-to-day things, but Caroline says it’s never been like this, I’m terribly worried about Gil’s project with Joe. Will he be able to keep the strands of the script in his head? It’s driving Gil nuts.

  That’s really tough.

  Mike and Caroline’s prospects as a couple were suddenly looking a lot brighter, a fact that would not have escaped the great financier’s attention. But he had better be careful not to show any sign of satisfaction. Caroline was a good woman; she would be loyal to Joe until the end. She’d nurse him as long as she could and would take very hard any hint that Mike was growing impatient.

  Say good night to Mike for Gil and me, said Elaine, and give our best wishes. Gil’s just coming out of the toilet. I’ll take him home. He’s dead tired and won’t want to linger. We’ll see you tomorrow evening, loved ones. At eight.

  Schmidt squeezed Alice’s hand. We’re next, he whispered, thank you thank you and we’ll be on our way!

  At last the great man turned toward them. He kissed Alice’s hand in his best exiled-Egyptian style, and then, patting Schmidt on the shoulder and squeezing his upper arm, offered his félicitations. He’s one of the best, he assured Alice. My closest friend, pas de problème. So long as he takes my advice he will do just fine. Right now my advice is to stick to you.

  They had almost reached the door when Caroline, followed by Joe two paces behind her, caught up with them.

  Happy New Year and good night, Schmidtie, she called out. We must see you again soon. Lunch here? I think Mike will organize something. Until then, but aren’t you going to introduce us to your Parisian friend? She turned to Alice. I’m Caroline Canning.

  Alice held out her hand, and Schmidt said, I’m sorry, somehow I’m more discombobulated than usual. This is Alice Verplanck. She’s an editor at Éditions du Midi, which she has just told me is Joe’s French publisher.

  Yes, they’ve published all my books, Joe piped up. Alice Verplanck, Alice Verplanck, that’s right, my editor Serge Popov’s girlfriend. And turning to Caroline, he asked: What is she doing here with retired lawyer Schmidt?

  She’s visiting me, Joe, Schmidt replied. For your information, Serge is dead, died earlier this year.

  They made their way to the car in silence, but as soon as they were out of the driveway, he heard Alice stifle a sob. What an awful man! How could he!

  It’s all right, Schmidt told her, it’s really all right. Canning is a dreadful man. But the performance this evening may have something to do with his being sick. Elaine has just told me he has Alzheimer’s. Sick or well, I can’t stand him.

  He was on the verge of saying, Any more than I could ever stand your Popov, when she said: You know, Serge didn’t like him either. He only liked his books.

  Good for Popov, Schmidt thought, and good for Alice. The wound is healing, perhaps we’re already there.

  It was nearly one by the time they got home. Come, sweet Alice, he said to her, it’s all right. We’ve even survived Canning. Let’s have a drink.

  Then he remembered. Shouldn’t you call your son? he asked.

  At this hour? She seemed surprised.

  In Melbourne it’s the afternoon.

  Thank you! That’s true. There was no way he could call me, she said with a giggle. He doesn’t know I’m staying with a single gentleman. Thank you for this! He’s surely at the beach, but I’ll leave a message.

  In fact, Tommy answered. Schmidt went into the kitchen, got a bottle of champagne out of the fridge, put it on a tray with two glasses, and waited in the kitchen until she had finished. Telling her to call had been a first step. From now on, if she’d only let him, he would look after her every hour and every day. They toasted the New Year and then petted, there was no other word for it, in the dark on the library sofa while a fire crackled in the fireplace and the Connecticut station brought them Glenn Gould playing the Goldberg Variations. At some point—he was past paying attention to the glow of the digital clock in the Bose—she reminded him that it was very late and they were both tired. It was time to go to bed.

  My bed, he whispered.

  Yes, but only to cuddle.

  And then she added: You’re giving good satisfaction. I think I’ll keep you. Won’t take you back to the store for a refund or exchange. But let’s think some more about where we have been as well as where we are going. Is that a deal?

  Unexpected bliss followed by a couple of hours of dreamless sleep. Wide awake and refreshed, Schmidt quietly put on his pajamas and bathrobe and went down to the kitchen. He drained the last of the champagne, put a couple of logs on the embers, and stretched out on the library sofa. She had asked him to think again about their history. Yes, he would, although he had pored over it countless times, and more intently than ever in recent months, since news reached him of the grotesque accident, a fall from one of those bicycles that any fool can rent just about everywhere in Paris, that had claimed his life. It was Gil who’d told him that Serge Popov was dead, having read the announcement in Harvard Magazine. Thus death had once more intruded to link Alice’s life to his. First it had reaped Tim Verplanck and then, with a bizarre flourish, Popov. And as he considered Alice’s history and his own, he would recall across the desert of years other stories that had enlaced them.

  III

  W & K’S NOTICE back in February 1995 to all partners, active and retired, announcing Tim Verplanck’s death had rocked Schmidt. Tim couldn’t be more than fifty-four, he thought, so young and blessed with everything that should make a man happy! Including—so it had always seemed—excellent health. There’s the rub, in “seemed.” Schmidt knew that there are illnesses before which modern medicine is still helpless. They sneak up and kill. The memo didn’t give the cause of death or the usual information about where contributions in lieu of flowers could be sent. And it said nothing about a burial or plans for a memorial service. At that time, the death of a W & K partner still rated an obituary in the Times, often with a photo. It wasn’t yet necessary to be a former quarterback suffering from dementia or a hundred-and-two-year-old jazz musician. In fact, all it took was a telephone call from a member of the family or the presiding partner of the firm, and perhaps an offer to provide a narrative supplementing what was available in Who’s Who. But nothing appeared in the paper, not even one of those notices that
W & K would normally compose and pay for whether or not there was an obituary. Was it possible that the task had fallen between two stools because Tim had been living in Paris for so many years, and the widow was there as well, and that brute Jack DeForrest, the presiding partner, had his nose put out of joint over Tim’s strange early retirement?

  It seemed to Schmidt that he had last seen Tim at the Union Club during the reception that followed the funeral service for Dexter Wood at St. James, the church where that titan of the law had been a vestryman. He had spotted Tim’s tall and slim silhouette right away, the mop of auburn hair, the suntanned face, and the expression of perpetual mockery standing out amid the phalanx of self-important men in navy-blue suits, white shirts, and black neckties, the uniform of W & K male partners for such occasions. They had chatted briefly. No, Alice hadn’t made it to New York, her mother was ailing. But he and Alice were doing well. Exceedingly well, was what he said in fact. Why don’t Schmidtie and Mary come to Paris? We’ll have a nice dinner à quatre. Having put the question, Tim laughed, Ha! Ha! Ha! the startlingly ebullient coda to most of his pronouncements. Really happy to see you, ha! ha! ha! It took all night to get that memo ready, but here it is, ha! ha! ha! Joe Jones called to say he’s sending a new transaction our way, ha! ha! ha! No, Alice and I can’t make it to your dinner, we’re dining with the president of Yale ha! ha! ha! Before they had progressed past “come to Paris … ha! ha! ha!” Lew Brenner, the New York senior partner with whom Tim had been working most closely in recent years, sidled over, and he began exchanging with Tim gossip about clients and deals that meant nothing to Schmidt. How soon after that did Tim retire? A year? Perhaps a year and a half? It would have been just before Mary’s first operation. Schmidt had turned sixty and had hastily arranged to retire from the firm. He wanted to be with her during the time that she had left, time that they soon realized would be short.

  But nothing, absolutely nothing, had foreshadowed Tim’s decision. He was a long way from sixty, the earliest age at which the firm’s plan permitted partners to retire. He was popular and hardworking. Nobody had wanted him to leave. The only explanation Jack DeForrest gave at firm lunch when he described the terms of Tim’s payout was that young Verplanck wanted to write a book, whereupon one of the newly made partners raised his hand and asked why any payout was appropriate for a partner in good health who chooses to retire at fifty. DeForrest browbeat him into silence. Having made the deal, he wasn’t about to have to justify it to a whippersnapper. Meanwhile a good half of the table tittered about how Verplanck had always had too much money for his own good. Why in the world would he want to work? Instant selective amnesia: by the time dessert was served the memory of the record-breaking billable hours that Tim had regularly racked up as an associate, and the volume of business he had handled as a partner, had been forgotten completely. The wolf pack could remember only his money and chic. Schmidt got back to his office in a foul mood and was about to dial DeForrest’s number and ask that potentate for the real story when he realized he couldn’t do it. The grudge he bore his erstwhile best friend at the firm was too deep; he wouldn’t give DeForrest the satisfaction of knowing that Schmidt’s cherished protégé had chosen to keep him in the dark. He put down the receiver. For the same reason, because it stung him to have had no news, no indication that there was a health problem, four years later he didn’t ask DeForrest what Tim had died of, and for no reason at all, except that, having just become the head of Mike Mansour’s Life Centers, he was swamped with work, it didn’t occur to him to put the question to Lew Brenner. Instead, he wrote to Alice Verplanck, pouring out all his feelings of sadness and friendship. He didn’t doubt she knew, he wrote, that Tim had been his favorite associate, the young lawyer he had admired more than any he had worked with during his long career. As he happened to be going on business to Eastern and Central Europe, and would pass through Paris on his way home, would she allow him to call on her? Her answer, sent by some sort of European express mail, caught him just before his departure. It contained her telephone number, different from the one listed in the office directory, and assurances that she would be happy to see him.

  It had in fact been old Dexter Wood himself, the firm’s autocrat since the death of the firm’s other founder, who recruited Tim. As he reminded the assembled partners at more than one firm lunch, the young man was a paragon, and it had been a coup to bring him in with the discreet help of his old friend Justice John Harlan, with whom he had played tennis and practiced law in the years gone by and for whom Tim was clerking. Quite a vote of confidence in the firm, he would intone, from the justice and from Verplanck. No disagreement was expressed. Manifestly, Tim had it all, every quality required to make him, as the younger partners put it, the complete package. Handsome, imperially slim, arrayed in discreet made-to-order suits and shirts that did not shout their Savile Row and Jermyn Street provenance, he trailed an aura of old New York money. A star as an undergraduate at Yale, he had gone on to shine just as bright at Harvard Law School, and, quite naturally, the best clerkships had followed, first on the Second Circuit in New York and then with the Supreme Court justice thought to represent the best of what the Eastern Seaboard legal establishment had to offer.

  Schmidt was then a brand-new partner. The glad tidings that he had been taken into the firm had been given to him by Dexter Wood the day before Thanksgiving in 1967, a little less than a year before Tim’s arrival. The old man had walked into his room, closed the door behind him, and, as Schmidt scrambled to get up, motioned him to remain seated and continue what he was doing, which was stuffing his briefcase with the documents he planned to work on in Bridgehampton during the long holiday weekend. A memorandum he had drafted and planned to submit to Mr. Wood on Monday was among the papers he had already packed. Schmidt was worried about it. He had never before worked under the old man’s direct supervision or given advice on complex and, to him, unfamiliar antitrust issues, in this case the legality of the railroad tariff arrangements that Mr. Wood’s favorite client, the CEO and major shareholder of which happened to be Wood’s own brother-in-law, had worked out for the shipment of its product to buyers and warehouses scattered across the country. Schmidt had already delivered several preliminary memoranda on various aspects of the problem and had been interrogated by the old man in his office, the questions showing a careful scrutiny of Schmidt’s work. No criticism of the work had been offered, but no praise either. Did that mean that the old man was satisfied? The fact that he hadn’t required Schmidt to rewrite any of the memoranda and hadn’t brought in another associate with antitrust experience to work alongside him suggested as much. But it was also possible that Mr. Wood would lower the boom only after seeing that final long memo reposing at the bottom of Schmidt’s briefcase. (A hypothesis between the two was that his research and conclusions had been found acceptable as far as they went, but, at the same time, mediocre and unimaginative. He hadn’t pushed his thinking far enough. He could do no better than journeyman work.)

  Worries and self-doubt had plagued Schmidt since he first went to work for W & K. The ability of the partners—if one excluded three or four handling trusts and estates who may have been all right when they started but by common consent had let themselves go—and of most associates too was, like the standards set for the work, so high that only a deluded dolt would have been free of Schmidt’s anxieties. This was his seventh year when, according to custom, he and other associates who had been hired with him would be either taken into the partnership or expected to leave. To be sure, not immediately or next month, a decent period of grace being allowed, but the policy of up or out was applied rigorously, so that with every week the situation of a passed-over associate who had not moved on went from uncomfortable to excruciating. Until at last he left. Left, but to do what? What became of him? Presumably he had found a job at another law firm unless, if he had remained in good graces, W & K had steered him to a position with a client. The tacit assumption was that either way it had to be a st
ep down from W & K. The prospect of being consigned to such a purgatory, and the attendant humiliation, terrified Schmidt. How would he explain it to Mary or, even more difficult, to Aunt Martha, who seemed to hold an irrationally high opinion of her favorite niece’s husband? Fortunately, he did not see his father often. But sooner or later, he would have to tell him too, and it would be wise to do so before W & K announced its new partners and he saw that his son was not among the elect. It was easy to imagine the pitying look: So this is my oh-so-fancy son who thought he was too good to come to work at my admiralty firm, the firm he could have inherited! His father wouldn’t allow himself to gloat, but he wouldn’t need to in order to make Schmidt squirm. Who knows? Perhaps he’d be forced to go back to his father with his tail between his legs and ask whether there might be a place for him at the firm he had as much as scorned. Schmidt was good at financings, and one-half of the work of an admiralty firm like his father’s was ship mortgages and charters. The other business—for instance, how to arrest in Singapore or Panama City the SS Boolah Boolah or some other hapless vessel whose owners owed money to a client, and to have her sold at auction—he could learn. The conversation with Mary wouldn’t be easy either, not because of anything she would say or do, but because regardless of her reaction he would have become the unsuccessful husband of a successful wife. It was not a role he had imagined. When they got married four years ago, she was an editorial assistant, at a great publishing house, to be sure, but still only a glorified secretary. But neither her pregnancy nor the arrival of Charlotte had slowed her progress. It took her only two years to become a full-fledged editor, and it seemed to Schmidt that everyone in the book business made a point of telling him that she was a powerhouse. He didn’t doubt it; besides she was carried forward by the cresting tide of women’s lib.

  And Schmidt’s own opinion of his own merit? When he allowed himself to think objectively about the partners’ perception of his work, he was obliged to admit that it must be favorable. But to go from there to the conclusion that he stood higher than the five other associates, three from Harvard and two from Yale, who joined W & K the same year as he, was hubris pure and simple. At most, he could bring himself to allow that one of them, his classmate at law school, wasn’t the sharpest tool in the firm’s shed, and that one of the two Yalies was a slimy sneak. But could one be sure that the partners were aware of the faults of character that had earned him the contempt of his classmates? Assuming they did, though, that still left Schmidt and three others in the running, and one couldn’t tell for how many openings they were competing. At firm dinners, Mr. Wood invariably babbled about how they always took in associates who had demonstrated that they deserved to be partners, those who were “breaking down the door.” But no one took that seriously. You had to be needed. Was Schmidt needed? Nothing was less certain. He might well be better at financings than any other associate of his seniority, but there were excellent prospects coming up through the ranks, and perhaps the firm would wait for one of them to be ready. To top it all, now that he had gotten stuck with old man Wood’s catastrophic antitrust assignment, all bets were off.