Schmidt Steps Back

by Louis Begley

  He did as he was told, both with regard to peeing and to sitting down. He was alone in the waiting room. On the coffee table before him were old issues of New York, U.S. News & World Report, Men’s Health, and Golf Digest. He plunged into a muckraking exposé of plastic surgeons’ obscene fees in New York. One o’clock. One-fifteen. He was summoned to the reception desk. A handsome woman of a certain age in white introduced herself as Mrs. Riley.

  Mrs. Riker won’t have visitors today, she said. I’m sorry you have come all this way from …

  Long Island, Schmidt volunteered.

  Yes, Long Island. As I said, we’re sorry.

  Schmidt shook his head. How can this be? he asked. Dr. Townsend set this up.

  I understand, but the patient isn’t up to receiving visitors.

  And does she know I’m here? What did she say when you or one of your colleagues told her?

  Mrs. Riley shook her head. We know this is very difficult. You’re her father, aren’t you?

  Schmidt nodded.

  Mr. Schmidt, you look like a nice man. I’m going to tell you something I’m not supposed to. When your daughter heard you were here she got into the clothes closet in her room and has refused to get out. Don’t take it too hard. I’ve got a difficult daughter too. These are bad, bad kids. It isn’t always our fault.

  He thanked her—there didn’t seem anything else he could do. When he got home he called Dr. Townsend and told him that Charlotte refused to see him, leaving out the part about the closet. He didn’t want to get the nurse in trouble. It was a test for Charlotte, the doctor told him, and a test for you. You seem to have fared better.

  He made the trip to Sunset Hill again in early October. When, standing in the door of the interview parlor to which he had been ushered, he saw her, sprawled in a chintz-covered armchair, his first absurd impression, dissipated immediately, was that he had been brought to the wrong room, that the woman with the expressionless face that seemed to have been flattened, like the pale faces of certain chimpanzees, was someone else’s problem. But no, this was Charlotte, looking through him with red-rimmed mocking eyes. Her legs stretched out before her were unshaved. She had on a housedress of the sort his mother had worn almost constantly during her long last illness, a garment so vile that he thought if it belonged on anyone it would have to be one of the women who clean toilets in office buildings, and brown leather sandals that displayed dirty feet and toenails that surely hadn’t been clipped since the accident. The housedress made it difficult to judge whether she only seemed pudgy or had in fact put on weight. She didn’t rise when he entered the room or respond to his greeting of Hello, Charlotte dear, I am so very happy to be able to see you! He realized that he didn’t dare to bend down and kiss her.

  Repressing an incipient shrug, he sat down in the other armchair, facing her across a low table, and said, I’ve brought some books I thought you might like, a radio and CD player, and some CDs. I’ve been told you’re allowed to have music in your room.

  She nodded, and a moment later said, You can take the books back. I’m not reading anything. Thanks for the CDs. I suppose they’re all Mozart.

  She hefted the tote, not condescending to look inside.

  No, said Schmidt, only two. It’s an eclectic mix. You’ve even got Michael Jackson and the Grateful Dead. Something to please every taste.

  Oh yeah? It’s that girl. The one you’ve got a child with. You sent her shopping for me.

  I think you mean Carrie, replied Schmidt.

  Charlotte rolled her eyes and said, Whatever.

  As a matter of fact, she had nothing to do with those CDs. A kid at the foundation where I work suggested some of them. The classical jazz and ragtime I picked myself, including some Jelly Roll Morton that I think you’ll like. And by the way, Jason is the father of Carrie’s child. Life is hard enough without adding imaginary problems.

  Sure.

  The people working here—at the reception, and the nurse who brought me here—all seem very pleasant, and I saw that there is a nice big garden.

  I don’t go in it. I don’t like to see the other freaks. It’s bad enough to see myself.

  I’m so very sorry.

  He searched for something else to say and failed. It was all too stupid.

  Look, Dad, she said after a while, I’m sick. I’m not as sick as I was, but I’m still plenty sick. You’ve seen Alan Townsend, so you know. It’s no use kidding yourself or me. I’ve got big worries. Will I get out of here? When will I get out? Will Jon want me back? What will that bitch Renata tell him to do? Will I be able to work? What’s going to become of me?

  She began to cry and pushed him away angrily when he came over to pat her head and tried to hold her.

  No, I don’t want your handkerchief; no, I don’t want you kissing me. I’ve got big problems and you can’t help me. There is too much bad stuff between us. So please go away. I let you come so you could see for yourself. And now go away.

  All right, he said. I don’t want to tire you out. Please let me know if you decide you’d like to see me. Or if I can help. In case there is anything I can do.

  XIX

  THE LORD BLESSED the end of Job’s life better than the beginning. He gave him thousands of sheep, camels, oxen and she-asses, seven sons, and also three daughters as fair as any in the land. Job lived to see his sons’ sons and his sons’ sons’ sons—no fewer than four generations. Hideous sadism, thought Schmidt, followed by a revoltingly crude payoff. The Lord could keep his cattle. No accretion of worldly goods would restore Charlotte’s womb. There would be no generations of sons or daughters, no little Myron, Albert, Renata, or Mary (the Virgin’s name in any event was surely anathema to Charlotte and her husband). Instead, she was afflicted by acedia, angst, and confusion, refusing life’s beauty and joys! Cowering in a closet! Turned into a mean, acid-tongued frump! His insides twisted like a rope at the thought of the calamity. Yes, he would hope for her cure or, failing that, a long remission. Dr. Townsend had told him that both results were possible. That was also the view of an author whose work he had consulted on Dr. Townsend’s recommendation. He would also hope that Jon Riker would treat her well, that her fears were ungrounded. Yes, treat her well until the day she left him, an outcome Schmidt was taking a vow not to wish for. He’d made too many wishes over the years: they had boomeranged to hit him in the teeth. If Charlotte and Jon did remain together, they might want to adopt. But even that might prove impossible. Charlotte had been branded by Sunset Hill.

  As for him, his earlier losses—Mary’s devastating illness and death; his consequent decision to retire early and give up his beloved profession; Carrie’s leaving him, heartbreaking though necessary and natural; the abject attempt, ending in humiliation, to join his existence to that of a woman he had fallen in love with and had mistakenly believed worthy—those were pinpricks compared with the latest catastrophe. What was left for him to do? He must love her and, no matter how frequent and how harsh her rejections, stand ready to help. Beyond that, scaled-down expectations and modest goals: do good work for the foundation, protect young Albert, avoid doing harm, and escape whipping.

  On a Saturday, when the heavy nor’easter had blown itself out, and the presence at the marina of both Jason and Bryan was no longer required, Schmidt invited Carrie, Jason, and little Albert to lunch. It was time, he thought, to make official, by repeating it in Jason’s hearing, the promise he had made to Carrie. The baby in his portable playpen was so placed that he had a good view of him. That big nose that had alarmed and moved him when Carrie brought him home from the hospital no longer seemed so aggressively large. Since it couldn’t have shrunk, little Albert’s face must have filled out enough to deprive that organ of its telltale pretensions. He was going to be a fine boy, most likely with his mother’s sallow complexion and with her dark eyes. The Puerto Rican team was ahead, and he was rooting for it.

  Over coffee, he told Jason about Charlotte’s accident and how she would never be able to have
children. Most of what he had to say Carrie had already heard. Then, smiling at the baby, pleased to see how contentedly he kicked and gurgled, he made his speech.

  Perhaps one day, after Charlotte has gotten completely well, she and Jon will want to adopt, he told them. It’s possible, but I’m not sure that it’s likely. If they do adopt one child, they may want to adopt another one, or perhaps more, so as to have a larger family. I mention these possibilities only because I want you to know that I’ve thought about them and have taken them fully into account. Whatever Charlotte and Jon do in this respect will have no effect on what I’d like to do for little Albert here. Or other children who for one reason or another come into my life and become dear to me. If you’ll permit it, if you agree, I will pay for the education of Albert and any brothers and sisters of his—tuition, tutoring, living expenses away from home, and so forth—from preschool through graduate work. Summer camps are included. The works. Will that be all right with you? Obviously, if the marina makes you so rich that you want to bear those expenses yourselves, you won’t be obliged to accept my money. I’ll set it aside instead as a nest egg for the kids.

  Carrie let out a whoop and ran around the table to hug him. What kind of dopey question was that? Hey, Albert, send Schmidtie a kiss! You just got yourself a pretty good deal. Schmidtie, this is so generous I can’t believe it.

  Jason too had stood up and with great seriousness shook Schmidt’s hand.

  Sit down, sit down, Schmidt said, and raised his hand as a signal to cease further effusions.

  Well, that’s good, he said. But I want you to understand that my question wasn’t all that dopey. What I’m going to do will lead me from time to time—for instance, when you’re choosing a school or a camp or when decisions have to be made about going to a boarding school or staying at home or about college—to stick my big nose into your affairs.

  He couldn’t help it. He winked at Albert.

  If that’s really all right with you, he continued, you’ve made me very happy. I’m a lonely old man. I need to think I can make myself useful.

  That was as brave and as sincere a speech as Schmidt was capable of making. But a little green-hatted devil whose proboscis resembled Schmidt’s, perching on his left shoulder, took a cynical view. Congratulations, chum! he whispered in Schmidt’s ear. Including the siblings in your largesse was one smart move. You hadn’t told me that part. It will sure spare young Albert some grief. But watch your step anyway. Don’t forget: we never forgive our benefactors, and no good deed goes unpunished. Leave lots of air between that little family and you. Don’t crowd them.

  Shopping for sufficiently fine and clever wooden toys for young Albert took up a good deal of Schmidt’s free time when he traveled and obliged him to carry an empty suitcase, which was filled gradually as he visited one capital after another. Central and Eastern Europeans were still carving, and putting carts and wagons together without nails or glue. The search continued when he was at home in Bridgehampton or New York. He had become an avid reader of FAO Schwarz catalogs, which disappointed him more and more, and as time he spent staring at the screen of his computer increased, he became an habitué of online outlets, as well as eBay, where he hunted for antique toys in mint condition. The kid, as he referred to little Albert in his thoughts, seemed to like him, the way, Schmidt supposed, he would have liked Mr. and Mrs. Gorchuck, Carrie’s elusive parents resident in Canarsie—Schmidt still had not encountered them, and for all he knew they had not yet set foot in Carrie and Jason’s house in East Hampton, in which case perhaps Carrie took Albert to visit them at their home. Schmidt hadn’t undertaken to inquire, remembering from the time when he and Carrie lived together that Carrie strongly preferred to keep distinct parts of her life in separate compartments. Or the way Albert would have liked Jason’s parents, had they lived somewhere closer to Long Island than Nova Scotia. It all went to show, he thought, how good it is to have money: if your children want to see you, you can hop into your car or on a train or plane and go to where they are. Or vice versa. You send the tickets or a check. And how shitty it is to have none or too little. No, being treated like a sort of grandfather, or anyway allowing himself to believe that was how he was treated, suited Schmidt just fine. Wasn’t that all he had hoped for when he could still take for granted that one day Charlotte would have children? Nor was he only attentive, as a virtual grandfather, to keeping Albert supplied with trucks, puzzles, and games. Schmidt had taken on as well the responsibility for the kid’s religious and spiritual education. It was Jason’s elder married sister, living in Nova Scotia like the rest of the family, who stood up with him at the font, and not, as he had feared, one of O’Henry’s waitresses, Carrie’s former colleagues. Let there be, however, no mistake: Schmidt’s democratic principles were intact. He liked those very young women, their welcoming bosoms, and the occasional whiffs of barely suppressed body odor, knew their first names, and left generous, sometimes extravagantly generous, tips. But ever since the nature of his connection with Carrie had moved on to a Sunday-best bourgeois respectability, he preferred to see them only in their professional setting.

  Schmidt had taken to heart the advice of the little fellow with the big nose and the green hat: he was doing enough for young Albert—and therefore Carrie—to vent a tiny part of the affection dammed up within him to the point of overflowing. He hoped he was not doing too much, that he was not in the way. Experience proves that being a good grandfather—whether de facto or de jure—is not a full-time job, unless you live in the seclusion of the Alps and are lucky enough to take into your house and your rough heart Heidi, your little granddaughter. Or to find yourself in some analogous case. Therefore, although Schmidt thought of Albert often, always feeling a happy warmth in his heart, and when in Bridgehampton saw the boy and his parents as often as he thought was prudent, being Albert’s Albo—a sobriquet suggested by Schmidt fearful that the kid would mispronounce Schmidtie—was not even a part-time job. It did little to fill the void of his days and nights.

  Running the foundation was the more effective remedy. Old habits persist. Schmidt had always worked hard as a lawyer and had been capable of an eerie concentration that sheltered him from noise, interruptions, discomfort, and, he well knew, thoughts unconnected with his work. That detachment, that absolute fixation on tasks at hand, had it not been the subtext of Charlotte’s reproaches in the first quarrels she picked with him after her engagement to Jon? She had berated him for having had his old trusted secretary transmit messages to her, make travel reservations, arrange for the time during the workday when they could speak on the telephone. That same concentration was now saving his sanity.

  To his surprise, and subsequent amusement, Schmidt discovered that his foundation job opened the door to a social life in a milieu where he would be lionized. It consisted of so-called fine arts or cultural trustees or cultural affairs executives—the inventiveness of the nomenclature used to tart up fundraisers and public relations operatives was stunning—who had recently joined his club. Dazzled by Mike Mansour’s fortune, they saw in Schmidt the vade mecum to the Mansour billions. The fact that the foundation operated only overseas and didn’t make grants to U.S. institutions didn’t discourage them, a separate deal or a new charitable initiative being always imaginable. Some of them probably, on a smaller and personal scale, salivated at the thought of the lectures they could deliver, and seminars they could lead, in Prague, Warsaw, Budapest, and even in other less romantic destinations, all compensated by honoraria and reimbursement of every travel expense, including first-class airfares. Schmidt had no moral objection to such calculations, understanding all too well that those nicely turned out ladies and gentlemen had apartments and houses to maintain and their own and perhaps other mouths to feed. Only, as the perennial aesthete, he found offensive, like a stain on a carpet, both the nomenclature and the hunt at the club for business and personal advancement. These were sins against the established order and civility.

  Ever since Th
e New York Review of Books began publication, he had been a faithful reader of its personal announcements, not because he was looking for a restored fifteenth-century farm in Umbria or a studio with exposed bricks and ceiling beams on Île St. Louis or wanted to enter into a progressively intimate relationship with a Boston divorcée or female Jewish academic ready to travel, but because they amused him as stylistically perfected communications, shot like an arrow into the air with the hope of lodging it in the heart of a kindred soul on the Upper West Side.

  His circumstances had changed. He found himself sending terse, though he hoped well-turned, replies to divorced and single females—he avoided widows—with their love of music, travel, Italian and French food, and interest in financially independent gentlemen between sixty-two and seventy-two. That bracket, he found, was the most sought after among the aforementioned females. He enclosed a photograph taken of him for the foundation’s annual report: the least stuffy and off-putting he possessed. Three of these shafts hit a target. The images he received in return, however, did not incite him to proceed. Somewhat discouraged, he kept on reading, and one day came upon an announcement, in a genre he had seen before and distrusted, the scent of which now drew him. Its author claimed she was a married woman of fifty, residing in Bedford Hills—the ne plus ultra of Westchester respectability—seeking afternoon meetings in Manhattan with an equivalent gent. Discretion guaranteed. How should he parse “equivalent gent”? Schmidt took the approach that had been taught to him by Paul Freund when the Harvard Law School was still worthy of its name: It’s a constitution, gentlemen, we are interpreting, we must look at the problem being addressed and find reasonable solutions. Soon enough he came to an interpretation that was not unfavorable. The lady couldn’t be thought to insist on a married man, unless she was seeking the spice of double adultery or had determined to avoid anyone who might seek permanency. Even if those desiderata were in her mind, he could probably allay her concerns by delicate advocacy. That left the question of age, but he doubted that she was unwilling to consider candidates who did not claim they were her own age or younger. Biology being what it is, fifty-year-old male seekers of adventure were likely to prefer ladies who were significantly younger. In the end, he decided not to push his luck by confessing that he was a widower. He wrote to her, enclosing the photo he had used in previous correspondence with fellow readers of the NYRB, avowing his age and also his continuing vigor. As an aside, he told her that in Manhattan he lived alone and unencumbered.