A Changed Man

by Francine Prose

  “Is that all you’re having?” Meyer says.

  Bonnie tries to say she’s not hungry but for some reason can’t speak. So she idiotically puffs out her cheeks and points to her stomach. Meyer helps himself to some fish, then turns back to Bonnie.

  “So how are your sons?”

  Meyer always asks after the boys, though sometimes she suspects that he could care less. How are the boys? Home alone, without her. She’d asked the kids if they wanted a babysitter. Danny pointed out that most kids his age are babysitters. He’d asked what she was afraid of. Did he really want to hear? Armed intruders, fire, flood. Leaking carbon monoxide.

  Bonnie says, “Speaking of the boys, I think I’ll call and check.”

  “Use the phone in my study,” Meyer says. “You’ll have more privacy.”

  “It doesn’t have to be private,” says Bonnie. But that’s the phone Meyer offers, and Bonnie can hardly pull out her cellphone and call from the table. Standing up is a bad idea. Too late to fix it now. Bonnie lurches off. She notes that she’s listing toward one side. But she’s sober enough to remember that here, if you slam into the walls, a Degas comes crashing down.

  Bonnie should be ashamed, helping arrange this dinner partly to see how Vincent behaves, and now she’s the one who’s loaded. She’ll worry about that later. For now, she needs to find Meyer’s study. But first a trip to the bathroom, where in the glare of shocking white light, she briefly forgets why she’s there and looks in the mirror. A big mistake. What did that guy on the street say? The lady looks fatigued. And Bonnie’s upset about that, instead of feeling good about the fact that Vincent stood there and let the guy say that without breaking his head. Vincent has changed already. He…Bonnie loses track. She must have drunk even more than she realized. She splashes cold water on her face, then stares in horror at Irene’s inviolate white towels. She grabs a crumpled cloth from the top of the laundry hamper. Vincent’s wine-stained shirt. She wipes her face, inhales. How has she reached the point of standing, drunk and dizzy, in Meyer Maslow’s bathroom with her streaming face pressed into a Nazi’s dirty shirt?

  Bonnie walks into what appears to be Irene and Meyer’s bedroom. Meyer said his study. Bonnie’s never been back here before. There’s a phone on the night table. Meyer didn’t say not to use it. Bonnie sits on the bed and dials.

  The line’s busy. Bonnie slams down the receiver. Is everything okay? Probably Danny’s online or talking to a friend. How can he do that when she’s trying to phone him? But of course, he doesn’t know that. She’s getting call-waiting tomorrow.

  Try again. Still busy. It can’t be busy forever. She’ll give it a minute. For the moment, she can lie back and shut her eyes and think.

  Meyer is the first to notice how long Bonnie has been gone. He gives her a few minutes, and when she doesn’t reappear, sends some freighted glances in Irene’s direction. But Irene’s so focused on Vincent that she ignores Meyer’s signals until everyone has registered Bonnie’s absence.

  “Irene, darling,” says Meyer, “do we think you should go find Bonnie?”

  “I’m sure she’s fine. She’s probably phoning her children.” Irene turns back to Vincent until the intensity between them lapses, and she says, “Meyer. Where’s Bonnie?”

  Shouldn’t Irene go find her, or Roberta or Minna, in case it’s some sort of bathroom thing, some female situation? Everyone’s looking at Meyer. Their sun. Their leader. Dad. The way that Irene plants her elbow on the table and cups her chin in her hand is eloquently communicative. It means: Bonnie is Meyer’s problem. He works with her, he invited her, this dinner was their idea.

  First he heads for the bathroom, imagining the grisly scenario in which Bonnie is ill or drunk. He’ll stand outside the bathroom door, listening to her retch, and thinking: I have to work with this woman tomorrow. This is why you should never mix business and social life.

  But the bathroom door is wide open. Bonnie isn’t there. For a moment, Meyer is alarmed. Could she have gone home? Has she been acting strangely tonight? Meyer can’t recall. He remembers being bored by a conversation with Minna about the Cochin Jews.

  Then Meyer sees Bonnie asleep on his bed. Even from a distance, he can tell: snoozing. Not in danger. Curled up on her side. Should Meyer wake her or let her sleep? What if she won’t get up? Where the hell is Irene? Meyer would rather be brokering a peace agreement between Arabs and Jews, he’d rather give a begging speech to five hundred New York bigwigs, he’d rather be speaking French on a crackly long-distance line with some sadistic Iranian prison warden, than deal with this in his own room, at the end of a long day. The last thing he’s in the mood for is coping with the problem of his passed-out development director. There is no hidden blessing in this. It’s a plain and simple pain in the ass. He wishes it weren’t happening.

  But what choice does Meyer have? Run to Irene, to Mommy? Meyer approaches the bed. He clears his throat, then coughs and coughs again, louder.

  Bonnie’s snoring lightly. Like a kid. Meyer stands above her, hoping she’ll sense his presence. He can’t bring himself to disturb her. Her knuckles are mashed into her cheek. Her glasses have slipped down her nose. Bizarrely, tears fill Meyer’s eyes. He’s becoming an old woman! Why didn’t he and Irene have children? The question was settled so long ago that he’s forgotten the answer. Back then, a woman of forty was old. God knows, they took enough chances. Irene never got pregnant. Both of them were busy. And everyone understood if a man with Meyer’s history chose not to bring children into the world. No one ever asked him why. Doesn’t Irene care?

  Bonnie shifts in her sleep, rucking up her skirt and exposing a ragged ladder in her dark pantyhose. This hardworking, defenseless, admirable woman would do anything for him. How hard and lonely it must be, raising those sons alone. And now she’s taken on Vincent. Meyer told her to, and she did it.

  Watching Bonnie sleep, Meyer sees her willingness for what it is: the simple desire to please, to do good, to make everything better. Watching her, Meyer no longer feels nostalgic for the young man he once was, or even for the healthy, middle-aged version of himself who at least might have considered the sexual implications of a not-unattractive woman curled up on his pillow.

  Meyer feels like a different person. Purified. Washed clean. It’s as if he’s come through to the other side, and instead of grief or regret, he can experience pure love for a fellow human being—the sympathy that, he’d begun to fear, he could only feel from a distance. Telescopic philanthropy. Compassion is something that waxes and wanes, like closeness in a marriage. When you lose it, you think it will never return. But it always comes back. So far.

  He wants to cover Bonnie with a blanket. He wants to cherish and protect her. Whoever sent him the Dickens chapter could not have been more deluded. This welling up of love for Bonnie is what he longs to feel for the world. This is what God gives you in return for trying to be conscious and do the right thing.

  This sense of grace doesn’t falter, not even when Irene enters the room. How flushed and excited Irene looks! How much Meyer loves her. God bless Vincent for giving her the male attention she longs for. Meyer puts his arm around her. Irene leans lightly against him.

  “Christ,” says Irene. “She can’t drive back to the suburbs like that. Vincent’s going to have to drive. Unless you want the two of them staying in the guest room. And I’ll tell you, Meyer, honestly, I’d rather jump out that window than have to face them tomorrow morning.”

  “We wouldn’t want that,” says Meyer. “Your jumping out the window. Anyway, Bonnie’s got children. A babysitter, I’ll bet. She probably needs to get back. And as for Vincent driving—”

  “Fabulous,” says Irene. “That simplifies things. Meyer, dear, give me the phone.”

  Watching Irene call car service and make arrangements for Bonnie and Vincent to be picked up and driven to Clairmont, Meyer feels nearly faint with gratitude and admiration. Maybe he’s also drunk too much. It’s been quite an evening.

 
Meyer follows Irene into the dining room. How smoothly they work together, switching seats so Meyer can confer with Vincent. No need to tell Vincent that Bonnie’s drunk. He can figure that out on his own. Meyer says that she isn’t feeling well and that they have called car service.

  “I could have driven her home,” says Vincent.

  Vincent has probably had as much as Bonnie. He just handles it better.

  “That’s all right,” says Meyer. “These things happen. What can you do?”

  By the time the doorman rings to say the car has arrived, Bonnie is up and walking. The other guests form a phalanx and, with quick social kisses, take Bonnie off their hands.

  Meyer and Irene’s relief is so intense that they hug each other, a joyous embrace observed by Babu, who has appeared at the dining room door and whose presence stops Meyer’s hand in its instinctive migration toward Irene’s ass. Irene detaches herself and heads toward the kitchen to oversee a few details, while Meyer goes off to wait for her over a brandy, in his study.

  He places his palm in the impression that Bonnie left on the bedspread, then smoothes out the bed. He can’t decide where he wants to be—in bed, in his favorite chair, drink, no drink, looking out the window. What he can’t decide is how he wants Irene to find him.

  They could be going on their first date, that’s how jittery Meyer feels. Except that there was no first date. There was only that New York dinner party, not unlike the one tonight, except that, at the end of it, Irene got Meyer his coat and, with her millionaire husband standing not three feet away, told Meyer she wanted to see him again.

  Some of that came back to him when they embraced in the hall. In addition, the pure love he had felt as he’d watched Bonnie sleep has focused, like a beam of light, on his wife and her body.

  Meyer decides on his favorite chair. What book should he be reading? He checks in fiction, under D. Here’s Bleak House. Could Irene have sent the chapter? Or could it have been Babu? Do they read Dickens in India? Meyer goes through the stack of books he plans to read. IBM and the Jews. Let Irene find him reading that, swirling a snifter of brandy. A successful, powerful, caring man…

  As it turns out, a miscalculation. Meyer can tell at once that what Irene is seeing is not Dick Powell, Ronald Colman, the suave movie-hero husband. What she’s seeing is some jerk who has been sitting on his fanny all the time she’s been working with Babu, overseeing mountains of dishes and details while her lord and master relaxes.

  “Irene, dear, would you like a drink?” How he wants her to say yes! If they can’t be passionate young lovers again, at least they can be partners, fellow soldiers who have survived another skirmish, and who in the calm after the battle can enjoy a moment of peace.

  “No, thanks,” says Irene.

  Irene slips into the second-best chair and consents to sit beside him in that companionable silence that takes decades to achieve. Somewhere, on Randall’s Island, a window reflects the moon, and the light of the bridge is draped like a bright ribbon across the East River. How still and beautiful everything is, this lovely panorama paid for with so much suffering, so much hard work, and with the mysterious grace of God, who has given this to Meyer and not to so many others who suffered more and worked harder.

  Irene says, “I’ll bet you fifty dollars she’ll be fucking him in two weeks. If she isn’t already.”

  Meyer says, “Who are we talking about?”

  “Bonnie and your Nazi. Did you see how she looked at him? And the way she was looking at me? She would have killed me if she could, just for talking to the guy.”

  Why is Irene doing this? Taking the best part of his evening—the swell of agreeable emotions he’s had ever since he watched Bonnie sleep—and reducing it to bitchy gossip. But Irene’s not doing anything to him. This is not about Meyer, as Irene so often says. She’s just reporting an observation. Is something going on between Bonnie and Vincent? How could Meyer not have noticed? The same way Mrs. Jellyby doesn’t hear her children falling downstairs and getting their heads stuck in railings.

  Instantly Meyer’s good mood is gone, all that love and empathy distilled to a puddle of ill-will. Is it envy? Envy of what? He doesn’t want Bonnie. He wants that lost-forever world of romance, surprise, and adventure. Bonnie and Vincent are young and alive. Or, at any rate, younger.

  He knows that Irene is feeling this too, perhaps more strongly than he is. She’s depleted by the energy she’s expended flirting with a man who is going home with Bonnie, a woman less attractive in every way except that she’s twenty years younger. Once more he wants to take Irene’s hand, but he fears that his sympathy might enrage her.

  Anyway, who says that Irene is right about Bonnie and Vincent? Men assume that women have some ESP for romance and personal situations. Bonnie isn’t stupid. She doesn’t need to get involved with a man like Vincent Nolan. Even though he does have many excellent qualities. What was it he said this evening? Faith cells were like fat cells, you developed them when you were young….

  “Irene, darling, excuse me.” Meyer goes into his study and finds the notebook in which he has been jotting phrases for his speech at the benefit dinner. He writes, “Faith cells—like fat cells.” Then he leafs back through the book. He reads: “Moral bungee jump. The courage to change.” This is Meyer’s real work. This is what matters, not a trivial misunderstanding with his wife, or some possible hanky-panky between two colleagues on his staff.

  By the time he goes back in the other room, Irene has gone to the bathroom, from which he hears the clinks of jars on porcelain, the buzz of her sonic toothbrush, the rush of water, and the sounds of her ritualistic preparations for sleep, the transfixed application of magic creams and time-reversing concoctions, useless and costing the earth.

  AHUGE EXPLOSION RATTLES the house.

  “What was that?” says Max.

  “Thunder, idiot,” says Danny. “What the hell do you think?” For Max’s sake, impatience and insult are the best way to go. Keep it real, keep it normal.

  “Thunder and lightning,” Max says.

  Rain stampedes the roof. Danny says, “It’s a fucking hurricane. Mom would shit if she knew. How come she didn’t tell us what to do if the house gets hit by lightning? Could you believe the crap she put us through before she’d let us stay alone? Telling us not to bleed to death if we, like, cut a bagel.”

  “Give her a break,” says Max. “She keeps it pretty together.”

  Max is always defending Mom. But this time, Max is wrong. Mom should have it more together. She should be able to leave two competent teenagers home for one night without the major drama. Though she should have told them what to do in case of a tornado. Do they have a flashlight? Probably not. Making sure there’s a flashlight is something fathers do. Something other fathers do.

  That was thunder. But what was that? All night, Danny’s been hearing strange noises, footsteps, slamming doors. Mom’s turned him into a wimp. It’s her fault that every floor creak makes his heart slam around in his chest.

  He’s actually considered the strategic advantages of being down in the basement in case the house does get hit by lightning or someone does break in. Mom kept saying: I know I can trust you guys. Well, she’s right. She can trust Danny not to get high tonight. And he’s glad he didn’t. By now, he’d be so paranoid he’d be phoning the Clairmont police, which would only make him more paranoid. He’d have to flush the minuscule pot stash he keeps in an espresso can on a shelf in his bedroom behind his dictionary.

  It’s strange that his mom hasn’t called. To interrogate whoever is stupid enough to pick up the phone. No, Max hasn’t fallen down the stairs. Nobody’s running a fever.

  By the time Danny remembers his computer and runs up to his room to unplug it—a kid at his school had his hard disk fried by lightning—the thunder is down to a growl. And the rain’s stopped. Excellent. Danny can go online. Which means that his mother can’t call. Maybe this will make her spring for a dedicated phone line.

  Danny’
s e-mail consists of three offers to sell him sleeping pills and enlarge his penis and a group message from Chloe that says: “Emergency! Any of you guys know anything about Nelson Mandela?”

  Emergency? Pathetic! The paper’s not due for ages, beside which it annoys him that Chloe’s doing Nelson Mandela. Does that mean that she is going over to the other side, writing a paper guaranteed to get an A from Linda Graber? Chloe swore that wasn’t why. She admires Nelson Mandela. So does Danny, actually—another reason not to write about him. Instead of which he’s doing Hitler, an automatic D-minus.

  Danny’s ahead of schedule. He’s already checked Hitler’s biography out of the school library, at which point he discovered that Hitler’s face on a book jacket was not something he wanted to flash as he walked down the hall to class. That’s all he needs: the whole school calling him Hitler Boy. Even at home, where there’s no one to see, the book feels embarrassing, somehow. Danny turns the front cover facedown.

  If Danny takes the Hitler bio downstairs and reads it while he watches television, he’ll be doing his schoolwork, minus the boredom. The boring book and the boring TV will cancel each other out. He logs off and heads down to Dad’s room, where he finds Max.

  “Wanna watch Howard Stern?” Max asks.

  “Go for it.” Danny stretches out on the couch and tosses the book on the rug.

  Howard’s talking to two identical twins: Gen and Jess. He’s asking how often they have three-ways with guys. He asks if their breasts are identical. The women strip off their bikini tops, and four tiny digital fuzzballs dance on the screen.

  Within seconds, Max is asleep. Howard Stern always puts him right out. Maybe he’s too young for it. Maybe it makes him nervous.

  Danny hears a noise and hits the mute button. Definitely a car. Definitely not his mom’s car. Not pulling into the driveway. Stopping in front of the house.