“Was it during the day? Was it at night? Was it on a bed or a couch or the kitchen counter? Do tell, Ethan, inquiring minds want to know.”
“I don’t remember the exact date.” I paused. “It was the night of the funeral.”
“Oh,” she said. “Oh, well, that’s extremely classy.”
I quashed the impulse to snap at her. Instead I said, “You can’t be this upset. It’s not as though you haven’t slept with anyone else in the last six years.”
“Have you?”
“Of course I have. You know that.”
She said, “I haven’t.”
I didn’t know what to say. Under normal circumstances I doubt I would have believed her, but just then I knew she was telling the truth.
She said, “I want you to leave.”
“Marilyn—”
“Now.”
I stepped into the hallway, into the elevator, my head racing with esprit d’escalier. Obviously, there had been some sort of miscommunication, a root misunderstanding of the terms of our relationship. Someone had not spoken up. Mistakes were made. I reached the first floor. The doors parted and music flooded in. The party was in full swing. I got my coat and went into the street. The snow was like cream, and I could see we were in for a blizzard.
Interlude: 1939.
Like most people, doctors tend to fear him, and in that fear, they never come right out and say what they want. It drives him mad. The one on the telephone, the superintendent, keeps talking in circles, such that Louis cannot fathom the reason for the call. More money? Is that it? He can give them more money. Already he pays fees that Bertha deems extortionate, a peculiar position for her to take, considering that the arrangement was entirely her idea, and that those fees come out of bank accounts to which she has never contributed a penny.
Louis would not mind paying more. He would, in fact, be happy to pay much more, give and give and give until he has left himself bloody and shattered. But here is the punch line: he has too much money to ever be broken. Writing checks will never be an effective method of expiation, and unfortunately for him, he knows no other way.
As Louis listens to the superintendent, he tries to convey the message to Bertha, who stands nearby, grinding her teeth impatiently.
“He says—one moment. He says that she—what was that?”
Fed up, Bertha seizes the receiver. “In plain English, please,” she says. Over the next minute and a half, her face shifts from exasperation to incredulity to fury to determination and finally to the blank, chill mask she puts on during difficult times. She says a few short words and puts down the phone.
“The girl is pregnant.”
“That’s impossible.”
“Well,” she says, pushing the button for the maid, “obviously, it isn’t.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I don’t see what choice we have. She can’t stay there.”
“Then what do you inte—”
“I don’t know,” says Bertha. “You haven’t given me much time to think.”
The maid appears in the doorway.
“Call for the car.”
“Yessum.”
Louis looks at his wife. “Now?”
“Yes.”
“But it’s Sunday,” he says.
“What’s that got to do with anything?”
He has no answer.
She says, “Do you have a better idea?”
He does not.
“Then run along. You’re not dressed for an outing.”
AS HE PERFORMS HIS TOILET, he wonders how he has gotten here. The events of his life do not seem connected in any way. First he was there, then somewhere else; now he is here. But how did he arrive? He does not know.
He reaches for his comb; his valet steps forward and hands it to him.
“That’s all right,” Louis says. “I’ll be alone now, thank you.”
The valet nods and withdraws.
Once he has gone, Louis removes his shirt and stands bare-chested. The last eight years have aged him. Once he had ringlets so dense that the teeth of the comb would get stuck. He had smooth skin, not the elephantine wattles that appear at his waist as he bends. His is not the dense, cannon-ball belly men of wealth and power should have but a soft paunch, a loosening around the ribs. His hips are wide and feminine, and his trousers must be let out at the seat. He repulses himself. He did not always look this way.
He puts on his shirt and his shoes and descends to the foyer.
The Home is near Tarrytown, a few miles off the Hudson. Once they leave the city, the roads become lined with deep ruts that the car is ill equipped to handle. The drive takes several hours; his suit is stuffy and his back stiffens; by the time they arrive, he can hardly move. It’s hard to say what would be worse, getting out of the car or turning right around and going back to Fifth.
The superintendent stands outside the gate, indicating where they may park, a gesture that annoys Louis, insofar as it implies that this visit is the Mullers’ first. Bertha might not come, but he does, at least once a year.
The grounds are lush and colorful, thick with wildflowers and weeds that make Louis’s sinuses buzz. He blows his nose and glances at his wife, staring impassively out the window at a building that did not exist the last time she was here. He knows this to be true because he paid for a portion of its construction. Anonymously. Bertha would not allow him to disgrace the family name. Another irony, that little bout of possessiveness, for it is he who turned her from a Steinholtz into a Muller.
She has changed, too, although he has a hard time putting his finger on how. Everything that made her a beautiful girl has lingered, more or less, into middle age, without the need for heavy investments in cosmetics. Other women spend half their day staving off wrongs done by time and childbearing. Not so Bertha.
What, then? Louis watches her gazing out the window and notices that all of those lovely features are still there—but more so. The beauty mark a touch larger; the nose a trifle rounder. It is as though the real Bertha, for years tightly wrapped in youth, has pushed her way through to the surface, causing tiny ruptures all over, individually imperceptible but together enough to render the whole grotesque. Perhaps these changes are real, or perhaps familiarity has bred contempt. Whatever the case may be, what scant desire he could conjure up for her, back when he was supple and highly motivated, has long since dried out and blown away. His appetites in general have waned, leaving in their stead regret, a multipartite regret made up of all his poor decisions. Because although he has a hard time understanding how he came to the present, if he is honest with himself he will say that the path has been of his making. What seemed like inevitabilities he now understands as choices. When, so many years ago, they brought him into the room to meet her and they told him she was to be his bride, and he agreed, and the whole machine swung into motion—that was his choice, wasn’t it? His father said to him: marry or go to London. Well, why not London? At the time he told himself that marriage would follow eventually, so he might as well accept his fate and be allowed to stay on. But perhaps his father had been giving him an out. Perhaps he could have spent his life in bachelorhood, like great-uncle Bernard. What might have happened in London? Louis wonders. And when Bertha sent the girl away—hadn’t he had a choice? He argued and argued and finally gave in, but he could have stood his ground. He could have done something. What, he does not know. But something.
In business he never second-guesses himself; in life he has no peace.
The car rolls across the gravel, slows, comes to a halt. Bertha gets out but he is impaled on regret.
“Get out of the car, Louis.”
He gets out of the car.
The superintendent’s name is Dr. Christmas. Though normally full of good humor, today he has a bilious look about him.
“Mr. Muller. Mrs. Muller. Did you have a pleasant drive?”
“Where’s my daughter,” Bertha says.
They pass through the lobby
. Louis allows his wife to take the lead, and she does, pushing out in front of everyone else, as though she knows where to go. Her daughter. Preposterous. An insult to the effort he has expended over the last twenty years. The girl has never been hers, not since the moment they parted company on the delivery table. But does he really want to claim that the girl is his? If so, then that makes her his responsibility; it makes everything that has happened his fault.
Dr. Christmas has decided to turn their walk into a tour, pointing out the Home’s prouder features, such as the hydrotherapy rooms, with their hippopotamus-sized tubs and stacks of linens. They perform more than a thousand cold wet sheet packs every year.
“Recently we’ve had some success with insulin treatments,” he says, “and you’ll be pleased to know that thanks to your—”
“What I will be pleased to know,” says Bertha, “is where my daughter is. Until then I am not pleased to know anything.”
They walk the rest of the way in silence.
Or—not silence. From other rooms, other floors—from far away on the grounds—muffled by concrete and plaster, oozing through ducts—come the most ungodly sounds. Screams and weeping and a jagged laughter that stands Louis’s hair on end, and a variety of noises that no human being should be able to produce. He has heard these noises before but they never fail to unnerve him. They do not have a daughter, they have a son; Bertha has repeated this mantra enough, forcing him to recite it with her, and he has come to believe. Thus every visit to the Home brings fresh horror.
Their child, their real child, David—he is growing up handsome and articulate, a model young man. At thirteen he has already read Schiller and Mann and Goethe in German, Molière and Racine and Stendhal in French. He plays the violin and has a knack for mathematics, especially as applied to business. While it is true that education at home has left him shy around other children, he is nonetheless charming toward adults, fully capable of engaging in conversation with men thirty years his senior.
By comparison, what hope does the girl stand? Bertha made the pragmatic choice, and she made it without hesitation, excommunicating her from her heart, something Louis has never quite managed to do. And yet what has he done except wallow in self-pity? Where has all his suffering gotten him? Surely it hasn’t improved the girl’s lot.
Thank God David is away, visiting his mother’s relatives in Europe. Louis shudders to imagine inventing excuses for this afternoon jaunt. Mother and I are going for a ride in the countryside. Mother and I need to take the air. More than anything, Louis hates to lie to his son.
As far as he can tell, David remains unaware of the girl’s existence. There was that one awful night, eight years ago, when Delia left the door unlocked and the girl wandered downstairs, attracted by the sound of the radio. For a time Louis had wanted to put a radio in the girl’s room, but Bertha had exercised her veto. A radio would serve no purpose, she argued. The girl wouldn’t understand anything, and the noise might draw attention. Instead they gave her picture books and dolls, which seemed to occupy her. But Louis knew that books and dolls weren’t enough, a suspicion borne out when she appeared. If Bertha had only listened to him and bought a damned radio, the girl might never have come calling, none of this ever would have been necessary.…
That awful night; the arguments that followed. He lost them all, with one exception: he managed to get rid of Delia, whom he had always considered indolent, sensuous, and untrustworthy. Even Bertha had to admit that leaving the door unlocked constituted grounds for dismissal. Although no longer employed, Delia remains on the payroll. Her continued silence costs Louis seventy-five dollars a week.
David has never said anything about that night, never asked about the girl. If he somehow discerned her identity—and Louis cannot imagine how he would have—then he seems to have forgotten all about her. They are safe. Hundreds of lies, each one thin, but layered until their accumulated strength allows passage across the chasm.
Dr. Christmas holds a door. Bertha and Louis sit on one side of the desk. On the other side is a seedy-looking fellow with an ostentatious pocketwatch. Christmas locks the door and takes the remaining chair.
“Allow me to introduce Winston Coombs, the Home’s resident legal counsel. I hope you won’t mind if he sits in on our little meeting. As a matter of course, I—”
“I don’t see my daughter anywhere.”
“Yes, Mrs. Muller. I have every intention of—”
“I came here with one purpose, and that is to see my daughter and what you idiots have managed to do to her.”
“Yes, Mrs. Muller. I would however like to inform you that—”
“I don’t care what you would like. This is not the time for you to express preferences.”
Says Coombs, “If I may—”
“You may not.”
“Mrs. Muller,” says the superintendent, “all I’d like to do is reassure you and your husband of our intention to take the appropriate punitive measures toward the young man responsible, and—”
Then Bertha says something that surprises Louis. “I don’t care one bit about him. As far as I’m concerned, he doesn’t exist. I want to see my daughter. I demand to see her, this instant, and if you continue to do anything other than take me to her I will call my own attorneys, who I can assure you will make Mr. Coombs very sorry that he ever entered the profession.” She stands. “I take it you don’t have her in that closet.”
“No, ma’am.”
“Then walk.”
They exit the building and step onto the back lawn, neatly mown and hemmed in on three sides by trees. Golden light pools in the grass. They follow a stone path into the woods. Fifty feet hence they come to a small house enclosed by a whitewashed fence, a place new to Louis and certainly to Bertha.
Dr. Christmas finds the correct key from a clanging set and holds the gate open for Bertha, who pushes past without a word. The house requires another key, which requires another minute or so of noisy fiddling. Bertha taps her foot. Louis stuffs his hands in his pockets and gazes up through the leaves at the bloody sky.
“And here we are,” says the doctor.
In the foyer they are met by a nurse, who stands as Bertha enters. “This suite is reserved for patients during their most sensitive or stressful episodes,” says Christmas. “And our finest staff—”
Bertha does not wait for him to finish but goes on to the next room. Louis is close behind, bumping into her when she stops short on the threshold.
“Oh,” she says. “Oh, God.”
Louis looks over his wife’s shoulder and sees his daughter. She is lying on a cot, wearing a blue gown through which her belly bulges visibly. Her entire trunk, already short and squarish, looks ominously distended. She blinks at them woozily.
Louis would like to step into the room, but Bertha is gripping the door-posts. Gently, he pries her hands free and enters. The girl sits up, watching him curiously as he drags a chair to her bedside and sits.
“Hello, Ruth.” She gives a bashful smile when he touches her cheek. “I’m very glad to see you. I’m sorry I’ve been away so long. I don’t know what’s kept me.”
The girl says nothing. She glances over Louis’s shoulder, at Bertha, who has begun to make a series of low, mournful chuffing noises.
“Ruth,” Louis says. The girl looks at him. “Ruth, I see that—that something has happened here.”
The girl says nothing.
“Ruth,” he says again.
Bertha turns and leaves. From the next room, Louis hears her threatening the superintendent but he tries to focus on his daughter. “Ruth,” he says. He had wanted to call her Teresa, after a great-aunt of his; Bertha had a Harriet to name for, as well as a Sarah. But Bertha insisted on a name with no connection to either of their families, which was precisely the point.
Still, love adjusts, and he has come to hold the name dear. Ruth, he says. He picks up her hand and begins to rock back and forth. Ruth. She watches him guilelessly, confusion spreading over
her face as he sways and says her name.
THEIR OPTIONS ARE LIMITED. Dr. Christmas hints that he has the capacity to end the pregnancy right away, but when he does so Bertha spits at him. She of the expedient solution; apparently, she clings to some taboos.
The next day their family physician—the one who delivered the girl, the one who recommended the Home—arrives on the afternoon train. He takes a taxi to the hotel and is shown to Mr. and Mrs. Muller’s suite, into which he steps with no small amount of trepidation. Hat literally in hand, he begins to offer an apology-cum-defense.
“Never mind that,” says Bertha. “You’re going to need clothes. We have moved the girl to a nearby cottage for the duration of her pregnancy. There is a nurse with her. The adjacent cottage isn’t for sale yet but we’ll have it soon enough. You will live there until this is finished. Once the baby has arrived we’ll decide what to do with the girl. In the meantime, you will have whatever supplies you require, and we will cover your expenses, as well as whatever losses you incur being away from your practice. Until you can further determine your needs this ought to suffice. Give it to him, Louis.”
As the doctor takes the check, his hands begin to shake, the way they did that night twenty-one years ago. Louis is dismayed. There must be someone better—someone younger, with more energy and greater expertise. But Bertha will not budge. No specialist, no matter how good his training, has as much experience as Dr. Fetchett in one area: discretion. He has kept the family secrets well, and now he will be punished for his loyalty.
“I understand your urgency,” says the doctor, “but I can’t possibly leave New York for—”
“You can and you will. She’s already quite far along. Why they waited until now to telephone us is another matter, for discussion at another time. Right now I’m concerned only about her well-being and the well-being of the child. Your room key is there, if you’d like to refresh yourself. We leave for the cottage in thirty minutes.”
SHE HAS SO MUCH TO LOSE. The woman the world sees is the product of many years of hard work. In becoming that person, erasion has played as great a role as creation, a lesson she has never forgotten.
The Genius Page 24