A Weekend in New York

by Benjamin Markovits

  Cal’s sleeping had somehow changed the atmosphere in the car – it was grown-up time. One of the things Dana both liked and resented about the Essingers is that they talked everything through. Her own mother had a very different sense of conversational etiquette. ‘I don’t know if he’s optimistic or not. He never says anything about these things to me.’

  This was more of a confession than she meant to make; she realized as much after the words came out. Not just a confession, but maybe even a slight betrayal – of Paul. Of what he was like with her. Eventually she said, ‘I’m sorry our apartment isn’t big enough for everybody. Do you want me to take you to Mike’s first or should we go home?’

  ‘I don’t care where,’ Liesel said, ‘so long as I can use a bathroom.’

  ‘You can use the bathroom at ours.’

  They crossed through the Park, between the dirty high stone walls, under the bridges, following the cabs, but still you could feel the green density around you, like a kind of subconscious for the city, the core of nature that you’re stuck with; emerging again on the West side was like coming out of a dream. More buildings, more people, more traffic. Even the cross-streets had cafés on them, pet boutiques and dry cleaners. Liesel felt her heartbeat accelerate slightly, a kind of happy anxiety. She had lived for forty years in America but coming to New York was like arriving again for the first time. Her undergraduate years were spent in Berlin. She was an elegant young provincial woman, men took her to the theater, they invited her to concerts, and a part of her life was still lived out in her imagination in big cities, without kids.

  They found a parking spot five blocks from the apartment (the service entrance made it slightly nearer), and Bill sat in the car while the women went up. Liesel took her handbag, and since Cal was asleep, Dana carried him. ‘Just give me a minute,’ Bill said. ‘You can leave the key. It will take me a minute to get everything together.’ There was something very faintly conscious about the way Cal adjusted himself in Dana’s arms, pushed up, shifted his head against her neck, so that she could feel the heat of his skin against hers. Somehow his eyes were closed for both of them, there was no one else.

  They walked through an arch into the courtyard, and a woman sweating in her running gear said, ‘You’ve got a sleeper. Poor Cal.’

  She was stretching out her calves, leaning against a wall.

  ‘Oh, hey Mandy,’ Dana said. ‘This is Liesel.’ And then, with a little laugh, ‘my sort of mother-in-law. Amanda Frankel.’

  ‘Excuse the state of me.’ Amanda stopped stretching and pushed back her hair. ‘The things we do.’

  ‘I never did,’ Liesel said, smiling. Afterwards, in the elevator lobby, she went on: ‘I’m always amazed how everybody knows everybody else’s kids’ names.’

  ‘Her daughter is the same age as Cal. He calls her that girl.’

  Liesel didn’t always listen well, she followed her own trains of thought, but these often intersected with the conversation anyway. ‘It’s nice that he has friends in the building. Kids the same age. It doesn’t really matter who.’

  ‘He has friends.’ They were in the elevator, among the mirrors, watching the light shift from floor to floor. ‘There are kids he doesn’t like. He likes Poppy.’

  It was funny for Dana to find herself subtly taking Amanda’s side. Because they had a complicated relationship – she was one of those mothers you compare yourself against.

  The front door of the apartment was very heavy. It was an old building, and Dana had to twist her body and use Cal’s weight to help her lean and push it open. She got her foot in the door and held it for Liesel, who went in and struggled to find the light switch in the hallway.

  Dana said, ‘I’m giving up on his bath’ and walked through with the boy in her arms. She took him to his bedroom and laid him in his cot, clothed and dirty. There was a chair beside it, an awful hospital-style rocking chair for nursing mothers, very comfortable, and she sat down for a minute, even though Cal was clearly deeply asleep. One of her favorite things about having a baby was that it allowed you to opt out of grown-up time occasionally. The presence of her in-laws always put pressure on her. It was a kind of atmospheric intimacy; she got used to it after a while and almost missed it when they left.

  Liesel was sitting on the sofa in the living room, with a glass of water, when Dana came out. The big window was behind her, which showed the rooftops of lower, cheaper buildings, untidily asphalted, sprouting shiny steel vents and grids and pipework, caretakers’ huts and boxes of electrical significance. Sometimes you could see a deckchair left out, somebody sunbathing, or a few potted plants and trees. Beneath them, at the bottom of a kind of canyon, the river of Broadway flowed.

  She said, ‘It’s so nice to be here. He must have been very tired.’

  ‘I didn’t think he would stay down, but so far so good.’

  Liesel set her water on the glass coffee table. The sofas were comfortable but not particularly to her taste – Italian, bright green; the soft rug on the floor was oatmeal-colored. Everything looked simple and expensive. Instead of paintings on the walls, there were large framed photographs in black and white, including photographs of Cal and Paul and Dana. She had probably spent the afternoon cleaning up, preparing for their arrival. Unless they paid for someone to clean up. You couldn’t keep a place this neat with a two-year-old boy; maybe all the plastic was in his room. Suddenly for some reason she felt sorry for Dana but also a little ashamed of her own strong opinions.

  ‘I didn’t mean to be rude about your friend. My kids tell me I’m always so critical. Really I’m just embarrassed. When they were small, all the mothers knew their names, and said nice things, and I could never reciprocate.’

  ‘I like Amanda,’ Dana said. ‘But she annoys me, too. Maybe I’m just competitive. She’s one of those women who works hard to please her husband. Like, he pays the bills so she has to look good. That’s why she goes jogging.’

  ‘I hope you don’t work very hard to please Paul.’

  ‘Well, sometimes I work out with her, too. But not for Paul.’

  There was a silence, not awkward or comfortable, and after a while Liesel said, ‘I should help Bill, but it’s nice sitting down.’

  ‘I can go.’

  ‘You’ve done enough, I’m just being lazy.’ She leaned over across her knees and picked up the glass and drank some more water. ‘I brought you something from Austin. It’s very small and you don’t have to wear it if you don’t like it.’

  ‘I’m sure I’ll like it.’

  ‘Don’t be sure,’ Liesel said. ‘It’s in my handbag. I’ll get it in a minute.’

  *

  For a minute Bill sat in the car, not moving. It was too hazy out for much sunshine or shade, but there was a faint breeze and the trees on 91st Street stirred in a hundred different ways. He always liked the summery effect of trees on the concrete jungle. Liesel wanted to move to New York. She wanted to retire and spend at least a part of her year in a big city. It made sense for him, too, he grew up two hours’ outside, but for some reason he was resisting. Even though he liked New York, his childhood was happy, the associations were good, the presence of Jews, in the streets, in the shops, gave him pleasure; but it all felt like a long time ago and he didn’t want to confront his nostalgia on a daily basis. Plus there was the space issue – he was used to having a certain amount of real estate to walk around in.

  When Paul bought the apartment, shortly after Dana got pregnant, Bill was surprised. It seemed an odd move for a guy pursuing a career in professional tennis, a guy who traveled a lot and needed good weather to train, who was about to have a baby. But Bill didn’t say anything at the time, except to Liesel and the other kids. Dana wants to live in the city was the reason he heard. She used to be a model, she was taking classes in photography at the New School, and she had enough connections in the business to get work as a personal assistant, if that’s what she ended up wanting to do. None of these reasons appealed to Bill. He was susp
icious of his son for marrying an unusually good-looking woman; he was suspicious of photography, both as an art form and as a road to a meaningful career; and he didn’t much like the kind of people Paul seemed to be associating with, fashion-types, celebrity hangers-on, everybody young and good-looking, the kind of people who live to be seen at certain parties. Well, who knows why anyone lives the way he does or she does.

  But when Paul bought the apartment it’s also true that a part of him was pleased. He took pleasure in his children’s homes in the same way that some grandparents take pleasure in their grandkids. The apartment was large and light, an old building, with attractive features like solid brass taps and mosaic-tiled floors in the bathrooms. The address was good, halfway between Central Park and Riverside and around the corner from a subway stop. For a son of his to have made it to this extent in the city from which his grandfather and great-uncles had moved out two generations before … I guess that’s one kind of progress, from the Lower East to the Upper West.

  It surprised him, frankly, that Paul could afford to live like this, unless Dana had brought over a substantial amount of money from her first marriage – something else he wasn’t terrifically pleased about, by the way, not that he judged her for it or held it personally against her. But there’s a cost involved in attaching yourself to unstable lives. Instability is catching; and the fact is, Paul and Dana weren’t married, in spite of the kid, and for whatever private reasons. His career earnings couldn’t much exceed a couple million dollars, unless Bill had miscalculated the value of sponsorship deals. Even that kind of money doesn’t allow you to live an anxiety-free existence in New York.

  But maybe, again, Paul had other business incentives for being in the city. His tennis career was on the last lap. He was still a nice player to watch, with a deft, clever serve, soft hands at the net and a tricky slice backhand. He covered the court well but his forehand was kind of a placeholder, a lot of topspin but not much penetration. So he didn’t trust his approach shot; he stayed back. The guys you came up against these days were like basketball players, they were like football players, not in the normal run of human beings. Paul lifted weights, he was six foot one, but he couldn’t generate the kind of power from the baseline you had to at least be able to respond to at the top level of the game. And somewhere along the way he seemed to have accepted this fact, which is what upset Bill and partly explained the move to New York. That’s the problem with failure. At some point it requires an acceptance of failure; you have to make internal adjustments. Okay, so Paul was making them. As a mid-level American tennis star, good-looking and presentable, with two years at Stanford to his credit, and a handsome girlfriend who had connections in the media, Paul could try to make the transition from player to former player gracefully and maybe even lucratively.

  Bill was aware that he had a limited sense of how people made money in this field, and that his other kids, if he tried to explain his thought processes to them, his concerns for Paul, would tease him for being delusional, a Jewish mother, a worrier.

  So he worried, so what. Then again, if Liesel got her way, they could live around the corner from Paul. He noticed a couple of real estate signs in the apartment windows, Corcoran and Douglas Elliman, beside the air conditioning units or sitting on top of them. Tall windows, with high ceilings behind them. Nice apartments, though Bill probably preferred the East Side. Smaller scale. Liesel wanted a balcony or a garden. There were two suitcases in the trunk, both with wheels, and another duffel or carry-on, which was known for inscrutable reasons in the family as the shoe-bag. He also had his briefcase. If he could sling the shoe-bag over one shoulder, he could rest his briefcase on one of the suitcases and wheel them both along. But this required a certain amount of careful arrangement; he began lugging all the bags into the street. He locked the door and told himself that he had locked it, and put the keys in the front pocket of his jacket.

  The last time they visited Paul, he took them out to a Chinese/Cuban restaurant in the neighborhood, which was inexpensive and really very good. Bill thought, I’d happily eat there again, or walk with Paul to collect a take-out, or go myself for that matter, if Paul wants to talk to his mother.

  In the elevator lobby, he came across a woman returning from her run. In her thirties, quite pretty. Her face was sweaty and red, full of pumping blood; you could see the faint dark hairs over her lip. She wore black Lycra running shorts and vest, which pressed against her figure suggestively. She helped him by wheeling one of the suitcases into the lift.

  ‘What floor, madam?’ he said, in his bellhop voice. She told him and he pushed the button. ‘Good run?’

  ‘On Friday nights, my husband comes home a little early so he can put the kid to bed. So I get half an hour. And this is what I do. Who knows why.’

  She dabbed a hand against her forehead to keep the sweat out of her eyes.

  ‘What’s he do?’

  ‘He’s a lawyer. At Cravath.’

  ‘I know Cravath. I once did a little consultancy work for them. I’m surprised they let him out early.’

  ‘It doesn’t always happen. But they’re only young once, right? It’s good for them to have a little time together, just the two of them. Without Mommy shouting at everybody.’

  ‘Yes, ma’am.’

  She got out first, making the tired-but-happy face, taking a breath, and for two floors he thought, it amazes me, though I shouldn’t be amazed, that there is still such a thing as a cultural connection. When he rang the bell at Paul’s apartment, Dana let him in and helped him with the bags, which they left in the hallway next to Liesel’s purse. Liesel was still sitting on the sofa. The kettle boiled, you could hear it in the kitchen, and Bill said, ‘It amazes me, when really I shouldn’t be amazed, that there is still such a thing as a cultural connection. I ran into a woman in the lift, obviously Jewish, very attractive, and for five floors we have a pleasant and even intimate conversation. That wouldn’t happen in Austin. There might be friendliness, on both sides, or politeness, but you wouldn’t get this kind of … easy …’

  Dana said, ‘Excuse me,’ and then called out from the kitchen, ‘Liesel, milk, sugar?’

  ‘Nothing. Just black. Thank you. I’m sorry, I’m just sitting here.’

  ‘That’s fine. You probably ran into Amanda. She talks to everybody.’

  Bill was standing in the doorway between the two rooms. ‘Well, my kids would shout at me for saying this, but I wonder if what’s really going on is something Jewish. This is why a thirty-year-old woman talks like that to an old man. It wouldn’t happen in Texas.’

  ‘Oh, she flirts with everybody.’

  ‘No, it wasn’t flirting.’

  Dana came in with Liesel’s tea and put it on the coffee table. ‘It’s hot,’ she said. ‘I’ll tell her you thought she was thirty. She’ll like that. I see her all the time. Her daughter is probably Cal’s best friend.’

  ‘Before I forget,’ Bill said, ‘let me give you your keys.’

  Liesel stood up at last. ‘I’m going to get you that present.’ She walked on painful knees into the dark hallway, where the suitcases stood. Even in her jeans, in her longsleeved shirt (like a painter’s smock), in her comfortable shoes, she had the air of a famous woman. Her short bright gray hair, her brown neck, her berry-red necklace. Dana was conscious of being alone in the living room with Bill.

  He looked in the pockets of his chinos, front and back, and began muttering to himself, ‘Oh for God’s sake.’ But he found the keys at last in his sports jacket and dropped them in her hand. ‘Listen,’ he said. ‘I’m only going to say this once. Let me pay for a hotel.’

  She stared at him for a moment. ‘It’s fine, don’t worry about it. You can stay at Michael’s.’

  ‘I’m not talking about us. I mean for Paul. He needs to sleep right the next few days. I don’t know what your arrangement is, but it can’t be easy for either of you, having a baby.’

  ‘Cal is sleeping through. It’s fine.’

>   Then Liesel came back holding a bracelet. ‘It’s Mexican silver,’ she said. A plain arrangement of links, slightly tarnished, but with a depth of color, a faint dark undertone from the copper content. Not the sort of thing Dana bought for herself, but she liked Liesel’s taste, she admired it. Her own mother had very severe standards: certain labels, certain cuts, certain colors. The Essinger aesthetic cost less money; they picked up things in flea-markets and put together odd combinations. Dana had a good eye; she was sympathetic to other people’s sense of style and not always confident in her own.

  ‘It’s lovely. Thank you,’ she said and put the bracelet on her narrow wrist.

  ‘This is why I give you presents. You were well brought up. You say please and thank you like you mean it. And everything looks good on you.’

  ‘It’s true, I like it.’

  ‘Well, I saw it and thought, that’s pretty. I wanted to buy it, but my kids have too much of everything, so I thought of you.’

  ‘I said to Dana,’ Bill broke in, ‘if Paul wants to sleep at a hotel for the next few days, we’d be happy to pay.’

  ‘Why should he sleep at a hotel?’ Liesel said. ‘He can sleep here.’

  ‘I don’t care where he sleeps, but he needs to sleep, he needs to be rested on Monday. They say it’s the night before the night before that counts.’

  ‘If Cal wakes up,’ Dana said, ‘there’s a spare room. Don’t worry. Paul doesn’t sleep well in hotels.’

  ‘Do you do that, does he use the spare room?’

  Dana looked at Bill; she wasn’t quite sure what was being asked. ‘Sometimes. But Bill, please, sit down. Let me get you a drink. Paul bought you some caffeine-free Diet Coke. One of those really big bottles. If you don’t drink it, we’ll never get through it.’