Something was bugging her, she didn’t know what. Like a dream where you wake up and can’t remember what put you in a bad mood. One of your stocks has fallen in the night. It wasn’t just the cheating but the way Ben reacted to it. Maybe they pushed him too hard, it was partly her fault. Ben was very bored in first grade, he had learned to read early and was starting to misbehave, so they let him skip a grade. Who knows how much she was motivated by pride. I don’t think much. But he was already young for his year, a September baby, and now he was hanging out with kids sometimes two years older than him and trying to fit in. There’s a big difference between eleven and thirteen. You start pretending just to save face. David hated these kinds of conversation, he had a low tolerance for anxiety. Which only exacerbated her worries, as they both acknowledged. He also had a slightly English attitude towards childhood and thought it was bad for the kids to get too involved in their lives, that’s not what childhood is for. But Bill and Liesel had always been very involved; they still were.
You can’t just sit here all day, they’re probably making supper plans. And Ben will be wondering what happened to you, he’s still your little boy. She started walking back to the apartment. The light had changed, the sun had dropped behind the apartment blocks on Central Park West and what was left was a kind of uniform warm gray that cast no shadows even under the trees. The quality of sound had changed, too, it seemed further away, you could hear parents calling for their children, everything echoed a little, like noises at a swimming pool, as though the surface of things had begun to ripple slightly. I need some sugar and she looked in her purse for the bag of dried apricots she usually carried around, in case the kids got hungry. Poor Paul. It’s a weird career that you give up at thirty-three. Jean said that Liesel was worrying too much about Dana, and I said to Jean, just because she’s your mother doesn’t mean she’s necessarily out of touch. But the apricots weren’t there, she must have left them in the fridge. I don’t feel right, and she explained to someone in her head, maybe Liesel, I need to eat little and often, every few hours. You know what it’s like for me, being pregnant. You were the same. I guess I know why Jean was fighting with me, and she came out of the park at 81st Street, one of the four-way intersections, the trashcans were full, the trees leaning over the road were covered in dust, a bus rumbled past, and waited on the corner patiently until she could cross.
*
Dana said to Paul when they got in: ‘Where were you? I called the apartment, but they said you left half an hour ago. I’ve just been waiting around.’
‘What do you mean, waiting? You live here,’ he told her. ‘Come on, buddy. Bedtime.’ But the boy started walking away and Paul made a game of catching him and picking him up.
‘I can do this,’ Dana said. ‘You need to rest up.’
Her hair was still wet from the shower, she was barefoot and wearing a dress. She had tough brown athletic legs and her face, after a work-out, looked almost boyish – partly because she hadn’t put her contact lenses in. When they first started dating, Paul used to take her to his club, they knocked a ball around, he wanted Dana to see something he was good at. But she moved very confidently, too, it was a real turn-on, she had played a little in high school before concentrating on crew, and even at thirty she moved like a woman who knew what her body could do. He felt her physical presence, a kind of equality in it, and said to her, with Cal in his arms, ‘I don’t mind. You did it last night.’
‘I do it most nights.’
‘So tonight it’s my turn. He calms me down.’
‘Just so long as it works out for you,’ Dana said.
‘Give me a break, Dana.’ And then, with his face in Cal’s neck, ‘It doesn’t matter, it doesn’t matter.’
But his breath tickled the boy, who started wriggling. ‘Mommy do it,’ Cal said, and Paul let him go.
The phone rang while Cal was getting in the bath. Jean was on the other end of the line. ‘Okay, we’re going to Carmine’s, because there’s room for everybody and the kids can have meatball spaghetti. Not my first choice, but it’s also pretty near to you, in case Dana wants to come along. Or you.’
‘It won’t be me, but I’ll tell Dana.’ He had taken the cordless phone to the sofa and was lying down. The water was still running; he could hear Cal’s voice, at a different pitch, rising above it. ‘Hey, Jean,’ he said. ‘Is Susie back yet?’
‘Not that I know of.’
‘You should be nice to her. She’s got a lot on her plate.’
‘What does that mean? I’m always nice.’
‘You’re mostly nice.’
They were used to talking long-distance on the phone, they were used to silences, and eventually Jean said, ‘Don’t feel like you have to lose tomorrow. I booked my flight back for next weekend, so you may as well make it to the third round.’
‘Okay.’
Somewhere in the room with Jean, Bill was talking, part of the background noise. Liesel answered him and Bill called out, ‘I can’t hear you when you’re in the kitchen.’ Jean said, in the same tone as before: ‘You know that everybody loves you.’
‘Except my son, apparently.’
The water had stopped, but there was still a kind of banging going on, coming from the bathroom. Paul reached for the remote control, which was on the coffee table, and flipped on the TV. Dana stood in the doorway, there were splash marks on her dress, and she said: ‘Who are you talking to?’
‘Jean. They’re going to Carmine’s.’
‘What’d he do?’ Jean said.
‘Picked his mommy to put him to bed.’ Dana heard this and stared at him for a moment, then turned back down the hallway. Paul switched off the television sound and started looking for a baseball game.
‘Well, she’s prettier than you.’
‘She’s prettier than me.’
Then Nathan, faintly but distinctly, said to Bill or Liesel or maybe to one of his kids: ‘I don’t think this has to be decided now.’ They were all there together, in the middle of something, not necessarily happy or unhappy, but caught up in it, and Paul was on the outside listening in. Jean told him: ‘The table’s booked for seven thirty, if Dana wants to come.’
‘She may be a little late.’
‘Not as late as we will,’ Jean said.
A few minutes later, Dana walked in with Cal in her arms; his face looked hot from the bath, he was in his pajamas, with a thumb in his mouth. ‘His hair got wet,’ she said, ‘so I washed it anyway.’ The boy had a sleek look, his eyes seemed hooded, darker than usual, full of feeling. Paul sat up. ‘They’ve booked a table for seven thirty. You should go if you want to go. I can take over.’
‘I don’t want another fight. If I do it now, it will take five minutes. I can be five minutes late.’
‘You can be whatever you want to be,’ Paul said. ‘You don’t have to go.’
‘Do you want me to go?’
‘It’s up to you.’
‘Is it rude if I don’t go?’
‘It’s not rude either way. You should do what you want to do. I can’t tell you what that is.’
‘I don’t care, but if you want me to go, I’ll go, if you want me to see your family.’
‘Dana, I don’t know how to say this any other way. It’s up to you.’
‘I guess what I’m saying is do you want me to stay.’
She shifted Cal onto her hip; he was getting to be pretty big.
‘I’m happy for you to stay if you want to stay. In about five minutes I’m going to put a pot of water on for pasta. Then I’m going to eat in front of the TV. I’m gonna check my rackets, I’m gonna get the bags ready. Then I’m going to bed.’
‘Are they expecting me?’
‘They’re not expecting you or not expecting you.’
‘But they must have booked a table for a certain number of people.’
‘All right, go. You’re making me crazy here. I can put Cal to bed and you go.’
‘No, I’ll put him to bed.�
�
‘At least let me give him a kiss,’ Paul said, pushing himself up.
But Cal for some reason turned his face against his mother’s armpit, so Paul kissed the boy on his wet head. The gesture was more intimate than he intended, he could feel their combined warmth, and put his hand on Dana’s side, where Cal was holding her, too. ‘Sleep tight, buddy,’ he said, and left them to it, as Dana carried him away. She was gone for about twenty minutes, and when she came out again wore a different dress.
‘I’m going to go,’ she said. ‘I think that’s what you want me to do.’
‘Okay,’ he said, shaking his head humorously, but when she was gone it’s true he felt relieved to be on his own. For too much of the day he had been looking forward to this moment, when he could lie down in front of the TV with a ballgame on. People just bugged him, even the people he loved. It’s like everybody has this gravitational field – just being around them drags you somewhere against your will, unless you resist it, and that takes up energy, too. You’re in a dark corner, you have to fight your way out of it. But even as a kid this is what he liked, hitting a tennis ball against a brick wall, there’s a reason you become an athlete, solitude and repetition are not a problem for you. With crowd-noises coming out of the television, like some kind of carbonation, rising up, he began working through his visualization exercises: backhand down the line, just inside it; backhand crosscourt, rolling his wrist over the shot; forehand crosscourt and down the line; moving your feet, keeping low, striking early. Even like that, with his head on one armrest and his feet on the other, he felt his heart rate quickening, and after a minute got up to put the water on.
*
The fountain in the courtyard was leaning slightly when Dana came out, and splashing over the brim of the pool; the wind had picked up and blew in through the arch on 86th Street. There was still that same gray light that Susie walked home in, after the sun went down. With her hair wet, Dana shivered a little but warmly – that feeling you get, coming in from a day at the beach. She had pushed herself hard at the gym and felt tired and cleaned out.
There’s no use fighting with him the night before but you can’t pretend either it’s a temporary thing. All her life she thought of herself as a straightforward person, who took things head on. Even at thirteen, when she became aware of her looks and the effect it had on people, she thought, this is something you have to learn to deal with. But she also couldn’t ignore the fact that she had basically drifted to this point. From one crowd to another. It was never a question of what she wanted to do, everybody wanted things from her. After a while you get out of the habit of asking what you actually think about anything. And then you have a kid and it doesn’t matter. But Paul is right. You’re making yourself ridiculous. If you want to go, go, if you don’t, don’t. Look, she felt like saying to him, I’m just as frustrated with myself as you are. You don’t hear it but in my head I’m shouting, Make up your mind! What do you want! Because you just sit there suiting yourself, I should, too. Screw your family. If you can’t be bothered to see them, why should I? But the awful truth was, she wanted to see Liesel and Jean because she liked them and they were like Paul but still showed her some sympathy and interest.
This is stupid. You’re doing it again. He goes into his shell for a week before the tournament and you act like it’s a major crisis. Every time. And then after a while he gets sick of dealing with it, which I don’t blame him for. When he loses, and gets over it, everything will be fine. But she didn’t believe this either.
It was five blocks to Carmine’s, walking along Broadway, with the traffic following and waiting and surging at the lights, but she took her time even though she was twenty minutes late. Something she learned from her mother, let people wait. It felt good to be out of the house, away from Cal. From Paul, too. People (men) looked at her, they scoped her out, even with a girlfriend on their arm. Not that it mattered, but it was like checking your bank account, she liked knowing that the money was still there. The wind felt rough against her face. Her dress hung loose, she could feel her body under it. The first person she saw was Julie sitting on one of the plastic chairs outside, under the restaurant awning, and reading a book.
‘Hey, Julie,’ she said. ‘What are you doing out here?’
The girl looked calmly up at her. She had something of her mother’s Middle Eastern complexion, but a kind of pallor, too, underneath it, especially under the eyes, so that she always seemed tired and patient.
‘Waiting until the food comes. Everybody’s fighting and behaving like children.’
Then Jean came out. ‘Grub’s up,’ she said and saw Dana. ‘Hey, you look nice.’ On their way in, she held the door for Julie, and then as Dana walked past, Jean said to her, ‘I’m not mad or anything but I just want to know. Did you say something to anybody?’
‘About what?’ And then, when they were both inside: ‘I told Paul.’
‘It doesn’t matter,’ Jean said. ‘I told Nathan myself but I just want to know who knows.’
Even with Jean, Dana got little reminders of what it means not to be part of the family – stranger kindness or even distant cool familiarity. With her shortish hair, Jean was hard to place. She wore cowboy boots and her T-shirt said BRUKLIN HIGH ROAD in mismatched letters like a blackmail note; she dressed like a teenager. But she was also a twenty-nine-year-old woman who could make up her mind about people. If you crossed a line she could draw a new one that excluded you, and Dana, to make up for telling Paul about the affair, said, ‘Nice boots.’
‘They’re totally phony. When I was a kid who actually lived in Texas, I would never have worn them.’
The restaurant had the air conditioning on, and Dana goose-pimpled lightly in her cotton dress. You could hear the noise of fans and vents blowing, the background noise of various televisions, low-level conversation sounds like pebbles dragging on a beach, under the waves, and they climbed a set of stairs by the bar to the mezzanine floor. Dana thought, if I didn’t know them, what would I think of them? Bill had a friend along, a heavy-set old guy with finely drawn features; he looked ill, there was a cane resting by his chair. Liesel seemed unhappy about something, frazzled, which was one of her words, seventy-odd years old, the kind of person Dana would probably ignore at a party. Susie was talking to Ben in a slightly rising voice, explaining something, in the voice of a mother treating her child like a grown-up, but loud enough so that Margot could listen in, and some of the adults, too. Nathan, in a fresh suit, wearing a paisley shirt, looked like the bigshot at the table, but still there was something slovenly in his appearance, he couldn’t be contained by clothes. Margot sat on his lap and from time to time he kissed her hair – even he had his defensive gestures, his comforter. The girl seemed tired, she was five years old, and he cut up her meatball for her and fed her with a spoon. To a stranger’s eye, it must have looked like what it was, a family reunion, though who could say if they were happy to see each other.
There was plenty of food on the table already, the portions were big, and everybody picked off other people’s plates. Meatball spaghetti, fried calamari, pasta with clam sauce, a baked fish special, steaming in the foil, veal saltimbocca, garlic broccoli, shiny and oily, a big Caesar salad. Bill had held back one of the menus. ‘Order something else if you want to’ was his greeting to Dana, as he passed it over, but when the waiter came all she asked for was a gin and tonic. A kind of statement of intent: I’m here to have a good time. Because she could sense already a sourness in the atmosphere, a tiredness or a kind of conversational tendinitis, that kept flaring up because the Essingers couldn’t resist repeating certain arguments. Paul always said she had the wrong idea of what a family should sound like. Yes, she told him, I think they should sound like they’re having a good time. But Paul said, it’s not a social occasion, when we see each other.
Whatever the argument was, there was also something else going on, which she couldn’t put her finger on. Nathan had taken over from Susie’s explanation. �
��There are things you can do in a war,’ he said, ‘that you’re not allowed to do at other times.’
‘Like kill people,’ Ben said. With his glasses on, he looked like an English schoolboy, pale and pink, pleasant and well brought-up.
‘That’s right. But it’s not always easy to say what a war is.’
Bill introduced Dana to his friend, an old law-school pal, now retired, named Fritz Kohl. A gentlemanly South African. Fritz used to work at Alston & Bird, but he regretted not taking the academic high road and clearly wanted to impress Nathan, he kept asking questions. There was a story in the New York Times that morning about the so-called Drone Memo, which the Times and various other parties, including the ACLU, had petitioned the government to release. It had been written to justify the murder or assassination ‘or execution or killing or whatever you want to call it’ (Jean had joined in) of Anwar al-Awlaki, an American citizen fighting for al-Qaeda. His son died, too, both of them killed by a drone attack in Yemen. One of the authors of the memo, Daniel Ronstadt, used to be a professor at Harvard Law. Nathan knew him a little.
‘He’s a smart guy,’ Nathan said. ‘I don’t know him well, but sometimes at the house we have a whiskey night. Everybody brings a bottle and we try different whiskeys. Daniel came once or twice.’
‘The people you know,’ Liesel said. The noise was getting to her, the restaurant clamor, but she sat quite straight in her chair, with her round brown face, white hair, and a red fat-beaded necklace on her neck – like some kind of Indian chief. In her German childhood she used to be known as der schwarze Bomber, the black bomber, because of her dark skin. One of her cousins once complained (they shared a flat at university), there are fat people and thin people, but she didn’t mean looks, she meant that Liesel took up a lot of space. Somehow even her silence could be very expressive. Judgments were being made.
A Weekend in New York Page 21