by Sol Stein
“I don’t know,” said Peter.
“I think we ought to go for the settlement.”
“Is it permanent?”
“Probably. It sticks even if she gets married fast.”
Peter fumbled with the pack of cigarettes on Hill’s desk. He took one. He lit it, even though he didn’t smoke cigarettes.
“It’s a free country,” said Peter finally.
“Yep,” said Hill. His rimless spectacles jiggled as he laughed.
*
Gradually Peter came to see the threats and counterthreats—and there were many—as the legal game it was, and though it was still painful, like all things it went down easier as the weeks passed. Finally the negotiations reached a point where Hill was able to recommend, “Let’s take the deal.”
Rose got most of what she wanted—money, house, car, furniture—and Peter got, for the first time, the legal right to see his children every other Saturday, 10 A.M. to 7 P.M.
Peter couldn’t help wondering what Leluc looked like. In his mind’s eye, French came with a neatly trimmed mustache, wavy hair, tall, thin, elegant, something like a maître d’, with a voice like the man who read Air France’s commercials on the radio. He wondered if Leluc had hair on his chest (Peter had none). He wondered if Leluc had hair on the back of his hands (Peter had none). Or—and the thought hit him with a shock—would Leluc look like Peter, because people were said to repick the same style in mates?
The first Saturday after the settlement was signed, Peter found himself as nervous about the visit as he had been about his first job interview out of school. (How does a father visit his children, what does he do, how does he behave, how—?) Though Peter wanted Elizabeth along for necessary comfort, to feel that someone else was on his side, on Hill’s advice he left her in a coffee shop several blocks away and went to the door alone, intent on controlling what he said and felt, if that were possible.
As he approached the house, slowing his pace a bit because it was still a few minutes to ten and he wanted to be there precisely at the time indicated in the agreement, Peter found himself anxious about Leluc.
Maybe Leluc wouldn’t work out, he thought, and Rose would have to find someone else. No, Rose was too skilled. If Leluc was eligible, she wouldn’t let him get away. This was it.
He pushed the familiar doorbell. It might as well have been the door to Tibet.
Chapter Nineteen
Be civil, Peter gave himself a final instruction as Leluc answered the door.
Though Leluc, standing on the threshold, was a step up from Peter, Peter found himself looking down at Leluc, who was short indeed. Of course, Frenchmen were short. No mustache. In fact, no wavy hair, very nearly no hair at all, just a vestigial ring of fuzz above the earline where the grass fire had ended.
“Leluc,” said Leluc, extending his hand. They shook.
“How do you do?” said Peter. He felt ridiculous.
“Won’t you come in?” said Leluc in a markedly French accent. Peter wondered whether Rose would pick up the accent in time.
He took a step or two inside the house—his house, he thought, then immediately squashed the thought. Truthfully he hadn’t expected to be invited in, but to be left waiting for the kids at the door.
Past Leluc, he could see how much the living room had changed. The furniture had been rearranged, the wall blazed with radical paintings (Leluc’s, or just Leluc’s taste?), and the burnt-orange drapes had been replaced, with white chiffony stuff Peter would have permitted only in a bedroom.
This is not your home, he told himself, not anymore.
“I will get the children,” said Leluc. He went up the stairs, which seemed to Peter an undue familiarity, and soon came down with Margaret and Jon in tow. Both children were “dressed up” and nervous as hell.
“Hello, Dad,” said Jon very formally.
Maggie seemed prepared to be formal also, but it didn’t work, and she and Peter embraced, not without embarrassment, in front of Leluc.
“Seven o’clock,” said Leluc.
That was unnecessary, thought Peter. And wasn’t Rose going to make an appearance? He had to get used to the idea that he might not see Rose again, unless the law required a confrontation at some point.
As soon as they were out of sight of the house, Jon relaxed his formality, which pleased Peter. The boy’s stiffness was not for him, but for the others. They chatted about school and the Little League until they reached the coffee shop, where Jon slid in beside Elizabeth in the booth and Maggie opposite. Peter ordered coffee for himself, a refill for Elizabeth and chocolate milks for the children. They seemed less like children than they ever had before. While Elizabeth was doing a brilliant job of getting acquainted with the kids and making them feel comfortable with her, Peter was thinking: What to do?
Finding a solution to Brew’s sales problems seemed minor compared to filling the emptiness that loomed in the next few hours. When he had seen the children regularly, day in, day out, it was easy to suggest a movie on the weekend, or bowling, or just a walk. But he had a sense now that the movie itself counted, that if it turned out to be less than great, he would have created a disappointment for them. They weren’t dressed for bowling; in the future that would have to be arranged in advance. It seemed absurd to have to make arrangements for something like bowling in advance. What to do?
“What would you like to do today?” he asked, feeling somewhat like the aimless characters in Paddy Chayevsky’s Marty. He fully expected Jonathan to answer, “I don’t know. What do you want to do, Daddy?”
Which is exactly what Jon did.
Peter looked to Elizabeth for help.
“Why don’t you do something reckless?” she suggested.
“Such as?”
“How would you kids like,” she addressed them, “to try the Ferris wheel at Palisades Amusement Park?”
Peter thought the idea of the amusement park brilliant. With dozens of different things to turn to and not more than minutes to spend at each, the kids could be kept whirling, safe from dragging time, safe from boredom with him.
“I think Palisades is a great idea,” said Peter.
“It’s hard to get to,” said Jon matter-of-factly.
“Oh, we could rent a car, zip across Manhattan, through the tunnel, up the other side. An hour tops.”
“It’s too long,” said Jon.
“Last Saturday,” said Margaret, “Mommy took me shopping to Saks and Bloomingdale’s, you know, not for anything special, just to see what they had.”
“Browsing?” asked Peter.
“Something like that. We didn’t finish Saks, so we couldn’t get to Bloomingdale’s. Could we go to Bloomingdale’s?”
“That’s no fun,” said Jonathan with finality.
The kids glared at each other.
Elizabeth touched Peter’s hand across the table in reassurance, then immediately withdrew it, lest the kids see.
Peter quickly weighed the facts of visiting life. Margaret would want to do some kinds of things, Jon others. Would that mean they’d have to separate, perhaps Elizabeth going off with Margaret and he with Jon? Would that be interpreted as Elizabeth’s having visiting rights? Would it be better for him to take Margaret for one Saturday a month and Jon for another? Was once a month enough to maintain a relationship with your own children?
“Surely,” said Elizabeth, “there is something we’d all like to do together.”
There were all kinds of “good” things they ought to do, thought Peter—the Metropolitan, the Museum of Modern Art, the Museum of Natural History, the planetarium—but the kids had been to all of them, and were they old enough to explore in depth? And if they got bored, would it allow time for someplace that was fun, so they wouldn’t on this first visiting day conclude that a day with the old man was a drag? Obviously alternate Saturdays now had to be planned in advance, very, very carefully, specific places, with a timetable.
As the best bet for a holding operation, he got
them all onto the subway headed downtown without telling even Elizabeth where they were going. When they passed Times Square, Jon and Margaret’s interest perked. When he motioned for them as the train pulled into West Fourth Street, they both lit up. Daddy was taking them to Greenwich Village.
The Village had the allure of the offbeat, the not-quite-prohibited, the semi-scandalous. Boys with beards, beatniks, hippies, the streets a walking museum of characters to look at, and then, on Eighth Street, the shops, which pleased Margaret and Jon, who found the book and record stores fascinating. They accumulated packages at a rather fast rate, but Peter gratefully paid, buying the day’s grace.
They ate in a pizza joint, ordering a large-sized sausage pizza for the four of them, Cokes for the kids, and Chianti for themselves. Jon said he was still hungry, so they ordered a supplementary pizza, this time with anchovies. Jon ate one slice, decided he didn’t like anchovies on pizza. Peter offered to order a third, plain pizza, or a small sausage pizza, but Jon said he wasn’t hungry anymore. Peter found himself staring at the uneaten pizza in front of them, angry not because of the waste, but because the pizza lay there as a symbol of his failure to work things out.
“Did you enjoy it?” asked Elizabeth, swinging to the rescue of Peter’s downhill mood.
The kids nodded, and so they paid the bill, gathered their armloads of packages, and off they went. Peter thought it would be heavenly to rest a bit, but the two movie houses they passed had shows “for mature audiences only.” It was just after the disappointment of the second movie house when they spotted the leather-craft store, its small window filled with sandals, hats, handbags made of supple leathers. It was Elizabeth who led them into the shop, her eye on a handbag in olive leather, a beautiful, simple thing, a pouch really, but fashioned with great taste. While she was deciding in its favor, Jon disappeared into the back of the shop and emerged wearing a vest covered with brown fur.
“Crazy,” he said. “It’s called a bear vest.”
The proprietor, a very thin Indian, turned on the hard sell in a way which convinced Peter that the bear vest was a dog to be disposed of. Jon gloried in it. The price was twenty dollars. Twenty dollars for a gag? The pressure from the Indian was great but resistible. The pressure building all day inside Peter was not resistible. He gave in.
“You sure it’s not too expensive?” asked Jonathan.
“I’m sure it is too expensive,” said Peter, trying to smile as he handed over the money, only to see Margaret, taking her cue from Jon’s triumph, trying on a leather Greta Garbo hat.
“You’ve never worn a hat, Maggie,” he said in self-defense.
“Always a first time,” she said, shaping it in front of the mirror.
Peter pulled Elizabeth aside and whispered frantically, “She’ll wear it once.”
Elizabeth shrugged her shoulders helplessly. She knew the fit of the trap.
Peter paid for the hat, which Margaret insisted on wearing out into the street so that, in her words, “Some of the kooks will look at me now.”
They were a distance from the store when Peter realized that Elizabeth had not purchased the handbag. The day had cost them over seventy dollars.
Elizabeth walked on ahead with Margaret, which gave Peter an opportunity to talk to Jon alone for the first time.
“Do you think, Dad, that Vietnam will still be on when I’m old enough to go?”
Peter remembered his war, how everyone was certain it would be over before Peter was old enough to be drafted. That was a laugh. Two years in uniform. But the risk had been his, and he hadn’t been sensible enough to believe that death was possible. Death or dismemberment. But Jon?
“Do you think it will still be on?”
The first real question he had ever been asked by his son.
“I don’t know,” said Peter.
They were all tired, and the packages were getting to be a drag, so they took a cab back, a last luxurious fling and, Peter decided, a worthwhile one, because in the nest of the back of the cab the four of them sat, tired, enjoying the glow of a hard day’s effort. Was the day a success? Peter studied the children’s faces. He couldn’t tell. Should he suggest taking only Jon the next time, splitting them up, as he now knew would be inevitable in time? He’d try once more, the two of them together. He’d plan carefully. He’d map an itinerary. He’d work out everything ahead of time.
It was like planning a marketing campaign. It lacked spontaneity. Is that a built-in handicap of visiting days?
The cab let them out. Peter overtipped the driver, hoping Jonathan would notice. Elizabeth hung back on the sidewalk while Peter and the kids, arms loaded, went to the door. It may have been open, but the kids rang the bell. The establishment of formalities had now begun.
Peter had taken a step or two back quite unconsciously, fading out of the picture. As Leluc answered the door (would he ever see Rose again? And why the thought?), the kids turned to half-wave at him, but their attention was now clearly on home, the house, and Leluc, who put his arms around them and conspicuously kissed Margaret on the cheek and shook Jonathan’s hand. Peter had never shaken hands with Jon.
Is Leluc taking them for his own?
Did you divorce children also?
He joined Elizabeth, and they walked toward the subway. He slowed his pace, then stopped.
“Anything wrong?” she asked.
“Nothing,” he said, suddenly buoyant. “Let’s go for a ride. It’s only seven.”
Peter fished in his pocket for his credit cards, came up with Hertz.
Twenty minutes later they were on their way, across the Queensborough Bridge, Fifty-seventh Street, down Ninth Avenue to the Lincoln Tunnel, and she knew.
“Palisades Amusement Park,” she said.
“Clever.”
“Haven’t been in fifteen years, maybe more.”
“Thought we’d give it a dry run, see what might interest the kids next time.”
She looked at him, relaxed now behind the wheel. Man and boy, she thought, she loved him.
*
As they walked from the parking lot, they passed families with children coming out of the amusement park, the day done. On the way in with them were teen-agers, mostly in twos.
“Feel middle-aged?” he asked her.
She squeezed his hand.
“Hungry?” he asked as they passed the first hot dog stand.
“Yes, but if we’re going to try any of the rides—are we?” He nodded. “Then let’s wait till afterward.”
Practical woman, he thought.
“How about the tunnel of love?” he asked.
“Closed years ago. Old-fashioned.”
When she saw where he was headed, she felt the first twinge of fear. She had suggested it for the children, not herself.
She thought he might ask her first, but he went straight up to the booth and bought two tickets. She looked up at the Ferris wheel, a huge full circle rimmed with lights.
“I thought we were going to explore, to see what the kids might like,” she said.
“That,” he said, “was the excuse.”
She remembered what he had said about necessary risks. But was this risk necessary? The wheel seemed fragile as well as high, so few supports, so much dead weight.
The attendant took their tickets, strapped them into a swinging seat side by side. Nearly half the seats above were filled; half to go. The attendant motioned the operator, who moved them off the ground so that the next couple could get on.
It was an exasperating ten minutes as their seat moved up eight feet at a time. Then they were at the very top of the circle; beneath them the dizzy fairground blinked away.
“Just look at it,” he whispered close to her ear.
She hadn’t realized her eyes were closed. It seemed a very long way down, much farther than from the ground looking up. Peter and herself and the wooden seat and sides obviously must have weighed three hundred pounds or more. Yet it all hung so loosely from the skimpy circu
lar frame. And how many times three hundred, how many other couples had now added weight to the spindly circle of the skeleton wheel? In looking down, she had shifted her weight, and just that slight movement started their seat rocking, wildly it seemed in relation to those few bolts holding it up in the air.
“There doesn’t seem to be much holding us up,” she said. “Are you sure it’s safe?”
She saw his expression and laughed at her own question. How would Peter know if it were safe? Amazing that the whole spidery apparatus would stay upright when massive steel bridges sometimes collapsed in a wind. They would circle faster than any bridge ever swayed, spinning like a wheel, with the individual seats swaying back and forth as well as moving around, she thought, secured by bolts subject to rust or metal fatigue or an attendant’s careless inspection, the failure to adjust a single nut that had come loose.
“I remember reading somewhere,” said Peter, shouting to be heard above the new level of noise, “the first of these contraptions had more than thirty cars carrying forty people in each of them.” He pointed a finger at his fact-filled temple. “Nuts,” he said.
“Why aren’t we moving?” she said.
They could see the lineup of couples now waiting to get on the Ferris wheel; the line wasn’t moving. No one was being put on, though there were still a couple of empty seats.
“We’re probably overweight with passengers,” said Peter, not knowing what he was talking about. “Too many fat people aboard.”
The operator and the attendant seemed to be talking busily, like a pitcher and a catcher at the mound. Why talking? Why were people gesturing upward? What was wrong?
Suddenly the wheel started to move, not slowly as before, when passengers were being put aboard, but in a great lurching motion that sent Peter and Elizabeth sprawling against each other and very nearly flying out of the seat despite the strap across their laps.
Elsewhere on the wheel, girls were screaming from the shock of the lurch. What had happened? Why all the milling around down below?
The wheel lurched a second time, this time worse. The screams from passengers were louder. One could hear, “Let me off! Let me off!” carried on the wind.