What Is Missing

by Michael Frank

  “This room says what he was like. The rest, out there”—Ivan glanced in the direction of the living room—“those are all things that were chosen by the British fellow who did that sort of job for him. But in here … it’s like looking into his mind. I keep thinking someone will want to come photograph it, or take some notes.”

  If Jeeves was going to insist on making conversation, Henry would have to join in. “Did you work for Mr. Sarnoff a long time?”

  “When he came back to New York, he needed a secretary, someone to organize the meals and goings-on here. In the country he had Mrs. Gonzales, but in New York, it was just Mr. Sarnoff and—all this. It was just around the time that the movie was being made. There were lots of appointments and interviews. People used to wait downstairs to photograph Ms. Streep, when she came up here to speak to him about the character she was playing. In this very room they had their conversations. Long conversations. She only drank bubbly water, like you. She didn’t care what brand. She liked it with lemon. No ice. Never any ice.”

  “And you’ve stayed on ever since, even while Costanza—Mrs. Sarnoff—was away?”

  He smiled. “She made a promise to Mr. Sarnoff. As long as she remains in the apartment, so can I.”

  Ivan glanced at Morton’s desk. “Perhaps we should return to the living room?”

  In the living room Ivan set the tray with the glass on a table next to an armchair. He poured the water. “Will there be anything else?”

  “No, thank you.”

  Ivan left. Henry drank. The apartment was only eight floors up, but he couldn’t detect any traffic from Fifth Avenue. He had no sense of being part of a large populated building either. Were the apartments of the super-rich always this quiet? What was the trick? Double-glazed windows, the thick carpet and heavily lined curtains, the absence of common walls? The place was muffled, plushly arrayed, a resplendent tomb.

  “Henry.”

  There she was, finally, standing in the doorway.

  He stood up and looked at her. She was dressed completely in black: pants, sweater, shoes. High-heeled shoes, which made her seem tall, precariously balanced, aloof.

  He opened his arms. She hesitated before stepping into them. He would have liked to kiss her, but the signals, her stance, the whole atmosphere, seemed against.

  “I’m sorry I kept you waiting.”

  She stepped over to a phone. A phone that was also an intercom. She pressed a button and asked for the prosecco. Then she sat down in a chair, one of a pair, that flanked the fireplace. Was its mate Sarnoff’s once? Henry wondered if that’s what she was thinking as he sat down across from her.

  “So.” It was difficult to find the right way in. “How are you?”

  “Tired. I’ve been away a long time.”

  “Yes, you have.”

  “Distance confuses things.”

  She sent off her remarks like little toy boats on a pond, leaving them to find their own way in the prevailing breeze.

  Henry’s heart sank. This wasn’t at all what he had imagined, or what he had hoped for.

  Here was Ivan again, slinking in. He was carrying a tray with a silver ice bucket, the prosecco, and two glasses. A bowl of tiny olives. Small square linen napkins, folded like origami. He set the tray down on the table between their two chairs and reached for the bottle.

  Henry gestured. “Let me do it, please.”

  Ivan glanced at Costanza. She nodded at him, and he withdrew.

  “He was very attached to Morton. I haven’t had the heart to help him move on. I will, eventually.”

  Henry had the prosecco open now. He poured two glasses, handed one to her, and picked up the other for himself. He raised his. “Maybe this will help.”

  “Help?”

  “Help get us talking. Help make us feel less awkward.”

  “You are diving in, Henry.”

  “Well, naturally. I’ve been waiting for this evening, Costanza. I’ve been waiting—well, let’s just say I’ve been waiting.”

  She sighed. “I’m finding a lot of things hard right now. You have to understand, or rather I should say, I wonder if you can understand, that this place, for me, is—”

  “Oppressive?”

  “Well, full of my recent past. Full of my recent past in a way that, just now, feels overwhelming. Do you know how it is when you go away, far away, especially for a long time, and think you have changed, then you return to the place you started out from, and it feels as though you never really left?”

  “That makes sense,” Henry said carefully.

  He waited for her to continue speaking. He wanted her to continue speaking.

  “There’s so much you don’t know about me, and the life I had here, the life that seems to be lying in wait for me here. It’s a lot to look after Morton’s … to care for all this—” She gestured at the large lavish room and left it at that.

  “Yes, but what’s in it for you?”

  “That’s just what I’m trying to figure out.” She paused. Finally she looked him in the eye. “And not only that.”

  “So you have been thinking about me—about us?” The word felt like a minefield. But why?

  “Of course.”

  The phone by her chair rang. Buzzed, rather. It was the intercom. She pressed a button. Ivan’s voice came through saying that dinner was ready.

  As though commanded, she stood up.

  * * *

  The dining room was on the other side of the foyer. Its double doors, previously closed, were standing open now to reveal a large dark table surrounded by chairs, fourteen of them, a conference room’s worth of polished mahogany. A cloth had been spread over just the far end of the table, leaving most of it exposed. The two places set on the cloth were a fairly substantial distance apart, as they would have to have been across such an expanse.

  Before she sat down Costanza noticed Henry’s fruit, which Ivan had arranged in a large glass bowl. It stood on a sideboard, sweating, and in this context looking, Henry thought, faintly ridiculous.

  “I haven’t seen color like that since Italy.”

  “It’s from Dr. Weissman.”

  She turned to Henry.

  “I was on my way to work, and there was all this fruit…”

  “It’s beautiful.” The warmth in her voice made her sound for the first time like herself. Or like the Costanza that Henry thought he knew.

  She sat down. Henry sat down. Ivan poured the wine, then withdrew.

  Costanza picked up her fork and examined the food in front of her. “Zucchini, avocado, cilantro. Morton always teased Ivan for copying the newest dish. A recipe would appear one day in the paper, the next on the table. Morton—” She stopped. “But you don’t want to hear about this.”

  “I want to hear anything you want to tell me.”

  They ate for a few minutes in silence. Henry’s mind had come to a standstill. He couldn’t think of anything else to say. He couldn’t remember when he last had nothing more to say. It was the room, the apartment. The somber dark walls, the guttering candles, the silver, the linen, the fussy food, the hovering manservant. And then there was Costanza: her detachment, her remoteness.

  He tried a topic, any topic. “You wrote that you saw some old school friends.”

  “Less than I would have liked. Most everyone is married now, and busy.”

  “How did it go in the end with your mother?”

  “It was challenging, as usual. I realized that I can’t go back there to live—not full-time, anyway.”

  Henry took this, at least, as an encouraging sign. A small one. But first he had to decide whether he wanted, truly wanted, to be encouraged. Only how was he going to decide that over dinner in a mausoleum?

  Costanza picked at her food. Henry didn’t touch his. He waited. He thought. Then he stood up abruptly. “Let’s get out of here.”

  “I can’t do that to Ivan.”

  “He’ll be fine. He’ll eat a nice dinner.”

  Henry stepped aroun
d the table and helped Costanza to her feet. He didn’t quite lift her, but he gave her some guidance, gently forceful.

  She let him walk her into the foyer. “Do you have comfortable shoes down here?”

  She pointed to a closet. Henry opened the door. Half a dozen pairs of women’s shoes were lined up on the floor. He brought her a pair that looked comfortable. Black flats. He knelt down, took off her heels, then slipped the flats on her feet.

  “And a sweater, a jacket?”

  “There’s a jacket. Black wool.”

  He found it and draped it over her shoulders. She stood up. “It’s not as warm in New York,” she said flatly, “as it was in Italy.”

  “No. It’s not.”

  When they turned toward the door, it had already been opened. By Ivan, who was standing there in silence. Costanza avoided his gaze; Henry met it.

  “I’m sorry about the dinner. Mrs. Sarnoff needs some air.”

  Before they left, Ivan handed Henry a bag. Inside was the fruit. “It’s not the sort of thing that keeps very long.”

  * * *

  The sun is in the wrong place.

  This was Costanza’s first thought of the new day. She felt the sun on her back, whereas in New York the sun, in the morning, usually shone on her face. And she was on the right, not the left, side of a large empty bed. A bed that was not hers, in a room that was plainer than the one she was accustomed to waking up in, in New York. The room had beams, molding, windows with divided lights. Where pictures had once hung, silhouettes checkerboarded the walls. The floor was bare, and the window frames needed paint. The whole room did.

  She was waking up in Henry’s bedroom. She knew that. It was not as if she had drunk so much that she forgot. Though her sleep had eventually been leaden, she remembered walking out onto Fifth Avenue, with Henry at her side. She remembered looking at the leaves on the trees, how they fluttered as a breeze picked up. She remembered hearing a siren. And she remembered being able to breathe, and think, properly think, for the first time in a week.

  She remembered having dinner with him, a picnic in his living room. Japanese food, sent in. A cold Sancerre. Cross-legged and shoeless, they sat on the floor and ate on their laps. After dinner, while Henry was clearing away the bento boxes and the empty wine bottle and all the rest, she had found her way into his bathroom and then his bedroom, where she undressed and slipped into bed. When he found her there, the look on his face was of pure joy. He shed his shirt and his pants, then he got into bed alongside her. He touched her hair and stared at her as though she were an apparition, a phantasm. She was neither. She was a woman, a real woman, who had merely sounded, and followed, or was possibly testing, her heart—it was as if the earlier part of the evening, in Morton’s apartment, belonged to another strand of her life, another story. This was the story, she decided, she was meant to follow. Did the why of it matter? What mattered was the fact of it. What mattered was that she had allowed herself to slip into Henry’s bed. And that she had touched her hand to his cheek, and left it there. He closed his eyes. When he opened them again, they were moist. A single tear spilled out of his right eye and left a thin damp trail along the side of his nose. She kissed it and felt a pang of tenderness for this man, for the improbability of his presence in her life, and for hers in his. She had had such a hard time in these last years with Morton, then without Morton. It had nearly consumed her—nearly. Being able to feel tenderness was helping to release her from Morton’s spell. So was coming to realize that she had been afraid of Morton, whether because of his age, his accomplishment, his nature (or her nature), she wasn’t sure.

  Henry kissed her palm. Then he kissed her neck, her breasts. She put her hands on his back and drew him closer. She inhaled the scent of his hair. It smelled of leaves. Eucalyptus, or mint. She could feel his hardness against her thigh. She lowered her hands. She cupped his penis in its envelope of cotton. The envelope was full, warm, and pulsing. It was like holding a small bird. She reached inside. His penis was alive. When she touched it, it quivered; what an explicit, communicative thing the male organ was. With her hands moving, exploring, she guided him toward her. The last time they had made love he had been tentative at first. This time he wasn’t. She felt a small flash of pain, then a flare of pleasure that built and built.

  She had no further memory of being conscious again until she felt the sun on her back. It warmed her, and it woke her. She rearranged the pillows and sat up in Henry’s bed. She listened to the morning. A distant steady vibration of traffic floated up from the street. Water hissed as it hurried through pipes in the wall. Someone was causing glass or china to chatter.

  It was Henry. He had showered and was dressed for the workday, but he had managed to put together a breakfast tray, which he was carrying, effortfully, into the room.

  On the tray was a small bowl of his fruit, expertly cut up, along with a croissant, a cup of coffee, and a pitcher of warm milk. He delivered it to her lap.

  “Impressive.” She added milk to the coffee and sipped it. “And you serve good coffee.”

  “For an American.”

  “You said that. I didn’t.”

  “But you thought it.”

  She conceded with a half nod.

  “I may not live on Fifth Avenue, Costanza, but I do grind my own beans.”

  “Ivan never understood how to make proper coffee, and Morton strictly drank tea.”

  Henry sat down on the edge of the bed. “Are you really going to go back there?”

  “That’s exactly what I’ve been sitting here trying to work out.”

  “Didn’t you tell me you kept your old apartment as an office? Could you go there?”

  She hesitated. “I sublet it before I left for Italy.”

  “What about selling Fifth Avenue and moving on? It’s been a year, over a year…”

  “This is kind of … private, Henry, but Morton didn’t come from money, and the fact that he made a lot of it was a burden to him. I signed an agreement before we were married. If I decide to leave the apartment, it gets sold, and the proceeds are added to the trust he set up to support writers who live under governments where they aren’t able to publish freely. The truth is, I’m more than ready for that to happen. The apartment—life up there—just wasn’t for me. I’m much more comfortable sitting at my simple wooden desk, puzzling out words.”

  “You could rent something else, couldn’t you? Somewhere new?”

  “I could. It’s just … it’s just that I don’t think I’m of a mind, yet, to make a new home for myself. Before I do that, I need to know what my next project is. When I’m working, everything else in my life tends to fall into place.”

  Henry ran his hand through his beard. “What about … what about staying here?”

  She set down her coffee cup with more clatter than she intended. “Here, with you?”

  “Well, not just with me. Justin is coming back tonight for a few days, before he returns to school. Andrew, as you know, is starting his senior year. He spends half the week and every other weekend with me, but by next fall, next year—”

  “By next year you’ll have a vacancy, and you’re looking for a roommate,” Costanza said lightly.

  “That is not at all why I’m asking you to stay. And you know it.”

  There was an uneasy silence. She stared into her coffee cup.

  “You don’t know me well enough, Henry. And I don’t know you.”

  “It would be one way to find out. We’re not children.”

  The light in her eyes seemed to turn inward. After several moments she said, “I would expect a breakfast tray like this every morning.”

  Henry’s eyebrows drew together. “You’re making a joke now?”

  “Who said I was joking?”

  “All right then, I will make you a breakfast tray every morning, though since several days a week I leave for work pretty early, I may have to put the coffee in a thermos. But the rest, yes, it will be like this, or close to this, every m
orning.”

  When he completed this formal little speech, Henry simply looked at her.

  Costanza sat very still. The room was so silent that she could hear Henry’s breathing, as he could hear hers.

  Henry. Henry and Andrew. Henry and Andrew and sometimes Justin. A new world opened up, offered up, to her just like that. A world that had nothing to do with Morton, nothing to do with the past. A chance to escape Fifth Avenue, to start afresh.

  And to see about Henry. To see if what had happened to them in bed, twice now, had legs. To see if the feelings that had stirred in her were to be trusted.

  “I tell you what. How about if I agree to stay for a little while, just until I can get myself … sorted.”

  “I understand this doesn’t say anything about us,” Henry said cautiously.

  “Well, I wouldn’t say that…”

  Smiling again, he took her hand. “I wish I didn’t have to go to work. And that’s not something I ever feel.” He kissed her on the forehead. “What will you do today?”

  “I’ll pack some things. I’ll return a call about a translating job.”

  “We’ll have dinner together?”

  “We’ll have dinner together, yes. I’ll prepare it. I don’t expect you to feed me. Breakfast was enough—is enough.” She paused. “You do know I was kidding about every morning?”

  “I wasn’t.”

  * * *

  Costanza showered in Henry’s shower. She dried off with Henry’s towel. She made Henry’s bed. All this felt oddly natural; alarmingly natural.

  Afterward she picked up the breakfast tray and carried it into the kitchen, where she lowered the dishes into the sink and washed and rinsed them by hand before spreading them out neatly on the counter to dry.

  As she was setting down the last coffee cup, a voice said, “When you wrote in that letter that you’d come find me in New York, this isn’t exactly what I pictured.”

  She turned around. Andrew was standing in the doorway, watching her. He was wearing a pair of boxer shorts and flip-flops and rubbing the sleep from his eyes. Her first impression was that he wasn’t the same young man she had gotten to know in Florence. Or, rather, he wasn’t—and he was. Andrew’s blemished skin had cleared up in the intervening months, and he seemed to have grown into himself, to inhabit his body more fully. But then again she had never seen him shirtless before. Maybe that was all it was, seeing him half-dressed.