In Justin’s face: surprise, then confusion followed by curiosity. “How did you…?”
“Well, I am your father, Justin, and I … I did some thinking while we were away this summer and you weren’t with us. I noticed that David has been coming up a lot in conversation. And then, seeing you two together. It was just a feeling.”
Justin nodded. Henry had the impression that his nodding was a way of biding time, of giving himself a moment to reset his thinking, since the conversation didn’t seem to be going the way he’d anticipated.
“David and I are together,” Justin said finally. “We have been since the summer. Since the lake.” He looked at David, then at the others. “Though for the record, I don’t identify as gay. Not yet.”
“For the record,” David said, “I do—in case you need to know that.”
Henry stroked his beard. “You know, Justin—and David—I see lesbian couples and help them to have children through insemination. I see gay male couples who have children through a surrogate. I was one of the first practitioners in New York to address the fertility issues, and needs, of this population. They make up an increasingly significant part of my practice.”
“That’s very interesting, Henry”—David smiled—“but Justin and I aren’t thinking about having kids quite yet.”
“He was just trying to make us comfortable,” Justin said to David. “Weren’t you, Dad?”
Henry nodded. “Yes, Justin, that’s exactly what I was trying to do.”
Justin sat back in his chair. “That was a lot easier than I thought,” he said, as if to the whole table. “Any follow-up questions?”
There was a moment of silence. Then Andrew raised his hand.
“Yes … Baby B,” Justin said, in the mock tone of a teacher calling on a student.
“Do you think anyone really cares who you’re sleeping with?”
The question seemed to sober Justin up, a little. “Actually, yes.”
“Well, I’m not one of them. What matters to me is what kind of a brother you are, and for a while now—just for the record—you’ve been a selfish and pretty shitty one.”
* * *
Andrew walked in squares. That was what you did in Manhattan; you obeyed the geometry. You allowed its orderly grid to curb a ranging or troubled mind. Though Andrew wasn’t troubled so much as rattled. Once again, yet again, the focus had been all on his big brother. He was the one applying for school. He had spent the summer father-sitting Henry. He was the son with a broken, or fragmented, or anyway aching, heart. He would have appreciated a drop of his family’s attention to have been focused on him; instead, as usual, Justin was the magnet. Justin and his food likes and dislikes; Justin and his revelations; Justin and that dick he’d brought home.
After a few minutes Andrew broke free of the squares and walked west. He was conditioned never to walk into Central Park at night, certainly never alone, but tonight he didn’t give a damn. He walked forward, and at a healthy pace. The deeper he went into the park, the fewer people he saw and the less traffic he heard. Instead there were footsteps, there was rustling in the shrubbery. A whoosh overhead, followed by a handful of leaves fluttering down out of the sky, told him that a bird was on the move. On the path ahead of him an older mustached man was leaning against a tree, smoking. He was wearing a tweed hat and wire-rimmed eyeglasses and his hand was buried in his pocket, buried and rooting around. Only it wasn’t in his pocket, Andrew realized as he came closer. The man’s hand was thrust into his pants, which were halfway unzipped. He was playing with himself while smoking, which was a little dexterous and a lot creepy, since his eyes clung to, it seemed, Andrew’s every step.
Andrew felt sweat lacquering his forehead. He sped up and made his way to the reservoir. In all the years he had jogged around the reservoir, he had never run at night. It didn’t matter that he was bundled up or wearing jeans. He increased his speed again, fell in with the few intrepid joggers who were out late, and began circling the inky water counterclockwise.
As he circled around the north side of the reservoir, it dawned on Andrew that he might not have headed into the park entirely by accident. He had likely sought out the park because it would lead him to the West Side, and on the West Side, just now swinging into view, was the El Dorado, the building where Charlotte lived.
He supposed it would be better if he didn’t turn up sweaty. It was strange enough that he was thinking of appearing there in the first place. So he slowed down and cooled off before heading toward the building’s heavy bronze-and-glass doors.
Carlos, the doorman on duty behind the desk, recognized Andrew and greeted him with a genial smile that hardened into some kind of official doorman pleasantry after he phoned upstairs. “She said she’ll be down in a few minutes.”
“Down?”
“She asked you to wait in the north lobby.”
Carlos pointed the house phone leftward before replacing it in its cradle.
Andrew hesitated for a moment, then headed for the north lobby. On his way he glanced at the mural that represented the legend of El Dorado. Depicted in—what else?—gold paint, a party of explorers were crossing a bridge into the golden land, a place of abundant wealth and (in some tellings—he and Charlotte had read up about them one evening) true love and happiness as well.
He fell into a rust-colored armchair. Its fabric felt as unpleasant as it looked. Andrew fought the impulse to run out the door, back into the park, around the Reservoir, and home.
“This is a surprise.” The voice came from over his shoulder.
He turned around, then stood up awkwardly. “I wanted to see you before you left for school. I guess I wanted to say goodbye.”
“Well, you’re seeing me.”
He was seeing her, yes. He was seeing how different she looked. The long locks that Charlotte used to wrap around her index finger, or chew on when she was reading, were gone. A close, severe auburn frame now set off her face. It was still her face, still wide and freckled, yet a hardness had crept into it. Or had been put into it. For his benefit, or distress.
Charlotte dropped into the companion chair to the one he had just stood up out of.
He sat back down. “If we had our books, it would be just like upstairs.”
“I’m not reading so much these days.”
It was not an easy conversation to get going.
“You seem different.”
“I just chopped off my hair.” She checked him out. “You’re the one who seems different. More—grown-up. More manly.”
“So why aren’t you reading?”
“I’m taking a break from Literature. I’m thinking of doing something wild and crazy at college.”
“Like what?”
“Studying pre-law.”
“I didn’t think you could study pre-law.”
“Well, whatever it is you need to know to go to law school.”
“That doesn’t sound like you.”
“I’m breaking free.”
“Breaking free means becoming a lawyer?”
“Breaking free means doing something, anything, different from my parents.”
Andrew gave her a look in which puzzlement competed with upset. “What happened to you this summer?”
“To me? Nothing.”
He nodded skeptically.
“My sister almost OD’d. Did you know that?”
“Emily does drugs?”
“She’s in a place in Minnesota now, undoing them.” Charlotte paused. “I told you that you romanticized my family, Andrew. You thought it was perfect just because my parents were together and no one bothered you when you came over.”
Andrew silently disagreed. Then: “Well, Justin says he’s gay.”
“So?”
“And my father has a girlfriend. Everything’s falling apart. Everything and everyone.”
“Oh, don’t be so dramatic. Justin’s not falling apart just because he says he’s gay. Emily’s being put back together in Minnesota. A
girlfriend is exactly what your father needs—that’s what you always said. And you and I are not falling apart.”
“Speak for yourself.”
She picked a piece of lint off the armchair. “You’re here, I’m going to guess, because you didn’t like the way we ended things.”
“I’m here because I didn’t like the way you ended things.”
“The thing is, Andrew, you just…” She flicked the lint away. “You just liked me too much.”
“Sure I did.”
“I’m serious. You did. And I didn’t want to be liked so much.”
“That’s sick. No. That’s sad.”
“It is what it is.” Then: “I’ve discovered that I like nastier boys.”
“That is sick.”
“All right, guys who hold back more.”
He crossed his arms across his chest. “Why?”
“You really want to know?”
“Sure I do,” he said, even though he wasn’t.
“They turn me on.”
Nasty guys turned Charlotte on? Really? How was it possible to be so close to someone, then discover she wasn’t the person you thought she was? “You’re not the girl I used to like so much.”
“See, everything worked out okay then.”
Andrew sat back and studied her face. It was as though the front door to a house had been closed while he stood on the porch, trying to peer in. He thought back to what Costanza had said to him in Florence, when he told her about Charlotte. “Are you sure you weren’t afraid?”
“Of what?”
“The—feeling. Between us. There was a lot of feeling there, for a while.”
“You’re going to be a psychologist now like your mother?”
He held her gaze. “I don’t think so.”
* * *
Andrew took a taxi home. The apartment was dark and quiet. In the kitchen, replacing the aroma of cooking, a trace scent of soap and scouring powder lingered in the air the way it did on the days after Hilda came. It was as though the dinner had never happened.
At the end of the hallway a band of light spilled out from under his father’s door. Justin’s room was dark. Andrew went into his own room, took one look at its chaos, and for a moment contemplated putting everything in order. But he was so tired his limbs felt as if they were made of iron.
He took off his pants, dropped onto his bed, and slept solidly for several hours. Then at about one in the morning his eyes sprang open. He lay awake with a painfully full bladder, paralyzed. It took a while before he could hoist himself up. Finally he went into the bathroom he shared with Justin and peed.
Back in the hall, he stopped to listen. He detected faint sounds from behind both his father’s and his brother’s doors. He stepped closer to his brother’s. What he heard was unmistakable. It was the sound of two people giving each other pleasure. Whether the intermittent muffled moans came from David or Justin or both, he couldn’t be sure. It was a song; their song.
At his father’s door he heard a murmur of conversation, back and forth. The last conversation he remembered hearing from behind that door was agitated, fiery; it came out in short spurts, like gunshot. This was different, low in tone, tender. It too was a song. Everyone in the house was singing except for Andrew.
* * *
Each morning for the remainder of the week, Henry scrambled to put together a breakfast tray for Costanza, as he’d promised. He wasn’t satisfied with any of them until the weekend rolled around, when on Saturday morning, before she was awake, he had the chance to slip out for provisions. He came home and set up a tray as though he were getting ready for surgery. He opened and seeded a cantaloupe and sliced off three perfect half-moons of fruit, then topped them with a scattering of raspberries. He toasted bread and in a separate dish arranged a slice of butter and a dollop of gleaming apricot jam. He placed a mug of coffee and a pitcher of warmed milk in the upper right-hand corner and next to it a glass of sparkling water—Costanza had mentioned that she liked the way, in Naples, they always gave you a glass of sparkling water before you drank coffee.
As he walked down the hall with his carefully appointed tray, Henry remembered a scene from a foreign movie he and Judith had seen together. He no longer recalled its name, but he could still clearly see the long shot that followed a young woman who was nervous and, as Henry recalled it, in love as she carried a tray full of champagne glasses through an ornate large apartment, on her way to meet her lover. Her hands were trembling, and the trembling caused the wineglasses on the tray to touch each other and make a tinkling, chattering sound. The sound both underlined her agitation and was strangely piercing and beautiful.
As Henry carried his tray down the long hall to his bedroom, nothing on it chattered. He didn’t splash a single drop of coffee or water or milk. Yet as he walked, he felt an approximation of what that young woman appeared to be feeling in the movie. He was excited to be greeting Costanza for the first time that day; he felt the excitement in his chest, his steady hands. It was the first time that they were going to spend an entire day together. The fact that it was a Saturday was even more delicious. Henry loved Saturdays. He had loved them ever since he had wrested them back from the strict Sabbath restrictions of his childhood. He might do anything and everything with a Saturday … and this Saturday, well, this was a downright magical Saturday. This Saturday the fates, whoever they were, had delivered the spectacular Costanza Ansaldo into his life. She was sitting up and waiting for her coffee in his bed; waiting, he hoped, to see what they might do together, with their Saturday.
Henry had left the door ajar earlier, so that he might push it open with his foot when he arrived with the tray. He did this now, then stepped into the room. The bedcovers were pulled back, the bed empty. For a moment Henry thought Costanza had vanished. Not just from his bed but from his life. Just like that, as mysteriously as she had first appeared in it.
But she had only gone into the bathroom to brush her teeth. He heard the water running, he heard her spitting. What a lovely sound spitting could be, under the right circumstances.
He set the tray down on the bed. The bed was saturated with a scent that came toward him strongly. It was stronger even than the coffee, the toast, and the fruit combined, a sweet floral scent, perfume and soap undercut by a whiff of sweat. The scent of a woman; the scent of this woman, and in the bed, and room, where the only body he had heard or smelled in the past six years had been his own.
“You’ve really outdone yourself this morning, Henry.” Costanza, returning from the bathroom, spoke words that, because of where Henry’s attention had turned, seemed to have come from far away.
“Well, I had the time…”
“I’ve always been fond of Saturdays.”
“Me too.” Henry paused. “I probably should mention that my father is coming in tonight. The visit was scheduled a long time ago, so that he could see Justin before he goes back to school. I’d like you to meet him, of course, but there’s no obligation for you to be here.”
“I would love to meet your father, Henry. I’d be happy to cook for him.”
“I appreciate the offer, but no one ever cooks for Leopold, because he keeps strictly kosher, which means that we either go to the one French bistro on the Upper East Side that he somehow believes, without a shred of evidence, follows obscure four-thousand-year-old dietary laws to the letter, or else we send out for deli. Given that I can’t be sure when the boys will turn up and that my father is very particular, as well, about the hour at which he sits down to eat, which is always seven sharp, the safest bet is deli, trust me.”
“I happen to love pastrami.”
Henry smiled. “Those words seem downright exotic coming out of your mouth.”
“And pickles. Sour pickles.”
He smiled. “It’s settled then. That leaves us ten unstructured, unspoken-for hours. What shall we do?”
“Actually, I have an idea…”
* * *
The rugs were arran
ged in separate waist-high stacks. There must have been fifty different islands of pattern and color colonizing a vast loft space in a former manufacturing building in the Flatiron District. There were old rugs and new rugs, subtle rugs and garish rugs, rugs with thick pile and others with a thin flat weave. Costanza was so evidently in her element, waiting with such patience as the rug handlers peeled back example after example for them to review, that Henry smiled in easy agreement. Whatever she liked, he liked. It was that simple because it was true.
She had taken him by surprise, at first and just a little. Over coffee she had asked him, sensitively, if he was happy with the way “things” were in his house. For a moment he thought she intended the state of his family. But that was not what she was asking about; she was asking about the condition of the apartment. He knew what she meant. The place looked like Judith had walked out with half the stuff six days instead of six years earlier. The upholstery aside, Henry’s apartment was shabby and uninviting. She didn’t use these words; she didn’t need to.
“What do you think,” she’d said, “if we spend some time today just gathering ideas for a little refurbishment? It’s something I like to do, fix places up.”
Henry thought it was an auspicious sign that Costanza looked at the apartment as a place to refurbish. She couldn’t mean to be leaving so quickly, he reasoned, if she was concerned about the lack of rugs and lamps. “Why just gather ideas?” he had said. “Let’s get whatever you think it needs.”
As he stood there amid the stacks of rugs, Henry felt a stab of nostalgia for the days when he and Judith were setting up their household together and used to spend a Saturday doing just this sort of thing. At the same time he was grateful to be with Costanza, in this place, on this day. He was grateful to be parting with several thousand dollars so that he might buy the rugs she chose. And he was grateful that, for the first time in six years, he would be able to walk around his apartment in winter in bare feet.
Costanza was a much more decisive shopper than Judith had been. In under an hour she had narrowed the choices down to four possibilities for the living room and two for the library. She had assessed the colors and patterns on the sofa and chairs, and she had taken into account the wall color, even as she hinted that it might be time to repaint.
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