by Louis Begley
Of course, Henry could count on George and Edie to invite him to their little dinners. They invariably did, George explained to me, because Edie was so fond of him, fully as much as he. It was she, in fact, who had first thought of asking him to be an usher at their wedding. Otherwise, he wouldn’t push her to have him over, that sort of thing being really better left to women, particularly if someone is as hard to place as Henry.
I expressed some surprise that he didn’t think Henry an easy fit.
It’s a bunch of factors, he said. Edie likes the table to be balanced, which is fair enough, and Henry never seems able to bring a date. I don’t understand it. I can’t believe that he doesn’t know any girls, or that he’s ashamed to show us the ones he’s seeing. We’ve tried to fix him up with Edie’s cousin Mary and a couple of the girls Edie went to school with, including the Adams girl who was in the wedding, but it didn’t work. We were really counting on Mary. She’s always been a great reader, so they should have hit it off. He took her out once or twice after we placed them next to each other at dinner, but that was all. Edie suspects he came on too strong too soon. I don’t believe he even called those other girls.
I asked how Henry got along at the office, and why, in a firm as large as Wiggins & O’Reilly, there wasn’t some sort of social life for him to plunge into.
One thing you don’t need to worry about is how Henry’s doing at the firm, George answered very seriously. Mr. Allen uses him all the time. That alone means a lot because he is a real taskmaster. And he’s very powerful. Henry does work for Jim Hershey too. That is, when Hershey happens to be around. He travels all the time for his international clients. People say that in his wily way Hershey keeps an eye on Henry, and he’s very powerful too. But this is all outside of my little department so I’m only repeating what I’ve heard.
George was in trusts and estates, while Henry did fancy corporate work. The two worlds hardly met. Nonetheless, I renewed my question: Even if all this is true, why should Henry be lonely after work?
That’s a different question, George said. We don’t have much organized social life at Wiggins, no monthly cocktail parties the way they do it at other firms. All we have is one dinner for all lawyers in the winter and one in June. People organize their own lives. Partners hardly ever invite associates. I’m sure that the Allens have him to dinner when they need an extra man, he’s practically Mr. Allen’s slave. Perhaps Hershey takes him to dinner at his club. Mrs. Hershey had polio after they were married, and she’s in a wheelchair. I don’t think they ever entertain at home. As for associates, I don’t know that he’s all that close to anyone. Maybe that’s because he’s just too busy or maybe the other two guys we hired from his law school class, Forrester and Lovett, and he have never been especially friendly. To be honest, I never knew who his friends were. I only happen to know those two fellows because we were at school together.
As I pondered this, I recalled George’s attempt to get Henry into his law school eating club, an embarrassing initiative for George that miscarried.
What happens usually at the firm, George explained, is that unmarried associates from the same class, or in the same small group like trusts and estates, hang out together, have parties at their apartments, and so on. Some are good cooks. They have roommates, which makes entertaining easier. I don’t know why Henry doesn’t at least have a roommate. His apartment’s all right. He had us to drinks soon after he moved in, with Margot of all people. That could have been hairy, but I think she and I both handled it well. I’m probably talking through my hat, but I’ve heard it said that Henry was brought in because Jim Hershey went to the hiring partner and said hire him. Why he’d do that, I don’t know, but the rumor doesn’t do Henry any good. The fact is that I don’t even remember his being interviewed. I know Edie asked her old man to arrange it, but he said he’d tried and found out there was nothing he could do. If Henry had been interviewed, the guy in charge of his schedule would ask whether he had friends among associates at the firm and take him around to visit them. Wouldn’t I have been one of them? So there might be something to the theory that he came in over the transom. That’s in addition to what you and I know, which is that even with all his brains and energy and law review he isn’t exactly the sort of fellow you think of as Wiggins & O’Reilly material.
I knew that. I also knew—and perhaps George as well—the larger history of Henry’s job search, which was hardly typical of someone who graduated close to the top of his law school class. The summer between his first and second years was spent winding up his father’s affairs, as he had predicted the evening we went to Margot’s apartment. Any free time he had he spent with Margot. But it was the following summer that was crucial. Henry applied to five or six of the leading New York firms, basing his views of excellence on scuttlebutt and comments posted at the law review. That meant that he was going against the opinion shared by every Jew he knew at the law school, including his classmates on the review, that these were the firms that didn’t take Jews except in the rarest cases, usually involving sons of the highest German Jewish bourgeoisie. But even these special Jews, once hired, were denied partnership, with one known exception. That was the case of Augustus Stern, an Albright & Kinsolving partner, brilliant and universally known as the least Jewish of Jews, who was the cousin by marriage of the family that owned the grandest of the Jewish investment banks and grew up, as Mr. Bowditch liked to put it, to be the master of hounds at one of the South Jersey hunts. Henry insisted that with a part of his brain he knew that all this was true. But something in him rebelled against worldly wisdom: This is a free country, he said to himself, I won’t be like those fatalistic American primitives in basic training at Fort Dix with their motto: “Fuck me, I’ll never smile again.” You, George, Archie, and Margot, you’ve all sold me on the American dream, he told me at Henri IV, where I had taken him to lunch in the fall of his third year at the law school. I was in Cambridge, visiting Tom Peabody.
I remarked that I wouldn’t have expected to find Margot on that list.
What do you mean, he answered, she let me through the door I most wanted to enter!
I asked him to go on with his saga.
Oddly enough, he said, of the five firms that had interviewed him in New York only one wanted to hire him, the one he liked least, full of Irishmen dressed up like lawyers, probably all firemen or policemen in real life. They must have made a mistake; mixed him up with O’Boyle or Sweeney. Anyway, he’d be damned if he was going to accept their offer. Not when there were Jewish firms in New York full of partners and associates with better academic records than anyone in the firms he had set his heart on, any one of which would be thrilled to have him. But the heart has its reasons: he thought that if he took that route he would be diminished in our eyes. What would I, Archie, George, or Margot think if he, a free spirit, with zero interest in being Jewish, bowed his head and moved into the ghetto? Mr. Hornung came to the rescue and rendered the question moot by inviting him to spend the summer at the bank as his assistant. He even made a trip to Boston to put this proposition to me personally, Henry said, although his bank doesn’t recruit lawyers and he certainly doesn’t travel to recruit a glorified office boy. Just picking up the telephone would have sealed the deal.
Both the proposal and Mr. Hornung’s interest in his career surprised Henry; a third surprise was that he hadn’t heard a word about it from Margot. She had enrolled at the École du Louvre and was living in Paris, and her father hadn’t told her. When Henry got over the shock, he concluded he must have found favor with this powerful rich man who had so terrified him and almost certainly did not know anything of the nature of his relations with Margot. Grasping at the golden straw, he took the job. At the end of the summer came another surprise: Mr. Hornung took him to lunch at La Côte Basque and advised him to get his law degree, take a long vacation, and then return to the bank. He assured Henry that he had a far better head for business than he might think and would be making the mistake of
his life if he didn’t put it to work. Henry thanked him with all the warmth he dared show. Then he explained that, contrary to his expectations, it had turned out that he liked the law and was able to do well at law school. He was determined to give practice a try. Mr. Hornung nodded and said he was disappointed. Margot would probably be disappointed as well—it was the first time he had mentioned her to Henry. But in his own case, disappointed or not, he wouldn’t be discouraged; the offer would remain open. Unless, he added, he sold the bank. Henry permitted himself to ask what would happen to his prospects in such an event. Mr. Hornung chuckled and said that solutions might be found.
I too found this denouement startling. What will you do now? I asked, remembering from George’s case that there soon would be another round of recruiting for permanent positions in law firms.
Actually, I have my eye on two Supreme Court clerkships, he said, with Frankfurter or Harlan. The trouble is that they don’t take clerks straight out of law school. You have to clerk on a court of appeals first, and very few court of appeals judges interest me. Really there is only one, Henry Friendly in New York. If that doesn’t work out, I guess I’ll apply to the same five law firms. Just to see whether the Irish still want me.
Our lunch had taken more time than I had expected. I was to have dinner with Tom Peabody, which meant dinner on the early side, and hoped to get some work done in the remaining hours of the afternoon. I called for the check, and while we waited for it Henry asked whether I would be in New York at Christmastime. I told him that probably I would be away, skiing, but whether or not I was there he was welcome to use my apartment. That was what he had hoped to hear. The house on Dorchester Road had been sold—not that he would have wanted to stay there anyway—and Margot had given up her apartment.
As it happened, I postponed my ski vacation in order to accompany my mother and Greg Richardson to the Pittsfield Town Hall for the civil marriage ceremony that took place, inconveniently, two days after Christmas. Spending Christmas Eve and Christmas Day with them was more than I thought my nerves would bear. The Standishes took me in, and, as soon as I had given my mother away and sat through a lunch at the club—Greg being now a full member—at which there were also no fewer than three Riggs patients, their clinical status as uncertain as Greg’s, I left for New York and the quiet of my apartment. Feeling quite distraught, I was afraid that I would not be glad to see Henry. I was wrong. He understood what I meant when I told him that I wasn’t at the top of my form and stayed clear during the day.
His near-term future seemed decided, he told me at dinner my first night back: he would take that vacation Mr. Hornung had suggested, perhaps with Margot, if her own situation became less puzzling. Then he’d go to work as an associate at George’s firm, Wiggins & O’Reilly.
I said that congratulations were clearly in order. It was a surprise to everyone, he told me, especially George. Archie—he had then four years to live—had been very funny about it. What next? he said. Jews in the DAR? George told me in confidence, Henry continued, that knowing how anxious I had been about the job situation, Edie had asked her father to approach Nick Allen, who pretty much runs Wiggins, but her father said that could only backfire, because they’ve made a shibboleth of not letting even the biggest clients interfere with hiring and partnership decisions. Edie thought that her father had been absolutely straight with her and would have made the call if he had thought it could help. According to her, he remembered me from the wedding and had said nothing that indicated that he knew that I’m a Jew. So that couldn’t have been the reason.
And Margot, I asked, what does she think?
That’s really quite unexpected. She told me in November that I was a fool not to go to one of the Jewish firms, where they would welcome me with open arms and I would have a normal life. I said I wouldn’t. So of course I called her as soon as I heard from Wiggins & O’Reilly.
What an unusual girl, I said.
She is strange, he agreed, and very intelligent. But there I think she was wrong.
He was more confused about her than ever and no less convinced that they were destined to be together. At the same time, although he understood her insistence on sexual freedom, he couldn’t imagine accepting it if they were to marry, not that he thought she would marry him. Or the strange game she was playing with him. For instance, in November, when he came to New York to see her, he got a room at the Waldorf so that they could be together.
The Waldorf? I interrupted again.
I see that you remember Madeleine’s visit, he replied, I do too. I didn’t decide to go there on account of that memory. It was just that I thought that if Madeleine picked that hotel it had to be all right. I know nothing about New York hotels.
Am I to think that you and Margot do it now? I asked.
He shook his head and said, No, not exactly. In November, she would get in bed with me. It was all right if I was naked, and all that I wanted to do was all right except the thing itself. She said it was again a matter of purity and coherence. I grew faint when I heard this and asked whether Etienne had come back. That wasn’t it, she told me, although she had dinner with him occasionally in Paris. He’s more or less getting married to a French heiress. No, now it’s someone else she’s met in Europe. An American lawyer. Apparently he’s in Europe all the time and tells fascinating stories about his cases. I wonder whether he is a spy.
So that’s how she has become so knowledgeable about lawyers, I said. And how about the clerkships?
He let my crack go and replied that he would go to Wiggins only if the clerkship with Judge Friendly didn’t come through. He wouldn’t know that until the spring. If he had to bet, he added, he would give odds against himself. He was silent for a moment and then said, You know, I am beginning to have second thoughts about the Jews. Perhaps I should call one of those firms and say here I am, will you take me, and, if they say yes, let Wiggins know what they can do with their racial purity. Don’t you think I’m nuts—worse, plain wrong—to go where I’m not wanted?
I pointed out the fallacy: if they hadn’t wanted him at Wiggins, he wouldn’t have been asked to work there.
He nodded and said that was logical.
Tom Peabody arrived the next day. He was spending the reading period at my place, justifying his absence from Cambridge to me and perhaps his conscience by the availability at the Forty-second Street Library of manuscripts he wanted to consult. Henry cut short his stay. He had remained on good terms with Tom, but I suppose he thought three might be a crowd.
XXVI
SLEEPLESSNESS, fatigue, and heartbreaking sadness—a state of being all too familiar—once more descended on me like a lead cloak as we won and lost in the valley of Ia Drang and our B-52s went into action to support the First Cavalry on the ground. I did not attempt to flatter myself by thinking that my sickness and those events were connected; I did not yet understand that the country was lurching into madness. Dr. Kalman changed my sleeping pill prescription and suggested adding one of the new antidepressants for which claims were made, paradoxically in my opinion, that it also helped with sleep and anxiety. I refused to take it on the grounds that my work depended on my being myself, such as I was with all my sorrows, not only when I sat down at my desk but also when I puttered about without any apparent purpose. Dr. Kalman raised his eyebrows and said it seemed to him that my first objective should be to feel better. I suggested that he didn’t know what he was talking about. On that footing, we continued our explorations. They did no good. Kalman and I were stuck, unable to progress or find an exit.
Meanwhile, my career was perking along. My third novel, which, unlike the second, I wrote in a sustained élan of creativity, was published. The publishing house called me on the promise I had made to be available for a book tour and interviews. The general view in the house was that the sales of my second novel would have been less anemic if I had been willing to cooperate. Kalman once again proposed the antidepressant. This time I listened to him and muddled throu
gh readings and book signings in an interminable series of cities I hoped never to revisit. When I returned to New York, however, the sessions with Dr. Kalman seemed no better than before. I screwed up my courage and asked whether he could recommend someone in Paris, if I went to live there. Not permanently; I had no intention of becoming an expatriate.