The End of the Book

by Porter Shreve

  “Welcome to the crucible,” he said when they stepped inside.

  They didn’t make it to the windows before they were kissing.

  They met on evenings when Helen wasn’t working and George knew that Margaret had a performance or rehearsal. That one tumble upon his rented bed, which George had hoped would mark the beginning of something, felt like the clocks had wound back to 1895, when he was a wrought-up stripling who hugged the pillow and walked the dusky streets muttering to himself about love and war. How many times had George imagined a room all their own, her silver silhouette, the sweet exhaustion?

  But the next time they met, just a week later, Helen had grown hesitant. She worried aloud that they had made a great mistake, that the circumstances—his trial separation, her loneliness—were all wrong. The questions she had not got around to asking had, in the sober light of morning, come to the surface one by one. She put them to George, and with each answer he buried himself deeper in his deception.

  “No, it’s not too soon for you and me. The time is now,” he said. He and Margaret had come to a mutual impasse, recognized at one and the same time that they had married in foolish haste. The breakup was amicable, a relief for both of them. “The trial is over,” he said. “We’re as good as divorced.”

  And no, it would not affect his job. “I’ve put in too many years, and have built my own little principality.”

  “But you must see your father-in-law every day. It’s not awkward?”

  “He won’t be my father-in-law for long, and I’ve been thinking about other work anyway.”

  “You’d be giving up a lot,” Helen said.

  “The trappings mean little to me.”

  “And what about your father? He’s not still living with Margaret, is he?”

  “He moved out when I did. I found him a snug boardinghouse in Lake View, run by a Russian widow who collects presentable aging bachelors.” George hated to lie to Helen but at the same time took a secret, guilty pride in his ability to spin a tale. It was dangerous how naturally the lies and embellishments came to him.

  Yet he knew the fragility of this web he was spinning. One misstep and he’d catch himself up. And with his wife and Helen walking the same grounds every day, crossing in the halls—who knows, even sitting down for coffee—his undoing seemed all but assured. He wondered if a part of him wanted to lay his own trap. Or perhaps he felt his marriage was a trap, and deception, then exposure, was the only way out. He wanted to return to that first evening when they had stumbled into the Palmer House after too much wine, but apparently Helen wanted to step back even further, to the moment before, when they were still friends from home getting to know each other again. Though they mostly met at the apartment, to talk about their days and share stories, they hadn’t so much as embraced since.

  One evening in early May George returned home to find Margaret at the stereopticon. “What are you doing here?” he asked. “I thought Thursdays were rehearsal nights.”

  “They are.” Margaret slid a card into the viewfinder and lowered her face to peer in. “I quit.”

  “Quit the play?”

  “The play. The clubs. The classes. I’m finished with Hull House.”

  “Finished? Just like that?”

  “I’ll continue to help Ellen with the lending library. She’s been nothing but good to me. And I still admire Jane. But the rest of them. I don’t know—”

  “What happened?” George asked.

  Margaret told him that ever since the bottom dropped out of the economy she’d felt increasingly like an outlander at Hull House. “At the place that welcomes everyone from every shore, I, whose family has been here some three hundred years, am the alien.” George thought of her in her Merry Widow hat that first time they went to the Hull House Theater, recalled the care she took with her habiliment each morning before venturing into the slums. Unlike Jane Addams, who dressed in plain clothes and sensible shoes and despite her fame blended right in, Margaret announced her class with every click of her rhinestone heels. George knew not to say as much, though he’d dropped hints before.

  “What was the turning point?” he asked.

  Margaret removed the stereopticon slide she’d been looking at and set it on the table. She turned to face him. “This morning I attended what I thought would be a meeting of the Arthur Toynbee Club—we were meant to discuss tariff reform—but the gathering turned out to be a most unsubtle ruse to extort a staggering donation from me.”

  “Extort?”

  “Not technically, but you should have seen them put the rush on. There were people in the room from outside the club—fund-raising officers—some I’d never even met. They circled their chairs around me, and this meeting had nothing to do with the country’s economics, only with my own—or, rather, my father’s.”

  She said that Stefan, whom she’d thought was her friend, had done a study of the Lazar family and found it was worth some eight million dollars. George had figured that his father-in-law was a millionaire, but not eight times over, and he paused at the thought of one day coming into all that money. What if he just endured his loveless marriage, carried on a secret life with Helen for years and years? If he could get a few more publications or finish a book, he could quit the agency and tell Lazar he was setting up an office in the Palmer House to become a full-time writer. Surely, Lazar would understand, having taken that route for a time before steering down the titan track. And so, too, would Margaret. What woman of culture would not want to say My husband is a man of letters?

  George was castle-building in this fashion while Margaret leafed absently through the box of stereopticon cards. “You wouldn’t believe what Stefan turned up,” she continued. “He knew the value of our house, the amount in my savings account. He’d made a ‘conservative’ estimate that I could afford up to 5 percent of my net worth, and handed me a folder that included his calculations and a breakdown of how Hull House would spend the money over a ten-year period. Your friend, Helen—”

  At the mention of her name, George awoke from his reverie.

  “Helen’s room and board, plus that of some half-dozen lodgers, would be funded through my generous donation. And the rest would go to the theater. Can you believe the cheek of it?”

  George knew that most residents were subsidized in part or full through a similar passing of the hat, and that Jane Addams had given away her entire fortune and all proceeds from her books. But the coincidence, if it was a coincidence, of Margaret being asked to pay for Helen’s keep made his heart gallop. He wondered if Stefan had his suspicions and was trying to send some kind of message. “I guess I’m not that surprised they would approach you,” George said, in a measured voice.

  This was the last thing Margaret wanted to hear. “So I see you’re on the side of the extortionists. But try putting yourself in my position. I’ve spent two years among these people, volunteering my time and enthusiasm. And now it seems that right along the smiles and courtesies, the friendships I thought I had made, were toward one end alone. I’m starting to think that my position in the theater was given me in the hopes I’d one day open my purse.”

  “That can’t be true,” George interjected. “You’ve done a superlative job.”

  “You’re not there. You’ve never seen the looks I get, from the stagehands and the bit players, the ones who think I should be managing this play,” she said. “And I bet by making me Director of Philanthropy, Stefan and the lot were hoping my first big haul would be from very own accounts.”

  “I think you’re overreacting,” George put in.

  Margaret ignored him and pulled out another slide from the box. She tucked it into the magic lantern. “Take a look,” she said. It was Wedding Feast at Cana. “So what do you think?”

  “Paris?” George asked.

  “We’re not getting any younger.”

  “You’re just upset,” he said. “But I’m sure it’s all a misunderstanding. Sleep on it. You’ll get up tomorrow morning and realize
your friends are still your friends and they only meant well.”

  But a trust had been broken, and Margaret never did return to Hull House, except on occasion to see her friend Ellen Gates Starr, who unsuccessfully urged her to reconsider. With the morning, too, came George’s realization that having his wife at home cut both ways. On the one hand, she wouldn’t be crossing paths with Helen and the treacherous Stefan Wirtz, but on the other she would be keeping an eye on George’s arrivals and departures, asking after him and expecting him for dinner and outings. He urged her to work full-time on her lending library of art reproductions in the hope that this would get her out and about, and though she tried for a time to fill her days with that one activity, so much thinking about art only sent her back to those infernal stereopticon cards, and her grand plans for a tour of Europe.

  George did his best to avoid the subject, though it wasn’t long before he found himself sitting at a table in Harriet Lazar’s parlor with his wife and a gabbling travel agent, who went on about the writings of John Ruskin and how the greatest treasures of Europe were to be found in Italy—and no, three months would not do; it would have to be six, minimum, even to skim the surface of all the continent offered; and why wait until next summer when they could travel in the fall, when the lines weren’t as long, the heat not so oppressive? Harriet hovered like a kestrel and swooped in at the slightest stirring, as when George suggested that perhaps his wife might travel with her mother or a friend, or even alone in the most hospitable places. He could meet her in London or Paris for a month before sailing back. There was so much to do at the office. But Harriet knew what had become of George at the agency, was aware that any functionary could take over his contracts ably for six months, a year, forever. You’re on an extended honeymoon, she said. Might as well enjoy it.

  Seeing no way out, George gave in, and agreed to sail on September 15 from New York to Liverpool on the RMS Cedric. He couldn’t picture himself in Europe, couldn’t imagine that he would actually board that ship and cross the ocean. He had no idea what he would tell Helen, only knew that he would put this off for as long as he could. When Margaret got a bee in her bonnet she was nothing if not persistent. She filled her hours with planning the itinerary, and soon after Decoration Day, the tulips, lilies, and irises abloom in the yard, she enrolled in a drawing class at the Art Institute. She presented George with six leather-bound daybooks, one for each month of the journey. “I’ll do sketches, and you can write about our adventures,” she said. “You always wanted to be a writer. What better way to start?”

  He hadn’t told her about the stories he’d been writing, but now he saw an opportunity. He was under way with his first novel, he explained, and if he could just have these next few months uninterrupted to work on the book he could finish before the trip, perhaps even hand-deliver the manuscript to an editor in New York on the way out to sea. “But I’m going to need a quiet place to write.”

  “What’s wrong with here?” she asked.

  “My father,” he said.

  “He leaves me alone.”

  “He must be afraid of you. No such luck for me, though. He’d be in my ear all day.” And that’s when George proposed that he get a small apartment in the Palmer House, where he once lived, just for these three months. “A writer’s garret,” he said, “where I can stop after work and finish my novel.”

  “Some garret,” Margaret teased.

  But happy and distracted with her planning, she put up no resistance.

  18

  A week and a half after my father died, thirty or so people gathered at his apartment for the cocktail party he had requested. I served Diet Rite and rum to those game enough to try it, and stocked the bar and fridge for everyone else. Since only a half dozen of my father’s asterisked friends had said they would come and I couldn’t stand a sad turnout, I invited a few people from the MFA whom I’d lost touch with, and Dhara brought in some coworkers, plus her father and stepmother from Dayton. It had been two years since I last saw the aunt and uncle I’d lived with after my mother died, but they came, as did my father’s sister and her kids, cousins I’d met long ago at a family reunion, all down from Wisconsin. My half brothers made it, too, though I was disappointed that they didn’t bring their wives and children.

  “Do you know what it costs to fly six people halfway across the country?” Michael asked, unprompted, soon after he and Eric walked in. “Fifteen hundred bucks, minimum. And that doesn’t include lodging.”

  “It’s not my concern,” I said, and left at that. I did feel bad about my brothers’ money troubles, and wondered, not for the first time, about the contents of their envelopes. Had they received an inheritance, too? Or was I the only one?

  I had already deposited my check in a savings account. I’d never held so much money in my hands before, and I wanted it out of my sight—so I wouldn’t lose it, so I didn’t have to think about it, so it could sit somewhere while I tried to make sense of all that had happened. I had also ordered the cremation, and Dhara talked me out of getting the most expensive urn.

  “What would your father have done?” she’d asked when the funeral director stepped out of his office to let us make a decision.

  “He’d have gone with a yard-sale vase or maybe a coffee can,” I said.

  So we bought a pewter urn, which now sat on a console table, along with candles and three photographs I had of my father: in front of the Christmas tree with his sister while his father was fighting in the Pacific Theater, at Michigan in cap and gown at his doctoral graduation, and a head shot the news service at Central Illinois took for an article about his retirement.

  Just enough people had come to make my father’s apartment feel close and intimate. Thundershowers were in the forecast, but it was a pleasant evening thus far, warm and breezy, with an undercurrent of cool air. Everyone took a turn stepping out onto the balcony to watch the sun fade in the windows of the Leo Burnett and the Kemper, Hotel 71, and other buildings across the river. Some said they’d never seen such a view—fifty stories from the street, a full panorama of the Loop—and a few, like Dhara’s father, stayed close to the sliding doors.

  “He’s afraid of heights,” said Lali Patel. Dhara had already complained about her stepmother’s wearing white to a funeral. It’s not really a funeral, I had tried to explain. Still, Dhara said, could she be more vernac? She has no education and she dresses like an aging Gujarati J.Lo. I reminded her that at least her father and stepmother came, made the five-hour trip for a man they’d met only once. It means a lot to me, I said, tight slacks and all.

  Lali was a close talker and if that wasn’t disconcerting enough, she wore blue contact lenses and looked right into your eyes as she shared intimate details. “You should have Jagdish tell you about his prostate,” she said. “This is supposed to be the best cancer. They get in. They get out. And you’re back to normal in weeks. Not true!”

  “Lali—” Jagdish tried to interrupt.

  “You had a cancer scare?” Dhara asked her father in consternation.

  “It was nothing.”

  “You do look skinny,” Dhara observed. It was true. He had lost his potbelly and some of the chubbiness in his cheeks; his gold-framed glasses seemed larger on his face, and the swoosh of gray at his crown had spread across his hair.

  “He wears special underpants now,” Lali said. “And the operation has presented other challenges—”

  Dhara turned to her father. “I wish you had told me.”

  “I called.”

  “You left a message, but you said it wasn’t important. I assumed you were just checking in.”

  Lali spoke for her husband. “He wanted to talk to you. He was asking me for days, ‘Did my beti call? Why won’t she ring me back?’”

  “If I’d known you were in the hospital—”

  “I’m okay. Okay?”

  “I’m sorry,” Dhara said.

  Lali wouldn’t let it go. “Even if he wasn’t sick, you should have called him back
.”

  “Lali, betu—” Jagdish said. “It was a misunderstanding. She was busy at work. She works very hard, my daughter.”

  “And you’re feeling better?” Dhara asked.

  Her father nodded.

  “Don’t look at me,” Lali said, when Dhara did just that. “He tells me nothing.”

  “I’m fine.” Jagdish peered into his empty glass, then turned to me. “Could I trouble you for more sparkling water?”

  When I went to get him some, he followed me inside, leaving his wife and daughter on the balcony. I topped off his glass and told him how much I appreciated his making the trip. “I know it can’t be easy to leave the motel for the weekend. You have a 24/7 job.”

  “Ajit is holding the fort. He’s doing better,” he offered, though I’d made no mention of Dhara’s brother’s past troubles. “He’s seeing someone about his temper, but he doesn’t want to stay and take over the family business. He wants to travel the world. ‘Not in these times,’ I tell him. Then he threatens to join the Navy. Sometimes I wish that Dhara had never left.”

  “She learned a lot growing up at the Dynasty,” I said. “She’s the best businessperson I know.”

  “It’s in her blood,” Jagdish said with a laugh, and went on to say what I’d heard him mention several times over the years, that in the days of the old caste system the Patels were Vaishya, the merchant caste, renowned for their entrepreneurial skills. Dhara had always dismissed her father’s old-school immigrant nostalgia and his claim that she was “born to sell.”

  He told a story about Dhara’s childhood ventures. “Most kids have a lemonade stand, but my beti was not ten years old before she was making a fine profit.” Though her family never had the time or money to go anywhere, she had figured out that those who did travel on the interstates rarely ate well, and preferred not to stop. So she made an arrangement with the best sandwich place in Dayton and with her mother, who was a good cook, and was able to offer three kinds of wraps: American, Italian, and Indian. She called her stand Wrap & Roll, and on summers and weekends she could be seen smiling under the banner she had designed herself—three wraps hugging, waving their flags of origin. Some of the money went to her college fund, but most she put in an envelope marked “Vacation” at the back of the motel office safe.