by Louis Begley
Forgive me. I have allowed myself to become distracted. Distracted from the memory of the total serenity of that weekend and of my own happiness, but I think that I must make a confession to you, although you have probably guessed what I was going to say. The Franks are like other big families for which everything has gone well. They like fellow Franks better than other people, and expect whoever marries into the clan to adapt. If I moved in that direction, they would have treated me with affection, kids or no kids. But that is not my way; I’m no good at joining groups and rather proud of my misanthropy. Therefore, the Franks have been courteous and kindly, and really quite patient. But that was not enough to satisfy the monster. As for children, the fault is entirely mine. No wonder Lydia lost her nerve, because that’s what I think happened. She became afraid I would be a resentful as well as absent father, and that her love for our children would come between us.
Enough self-flagellation. My happiness and contentment consisted in this: Lydia and I were in the house on the Vineyard and we were there alone. Had I been asked by the most fearsome of judges whether there was anything more I desired, and had I laid my heart bare, as I am doing now, the answer would have been: Nothing. I had all I wanted and all I needed. You are probably wondering about sex: Was I content with it too, did I not miss the ministrations and submissions of Léa? You will not be surprised if I don’t give you an explicit account of Lydia’s and my lovemaking. You might indeed be offended if I undertook to do so. I can tell you though, without hesitation, that when I was in bed with Lydia I never missed what I had done or could be doing with Léa, and that I never asked for anything like it from Lydia. Thoughts of Léa, images of Léa—they were stored somewhere, among many other memories of the same sort. I review such memories occasionally, with varying degrees of interest and pleasure, for instance on the rare occasions when I masturbate. They do not intrude on my day-to-day life, and certainly not when I am in bed with Lydia. I am convinced that I would not have regretted Léa’s disappearance from my life, and would have made no move to see her again, had she not kept after me, had she not come to New York, and had I not been obliged to go to Paris for the filming of my book. A question for you: Was I really “obliged” to go to Paris, wouldn’t old Joe Bain, my schoolmate, let me off the hook? It would have taken but one phone call to him. Ah, yes, you would like to ask what went wrong, because you sense that something did. You are right; just look at the facts. Léa had been consigned, without a conscious decision on my part, to a forgotten, out-of-the-way suburb of my affections. It was not a place I visited. Nevertheless, I went to Paris, although I might have arranged to stay in New York with Lydia. There is possible justification for my behavior, but an explanation can be given. Haven’t I told you that I had come to love Léa? If it wasn’t love according to your or my best definition, wasn’t it at least an infatuation so powerful as to be almost indistinguishable from it?
We did not go out on the boat. Lydia has no real fondness for sailing. Besides, I must admit that Cassandra is not very comfortable even as racing boats go. You have to love her before you can enjoy her. Therefore, I took her out alone, for a short spin outside the harbor, in a good wind, and that was the one moment when I thought spontaneously of Léa. She had told me that she was a good sailor, and I could imagine the fine sight she would be at the wheel. The ocean was, of course, too cold for swimming, even on the bay side. But Lydia and I love walking on the beach, and that is what we did mornings and afternoons, because during those days I made no attempt to work. Lydia asked about Paris; she was surprised I hadn’t gotten around more. My answer, that I had seen the Lalondes, once for dinner with both, once for drinks with Pierre alone, and had to spend more time than I had expected on the telephone with journalists, seemed to satisfy her. I also told her that I had been trying to write Loss, although my heart wasn’t entirely in it because of the way I had come to feel about my work. She repeated over and over the only useful thing you can say to a writer who is in that situation: that my work wasn’t boring (my worst fear as she knew), that my novels had been praised by very intelligent critics, and that, whatever one thought, the judgment of history about novels and literary reputations could not be predicted. All that really counted, she said, was whether I believed I had written honestly and had tried to write as well as I could. Since the answer to that question was yes, she said my duty was to go on writing and trying to do my best. I told her that I would have to spend a fair amount of time in Paris while The Anthillwas in production there, and about Pierre’s offer of the apartment. We agreed that we would try to be together at least once every two weeks. Either she would come to Paris for the weekend or I would go to New York.
The Vineyard people we know fall into two categories: New Englanders I have known since childhood, and our New York friends who happen to have houses there. The former belong to the sort of dowdy good society that amuses Lydia more than it attracts her. I sometimes look them up on the visits I make alone to my house and to Cassandra.As for the other group, on the rare occasions when Lydia or I have said, Let’s invite Jojo or Bubbles to dinner or lunch, the other has invariably asked, Why? Isn’t it enough that we run into them in the city? So we remained blissfully alone.
The Fourth of July weekend found us in East Hampton, at our house on Further Lane, as full-fledged participants in the Frank circus and guest artists in the circuses of various other moguls. As you know, a surfeit of literary figures of all kinds may be found in Southampton and East Hampton, and the villages that lie along Route 27 and to the north between those poles of fashion. Writers with real reputations who still write, wrecks of such writers hollowed out by age, malady, and booze; so-called cult writers whose only readers are members of their special sect and fellow writers likewise in search of a public, editors, agents, journalists with intellectual pretensions—all reducible to a common denominator: sufficient money to own or rent a house out there, with enough left to buy food to supplement what they consume at book parties. At parties given by members of the American senatorial class, such as the Franks or the Sartors, writers (myself included) appear as entertainers or, if you prefer, the twentieth century’s equivalents of Greek slaves. Years of practice have taught me to assume that the host and hostess—and the guests they want to impress by my presence—will treat me as a star among Greek slaves, although the notion that they actually take any pleasure in my company and conversation still makes me giggle. Marriage to Lydia Frank enhanced my status: I became an anomaly, the entertainer who rose to be a provisional member of the Frank clan’s class. My recent prize and the news that Robert Redford would star in the film The Anthill had a similar effect. In short, Lydia and I were a very desirable couple during that season.
Already in June, I knew from the front page of the New York Timesthat fate had saved me from the menace of Léa’s irruption in East Hampton. Jacques Robineau’s Venezuelan friend was indicted for looting accounts he was managing for his firm’s clients. He was out on bail, in seclusion. The Timesdid not say where. A week or so later came the report that the wife and children had returned to Venezuela. About the same time, Léa left a message on my answering machine that she and Robineau were still coming to New York, but, since they couldn’t stay with the jail-bound banker, Robineau was postponing their trip until the second half of July. She would call me on arrival. I am very sensitive to people’s voices. Hearing her say those words made her totally present to me; they rescued her from the oubliette and made me want her. At the same time, they put me in a state of panic. There was the danger of her insisting once again that she must meet Lydia. She would badger me if I did not make it happen. In any event, I would end up sleeping with her. Where and when, I didn’t know, but clearly it could become necessary to lie to Lydia in the evening about what I had done during the day. I loathed the prospect. The only escape I could think of was to tell Léa when I called back that she shouldn’t count on seeing me. Lydia’s plans and mine for that second half of July were uncertain, I told her
, and I didn’t know where I would be. Her answer, recorded the next day, was: I expect you to be in New York, don’t disappoint me.
It was, in fact, certain that we would be in New York, because the project Lydia was directing continued to advance. She wanted to be there to oversee it, and we agreed that she should take no more than two weeks of vacation. In keeping with our usual summer schedule, we drove out to East Hampton on Friday evenings and returned late Sunday night or early Monday morning, depending on Lydia’s work. As for the rest of the week, I doubt that you can imagine the monotony of a writer’s life—obviously I am speaking about a writer like myself who constructs novels out of materials already stocked inside him, as I described it to Léa at the Flore. Unlike most of my American colleagues, I don’t teach creative writing and so don’t have horny students or poisonous faculty squabbles to distract me. It must be quite different for writers who gather material for books on travel, organized crime, lesbian priests, affirmative action, and God knows what other exciting subjects. I am mostly alone. I start work early in the morning and write as long as I can before lunch. Afterward, I return to my typewriter and continue until I feel I have been squeezed dry. You shouldn’t assume that I write during all that time. That is possible only when the work is going well. Otherwise I may be sitting at my table unable to write a coherent sentence until a headache, combining with the sensation of having nothing— nothing whatsoever—in my head, drives me into hiding. In such cases I may go to a museum or an afternoon movie, the latter though very seldom because I am afraid of being taken for one of those men who go alone to the movies mainly to rub their elbow against the woman in the next seat. In principle, I play squash three times a week, even in the summer, but that too is a bore because, having no squash friends, I play with the pro. On the squash days, because I want to get an early start, I walk with Lydia to the hospital and there catch a taxi to my office. It is an office I have had forever, since before Lydia and I were married, consisting of a large dark room in a building on Forty-eighth Street between Fifth and Madison Avenues that will surely be torn down soon to make room for a narrow tower. For the time being it houses law firms, such as the one from which I sublet my room, and a couple of medical doctors with odd specialties. We have a dermatologist and an ophthalmologist. Why they practice in that location is a mystery. In the old days you would have suspected they were secretly doing abortions. A travel agency, a couple of import-export firms, and an accountant complete the list of tenants. My office gives directly onto a corridor straight out of The Maltese Falcon. The door has a frosted-glass panel, though my name is not stenciled on it. Inside my office, but for the addition of a halogen desk lamp and daybed which was Lydia’s birthday present to me, nothing has been changed since I moved in. The daybed replaced an old chesterfield sofa, which had been giving off an increasingly strong smell of mold. There was another change, of course, the most recent, which was Léa’s painting: I hung it centered above the daybed. The law firm from which I sublet has a reception area a few doors down the corridor; I don’t use it, but when I am away, my mail is delivered to the receptionist who decides whether to forward or hold it. It’s a neighborly arrangement: a few times each year I bring the receptionist and secretaries chocolates and such like. My own secretary is not full-time. She comes to my office or to the apartment as often as I need her during the week, to take care of household bills, retype my corrected manuscripts, and type the letters I cannot escape writing. She does the bills and correspondence at the apartment, in a spare bedroom we converted for her use; the manuscripts she works on at her own home.
After work, I walk home. If it’s not raining, I walk through Central Park. Then I read. Lydia stays late at the hospital; it’s rare for her to be home before seven-thirty. Normally, we have dinner at home, unless we have accepted an invitation to a dinner party, which we do reluctantly because Lydia is tired after a day at the hospital. We have dinner late, so that she can have a chance to read something other than scientific journals. Neither of us objects to the other’s reading while we have drinks. Usually, our housekeeper shops for food and washes the salad and the like. I am a good cook with a limited repertory, and most often I prepare the dinner and put it on the table. Poor Lydia has never been much use in the kitchen. I also rinse the dishes and put them in the dishwasher. The pots and pans and the silverware I leave for the housekeeper.
Since July, our housekeeper had been away, visiting her mother in Trinidad. What with the heat and my lack of enthusiasm for shopping on top of cooking and dishwashing, we went out to dinner every night, to one of the three neighborhood bistros we like, including the one I mentioned when I told you about the onset of my literary panic. Occasionally, we met friends there. Most of the time, the same couple; she is a novelist who hasn’t written in a while. We are symmetrical couples: the husband is a thoracic surgeon. I like listening to his tales of sawing and breaking bones as he “goes in.” She hardly ever speaks, but I know that she is the most intelligent woman in New York, Lydia only excepted. All the while I was writing Loss,but the work was going slowly. Each word seemed to weigh a ton.
North’s eyes glittered. He smiled at me, raised his hands as though to ask for attention, and began to sing Cole Porter’s “I get a kick out of you.” I couldn’t help wincing, he was so far off-key. He noticed, stopped right away, and raised his hands again, this time to signal capitulation, and said, yes, not being able to carry a tune has been a lifelong sorrow. It’s so unfair! I know that a great tenor is imprisoned inside me—a Caruso whom malevolent fate deprived of voice at birth. Have you heard Ethel Merman do this number? You shake your head. Too bad, she set a standard not to be equaled, but even so you found my rendition deeply offensive. It doesn’t matter. All I wanted to get across is the sense of amazing and blissful surprise. Merman—one of those ineffably blasé party girls Porter specialized in—is out on a quiet spree, fighting vainly the old ennui, and, Boom!—apparently no longer able to contain himself, North intoned—“suddenly I turn and see your fabulous face.” Ah! How splendid. Then, returning to his normal tone, he told me I really must make it my business to hear the Ethel Merman recording.
The reason I have been carrying on like this, he continued, is the memory, still very strong, of the jolt that got me out of the doldrums, seemed to bring me back to life. Only it wasn’t a face; it was once again Léa’s voice. I was in my office correcting the proof of a book review I had done for the Washington Post.Since I expected a call from the editor, I had set the answering machine on the mode for call screening. The telephone rang; I heard myself say: If you recognize my voice, you have reached the right number. Please leave a message if you think you must. At some point I must have found this greeting funny; I have never bothered to change it. Then Léa’s voice, Coucou, c’est moi. Without thinking, I picked up the receiver. She and Robineau had arrived in New York the previous evening. He was in Washington for the day. She was supposed to go with him, but complained of a bad stomachache so she could stay in the city and see me. Could I come right away to the hotel? The St. Regis. Oh, I didn’t want to resist.
It was a very short walk, too short to clear my head, and before I knew it I was there. I picked up the house phone and asked for Mr. Robineau’s room. Léa gave me the room number and hung up. I found the door on the sixth floor. She wore a blue denim miniskirt and a black tank top. Bare legs. Red sandals with high heels that made her almost as tall as I. We staggered to the nearest piece of upholstered furniture—a loveseat, if you can believe it. Soon she was naked, except for those sandals and the skirt, which was up around her waist. It was one of those hotel rooms dominated by a huge bed. She gestured toward it. But how can we, I said, it’s his bed. Her reply was, You are so silly; I will have it made up fresh. We did as she said. Later, when we had finished, and she was asleep with her head in my lap, I sat up and looked around. Léa’s things, some familiar to me from nights at my hotel or her studio—I had begun to think of them as her permanent mess—were on
every chair and table. I catalogued her combination calendar-and-address book, leather bound, as thick as a small city telephone directory, two hairbrushes, nail polish, nail-polish remover and cotton balls, a pink Lanvin scarf, and a cotton sweater. Intermingled with them were traces of Robineau: a black attaché case from whose presence under the vanity table I concluded he must have another one, perhaps smaller or perhaps even more capacious, that he took to Washington, file folders of different colors stacked neatly on the floor. Each stack was cinched by a canvas belt with a buckle, miniature versions of the striped or madras belts that were in fashion around the time you and I were at school. On the night table beside me I saw a traveling alarm clock in maroon leather I had not seen in Léa’s studio. Probably it was his, the sort of ugly object that companies give to important clients. My God, I thought, what am I doing in this guy’s bed, in his expensive hotel room, fucking the girl he has brought with him to New York so that he can fuck her? I must be insane.
It was a few minutes past one. I got up and washed, dried myself with a hand towel to preserve as much as possible the pristine order of the bathroom, and as I dressed saw myself in the mirror. I looked the way I thought I should look: dissolute, like a man who has been at an orgy. Not too gently, I shook Léa, saying, It’s time for lunch. She didn’t want to get up, and she didn’t want to go out. Instead, she kept repeating, Let’s stay here, why are you all dressed, come back to bed, it’s so nice here, let’s fuck. She yielded, but only after I threatened to leave. After her shower, when she had gotten back into her skirt, top, and sandals—her hair still moist, face brilliantly clear—she asked me for twenty dollars. It was for the chambermaid, to get her to make up the room a second time and put on fresh sheets.