Beginner's Greek

by James Collins

  Dick took a step toward the foyer, and Julia walked with him.

  “I’ll get my bag,” Julia said.

  “Please, allow me,” said Dick, with sneering chivalrousness.

  “All right. Thank you,” Julia said. “It’s in my dressing room.”

  Julia took her coat from the closet. She put it on and buttoned it like an automaton. Dick returned, opened the front door, and placed the bag by the elevator, and Julia went to stand by it.

  “Good-bye,” Dick said.

  “Good-bye.”

  Dick closed the door. Julia pushed the elevator button. One of the odd things about living in an apartment was that you could walk out of someone’s life but still have to wait for the elevator.

  When Julia and Anna came to the apartment the next day, they found a portly middle-aged man with a red rash on his hands waiting for them. He was somehow associated with the law firm that Dick had already retained. The man politely explained that he was there to provide guidance to Mrs. Montague as to which items she could legitimately remove from the apartment, such as clothing, personal photographs, and memorabilia, and which might be the subject of a dispute and so should remain. He would also make an inventory of everything she was taking and would ask her, if she would be so kind, to sign it.

  As she was packing, Julia discovered that her jewelry was gone. With all the other things on her mind, she had not given any thought to it. Nor had it occurred to her that Dick might want to go through her bag before she left. How foolish of her. A woman of the world. A reader of nineteenth-century French novels!

  In due course, everyone knew the state of affairs. Julia’s mother did not hide her disdain. She had not approved of Julia’s marriage, and now Julia had gone and acted like an utter fool. Julia’s father was jolly. “So, by hook or by crook, I got me a grandchild,” he said. He told Julia that he’d never really liked Dick anyway. As for how the pregnancy had come about, he said, “Well, Puss, if you want this guy’s kid, he must have been okay.” He hadn’t called her Puss in decades.

  Julia told each of Dick’s children. With great intensity, Charlotte assured her that their relationship would remain the same, whatever occurred between Julia and Charlotte’s father. She wanted Julia to know that if she needed to talk to anyone she should call on her anytime, and she wanted to have lunch. Deirdre cried. David was sweet. “You know how when a couple divorces,” he said, “the children always think that it’s their fault? Well, that wasn’t true in my case: when my parents got divorced, I thought it was your fault. Since I couldn’t have cared less about either my mother or father, though, not very much anger went along with the blame. Then it got slightly more complicated after I got to know you. I started liking you a whole lot more than I did either of them. Okay! I’ll admit it! There was maybe a little bit of a crush, starting when I was about fourteen and lasting until like, oh, say, now.” He laughed and harrumphed. “Anyway, I always really did like you a lot, Julia. So I’m going to miss you.”

  After Dick, the person whose reaction Julia most feared was Mme. Gorotiaga. Julia wondered if she would be horrified, scream maledictions, and leave with her husband immediately. But Mme. Gorotiaga wasn’t like that at all. When Julia explained what had happened, she had a look of concern, but all she asked was whether Julia was drinking beer, and when the answer was negative, she tut-tutted, saying, “This is no good.” From that point on, Mme. Gorotiaga took complete command of Julia’s diet and daily schedule. When Julia protested that the doctor had said one thing or another, Mme. Gorotiaga would ask, Has the doctor had any babies? Julia would reply, Well, in fact, she’s a woman and she has. At which point Mme. Gorotiaga would grunt dismissively. Julia also had a good comeback when Mme. Gorotiaga insisted that she was being too active. “I suppose you’re right. Didn’t you say that when you were having your babies, you would lie on a couch all day long?” “Lie on a couch all day long!” Mme. Gorotiaga said indignantly. “Lie on a couch! No, madame! I was doing the cooking and washing and watching the other children, and I would tend the garden —” That’s when she realized that Julia, who looked on smugly, had tricked her. “Bah, I was different from you, you’re so skinny.” But Julia had made her point. They would also fight about beer (absolutely necessary for a healthy baby, in Mme. Gorotiaga’s view) and wine, both of which Julia refused to drink. What did she think women having babies had been drinking for thousands of years, Mme. Gorotiaga asked, Coca-Cola? Julia did appreciate one policy that Mme. Gorotiaga adhered to strictly. She always brought Julia her breakfast in bed. The person who suffered in all this was M. Gorotiaga. Mme. Gorotiaga, who was twice his size, continually berated him for something he had failed to do, inevitably something that the baby’s entire life and happiness depended on — fixing a drafty door, laying in an adequate supply of potatoes. When Mme. Gorotiaga turned her attention to Julia after one of her tirades, Julia was always amazed at her instant transformation from harridan to kindly grandmother.

  Julia was in her favorite place in the world. She was being cosseted. Her little boy was growing within her. It was all so wonderful. The present, in other words, in and of itself, wasn’t so bad. But it wouldn’t last, would it? If the past was pushing her inexorably forward, the future sometimes looked like a cliff toward which she was inexorably headed.

  Having a baby would be the first thing that Julia had ever done that she could not get out of. This was terrifying. No matter what happened, even if she left the boy on someone’s doorstep, she would still be his mother; even if he left home at eighteen and decided never to communicate with her again, she would still be his mother. She would be his mother for the rest of her life, there was no way around it. What commitment had she ever made that even came close in its importance and permanence? Marrying Dick? Ha! She had signed leases on apartments that were more binding than her marriage to Dick had been. With a child, she would have to give of herself over a long period in a way that she never had, and she would have to give consistently every day, even every hour, from the beginning, in a way that she never had. Her life was about to change forever in the most profound and the most trivial ways, and there was no way out. Was she ready, could she change, would she become bored, would she repeat all her own parents’ mistakes, would the boy wish he had never been born and would he be right? She didn’t know.

  Sometimes, trying to find evidence for optimism, she would think about the families she had known throughout her life, but this was exactly the wrong thing to do, for the results were horrifying. So many children hated their parents and vice versa. There was so much strife and unhappiness and disappointment. In fact, if people really looked at the miserable families around them and thought about it, no one would start a family of their own. The odds looked terrible. Why should she be exempt from them? She thought about Anna and her son, Zach, who was now sixteen. To some extent, this was encouraging: as a little boy Zach had been deeply in love with his mother and even now they had an extremely close and intense relationship that seemed enviable. But it was almost too intense, and one reason for their intimacy was that Zach acted more as the parent and Anna as the child, which couldn’t be good. Meanwhile, Anna the free spirit had never worried about anything — getting Zach to school on time, his friends — which was probably good in some areas but bordered on neglectful in others. Oh, how Julia would worry, she imagined. She would worry about all the physical and emotional injury that her child might suffer at life’s hands; she imagined that she would have her heart in her throat every minute for the next thirty-five years, or longer. Knowing what awaited their children, how could parents endure watching them go through life in all their ignorance and innocence? It was like being a member of the audience who knows the hero is about to walk right into a trap and living in that state for years: wouldn’t the tension kill you?

  When Julia managed to turn off her brain and simply ride her emotions, she felt only pure love for her baby, and pure happiness and optimism about the little family they would become
. There was one subject, however, whose ominousness she could neither ignore nor minimize, no matter what she did. This was the subject of money. Perhaps it was very shallow of her, Julia thought, but she could not shake the conviction that having money was better than not having it. The prospect that she would not have it terrified her, and this terror, unlike the others, had a directness, an immediacy, that made it almost unbearable. As spoiled as she was, and as shallow, she hated the idea of having to live more cheaply, when for the past many years she hadn’t thought twice about spending a thousand dollars on a blouse. But she wasn’t merely concerned about maintaining her fabulous lifestyle. She really didn’t have any idea what her circumstances might end up being, so even though she knew it was probably irrational, she was convinced that she could end up truly broke. She would become consumed with worry that she would be unable to pay the rent or buy her son Christmas presents. A psychological component made her fears still more intense: more than for what it could buy, Julia liked having a superfluity of money for the sense of security it provided, and so the threat of poverty, even if only relative, triggered within her a powerful dread.

  Well, she would think, she had a little money of her own (but so little!), and she could probably get some kind of job. She had friends who would help. But the crucial question was how much she would get from Dick. In this regard, Julia had one ace, but she didn’t know how or whether to play it.

  When Dick’s father died, he left each of Dick’s children a fairly large amount of money, and Dick was given responsibility for it until the children reached age thirty. In the meantime, the money could be used for the children’s education, medical care, and “maintenance.” Over the years Dick had gotten into the habit of making purchases and “investments” that stretched the terms to the limit. Wouldn’t the children live in the house with the painting or the piece of furniture Dick wanted to buy? And weren’t these good investments? Wasn’t a country house a good investment, and didn’t the children benefit more than anyone from its purchase and upkeep and expansion? Moreover, Dick awarded himself a higher fee than was typical for his administration of the funds, all the while claiming expenses — shooting trips with friends who were money managers, a generously calculated pro-rata share of the maintenance and capital cost of his office in the apartment — that reflected a fairly aggressive posture. Dick had taken loans, too.

  Over the years, Julia had slowly figured out what Dick was up to. At first she didn’t really understand, then she entered a state of denial, and, finally, having been corrupted herself by having all this lovely extra money, she became passively complicit.

  It wasn’t really stealing, since the children still owned the things that had been bought, and hadn’t their value increased? Everybody charged a fee. Those loans were an asset. And by the time the children were old enough for any of it to matter, it would somehow all have worked out. Of course, as time passed, the imbalance in justified and unjustified spending grew worse and worse, not better, and with corresponding desperation, Julia clung to her rationalizations.

  Now she was in a moral, financial, and legal quandary. The worst kind. The children had not been told about this money. Inertia had sustained the argument, well after it had ceased to be valid, that they were too young; fortunately, just as the legal age limit was being reached, another justification had come to hand. It would be dangerous for David to know, given his problem, and so, for the time being, it was probably best not to tell the others, either. All this gave Julia some leverage with Dick. It was clear that he was willing to show some decency where she was concerned if she kept her mouth shut. If she cooperated, if she didn’t use “tricks and threats and ultimatums,” if she was willing to allow the ruse to go on, maybe she could get a little more money, maybe she could even keep the house. He had almost said as much. In contrast, if she blew the whistle he would have no motivation to restrain himself from fighting Julia to the death, and, indeed, he would have the added incentive of revenge. He had always figured, probably accurately, that his children were too weak to do much if they found that they had been wronged. Still, it could get unpleasant and expensive, and lurking in the background was the attorney general of the state of New York.

  As she sat in bed thinking about all this, Julia could become so preoccupied that she consumed the delicious breakfast Mme. Gorotiaga had brought her without paying attention to a single sip or bite. Money, money, money, money, money, money, money, money. Money. The pulsing of that word in her mind paralyzed her.

  7

  When Charlotte happened to be in Paris and the season was right, she usually went down to her father and stepmother’s house, and after her conference she was once again going to pay a visit, a prospect that Julia looked forward to not exactly with dread, but without much enthusiasm. Charlotte had always tended to drive Julia crazy, and now that she was making a special effort to show that she was standing by Julia as her friend, that she was not a narrow-minded prig, this tendency had become more marked. Also, as much as her troubles beset her, Julia had been able at least to forget them occasionally while she was here, so far from the Land of Dick; Charlotte’s presence would make them inescapable. But, of course, when Charlotte called, Julia responded with good cheer. Charlotte would stay for two days.

  M. Gorotiaga fetched Charlotte from the train station. She was exhausted. In fact, she had never been so exhausted in her life (except for all the other times she had arrived at the house after a conference). Practically before Julia had even led her across the threshold, Charlotte had retailed various crises. The Quebecois delegates had been insulted when they discovered that they had been assigned an all-U.S. TV package at the hotel. “Comment? Vous croyez que nous sommes venus à Paris pour regarder les sitcoms américains en anglais?” In Montreal, you see, they are dubbed. At the reception for the jazz symposium and concert, the Andorrans, who hadn’t even signed up, ate all the food; the representative from the French government, a Parisian, repeatedly told delegates that he couldn’t understand a word they were saying. Charlotte collapsed in a big chair in the sitting room. Julia asked Mme. Gorotiaga to bring some tea, and when she did so, Charlotte told her, “This will do me a world of good,” and then roused herself to ask Mme. Gorotiaga lots of questions about herself and M. Gorotiaga and her children, the son in Spain, the daughter with all the babies. This was routine, and Charlotte always spoke in admirably idiomatic French. These conversations made Mme. Gorotiaga uncomfortable, though. She stood stiffly and nodded and said, “Oui, madame,” and “Ça va bien avec lui.” Julia looked over Charlotte’s attire, boots that looked like sausages and a sort of gypsy dress with lots of layers. Her hair was dirty.

  After tea Charlotte had a rest. Then, at dinner, she was subdued, nervous, and preoccupied. Uncharacteristically quiet, she answered Julia’s questions with monosyllables. She tore at the skin on her thumb with the nail of her index finger, and she gulped down wine. Now, after their meal, the two women had moved to the sitting room and were eating cheese and Charlotte was drinking more wine. If she had been alone, Julia would have sat by the fire and allowed herself to melt into a state of sated, pregnant stupefaction. Tonight, though, she was alert, for Charlotte had begun talking about her personal life, and while Julia typically found it difficult to attend very closely to such monologues, this one was of unusual interest.

  “Well,” Charlotte had said when they were settled, “I guess I’ve told you just about everything about the conference.” Then she chewed a shred of skin off her thumb and drank from her glass. She swallowed and looked up with an agitated expression.

  “Julia, there is something I want to talk to you about. You’re the only person who I think I really can talk about it with. You understand this kind of thing.” Charlotte paused. “You see, something has happened.” Charlotte took another drink.

  “Do you remember my old French boyfriend, Maximilien-François-Marie-Isidore?”

  Julia nodded.

  “Well, when I got back to my hot
el on the first night of the conference, he was there waiting for me in the lobby. Do you remember how obsessed he was, how possessive? He wanted me to have a drink with him. I told him that it was late and that I had a long day the next day. But he insisted, and he was almost making a scene in the lobby, so I said okay. We went to the hotel bar and had a drink. We had a couple of drinks, actually. After a while, I even started smoking, which I hadn’t done in ages. What an awful feeling in my throat the next day.” She glanced at Julia, and then seemed to try to gather her thoughts and her strength. “Okay, so then, well . . . uh . . . so then something kind of happened. Well, Maximilien-François-Marie-Isidore came up to my room. And we talked there for a little while, and smoked some more, and drank some things from the fridgie bar. And, well, he spent the night. I mean, we slept together.” Charlotte blurted out this information and then began to sob. Using a handkerchief to dab her eyes, she took a moment to compose herself. Then she tried to smile ironically. “So you see,” she said, “that I have a little bit of a problem. May I — could I have a little more wine?” Julia replenished her glass and Charlotte drank. She chewed a piece of bread with some cheese, and then continued. “So then the next day I was crazed, as usual, and the dinner lasted until quite late. But even with all that, I spent all day, all day, waiting to see him again. We had agreed that he would come to the hotel again that night.” Charlotte’s shoulders collapsed and her eyelids and cheeks and mouth drooped down. “Oh, but God, I was so desperate to see him again. And we spent another night together, and the next night, too. And —” Charlotte’s lower lip and chin began to tremble. “Oh, Julia!” She began to sob into her handkerchief and then looked up. Bright red patches mottled her face and tears streamed from her eyes. “I love him! I love him! And he loves me!”