He comes up the stairs and when he is at the top he leans on the banister. He takes his sunglasses off and runs a careless hand through his hair. It is Lyle Moore—international star of stage and screen. Well, screen. He has just won an Oscar for Sapphire Dark. There are probably women who would faint right now.
“You’re Lyle Moore!” I say.
“I know,” he says. “The truth is,” he continues, now putting his head to one side to stretch his neck, and shutting his eyes, “the truth is that I am feeling stressed. I need a little quiet, a little calm. I thought I would come in here and—you know—chill a little bit?” He opens his eyes again, looks straight into mine.
“Oh, yes, well, feel free . . . ,” I say. “There’s—you know—a—a chair at the back here, if you want to sit and read quietly . . .”
He smiles, with the whitest of teeth. Then he looks down, shakes his head, smiles, and then looks back up. In real life, he favors the acting style of the guys who play adorable vampires.
“So, do you work here?”
I so evidently work here. He must have good directors. I am thinking this, but it doesn’t matter what I am saying. My heart is pounding, and I desperately want to create a good impression. I say, “Was there a particular book you were looking for?”
“Yes,” he says, and smiles again. It’s like a weapon. “I want a book that is a classic and is still a great book to read.”
I have a mischievous impulse to offer him Lyle, Lyle, Crocodile.
“I think you would like Graham Greene,” I say, as I have just glanced around the shelves in a panic and seen his name filling a thick spine. “The Power and the Glory is wonderful.”
“Why?”
“There’s a great scene where a priest fights a dog for a bone,” I say. He gazes at me in silence. Maybe I should say something insightful about the overarching meaning of the book, but I can’t think of anything. Anyway, a priest fights a dog for a bone? I’d read the book that that was in.
“Okay,” he says. “So, do you have a copy of this . . . The Power and the Glory?”
I go to the mezzanine railing and reach for it.
“Here,” I say. “Greene was fascinated by God and guilt and death. Or Catholicism, for short.”
“Right,” says Lyle, flirting the pages with his thumb. “You’re saying Greene’s kind of a big deal.”
“Yes, I think so.”
He traces his finger down the blurb on the inside flap, and says, “So he’s English.” I am worried that he will think I am just recommending writers from my own village pump. I try to think of some Americans. I am surrounded by them. Who, who? The one who wrote about the horses.
“A lot of people think that one of the best writers of the last hundred years was David Niven,” I announce.
“David Niven? That name sounds familiar.”
“Yes. I think he has won the Pulitzer, and he wrote Bring on the Empty Horses—it won lots of awards, and it got made into a movie. It is supposed to exemplify Southern Gothic.” As he looks blank again I say, “Like Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil,” and his face clears.
“Kevin Spacey,” he says.
“Yes,” I say.
I glance down because downstairs Luke has moved, suddenly, as if in response to what I am saying. He vanishes down the side aisle for a moment, and then runs lightly up to us.
“Here’s a copy of the Niven,” he says, handing it to Lyle Moore. “Good to see you. In the Wintertime was a good movie.”
Lyle holds the book up at him in thanks, and then says, “Right, I guess I will go and sit back there for a spell.”
He heads to the back of the mezzanine—the chair is hidden by a high bookcase full of leather-bound books and what George calls “ancient treasures.” He can chill there for as long as he likes without being disturbed.
I go downstairs to see Luke, to marvel that we have a Hollywood A-lister upstairs. George has arrived, and is sitting on the second seat, so I stand at the counter. The store is now speckled with customers.
“What shall we do with him?” I ask.
“Do with him? We haven’t captured him, Esme—he’s not a golden marmoset or anything. Unless you want to creep up on him with your phone, take pictures you can send to People magazine?”
“Who are we talking about?” asks George pleasantly.
“We’re talking about Lyle Moore—the actor. Esme’s got him all settled in upstairs, reading David Niven.”
George looks mystified. “David Niven? Oh, because of the acting.”
“No. Because he’s under the impression that Niven is the greatest writer of the last century. Thanks to Esme.”
I clap my hands to my face. “Oh, Lord.”
“All the Pretty Horses,” says Luke. “The pretty ones. Not the empty ones.”
“But you brought him a copy of the Niven!” I say to Luke.
George is grinning broadly. “Esme, you should go and set the poor boy straight,” he says. “You don’t want him on Jon Stewart or Jay Leno talking about David Niven in the same breath as Philip Roth and Faulkner.”
“All right,” I say, despondently. “I’m going to sound great. ‘Hi, I was so nervous because you’re famous that I got mixed up between David Niven and Cormac McCarthy. And I have a hole in my tights.”
“I think you blew your big chance,” says Luke. “Never mind that he’s dating Palermo Crianza and just broke up with Tamsin Bell.”
Lyle appears at the top of the stairs with the copy of Bring on the Empty Horses.
As he comes down, I say, “I’m sorry, I told you the wrong book.”
“No, you didn’t,” he says. “This is perfect. I’ll take it.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
I am organized now, and make every second count, so that when I do laundry I am reading Danto, and when I have to sit at the front in The Owl I read Panofsky. I have Adam Gopnik to read in bed, and aesthetics journals in the bathroom; there is hardly a moment wasted.
I also read about what to eat, drink, do, think, and listen to for the good of the baby. I read American Baby, because I am going to have one. There are many things to worry about, and just about every worry can be lessened by a purchase. Unless you thoughtlessly purchase something worrying. You can apparently give your baby “head cancer” by using sodium lauryl sulfate, which is in most shampoos. Alternative shampoo-makers have lovingly removed it from their recipes, but rascally ones keep it in there, because it’s cheap and foamy. The dangers of sodium lauryl sulfate are entirely fictional, as far as I can see, part of Internet-spread mythology—like all the dire warnings that my mother used to forward to me, about having my liver stolen in underground car parks in Nottingham.
There seems no end to the efforts to which pregnant women are exhorted for the sake of the fetus—play Bach, read Keats, take up aquarobics, abjure sad thoughts, and one that I respond to with especial sourness: “Be sure to get Daddy to talk to the bump. This can be a very precious bonding experience for all three of you.” There is a picture of a woman who surely only lives in the pages of American magazines, wearing linen and cotton in Maine shades. She is smiling up towards the ceiling as she lies on her white sofa, smiling with her white teeth, as the father bends his ear to the giant bump, and smiles with his white teeth too. I cannot stop staring at the picture. She is a deliriously happy incubator, proud to be perpetuating the American dream in shades of taupe and pale blue.
The baby magazines have advertisements for new ways to separate fools from their money, including a pregnancy belly-cast kit. You get to make a huge plaster mold of your huge giant fleshy belly for twenty dollars, optionally including your breasts. It comes with acrylic paints so that you can decorate it. Then what do you do with it? Put it above the fireplace?
You can also “join the momversation at Momversation.com,” and so I do, because my critical faculties are in abeyance. The post that is blazoned across its homepage is “Did you pick the right mate to co-parent your child?” Er, no. I d
idn’t.
There are lots of pictures of dads in the magazines, strong of jaw and loving in aspect, and even if they are model men posing as model dads, the effect of seeing a minuscule bundle in the arms of one of these guys makes me wistful.
I think I might be lonely. I met Mitchell so soon after I arrived here that I stupidly haven’t forged proper friendships with other people, except for Stella. I always mean to see Beth, my friend from the art gallery, for instance, but Mitchell always seemed to be the next person I ought to see; he was always the person who had just texted me, who had just e-mailed me, who was covering me with attention apparently as light as Irish rain, which actually soaked me to the skin. And now I’m in a dry season. If I try to make friends now, they will assume I see them as second tier, so I can’t do it. I wish that I could tell Mitchell about the funny belly-cast kits, I wish I could ask him to come with me to the scan. I wish that the phone would ring this minute. It would be Mitchell, and he would say, “Oh, Esme. I love you.”
At first, after he walked out of my apartment, I checked my phone compulsively for messages. None came. I haven’t heard anything from him since. I have been shoving Mitchell out of my head whenever he has come near it. Americans call it denial, but I call it Getting Over Someone. It is a slow process. I still miss him. But not enough to call him.
Before the semester ends, I have two papers due: one on the masculine gaze, and one on Thiebaud, which might stand, if it’s good enough, for one of the chapters of my thesis. Professor Henkel says that I should really present a paper to the department in the spring, and the idea of it makes me go cold with fear. There are now twenty minutes ahead of me in the spring when everyone will find out I am an imposter. I can see it: some curled darling of a PhD student—Bradley Brinkman springs to mind—will stand there in his scruffy clothes that are themselves an implicit declaration of his personal beauty, and he will ask me questions with unseen brackets in the middle of words, with a nod to Derrida and a little side joke about Hegel, and I will stand there for a second, rooted with fear, and then bolt out of the room as my notes float gently to the ground.
Women are more scared of this. Other women seem as scared as I am, while the men seem generally to look forward to it. Why are we scared? Is it because we are giving a lecture, giving our thoughts, our words, ourselves, launching ourselves out there as if we were chicks leaving the nest? Is it because our gift might be rejected?
I want to have an impeccable CV—the one accomplishment that the baby magazines touch but lightly—so I will have to do it.
It is easy to write about the male gaze in this city, where Rembrandts and Vermeers and Picassos and Sargents are sprinkled about like sweets.
The other paper is about Thiebaud’s influences, and I have been having some fun with some of that, from the early painters of still lifes with dead geese and beautiful lemons right up to Thiebaud’s pictures, of cakes with their impasto of icing, of serried soup bowls, of a live white rabbit. Edward Hopper is supposed to be his biggest influence, but Hopper’s people stare out from their own souls, suspended in a kind of ether of misery. In Thiebaud, there is the sort of sadness inherent in nostalgia, but also a joie de vivre, a joie de gateau.
I am trying to sort out my thoughts about this when I get another call from The Owl, and there is a tiny pang of pleasure when I see the number on my phone. I think they are going to ask me to come in.
After expressing hopes that he isn’t disturbing me, George then proceeds to disturb me very much by voicing his concerns about ultrasound scans. The concerns all sound very rational, but this is a man who thinks headache tablets are deadly.
“Wouldn’t more people talk about this if it were such an issue?” I ask. I am looking forward to the scan.
“There are a lot of people invested in not talking about it,” he says. “Just because it is not surgical, do not be misled into thinking it is not intrusive. When I see you, I can give you more information.”
“Okay,” I say, dolefully. “Are you busy there? Do you need any help? It isn’t that long until Christmas—I could come in and tidy up, ready for—”
“We’re fine. It’s just me and Luke but it’s not busy. And we’ve got Thanksgiving on Thursday, so we don’t need to focus on Christmas just yet. Stay home and do some studying. We’ll see you for your shift tomorrow night.”
I had forgotten Thanksgiving. Mitchell described a van Leuven Thanksgiving to me once in meticulous and malicious detail. He said that in rebellion, we would have Thanksgiving alone in his apartment, with a table festooned with orange paper turkeys, and then sex on the sofa. And then we would feel very thankful.
The phone rings again. It is George again.
“We were assuming you had Thanksgiving plans, Esme, but Luke says that I should ask you. We always have a small Thanksgiving celebration at my apartment, up in Washington Heights. Everyone from the bookshop is always invited. David can’t come—I think he’s going home for Thanksgiving—but Bruce comes, and Luke is coming this year. And so is Barney, and so is Mary, with or without the dog. You would be welcome.”
That tumbling mixture of gratitude and misery; I want to be with Mitchell and his silly paper turkeys. The disappointment is so tangible I could chew it, the kindness with its casual delivery so like George I feel hot tears rise up.
“Luke says to tell you it’s going to be vegan.”
“No turkey?”
“I’m afraid not. Nor even the vegetarian approximations of it; no Tofurkey, no igturkey. And although personally, I have some grave suspicions about the ontology of mushrooms, we will be having organic mushroom roast.”
“Norman Rockwell wouldn’t like it.”
“The turkeys, by contrast, are overjoyed.”
“Thank you, George. I would love to come.”
“We’ll see you Thursday.”
I TAKE CRANBERRY sauce and applesauce to the Thanksgiving, as instructed by George, to go with the turkey that won’t be there.
George’s apartment looks like a storehouse for Bergdorf Goodman windows that a giant has stirred with a spoon. There are books everywhere, of course, on shelves, in piles—that was pretty much in the cards. But there are also the most peculiar and off-the-wall things propped everywhere: In a small patch of wall between two shelves, the pottery face of a Green Man looks wickedly down. Against a bookshelf that contains about a dozen volumes of the letters of Erasmus, a huge pale blue cardboard compass with golden lines on it is propped, and in front of me, two welded metal turkey cocks whose tails are dozens of rolled-up pieces of tin stand next to a little naked manikin made of newspaper—I think he is made from the New York Times, as he has an upside-down picture of Paul Krugman on his tummy. There are evident pathways through all this to a small clearing in the middle of the sitting room. Luke and Mary are already holding glasses. I produce my two Ziplocs full of sauce.
“Plastic!” says George, in tones of horror.
“Food-safe! For thirty minutes!” I say.
He takes them gingerly, then buzzes Barney in. Barney is walking into the center of the room when his attention is caught by a lamp on the top of a bookshelf—it is an ordinary turned wooden lamp base, with a parchment shade.
He pauses midgreeting to say, “Oh my, George, is that shade made out of plainchant? On vellum? Is it real? I don’t care, I love it, I love the whole ensemble. How much do you want for it?”
George passes a glass of fizzy elderflower to me. “Barney. This is my home. The things in it are not for sale. Would you like a glass of prosecco?”
“Oh, that’s a shame,” Barney says, completely unfazed. “I brought a pumpkin pie. It’s from Dean and DeLuca. I needed a bank loan to buy it, seriously. Oh, and I brought champagne. Hi, honey. How’s the baby coming along?” He sits down next to me and beams. “I totally fucked up on that lamp thing, didn’t I? I’m usually a lot classier than that, believe me. Still no sign of the father? What’s so funny?”
By the time we have finished the pum
pkin pie and the peach cobbler that Mary brought, I am the only completely sober one, and I don’t feel sober; the company and sugar combined are making me feel giddy. Mary has just had one glass. The others, though, are all well beyond counting.
Barney is eating slice after slice of vegan cheese, remarking on how revolting it is after each mouthful. He is saying, “Seriously, how does anyone get pregnant by accident in this day and age? Or no—more interesting question—why anyone gets pregnant on purpose in this day and age?”
“You think I got pregnant on purpose?”
“Is the pope gay?” replies Barney.
“I think ‘Catholic’ is the adjective you’re looking for there, Barney,” says George.
“I got pregnant by accident,” I say.
Luke says, “They say there is no such thing as an accident.”
“There is such a thing as an accident.”
“Not according to Freud,” says George.
“I’m serious,” says Barney. “I’m really serious. Esme, look at you, you’re a smart girl, with everything ahead of you—what would induce you to take the risk unless you wanted it to happen?”
“I didn’t want it to happen.”
“Not consciously, maybe . . .”
I sigh. There is no argument against “not consciously, maybe.”
“Is he rich? The guy?”
“That isn’t important. That wasn’t what it was about.”
They all, except Mary, look as if enlightenment has dawned, even George.
“How rich?” says Barney. “What does he do?”
“He teaches economics at the New School,” I say.
“Oh. Then he’s from money already,” says Barney. “What’s his name? Esme? What’s his name?”
“Mitchell van Leuven,” I say. “No, Barney, do not google him, we’re in the middle of a Thanksgiving dinner . . .”
He takes no notice. “How are you spelling it?”
I say, “I don’t suppose anyone will believe me, but it wasn’t ever about his being rich.”
Mary says, “I believe you.”
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