Pot of gold : a novel

by Michael, Judith

  They picked up their menus and ordered, but later neither of them could remember what they had eaten. What they remembered was the talk, all through dinner, without pause, as if they could not fit everything they had to say into the brief time they had.

  "I'm sorry," Claire said as they left the restaurant. "I wish I could make it a longer evening, but I really want to finish the whole project tonight."

  "You have nothing to apologize for; I've worked against deadlines most of my life." And when he pulled up in front of her house, he turned to her. "It's a rare and special pleasure to have someone to talk to and the talk be inexhaustible."

  "Yes." Impulsively, Claire leaned toward him and kissed his cheek. "Thank you for a wonderful evening."

  She was thinking about that evening as Alex talked to the couple in the theater lobby. When they moved on, he apologized. "I didn't mean to leave you out; but they could become major

  contributors, and I had to make them feel wanted. Which, God knows, they are."

  "You know so much about it. And I remember, one of your novels was about an actor. Have you been in the theater.^"

  "No, I just hang around and pick up information. I may be a frustrated actor, though I don't think so; as far back as I can remember, all I've wanted to do was write books."

  "But you're not even doing that."

  "Not at the moment." Claire looked at him in surprise, and he smiled. It was a little boy's smile, she thought, almost sheepish, trying to be casual but not quite containing his excitement. "The fact is, I've had a couple of ideas in the past week that I'd like to explore. That's always the way my novels have started: with one or two ideas that interest me and make me curious to see where they lead."

  "That's wonderful. Isn't it.^ Aren't you pleased.^"

  "I think so. I really didn't plan to write novels again, you know."

  She shook her head. "I don't see how that could ever be final. It would be like saying you hadn't planned to look at a sunset again, or listen to music. Or eat."

  He looked at her with interest. "You think writing a novel is like listening to music and eating."

  "I think it's as deeply a part of you, the same way design is a part of me."

  "Yes, I liked that, in one of our interviews, when you said that you found you couldn't just stop doing it."

  She nodded. "Because, in a way, it would be like saying I'd decided to stop breathing. There are some things we have to do to feel alive. I don't think you'd feel alive if you went for years and years without writing books."

  "I might not. That may be what I'm discovering."

  "That the world just doesn't feel right, or you don't feel comfortable in it, because you've lost something that's so much a part of you."

  He smiled. "Not many people understand that."

  "And I hope it's a good feeling. It was for me, it was wonderful, as soon as I went back to it."

  "It is good. But I feel tentative, too. It's a little like moving

  back to the town where you grew up. You know it won't be the same; it probably will have painful memories; and almost certainly it will be harder to become part of it than it was the first time."

  "You think the writing will be harder this time."

  "It's always harder, the older a writer gets. It takes longer to think of the exact word you want, the best metaphor, the most lyrical description; it's more difficult to be fresh and sharp in your ideas; and if you care about not repeating yourself or unconsciously lifting from authors you like, you have to have an encyclopedic memory for everything you and all your favorite writers ever wrote."

  "But that wasn't what you meant, was it.'' I thought you were talking about going back to a way of life with so much of that life gone. As if you'd found yourself in a different country but you still had to perform the way you used to. Or even better."

  "A different country," he repeated. "That's exactly what a great loss does: there's a shift, like an earthquake, and you find yourself staggering because suddenly everything is off center, the same but devastatingly not the same. Shadows are longer; people are more distant from you, but their voices are louder and they all seem happy; and buildings seem to tilt inward, over your head, like a cap someone is pulling low over your eyebrows, so that you can't see the sun. Everv^where you go, there's a feeling of the foreignness of things."

  "Yes," Claire murmured, remembering how she had felt as if she were staggering through the days when she finally understood that Ted really would never be back. "And will you write differently, do you think.'*"

  "I don't know. I'll be interested to find out. You told me, in one of our interviews, that you're designing differently."

  "Yes, but it had nothing to do with my loss; that was eighteen years ago. It's what I told you: the iotters made the difference; it gave me confidence."

  "Winning the lotter^^''"

  "Having sixty million dollars."

  "You told me that, and I put it in the article, but I didn't really understand it. What does sixty million dollars have to do with how well you design.'"'

  She looked at him wonderingly; it seemed so clear to her.

  "The world is an easier place; I'm more comfortable in it. I can concentrate on what I want to do instead of what I have to do."

  "But your eye hasn't changed; the way you look at the world and see shape and color and harmony hasn't changed; the desire to excel hasn't changed."

  "No, but now I'm willing to experiment."

  "So you're more daring.''"

  "Yes."

  "And you think you can't be daring unless you have money.''"

  Claire was uncomfortable. "The answer to that ought to be no. But there's something so powerfully affirmative about money, as if having it gives permission for almost anything. If you lost something, you can buy another; if you fail at something, you can afford to keep trying until you succeed; if you make a mistake, you can buy a second chance. Money is control. And I never felt in control of my life until I had it."

  "Or something else changed in your life."

  She looked at him reflectively. "Maybe. Maybe I just wasn't ready to be daring until now. Maybe the money had nothing to do with it."

  "I like that the best," he said with a smile. "We all have to grow up sometime."

  "Well, I hope you do," Claire said, her smile meeting his. "And whether you write differently or not, I'm ver' glad you're going back to it. I never really bought the line about your turning into a longshoreman."

  "But I was serious; I wasn't posturing. It was an alternative I really thought about, a way to get out of a rut and into something alive and useful."

  "What was the rut.^"

  "Being in that foreign country. Mourning, feeling sorry for myself, wrapping myself in my own sorrow as if I were trying to be dead, too. As if it would be a betrayal of my wife and our love if I started to live again. Something had to pull me out of that because I sure as hell wasn't doing it for myself."

  "And what pulled you out.'"'

  "Partly time: enough time passing. But mostly, I think, it was you."

  The lobby lights dimmed and brightened and there was an immediate responsive surge in the crowd. Claire and Alex were

  pushed back into the corner, their faces very close together. "Time for the second act," he said.

  Casually, he took Claire's hand to follow the audience into the theater, and when they were in their seats, he held it again, glancing at the program in his other hand. "Watch the young girl in the first scene; I think she's going to be a great actress." From then on, they concentrated on the play, their eyes meeting now and then when something struck them both as memorable. After a while, Claire became aware of how often that was happening: she would look up and find Alex's eyes meeting hers in appreciation or amusement at something on the stage, and it happened every time she looked up, as if their thoughts were identical.

  The next time she found herself turning to look at him, she deliberately kept watching the stage. From the corner o
f her eye, she saw the movement of his head and she felt his eyes on her. After a few seconds, it was too hard to look straight ahead; she turned, and as their eyes met, they broke into quiet laughter. It was the first time ever, Claire thought, that she had shared a private joke with someone without either of them having to speak.

  When the final curtain came down and applause filled the theater, Alex turned to her again. "I have to show up at the party; it goes with being a sponsor. But I'd like to leave early; I want to be with you. Will you come back to my place after we spend half an hour or so with the others.^"

  "Yes."

  "A woman of swift decisions," he murmured, and after repeated curtain calls and the slow exit of the audience, they left the theater and walked up the street to the Gargoyle Cafe, bright with low-hanging colored lights, like theater spotlights, and swirling with energy. "They know it was good, even with all the opening-night glitches," Alex said between greeting people and introducing them to Claire. "In fact, they know it was great; you can feel it in the air. There's a unique kind of excitement when people know that everything they hoped for has come to pass; it's like a special blessing embracing eversone ecn remotely connected with it. There's no other feeling like it in the world."

  He and Claire stood beside the bar talking to the director and producer of the play, the backstage crew, the office staff, and the patrons and sponsors who, like Alex, kept the theater alive. The

  talk grew in volume and excitement, and when a new crowd came into the restaurant, they were surrounded again. It was almost another half an hour before Alex turned to Claire and smiled ruefully. "I wanted to stop in for a few minutes and then leave. Are you ready to go.'"'

  "Yes, but I've enjoyed this. It's so different from any party I've ever gone to. I've learned a lot and I've had fun."

  "I was hoping you would." He took her hand and led her through the crowd, saying good-night to everyone they passed. They all paused in their conversation to talk to Claire.

  "Come backstage some night; we'll all go to dinner afterwards."

  "If you want to watch rehearsals or some acting classes, feel free."

  "We're having a donors' dinner in January at the Rainbow Room; I'm sure Alex has asked you, but I want to tell you how glad we'd all be to see you there."

  Claire recalled the invitations she had received from Quentin's friends when she first met them. Two different worlds, she thought, so far apart. Alex held her coat and she slipped it on, and they walked to his car, parked near the theater. "I didn't ask you to the donors' party," Alex said as they drove up Christopher Street, "because I didn't want to ask you to give us money."

  "Why not.'"' Claire asked. "You know I have the money, and you know how many organizations I'm involved with; they're in your story."

  "None of them are theater groups; you've narrowed it to education and music and anything connected with children."

  "I don't know much about the theater. I'd like to know more; I think I will come to rehearsals and acting classes, to learn how they work. But that wasn't why you didn't ask me to the dinner."

  He stopped at a red light and looked ahead, at the Christmas lights strung on shops and restaurants and, on the floors above, the trees blinking in apartment windows. Once, this had been the worst time of year for him, when everything was a symbol of home and family, when carols and candy canes and fake Santas seemed to mock his singleness, when he missed his wife with a deep, dull pain that seemed to have no end. And even when it did, finally, ease and then disappear, what remained was emptiness, and he

  had wondered if he would ever feel, or love, again. Now he thought he knew the answer to that. Tonight, he felt only happiness. Tonight, he had to admit, he was absurdly happy.

  "You're right," he said, driving on as the light changed. "I didn't ask you for money because, however personal the request— and the ones that bring in the most money are always personal— it's a business transaction, and I don't want to be doing business with you."

  Claire was silent, gazing out her window. Traffic was light and they were moving swiftly up Eighth Avenue, past bedecked apartments, past stores whose neon signs blinked and flashed and quarreled with the meek Christmas lights beside them, past record stores with music blaring through open doors, and nightclubs with solid, secretive doors, and apartments with uniformed doormen in white gloves standing guard. Only a few people walked on the streets, stepping briskly past shapeless bundles of sleeping people in the doorways, men walking their dogs, and groups of young people swinging arm in arm down the sidewalk.

  Claire felt the life of the city: a constant, rumbling vibration that quivered through the streets; the air was tense and alert, perpetually in motion, as if a steady gale kept everything spinning a few feet off the ground. Coming from the forests and fields of Connecticut, she felt like a stranger, but, still, something drew her to the growling, humming intensity of the city, and for the first time, she found herself thinking that she would like to live there.

  Alex had glanced at her once as he drove, but he said nothing and they both were silent, absorbed in their thoughts. Claire liked it that he did not feel he had to keep noise going between them, whether they had anything to say or not. But that had never happened, she thought; they had always had something to say. She thought back over the past few weeks, to the long hours in her studio when they had put away their work and sat over tea, talking, talking, talking, about everything in the world, and about themselves. She had never talked so much or so comfortably to anyone but (jina and Hannah; she had never had a good friend who was a man.

  / {Jon^t "inant to be doing business "m'ith you.

  Alex turned off West End Avenue onto a quiet street, and she was struck by the sudden difference in the atmosphere. Here there were no tail apartments or bags of garbage on the sidewalk

  or the rush of taxis; here tall trees lined the street on both sides, screening elegant limestone row houses facing each other with severe grace. The noises of the city seemed to have vanished; it was as if they had driven into a small corner of another century, and as Claire looked around with pleasure, she almost expected to see varnished horse-drawn cabs clip-clopping along past young boys with soft caps hawking penny newspapers.

  They drove the length of the row houses to the end of the street where a square, graystone apartment building stood on the corner of Riverside Drive. Beneath bright yellow streetlights, Alex pulled to the curb, maneuvering to fit into the small parking place. "You may not appreciate this, but you are witnessing a minor miracle: a parking place on 105th Street." He took Claire's hand as she got out of the car and led her to the door, opening it with his key. "No doorman; we all voted it down. Too expensive. We do have a maintenance man who seems to excel at catnaps; now and then he finds an odd job or rwo, like taking out the garbage, that he's willing to expend some energy on."

  The lobby was enormous, dimly lit and bare of furniture, with a black-and-white tile floor and, at each end, an elevator with scarred and chipped doorframes. "The idea is not to look like a Fifth Avenue building, to discourage anyone who thinks we have anything to rob. In fact, I don't, but some of my neighbors do; the apartments are very good. You'll see."

  They rode the self-service elevator to the eleventh floor and walked to the end of the corridor, to another scarred door. Alex opened it with his key, and Claire went inside and walked farther into the large room while he hung up her coat. It was a combination living room, dining room, and office, with a galley kitchen on one side and a small bedroom on the other. The furnishings were Spartan—a couch and armchair with a hassock and a glass coffee table; a small, square dining table with four chairs; two desks, one for a computer and printer, and several filing cabinets—but Alex had brought warmth to it with a dark red kilim rug, floor lamps with dark red shades, a rare Toulouse-Lautrec poster with life-size figures, floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, crammed and overflowing, on two walls, and more shelves running up the sides and over the top of the large windows on the fourth wal
l.

  "They overlook the Hudson," Alex said. "You'll have to come during the day, to see it. We get exceptional sunsets here, too. I

  have Stilton and fresh pears and a good Bordeaux; would that please you?"

  "Very much." Claire was at the windows, looking down at the bright lights of Riverside Drive and the river's edge. "You seem so far from the city here."

  "An illusion, but a happy one. I've come to enjoy the city, now that I have my own retreat." He set the food and wine on the coffee table and sat on the couch, then watched Claire turn and hesitate between the armchair and the other end of the couch, and choose the couch.

  He leaned forward and filled their wineglasses and handed her one. "I haven't brought anyone here in the four years I've lived here," he said casually. Claire looked at him in surprise. "It isn't that I've been a monk; far from it. But I haven't been able to bring anyone here. Somehow, from the day I bought it, it seemed to be a part of me that couldn't be opened to scrutiny, like the house I'd sold, and the people who'd lived in it. That was the private core that never made it to conversation."

  There was a silence. "I'm glad to be here," Claire said.

  Alex nodded slowly, contemplating his wineglass. "It's a wonder to me, how you always say what I hope you'll say." He leaned forward again and filled a small plate with cheese and fruit and handed it to Claire. "I don't think I made a deliberate decision to keep out of any involvements; it just happened. I couldn't imagine living with any of the women I knew, or even staying with them very long. I couldn't imagine living with anyone, even my son. For the first year, I craved solitude as if I couldn't hold myself together except in silence. After that, I wanted people, I needed them, but not in my own space and not permanently. Until I started working in your studio. After the third or fourth time, I didn't want to leave. Or, if I had to leave, I wanted to take you with me and bring you here. Because I couldn't imagine staying here, without you."