Florence Gordon

by Brian Morton

  The terror shook loose something inside her, and she felt overwhelmed by love and respect for her grandmother. Florence had dragged herself down here, bad ankle and all, to take part in a debate she must have known she would lose. And now, having lost it, instead of going home, she was standing in the rain to try to make sure that no harm came to the people who had disregarded what she’d had to say.

  The riot police started moving toward the line—toward the students and the one old lady.

  It was like seeing the police advancing on a softball team. It was like seeing a boxing match between the heavyweight champ and a blogger.

  Florence was standing between a boy and a girl, and Emily felt strangely jealous of the girl. She was a slight, pixieish figure, and she and Florence had their arms entwined, and after the demonstration, Florence was going to take her home and adopt her.

  Something happened—a kid jumped forward? Somebody pushed somebody? A cop hit somebody?—and instead of two lines there was one surging blob. Emily couldn’t tell what was happening. All she knew was that people were pushing and people were falling to the ground, and that she’d lost sight of her grandmother.

  57

  Emily ran forward and started pushing. She forgot to be afraid—well, almost. She was struggling through the crowd and trying to cover up at the same time, because she didn’t want to get hit on the head.

  If it was a bigger crowd, she didn’t know what she would have done, but she was able to push and swivel and crawl her way to Florence, who was on the ground, holding up her cane to try to protect herself from people’s boots and knees and elbows.

  The crowd was a writhing thing. Emily couldn’t tell what was happening. All she could see were people’s legs. Someone stepped on her hand. Someone kicked her on the chin. Someone stumbled over Florence.

  “Get away,” Emily said. “That’s my grandma.”

  She was embarrassed as soon as she said it. Florence surely would have preferred “That’s my grandmother” or, better, “That’s Florence Gordon.” But the word had just popped out of her mouth.

  Emily thought it was strange to be embarrassed in a moment like this—aren’t there any situations in which you can just lose your self-consciousness?

  All this passed through her mind in an instant.

  Emily helped Florence up, and kept an arm around her, and they found their way out of the tangle.

  Even from the outside, it was hard for Emily to tell what was happening. Too much was going on at once. Police were pushing people down. Some of the students, including the pixieish girl, had moved away and were chanting “Shame on you!” Some of the students were being arrested; others were sitting with their arms behind their backs as police tried to get them to stand up.

  She was reminded of the chapter in The Charterhouse of Parma where Fabrice takes part in the Battle of Waterloo, but he doesn’t know it—all he knows is that he’s scared and confused.

  “I failed to exercise a calming effect,” Florence said, or something like that—Emily couldn’t hear her well in all the noise.

  Emily was about to say, “At least you tried,” but she stopped herself. She didn’t know if it was the wrong thing to say. Or the wrong thing for her to say. She could imagine one of Florence’s friends saying it, but if she said it, Florence might be annoyed.

  They stayed until the scene was cleared. Some of the protesters had been arrested; others had gone away. The bloodmobile too was gone.

  They walked to Sixth Avenue and took a bus uptown. Emily was sore all over, and Florence had scrapes on her arms and legs.

  “What did you make of it all?” Florence said.

  “It was like The Charterhouse of Parma,” Emily said.

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Florence said. “You’re a strange girl.”

  This, oddly, made Emily feel proud of herself.

  58

  If I leave Daniel, what will become of him?

  This was the question on Janine’s mind.

  She had decided to go to the conference with Lev, and she was nervous about it.

  Caroline, Daniel’s old protégée or whatever she was, had turned into a fetching young woman—sophisticated, charming, poised. Surely Daniel found her attractive. How could he not? So if Janine left him, maybe he’d end up with her. Maybe a happy ending was possible here. Even though Caroline was, like, twelve years old.

  What would Daniel do? Take up with a new woman, or live by himself for the rest of his life? Both of these possibilities were hard to imagine.

  One of the things Janine had always loved about Daniel was that he never looked at other women. When a typical guy is out and about with his wife, his eyes will rove around insanely, checking out this woman’s breasts and that woman’s legs and that other woman’s who-the-hell-knows-what-else-men-look-at, and you, the wife, will wish you had a little flag that you could pull out and wave in front of him to get his attention, or a little club that you could whack him with. Daniel, alone among men, was never like that. When he was with Janine, she was the only person he seemed to see. It made you feel secure.

  She imagined Daniel with his other woman, ten years from now. Not Caroline—someone older and more seasoned. They’re in a restaurant, and he’s gazing at her, this new woman, with his patented “There’s no one in the universe but you” look. And then the door opens and Janine comes in—maybe with Lev, although the reverie didn’t require it. And then—and then, nothing. Daniel continues to gaze upon his age-appropriate, wrinkled-but-still-attractive mystery woman, and he doesn’t notice Janine at all.

  And then what?

  Then I stride across the room and slap that little hussy silly, and take Daniel home with me.

  This fantasy didn’t make a lot of sense, if she was planning to leave him. She was aware of that.

  59

  “Why did you become a cop?” Janine said.

  After Lev had told her about why he’d become a psychologist, she’d thought that Daniel would never give her a comparably straight answer about why he became a cop. But maybe she was selling him short.

  “Why did I become a cop?” he said.

  “Yes.”

  “Why did I become a cop? That’s what you’re asking?”

  “That’s what I’m asking.”

  “Haven’t we already talked about this?”

  “We probably have, but I can’t remember.”

  He looked as if he were thinking, and then he said, “Are you sure we haven’t talked about this? You were there.”

  “I’m sure we talked about it at the time, but I can’t remember.”

  He’d applied for the job just after they got married. All she could remember, really, was being happy about the salary and the benefits. It meant they’d be able to start a family.

  “I know why you went into CI,” she said, “but I’m not sure I know why you became a cop in the first place.”

  There was no reason for him not to want to talk about this. It was as if he belonged to some cult that held that it’s immoral to talk about anything important.

  “Okay,” he said. “I’ll tell you. You know, on the news, you’ll see some guy who’s been arrested, and he’s getting into the back of the squad car? And the cop always puts his hand on the guy’s head? Like criminals are this breed of people who don’t know how to get into a car without bumping their heads?”

  “Yeah. I have noticed that.”

  “That’s the secret to why people become cops. We like to put our hands on people’s heads.”

  Janine got up and started making herself a cup of coffee.

  “We just like to do it,” he said.

  “I thought that was it,” she said.

  60

  Janine was leaving for her weekend in Pittsburgh.

  She had thought that Emily would be with Daniel, but it turned out that Emily was going away too. She was going to Boston to visit one of her college housemates.

  Daniel would be alone all weekend
. How would he take care of himself? What would he do?

  Janine knew it was silly to worry about this. He was a grown man. He was a grown man who had just spent months alone in their house in Seattle. He seemed to have survived the ordeal, and he’d survive the weekend.

  But she couldn’t stop worrying.

  “Sweetheart,” Daniel said. “Do you think you could remember to buy me those socks?”

  He liked a kind of sock that was hard to find in stores, and for some reason he could never find them on the Internet.

  “Of course. I can do it as soon as I get back.”

  It wasn’t until she said this that she realized she was truly going.

  She pictured Daniel, in some sad future, without her, helpless, no longer able to find the socks he liked.

  61

  “You should get packed,” Daniel said.

  And then, to make things worse, he started quizzing her about whether she’d remembered to pack everything.

  This was something he did for her every time she took a trip. He went through a mental checklist for her: cell phone, computer, chargers, reading glasses, book, pen, extra pen, notepad, tissues, hand sanitizer, gum to keep her ears from popping on the plane.

  Normally she found this touching, but today it was breaking her heart.

  62

  Janine took her suitcase to the lab and spent the morning working. At around noon she looked for Lev. His secretary told her that he’d gone to lunch.

  When he went to lunch by himself, he liked to go to an old-fashioned ice cream parlor on Broadway. Janine left the lab and found him there. He was sitting at a table near the window.

  She went inside and stood over him at his table.

  He was eating an ice cream sundae and reading a book by George Vaillant. He brought his spoon to his lips, and as he was bringing it back toward the ice cream, he looked up.

  For a moment he must have thought she was the waitress: there was no sign of recognition in his eyes. Then he did a double take.

  He looked delighted to see her, but then again, he looked delighted when he saw everyone—

  No. It was time to stop telling herself that she didn’t make him any happier than anyone else did. She made him happy. She knew this.

  “Would you like to hear the specials?” she said.

  To her own ears, she sounded throatily seductive, but he might have just thought she was struggling with a glob of midsummer phlegm.

  First the provocative coffee-pouring moment, and now this. She was flirting. She had become a flirt. But she didn’t know if she was doing it right.

  When was the last time she’d flirted with anyone but Daniel? It was way back in the Chips Ahoy era. That was ages ago, back in a time when Whoopi Goldberg was considered edgy.

  She sat across from him.

  “I have a question,” she said. Still throatily seductive, or maybe still sounding like Andy Devine.

  “Yes?”

  “I was wondering. If I hadn’t said yes, and you’d taken somebody else to the conference, would you have missed me?”

  “I wouldn’t have taken anyone else. It was always you. Only you.”

  This sounded off to her. It sounded too ardent. She’d wanted him to reply in an understated fashion, because feeling shows itself most vividly in restraint. It occurred to her that she’d been hoping that he’d give the kind of answer that Daniel would have given. She told herself not to dwell on this.

  The waitress showed up. There was something in her manner that struck Janine as subtly reprimanding. The waitress was about twenty, yet it was as if she were an authority figure. Janine ordered a dish of ice cream, because it seemed like the thing to do.

  She’d once heard someone say that each man is either a husband or a lover, and that it takes only a glance to tell which category any man belongs to. Daniel was a husband: she had known it from the moment she looked at him, or at least that was the way she remembered it now. The funny thing was that Lev was a husband too. Everything might have been simpler if he weren’t.

  “I should tell you that I’m afraid of plane rides,” she said.

  “I’ll be right next to you.”

  “If I get scared, will you hold my hand?”

  “I think I can manage that,” he said.

  He extended his arm, with his hand palm-up on the table. She reached out and took his hand.

  This isn’t so big. This isn’t adultery. We’re just holding hands.

  63

  “You’re going to be all alone, Dad,” Emily said. “It’s so sad.”

  “Nonsense.”

  “What are you going to do without us?”

  “I’ll go to the ball game. I’ll eat Sugar Smacks for dinner. Guy things.”

  It was ten in the morning. Emily’s train was leaving a little before eleven.

  Daniel said he’d accompany her to Penn Station, because he was going downtown himself.

  “Where are you going, actually?” she said.

  “I’m seeing an old friend. In the Village.”

  “Who?”

  “You don’t know him.”

  “Does he have a name?”

  “You couldn’t pronounce it.”

  This was a Star Trek reference, one of the jokes they shared.

  They took the subway and got off at Thirty-fourth Street.

  “You really have someplace to go?” she said.

  “Of course. You think I’d say I had somewhere to go if I didn’t?”

  “I think you wanted to come to Penn Station with me.”

  “Why would I want to do that?”

  She didn’t know why. Because he was overprotective? Because he was going to miss her, even though she’d be gone for only two days? The one thing she felt sure of was that he wasn’t meeting anybody downtown.

  Normally this might have made her annoyed with him, but she couldn’t be annoyed with him now. She felt too guilty. She had told her parents that she was going to Boston to see her friend Miranda, and that was true. She would make sure to see Miranda while she was there. But what she hadn’t told them was that she’d be staying with Justin, or that she and Justin had a plan to take Ecstasy and have sex.

  She hadn’t had either of these experiences before—having sex or taking Ecstasy. It was time for both. She felt terribly behind in life: all of her friends had had sex, and most of them had done every drug there was.

  She didn’t want to do every drug there was—drugs didn’t interest her—but she wanted to try Ecstasy. And she wasn’t sure she wanted to be with Justin, but she didn’t want to be a virgin anymore. It was embarrassing to be a virgin at nineteen.

  But at the same time as she wanted to do these things, she couldn’t stop herself from feeling that it might not be a good idea to do them with a boy she wasn’t sure she wanted to get back together with.

  She still didn’t know if she wanted to see Justin at all, let alone have sex with him, but he’d kept asking her to visit, and finally he’d just worn her down.

  She had made her plans for the weekend rationally and calmly; she’d talked herself out of her second thoughts; but still, there was something horrible about this moment. She wished her father wasn’t taking her to the train.

  She felt safe around him. She always had. She had always loved walking in the city with him—the city, up till now, meaning Seattle—because there was something delicious in experiencing the energy of the city while still feeling utterly protected at her father’s side. But now his nearness made her feel almost ill.

  She felt as if she were lying to him—well, she didn’t feel that way: she was lying to him. What would he have thought if he knew what she was planning? She didn’t think he would have tried to stop her. That wasn’t his way. He would have asked her why she was set on doing these things, and he would have listened to her answers, carefully and respectfully, and then he would have told her what he thought (“This is my advice, not that you asked for it”), and then he would have let her make her own ch
oice.

  Her certainty that he wouldn’t have tried to stop her made everything feel worse. He trusted her—trusted her to be responsible, trusted her to take good care of herself—and here she was, heading off to have sex with a boy whom she knew to be unstable and to take a drug that, for all she knew, might be strong enough to put her own stability at risk.

  Her father thought she was one thing and she was really another thing.

  “Have you ever seen pictures of the old Penn Station?” he said.

  “I didn’t know there was an old Penn Station.”

  “It was beautiful. It might have been even more beautiful than Grand Central.”

  “So what happened?”

  “They tore it down in the name of progress.”

  “Did you used to love it?”

  “I’ve only seen pictures. They tore it down before I was born. In the sixties, or the fifties. I’m not sure.”

  The fact that her father didn’t know this struck her as very sad, somehow.

  When you’re young and strong and coming into your own, your parents can seem terribly vulnerable.

  Maybe I shouldn’t go, she thought. Maybe I should stay here and take care of him.

  He would have smiled at the idea that he needed taking care of, but she believed he did.

  Walking through Penn Station by his side, she felt as if she were heading toward someone’s doom. Hers or his.

  “I could stay if you wanted me to.”

  “Why would I want you to stay?”

  He was looking at her with an expression of amused dry distance.

  “I don’t know. I thought maybe you had more valuable life lessons to teach me.”

  They were at a ticket machine, and before she could get her wallet out, he was feeding it his credit card.

  “I don’t think I have any life lessons I need to teach you this weekend. I think you’ve earned the right to relax and have fun.”