The Right Thing to Do

by Josephine Gattuso Hendin

  When she was leaving her room, she met Alex at the door.

  “I was coming for you,” he said. “Come and meet everyone.” He seemed very happy.

  At the entrance to the living room Alex paused. An older woman at the other end of the room called his name and everyone turned and looked at them.

  “Hello,” he said. “This is my . . . ”—he made a great show of looking helplessly for a word—“friend, Gina.”

  Everyone laughed. Gina felt stung, embarrassed. Why did he have to make such a point of it? She could see Catherine hadn’t liked that at all. Alex’s mother came toward her with an older woman. Her eyes had turned even cooler. They raked her over, lingered on her face and hair, took in her clothes, recoiled from her shoes, and found the whole, Gina could see, unacceptable.

  The other woman had a ready smile. She reached for Gina’s hand and said to Alex, “So this is what you’ve been doing, the reason you’re too busy to come crosstown to visit me,” she said. “I have known Alex since he was seven,” she said. “I would do anything for him except make him eat spinach. And I have to wait until we both come to Philadelphia to see him when I live ten minutes away in New York.”

  Gina laughed, liking her. “So you don’t live down here,” she said.

  “Never. The weather in New York is bad enough. You come to see me and make him come along,” she said, turning away. Alex’s mother had moved on to another guest.

  “That’s my father,” Alex said, nodding toward a tall man across the room.

  Looking at Victor from a distance, Gina saw little of Alex in him. Spare and angular, he stood smiling and polished in a dark blue suit and striped silk tie. He looked as though he had found the way to an endless prime. Alex had joked about his father’s fitness craze, his daily two-mile run, his determined efforts to learn squash, his victory over his love of sausages and beer. It had paid off. Alex had reminded her of a slide she had seen in art history of Donatello’s sculpture of David. David is all physical grace. He’s wearing a fantastic hat, and leaning on his sword as one foot lightly rests on the severed head of Goliath. He’s just killed the giant, but he seems not to have fought him, to have done him in effortlessly. The delicacy of David seemed to reflect Alex’s code: no sweat. Victor was rugged by comparison.

  Gina could see Victor moving through the cocktail party talking to everyone. He was deft. His face was not expressive, a social mask, correct and diplomatic, a face for making inquiries but giving no answers. Several times his eyes had met hers and he had smiled. When Alex had introduced her—flourishing his pregnant pause—as his “friend,” Victor had not been pleased. He had looked from her to Alex to see how she had taken it and whether Alex had gotten what he wanted out of it. She had felt embarrassed, but decided to deal with it the way Alex dealt with everything. She looked amused. Victor’s subsequent glances toward her showed she had done well.

  This one is younger than the others, Victor thought, and more dramatic in style. Her clothes are more of a costume than an outfit—carefully chosen for effect. Her bold colors stand out in a room in which women wear black dresses and interesting pieces of jewelry. Her hair is swept up and coiled in a braid instead of a chignon. The effect is striking rather than stylish.

  Victor began to make his way across the room to her when a tall blonde—she must be almost six feet tall, Gina thought—took Victor’s arm. He propelled her toward Gina while the woman kept talking animatedly to him.

  “She’s inviting me to lunch in New York,” Victor said. “What do you think of that?”

  “You’re the most interesting person to have lunch with. Anyway, I promise to let you come back here, sooner or later.” The woman laughed.

  “What do you think of that?” Victor repeated.

  “I think she has excellent taste,” Gina said, not really sure what was going on between them.

  “Oh, well, she’s right,” the woman announced to Victor. “Out of the mouths of babes,” she said, pulling Victor toward the bar. He permitted himself to be pulled.

  Pretty smooth, Victor thought. And the daughter of the inarticulate woman who had spoken to him from Alex’s apartment. Alex had said almost nothing about her; just that she was making him happy—he really thought people existed for that!—and that she came from a strict Italian family that wanted him to marry her. He had called her father a real “primitive.” She didn’t look primitive. On the contrary, she seemed to have no visible rough edges. She carried herself beautifully. Her body seemed perfectly balanced and her movements had a freedom and strength that contrasted with her air of reserve and containment. Alex had told him she was studying anthropology in college, but he was vague about everything else.

  When the last guest had left, Gina picked up a plate to help Catherine collect the leftovers.

  “These are wonderful,” she said to Catherine. “How do you make them?”

  “I didn’t. I buy everything and have it delivered,” Catherine replied, taking the plate from her and putting it back down on the table. “Let’s sit down for a while until Elaine is through in the kitchen. She’ll be in to clean up. He can help her,” Catherine said, gesturing toward the bartender. “Is anyone hungry for dinner?”

  Victor shrugged. “I am always ready for dinner. I never eat these things.” He waved his hand over the hors d’oeuvres.

  “I made a feast of them, as usual,” Alex said.

  “I’m not hungry,” Gina added.

  Catherine sighed. Victor always expected dinner. She went into the kitchen to tell Elaine to set the table and took a casserole out of the freezer. She set the microwave herself. She always had Elaine make a few of these casseroles for the freezer. That way dinner was always ready. Although by the time it was over, Elaine would have gone home and she would have to clean up.

  She couldn’t get a fix on Gina. She was very correct. There wasn’t a thing to object to about her, and somehow that was objectionable. She was very good-looking. Her blouse was cut high, to the neck. Nothing was exposed. But she moved very well and her body seemed to radiate an electricity. She reminded Catherine of a lioness wearing a costume. The image made her smile.

  Why should she be so suspicious of the girl? She wasn’t the first Alex had brought here and she probably wouldn’t be the last. If she were on the prowl, Alex was a strange choice of game to hunt. It tore her heart to see him. She could barely look at the elegance of his face or listen to him talk without a stab of pain that nothing was coming of his first-rate looks and his first-rate mind. Her friends had sons who were economists or lawyers or something by now. And hers was a part-time clerk and a part-time student of God knows what.

  It was embarrassing; worse, it was frightening. How long could he go on like this? If Gina thought she was in for an easy ride, she was in for a fall. Victor kept telling Catherine she thought nobody was good enough for Alex. But the trouble was that Alex wasn’t good enough for Alex, either. He had a future, but no present that led up to it. His future was beginning to look like a mirage. He was already twenty-six and still without anything that meant anything to him. Catherine returned to the living room in time to see that Victor had paid the bartender. He settled himself back on the sofa with a tall drink he insisted was his last. She sat near Alex.

  Gina surveyed the trio. Catherine had taken off her shoes and put her feet on an ottoman in front of an easy chair that seemed twice her size. Victor sat at one end of a deep sofa with Alex at the other. Gina sat facing them, wondering about them all. An unusual family. There were advantages to being female here. One of them was that there would be no Nino to grill you about your intentions. In this group, she thought wryly, there would certainly be no questions about baseball trivia. Still, she could see they were curious about her, with an inquisitiveness they had not yet shaped into questions.

  When in doubt, seize the initiative, she thought. When in fear, seize it faster. She was feeling giddy from the wine she had drunk on an empty stomach. She could start with something safe, j
ust to break the silence.

  “How did you get interested in the Puritans and the Indian wars?” she asked Victor. He must have been asked that question a thousand times, she realized.

  “What boy can resist tales of Indians, war whoops, noble fighting?”

  “You mean the Indians were noble warriors. Your Puritans aren’t too wonderful.”

  “What don’t you like about them?”

  “You described how they promised not to harm the Indians if they surrendered and converted to Christianity. And then they sold them into slavery in the West Indies once they gave up their weapons. Then there was the hypocrisy of calling them savages for scalping, and then scalping them and wearing their scalps as trophies. Not a noble thing for Puritans to do.”

  Victor looked amused. So that’s where Alex gets that look, Gina thought. Except Alex has it most of the time.

  “The Indians scalped first,” Victor said, tongue in cheek.

  “But that was the way they had always done things. The Puritans claimed those ways were heathen and then found themselves following them. That’s what interests you, isn’t it? Their going into the wilderness and being changed by it rather than simply changing it.”

  “Don’t get him started,” Alex said, “or he’ll talk all night.”

  “Yes,” Catherine agreed. “This is no time for lectures.”

  “That’s it, isn’t it?” Gina asked. “To defeat the enemy you have to see through his eyes, become him, think like him. The more you do, the more you lose yourself, your moral bearings.” Gina felt oddly agitated, as though she were saying something truer about herself than anyone else.

  Alex groaned.

  “Let’s go into my study,” Victor said, “and leave these people to their small talk. I have some old pictures and manuscripts you might like to see.” He rose and motioned for her to follow him. They passed down a corridor into a room lined with books and dominated by a huge desk. Files lined the wall in back of the desk.

  “There’s some truth in what you say,” Victor said, offering her a chair. “But becoming the other, the enemy, also gives you a different perspective in a positive way, permitting greater flexibility in coming to terms with reality.”

  “How can there be flexibility in matters of life and death? It’s one or the other.”

  “There has to be flexibility there most of all. The stakes have to be high to make you want to see the meaning of your actions in terms of good and evil, to feel the sense of mission. Their sense of destiny took over, they were fired with religious fervor. . . .”

  “But all of that made them use the notion of doing right to do what they wanted to do anyway. They did what was expedient and called it right.”

  “And once the Indians were effectively squelched, they achieved nothing but the sense of possibility.” Victor opened a cabinet in one of the bookcases and took out a bottle of Chivas Regal. He reached in for two small glasses, filled them, and handed one to Gina.

  She realized that she had already had enough to drink, but took it anyway. She had never tasted whiskey straight.

  “Possibility,” Victor went on. “I dwell in Possibility, a fairer house than Prose / more numerous of windows, Superior of Doors. Infinite possibility.” He sipped his drink.

  “How could the Puritans believe in fate and predestination and also believe in infinite possibility?” Gina asked.

  “That was maybe the ultimate triumph of the wilderness,” Victor said, “the undoing of the religion. After all, it grew weaker and weaker until it scarcely existed at all. As a religion. And then Emerson concludes: There should be no such thing as fate. There you are. No more Puritans, no more predestination, just a belief in the power of individuals to transform themselves.”

  “There is no such thing as infinite possibility,” Gina said. She caught herself before she said anything about being hemmed in by obligations, by family. Emerson was certainly an improvement. “But change is a kind of doom, too. You know the character in Dante’s Inferno whose punishment is to keep changing from one thing to another. . ..” She realized she was ceasing to make sense.

  “Everything’s an open question for you, isn’t it?” Victor said, amused.

  “You’re very good to talk about all this. I mean, I know you already took five volumes to say what you thought about it.”

  “No, no. I don’t mind,” Victor protested, finishing off his drink. “Nobody has asked me about it for a long time. And what do you do?”

  “I’m at Hunter College, studying anthropology.”

  “So that’s why you like Indians. What will you do when you run through primitive tribes? There are no new ones,” he teased.

  “I’ll study historians,” Gina retorted.

  Victor laughed. “What’s so interesting about my tribe?”

  “How they reconcile facts and poetry.”

  Victor smiled. She was fun, and very young. She would mellow with time, but she was lively company now. “Actually, I have something more interesting to talk about. I had an ulterior motive in bringing you in here.”

  “Oh?” Gina asked, putting down her drink. “What could it be?”

  “It could be lots of things, but it’s something we have in common.”

  “What could we have in common?”

  “Alex.”

  “I’m not claiming joint ownership,” Gina said.

  “Maybe you should.”

  “Why is that?”

  “It would give you more of a stake in what happens between you—in making it work.” Victor realized how much he wanted it to work. There was something decent and solid about her. She would be good for Alex.

  “Machines work,” Gina said. “People are either happy or unhappy together.”

  “It’s not that simple,” Victor persisted.

  “You obviously feel Alex needs working on. What do you want to fix?”

  Victor looked at her. “Do you always get to the point as quickly as that?”

  “You led the way.”

  “Do you know what Alex intends to do?”

  “About what?”

  “About school. Does he want to finish in New York? Is he taking courses that will help him finish? Does he want to go elsewhere?”

  “Not that I know of. He’s taking a course in Chinese.”

  Victor winced. “Does he go to class?”

  “Why don’t you ask him?”

  “He doesn’t answer my questions.”

  “I can’t be your informer in the enemy camp.”

  “He’s not my enemy,” Victor said.

  “Then talk to him. I can’t be a go-between,” Gina said gently. It ran through her mind that Victor must be pretty desperate, or more drunk than he seemed, to talk this way to someone he had never met before. “You’re really worried about him, aren’t you? You think he’s wasting his time.”

  “I know he’s wasting his time. He’s already wasted years. Not to mention an expensive education. He’s got to do something for himself. It won’t be easier next year than this one.”

  “What makes you think I could help?” Gina was getting more depressed by the minute. It was one thing to be irritated now and then by Alex’s laxity, but another to hear his own father say it was a catastrophe.

  “You’re the first woman he’s brought here in a long time. He must really care for you. You seem . . . all there. Does that sound funny?”

  “You think he’s not all there?” Gina smiled.

  “I don’t know anymore.”

  “Why do you think he isn’t doing more?”

  Victor shook his head.

  “Maybe you expect too much. He’s doing what he wants to be doing. Isn’t that enough?”

  “He’ll never be happy doing nothing, going nowhere, not living up to his potential,” Victor said.

  “Why do you think he lives the way he does?”

  “To get back at me.”

  “Why should he want to do that?”

  “Why does anyone hurt himsel
f to get back at someone else?” Victor looked at her directly. “I know what you’re saying when you refuse to get involved. It’s what anyone would say. I can’t really expect you to say otherwise. All the same, I don’t believe you like what he’s doing or think it should last. It seems like temporary stuff to you. But he’s been doing things like it for six years. Anything that goes on that long isn’t temporary. It’s a way of life. A rut. If you can do anything to get him out of it, please do it. I haven’t succeeded; maybe you won’t either. He and I are getting too old to be at each other’s throats.”

  “You don’t seem to be angry with each other.”

  “That’s his genius. He knows how to frustrate me while being perfectly pleasant.”

  Gina looked at him, not knowing what to say. He had spoken with the weary disgust of someone resigned to chronic pain. He’s really given up on him, Gina thought. He’s written him off as a total failure. He hadn’t wanted to, but he had. He was harder and more cutting in his way than Nino. For Nino, if you did the right thing, that was sufficient success. It was what you were that mattered, not what you became. Here you had to be a star at something to retain your position in the family. Victor was tired of being the father of someone who was still finding himself.

  In the silence, kitchen sounds became audible. Gina sat wondering what to say, and was finally saved from having to reply when Alex came to the door.

  “You can come in to dinner now,” Alex announced. “Everyone else did all the work, and it’s time for the defender of the work ethic to come in and freeload.” He smiled amiably.

  Victor tried to smile back.

  Alex looked from Gina to Victor. “Who’s been preaching to whom? Any converts here besides me?”

  “What have you been converted to?” Gina asked.

  “The oldest religion of all. The one with the most followers. At last, I’ve joined the mob.”

  “So?” Gina said.

  “Cynicism. I don’t believe in anything.”

  “You’re lying,” Catherine said, coming up behind him. “You believe in dinner. Come in,” she insisted, “before everything gets cold.”