by Susan Isaacs
“How about a combination like good writing and noncombativeness?” he suggested.
I recognized I had an invitation to agree with him. That meant that within seconds, I had moved from the verge of unemployment to more stable ground that would not necessarily shift and throw me off the magazine. “How about good writing and an automatic ten-second time-out before I speak?”
He paused long enough to give my stomach time to churn a couple of times. “All right,” he said slowly. “We’ll try that. I don’t object to discussion, you understand.” He waited. So I nodded. He gave me such a broad smile that I was able to glimpse a new brown spot on his upper right canine. “In fact, I encourage discussions.”
“So can we discuss whether I can have two paragraphs on anti-Semitism rather than one?”
Happy Bob’s smile diminished only slightly as he said: “Two short paragraphs.”
In graduate school, my concentration was in magazines, mainly because I realized that anyone who took two hours to compose an opening sentence was probably not suited for work on a daily newspaper. So I surprised myself when I finished my article at four o’clock that same afternoon. I read it. I reread it. It seemed okay to me, but not wanting to ruffle a single one of Happy Bob’s feathers, I took it down the hall to Gloria Howard’s office. “I know you’re busy,” I said, “and I know I should go up the chain of command—”
“But you don’t want to,” Gloria observed. Except for the pencil stuck behind her ear, she was as perfectly groomed and ladylike as ever. She wore a dark blue skirt, a white blouse with a simple ruffle of the sort John Adams would have admired, and a blue and ivory herringbone jacket, the bones coming from teeny herrings.
“Could you give this a fast read and let me know if it’s coherent?”
For an instant, I thought I saw Gloria’s eyes darting back and forth, as in Trapped! That’s when I decided the only way she would allow herself to get stuck is if she was willing. “Have a seat,” she murmured, her eyes already whizzing down the first page. Although she was not the neat freak I was, with piles of paper obsessively straightened until all corners were aligned, she was orderly, with her department’s work separated into a rainbow of manila folders.
“It’s fine,” she said. “I like the anti-Semitic stuff. You know what I mean. I like what you’ve written about it. If I have any criticism, it would be to expand that part of it and drop something ... probably the quote about America becoming a pariah among nations. That’s old.”
“Happy only allowed me two short paragraphs on the anti-Semitism. The reason I wanted you to check it is because I pushed him too far. He got so seriously pissed that I’m going to have to be simultaneously agreeable and serious for a couple of weeks. Maybe even a month. The thing is, I need to get out and do background for another story. So if you say this is okay, I’ll sneak out tomorrow morning and hand this in late afternoon. On the other hand, if you say it seriously sucks, I’ll keep working.”
“It doesn’t suck at all,” Gloria said. “Go and do ... whatever it is you have to do.”
“You’re making it sound much more intriguing than it is,” I said, a little too perkily.
“I don’t think so,” she retorted. “Ten dollars says it’s something I hope to hear about someday. In any case, good luck tomorrow morning.”
If I got into the passenger seat of a car and saw that I was the driver, I’d get out and take the subway. Not that I’d ever had an accident. But I didn’t learn to drive until I was twenty-two, and that was only because I figured I’d need a license to rent a car for work. Until then, my attitude toward driving was similar to what my attitude toward sex had been when I was eleven: Doing it would make me crave more, and more again, and I’d wind up another scrawny hooker in thrall to the pimp of Avenue B, a guy with a diamond in his nose and a belt buckle that was a three-inch-high Knicks logo in brushed gold.
Getting a driver’s license had seemed equally perilous. Such temptation! Like my father, I would develop a passion for other people’s cars. On a holiday from boarding school, lured by a silver Porsche stopped at a red light, I would begin the sad spiral downward from scholarship student to compulsive carjacker.
Of course, I knew it wouldn’t be a Porsche that could set me off. Ever since I’d left the projects and discovered a level of luxury far beyond Nike sneakers, I’d been nervous that one day the barrier between me and criminality would collapse under the weight of my desires. I longed to be the casual owner of sumptuous goods. Oh yeah, right, the third drawer has my cashmere twinsets. I know the hoots feel like velvet, hut they’re actually suede, from the skins of aborted Turkistan calves. Those pillowcases trimmed in hand-crocheted lace? Aren’t they sweet? My great-grandmother—I think—sent them home from Brussels the summer she went on her grand tour.
I ached for luxury. Since heisting a couple of prime ribs for dinner didn’t appeal to me, I pictured myself keeping up the family tradition of thievery by stealing cars. Best to be ignorant of them. Nevertheless, once in journalism school, I recognized that in America, if not in New York City, adults drive cars. I learned the basic how-tos from some temporarily smitten guy in my magazine writing workshop, who took me home to his parents’ house in Tenafly, New Jersey, every weekend and gave me all sorts of lessons in his father’s Jeep Cherokee. A year and a half later, after Tatty and I spent a weekend in her Jaguar practicing three-point turns and parallel parking, I passed my test. Since the hottest car In Depth would spring for was a Dodge Neon, my propensity for felony was never tested.
The next morning, in a Chevy so gray it blended into the sky and the pavement, I drove to Long Island and parked on Main Street in Shorehaven. The Shorehaven Sentinel took up the first floor of a building that, according to the black-painted directory on the glass front door, was also home to Hudson Gaines, D.D.S., and Rosenthal-Lipsky Investments, Ltd. I realized a woman behind the counter at the Sentinel was giving me the eye, but for moments I just stood outside, reading the door, unable to make my hand open it.
I kept thinking how much better John would be at a gig like this. Most often, the people I spoke to for a living were people who wanted to get their points of view across to the public. As for any others, once they started talking, I had the strategic skills to get from them what I wanted to know. My charm, such as it was, had always been in presenting myself: likable, friendly, but not gabby, so people felt comfortable talking to me. John’s charm was in making people believe he was interested in them. That was because he actually was. When he’d volunteered to help me, I should have said, Go to the local newspaper in Shorehaven and find out whatever you can about Véronique and Ira Hochberg.
When I finally made it through the door, I spent a couple of minutes convincing a woman behind the counter, Ms. Nature Girl—no makeup, no bra, gray frizzy hair—that I wasn’t interested in placing an ad, despite the Sentinel’s low rates. I tried to get across the idea that I was deserving enough to get to see the editor-in-chief, Sandy Garfunkel. Ms. NG said she’d never heard of In Depth and Sandy probably hadn’t either.
Sandy Garfunkel, when at last I got to meet her, turned out to be a woman with respect both for In Depth and makeup. She didn’t look painted, but it was clear she knew which end of an eyeliner pencil was up. She was one of those small, thin-thighed, supertoned types who could be any age between thirty-five and fifty-five. Her office was as well taken care of as she was, all blue and white, like a design on an antique Chinese bowl. “I’m honored,” she told me, taking her seat in a tall striped chair behind her desk. “Unless In Depth is doing a story on the decline of the suburban weekly.”
“Not at all. I just used my being at In Depth as a door opener, although it would sadden our publisher to know how few doors it actually opens. I’m here doing due diligence for myself.” Generally, journalists are pretty quick at figuring out if someone is a straight shooter or a liar, so by the almost imperceptible nod of her head, I sensed Sandy had determined I passed the truth test. “I recentl
y found out I’m related to a family in Shorehaven. I know I could probably knock on the door and say, Hi, I’m Amy Lincoln, but I figured a little background couldn’t hurt, just in case they’re the town psychotics. In journalism school, we were told that if you need a quick take on an area you’re not familiar with, talk to someone on the local paper.”
“Sure. Would you like coffee or something? There’s a Starbucks two blocks away and an independent coffeehouse across the street. I can send Nell, the one in front.” We both chose coffee with whole milk and Equal and agreed to split a muffin, so I felt we were virtually soul mates. “Who’s the family?” she asked.
“Véronique and Ira Hochberg. They have two sons.”
“Sure, sure, sure.” She had a line of small white animal figurines about two inches high, elephants, camels, and the like, and she spent a couple of seconds rearranging them in what I guess was supposed to be a circus parade. Since she glanced my way right after that, I smiled at their adorableness, although I wasn’t sure whether I was supposed to be admiring them because they were cute, for their artistic worth, or for how expensive they were. “Ira owns a big lighting fixture store,” Sandy went on, “and he’s a pretty steady advertiser. If not for that, I wouldn’t know him. He’s not active in the community. As far as him being the town psychotic, I don’t think so. Let me be open with you and ask for ... I guess you’d call it reciprocity. In exchange for the information, do I have your word that even if Ira turns out to be your long-lost father or whatever, you’ll keep everything I’m telling you under your hat?”
“Absolutely.”
“The best way I can describe him? He’s someone you don’t want to get stuck with at a cocktail party. Unless you play golf.” I shook my head. “That’s the only thing I’ve ever heard him talk about, other than business. A couple of years ago he called me to announce he’d been elected chairman of the rules committee at his golf club.”
“Front page,” I said.
“He thought so. He made it pretty clear that he viewed his appointment as a major accomplishment, if not actually front page. In a kind of half-kidding way, I offered to send over a photographer and get some shots of him on the putting green. Guess what?”
“He said yes and you ran it.”
“Right. So bottom line on Ira is that he’s a little full of himself, what with his wanting photo ops and talking endlessly about golf. But he doesn’t seem to be a bad guy. Just a boring guy.”
“And what about Véronique?” I asked.
“Is she French or something?” Sandy asked. I shrugged.
“She’s on a committee to bring back a small theater to Shore-haven that did a lot of Shakespeare. It closed a long time ago, late sixties. Besides the bandshell and the library, that was the town’s claim to culture.”
“Did she organize the committee?”
“No, she’s just on it. We ran a couple of pieces on it and if her name wasn’t Hochberg, which I noticed only because I was proofing the article, I wouldn’t have paid attention.”
“Did you meet her?”
“No. I’m sure we ran a photo. If you want, I can find it.” As I was saying no thanks, Nell, Ms. Nature Girl, came in with the coffee, muffin, and a surprising number of paper towels, as if a spill of Exxon Valdez proportions were inevitable. When she left, Sandy said: “As far as Véronique Hochberg goes, you now have the sum total of my knowledge.”
“And the two sons?” I took a bite of muffin—either intensely seasoned bran or bland pumpkin. “I think they’re elementary or middle school age.”
“If they were superstars at academics or sports, I’d probably have heard of them. Same thing if they were deep into delinquency. In a community this size, sealed juvenile records don’t mean you don’t know what’s going on. But I never heard of them. Nearly all my business with Ira is on the phone, but the couple of times I’ve seen him he’s never whipped out his wallet and shown me pictures.” Sandy took a couple of sips of coffee, and then put down her paper cup on a small saucer-size plate. “Actually, we have a fair number of interesting people in this town. The Hochbergs are not among them.”
For someone who was not an ace behind the wheel, I had an amazing ability—well, amazing to me—to read maps. During the fighting in Afghanistan and the war with Iraq, I could have been one of those CNN generals standing next to a floor-to-wall map with a pointer in my hands. Give me a few seconds and I’d not only be able to present the best off-the-main-highway route from Karbala to Kirkuk, but also remember it a week later. Likewise, after a couple of minutes with a Greater New York road atlas, I could have been named official cartographer for Shorehaven.
I got off Main Street, which seemed to be a half-mile-long exhibit of pizza places and nail salons separated only by a hardware store, shoe store, bank, or gift shoppe featuring fat candles embedded with flowers. The residential areas nearest the center of town were middle class, with plastic tricycles temporarily abandoned by schoolchildren in front of single-car garages and odd objects stuck into spring green lawns: gnomes, frogs, bald eagles, though sadly, no flamingos.
As the neighborhoods became more prosperous, metal, plastic, and inflatable things disappeared from the grass. So did sidewalks and, eventually, streetlights. The Hochbergs’ house was in a section called Shorehaven Manor. That part of town was as upper middle class as it is possible to get without being actually rich. Still, the plots of land looked pretty small to me. At least they were far from the acreage of the estates in which a couple of my friends from Ivey had lived, and not close to the Orensteins’ house in suburban Connecticut, with its hill of a front lawn and forested backyard.
The houses themselves, however, came close to being grand. There were huge, red-roofed Spanish villas, massive, beamed Tudors, impressive brick Georgians with Tara-like white columns, often so close to each other that someone might be able to read the vintage of the bottle of sauvignon blanc on her neighbor’s dining room table. As I neared the final left turn to chez
Hochberg, Shorehaven Manor felt cramped to me, as if an entire kingdom’s aristocracy had been squished into ten acres.
I made my turn and drove around the block slowly to check out 48 Knightsbridge Road. A Tudor. Maybe Véronique Hochberg’s devotion to the Bard of Avon was such that she’d bought it as a constant reminder of his genius. The upper part of the house was the predictable white crisscrossed with dark timber beams. Perhaps the first floor was some pre-Elizabethan style that I didn’t remember ever seeing before, but it was part brick, part roughed stone, so it looked as if the builder had run out of one material and simply continued with whatever the next truck brought in.
As far as the landscaping went, I couldn’t judge. It was grass, a couple of trees, and a lot of bushes with small red and pink flowers. Not labor intensive. To me, gardens were either the big Botanicals in Brooklyn and the Bronx, or like Dr. Orenstein’s—lots of flowers that bloom at different times of year to attract butterflies, and, way in the back, a vegetable plot surrounded by a homey little fence to keep out deer, rabbits, and other vegetable-eating Connecticut creatures.
Coming back from my trip around the block, I parked the car across the street and a few houses down from the Hochbergs’, then took out the road atlas and my cell phone in order to look lost in case there were suspicious neighbors. Not that I saw any. Knightsbridge Road was quiet enough to seem devoid of life. I felt like an interloper who had dropped in from a parallel but populated universe.
With all that suburban silence, I stared at the dark wood door of the Hochbergs’ Tudor and tried to imagine myself standing before it, ringing the bell. I would hear footsteps. The door would open and my mother would be standing right there. In a bathrobe? In what Tatty had called her suburban gypsy style, some brilliantly striped Missoni outfit and hoop earrings? Maybe she’d recognize me because I looked like Selwyn’s sister. More likely, having been tipped off by Rose that I was alive, well, and in investigatory mode, she wouldn’t have to ponder, Hmmm, who is this pe
rson on my doorstep? She’d had a ninety-seven average. She would know.
Except maybe it wouldn’t be her at the door. Ira could be an easygoing entrepreneur who didn’t get off to work until eleven o’clock. Or he might have a regular morning golf game. I pictured him looking like an aging playboy in a lighthearted thirties movie, dressed in knickers and one of those hats that looked like a tumescent beret with a pom-pom.
Perhaps the door wouldn’t open at all. They might have an intercom. I’d be waiting for the door to open, but instead I’d hear a disembodied voice, Yes, who is it? What could I answer? Amy Lincoln? Would she come racing down from her bedroom or out of the kitchen, open the door and stare at me, whimpering, Oh my God, Oh my God, and then enfold me in her arms? Would a tinny voice rage through the speaker, If you don’t get the hell out of here I’m going to call the cops?
I put the seat back as far as it could go and rested my feet on either side of the steering wheel, the ultimate in un-Grandma Lil posture. The truth was, I still had no idea about what my mother was like. Okay, impulsive, strong-willed, and, at least in her behavior toward her own mother, anywhere from cool to nasty. But although the more I knew of Rose, the more I liked her, she herself wouldn’t win any prizes at the International Warmth Competition. True, she’d been welcoming to me, but maybe she and Selwyn could have been unloving toward Phyllis—or even worse.
I leaned forward and turned on the ignition for a second so I could open the window. Even though the day was gray, the smell of new-mown grass and the friendly chirps of birds on the quiet street made it seem lovely outside. The breeze had a chill, but I still felt enveloped by spring. The real reason I couldn’t figure out my mother was because I knew my father.
Chicky was midway between good-looking and handsome, like a really attractive actor playing a likable hoodlum. Except with my father, it wasn’t an act. It was him. Likable and somewhat crooked. Uncomplicated too, largely because he hadn’t the brains to be complicated. He had been loving to me, far better than anyone else who had known him could have imagined. And if he was telling the truth and he’d taken the rap for my mother so that I’d have an appropriate parent to bring me up, then he was also a profoundly good man.