by Louis Begley
The telephone rang in the house. Let it go. Until recently, when Carrie’s mercilessly teasing compelled the acquisition, Schmidt had had no answering machine, on the theory that if anyone really needed to reach him it was easy enough to call again. Now that he was the owner of such a contraption, he compensated by listening to messages only rarely—when he thought Carrie might have left one. The ringing continued. It was someone persistent, who took into account the possibility that he was in the garden. He might answer in time if he ran, and then he might not. He remained on his deck chair. Carrie wouldn’t be calling; she was in class and, anyway, didn’t have the telephone habit. What if it was Charlotte? He had planned to call her himself, a little later. Nobody else mattered; it wasn’t as if there were still the chance of his getting a new assignment or, that miracle of miracles, a brand-new client. He would have liked to wipe the slate clean of the last years of his practice, before Mary’s illness brought him to retire early: a shrinking workload, feelings of helplessness (although he had not done anything to lose clients; how could he have prevented the consequences of his specialty’s having gone the way of the telex machine?), guilt, and shame about not having enough brains or energy or force of personality to drum up business of some other sort. A number of fellow financing lawyers he knew and respected had done just that. In the jargon of the profession, they “retooled.” Loneliness and not knowing what to do with his time were a cheap price to pay for early retirement, for having been set free. Besides, a couple more years, and he would have had to leave the firm anyway. Without the miracle of Carrie to console him. It wasn’t as though anyone at Wood & King might have suggested that he stay on past the mandatory retirement age. Had anyone thought of calling it the Drop Dead date? In fact, it was likely that the younger partners might have agitated to have him pushed out if he hadn’t made everybody’s life easy and negotiated his own departure. People’s lack of imagination was wonderfully surprising: these partners in their forties or early fifties, didn’t they foresee that what they did to their elders would be done to them in not so many years? More brutally, in all likelihood. Schmidt and his contemporaries had been brought up in a tradition of almost filial respect for their elders. If they had neglected to transmit a halfway effective simulacrum of those feelings to the next generation of partners, at least they hadn’t offered them the sordid spectacle of parricide. But the very bright youngsters in the firm today, the superstars said to be beating down the doors of the partnership, claiming admission as their birthright, would have received ample instruction in that blood sport, and from front-row seats. If he lived long enough, he would have fun watching them cut off the balls of the self-satisfied bastards who had been after his. Perhaps even Jon Riker’s—he didn’t care that it would be unseemly to sit there and laugh while one’s son-in-law was neutered.
Enough sun. One more dive into the pool, five minutes of laps. Down, anger. He should learn to laugh and get rid of the scowl that etched the bitter lines framing his mouth. How lucky he was, in the end. He had plenty of money. Not for him one of those mail-order second marriages with a classmate’s widow or some divorcée with a surgically renewed face—certainly not the sourness of celibacy. “Black, but comely” his wild girl, his lily of the valley; each night he lies betwixt her perfumed breasts. But how long would it be before that wild girl told him she had had it with her old and limp lover?
The telephone again. He was at the door of the screened porch. For Pete’s sake, Schmidtie, stop the doddering crackpot routine; cross the porch, go into the living room, and answer. Ah, it’s Charlotte. So rare that she called. Calling was his job. Stilted conversations; Schmidt timed them so that there was something he could do immediately afterward—take a stiff drink at the very least—to deaden the sense of desolation.
The weather nice out there? she inquired. That’s good. The city’s miserable. Perfectly awful.
A couple of similar observations later, Schmidt understood she was calling for a reason but needed to circle around before getting to the point. He waited for the “by the way.”
Dad, do you have people coming out for this weekend?
No, I don’t, nobody.
I think I might want to come.
The old but not yet forgotten feeling that he might melt, like a snowball, from complete happiness, leaving in the place where he stood only a wet puddle on the gleaming painted wood floor.
That’s simply wonderful, he answered, I think I’ve heard on the radio that the weather will be fine. You and Jon aren’t going to Claverack?
I’m not. I don’t know what he’s doing. If it’s OK, I’ll come alone.
Sweetie, is something the matter?
Plenty. I need to talk to you, but not from the office.
All right, baby. Do you really want to wait until Friday evening? You could take Friday off and come out Thursday afternoon. Or I could go into the city tomorrow and have lunch with you.
Thanks, Dad, it’s too complicated. Friday’s OK. I’ll take the six o’clock jitney after work. Is that girl still living there?
Carrie. Yes, of course.
Then I’d like to stay in the pool house.
As you wish.
Silence on the other end of the line. What to do?
Sweetie, he ventured. Do let me know if you change your mind and want to come earlier. By the way, Carrie and I are going out to lunch on Saturday. At the house of a man called Mansour. Michael Mansour. You know, the financier who’s always in the papers. Of all things, he’s bought the old Crussel place. Shall I tell him you will come too?
I don’t think so, Dad. I’ll skip your activities. All I want is to get some sun and have a talk with you. OK?
Aha! The problem between her and Jon, whatever it was, hadn’t put a dent in her standards. Wouldn’t have Papa’s Puerto Rican tootsie at her wedding, won’t stay with her under the parental roof now. Let it be. Hadn’t poor Mary and he fitted out the pool house expressly to make young people’s weekend visits to the country easier?
Absolutely. Be good!
He went upstairs to shave. Across the landing from the room he shared with Carrie was Charlotte’s old room, which, after Mary died, Charlotte had shared with Jon on weekends. Until she and Schmidt quarreled. They had never returned, except when they came to see him in the hospital. Or had their primary motive been to get hold of the VW sitting in the garage, which he had given to Charlotte, and to count the silver, the silver he had told them he didn’t mean to part with while he was still alive? Schmidt threw the blade into the wastebasket and attached a new one to the razor. He went over his face another time, slowly and with care, from time to time testing the skin for smoothness with his index finger. This wasn’t the moment to catalogue old insults. Granted that she had behaved badly, and the Rikers, mère, père, et fils, were deplorable. Wasn’t it the first time that, as an adult—if there had been other occasions he couldn’t remember them—she might be turning to him with a hurt? If there was something the matter—he found it difficult to imagine anything serious, probably it had to do with Jon’s working too hard or “their” not having become pregnant, something that, so far as he could tell, no one did anymore. If there was a problem, it had to be the Riker in-laws nagging her. In that case, he mustn’t let the least trace of satisfaction appear. An as yet unmeasurable opportunity to repair the damage between him and Charlotte: that’s what possibly lay before him. If only Carrie would help. At first, the absurdity of the pretension shocked him. That was something he would have had the right to expect from Mary, not from this child mistress. But there was no one alive he knew who had finer innate tact, no one more deeply benevolent.
II
LET’S take my car.
He didn’t want to tell her that a huge cloud, as yet invisible in Bridgehampton, was gathering over him. Not until he knew its shape better, not until he had had another talk with Charlotte. He was going to the beach with Carrie for their daily walk. She kept the little BMW so clean that ordinarily she
preferred to take his car. What’s a station wagon for if not to be full of sand. And beach toys, he might have added. But the evening was so deliciously soft that she wanted to drive with the top down.
Hey, don’t forget to get the sand off your feet before you get in when we go home. Use the towel.
Promise.
Carrie the waif, Carrie attached to her one possession like a little housewife. To see her like this gave him a sad shot of pleasure, similar to the feeling in the old days when some action or gesture of Charlotte’s vividly showed that she was such a splendid girl, that Mary and he, although they were only children, and Mary an orphan to boot, had done well bringing her up. Carrie’s driving way too fast once she got behind the wheel of the little convertible was another matter; had they used his car she would have rolled along sedately, as behooved a lady behind the wheel of a big fat Volvo. One balanced the other. Therefore, Schmidtie, avoid remarks about people in little red cars zipping over country roads at fifty. The tires protested when she hit the brakes in full view of the ocean. It waited there, blue and black, regular small breakers lining it near the beach like the furrows that once lined the potato fields reaching all the way to the dune before the farmers sold out to make room for rich men’s beach houses.
Perfect day, I’m glad you got back early.
The sand was soft and rutted. He trotted awkwardly to the water to test its temperature.
It’s not cold, he called out. We’ll have a swim after the walk. This is too good to be missed.
You swim. I think I’d drown.
You won’t. I’ll hold on to you.
No way José.
She made a neat pile of their towels, wiggled out of her sweatshirt, and took him by the hand.
Hey, what are you waiting for, how about a kiss?
She wore the smallest of bikinis. Strings around her waist and between her legs that held in place a triangle of red cloth. Two smaller triangles of the same cloth attached to strings covered her nipples. Unbroken, luxurious tan; a salacious invitation to dream of the hours she spent lying in the sun naked. He took her in proudly, noting that even her feet were brown. A savage virgin goddess: no, a temple whore, ministering to adepts of Eastern mysteries. When she untied the cotton kerchief she had put over her head to drive in the open car, her hair, a mass of tiny curls, became a black halo surrounding her face.
Feasting locals, two couples of Schmidt’s age, the others younger, probably their progeny accompanied by wives and husbands, comfortably installed in folding chairs, drink beer out of bottles. The older men are big, no taller than Schmidt but heavier, with comfortable paunches under their Tshirts and dull blond faces. Retired telephone repairmen or managers in one of the supermarkets at the mall. Wives apt to work at the checkout counter as supervisors, correcting the black teenage girls when they screw up on the cash register. Sour looking, but they’re the last generation to have learned how to count. Bags of Fritos and a bowl of green dip pass from hand to hand. Does the younger set aspire to the same lives, to longevity in a society that has less and less use for the old? Have they thought up new ways of making it in the information age? Beside them, a cooler with more beer on ice and a barbecue grill. The charcoal briquettes have fine white ash on them. They are ready to receive the halved chickens and coils of Italian sausage spread out on a table covered with a sheet of plastic. These good people have brought their mountain of stuff in the pickup truck and two minivans parked steps away, too close to the dune and the once plentiful sandpipers nesting in it. Men Schmidt knows, upright denizens of the Georgica Association, would bellow stentorian reproof at these yokels. Schmidt doesn’t feel up to the insults they might yell back. There was a middle way: he intensified his stare. As though rehearsed, the heads turned to stare at Carrie and him. Let them. This is about class warfare, not protection of the environment. Thank you for your interest, Mrs. Mahoney and Mr. O’Toole, please enjoy your front-seat view of the father out at the beach with a daughter who doesn’t look much like him. Wait for the surprise. All I need to do is rotate her forty-five degrees and stick my tongue in her mouth. Then watch closely: she’ll glue her body to mine while I’m running my hand over her back and buttocks and, yes, even down the crack between them.
He reaches for Carrie. Rising on exquisite toes, she deposits a chaste kiss on his lips.
Come on Schmidtie, that’s all for now, these guys are watching. Let’s get away.
I love you with all my heart.
I’ve got a secret for you. I love you too.
Just beyond where the tide reached, the sand was better: smooth, cool, and very hard. They walked fast, holding hands. That was where one might have wanted to run. Far ahead, at what seemed a great distance, were little human figures with animated black dots, their dogs, circling around them.
Charlotte called. Right after you left. She’s coming out this weekend.
No kidding.
Yes. Do you mind? She said she would stay in the pool house.
I don’t mind. Boy, that’s really something. Their first time. Is this an anniversary or something?
No, no. And it’s not they. She’s coming alone. I think there’s trouble between her and Jon. She didn’t want to talk about it on the telephone.
Gee, Schmidtie, maybe I should move out while she’s here. Huh? That’ll be one thing less to worry about.
Without breaking her stride she raised his hand to her lips. Oh, how he adored her.
Where would you go?
I could ask the Blackmans, she ventured cautiously. I don’t know about my friend.
That was the waitress at O’Henry’s who lived in Springs. Perhaps the boyfriend, who had made unwelcome passes at Carrie, had moved on. How true it was that they really had no one they could turn to.
The Blackmans will be thrilled to have you, but if you don’t mind I wish you’d stay. You know, keep me company, make sure I don’t blow it. She’s a big girl, might as well get used to you.
Yes, and also to the mess Jon Riker had made. It was better not to think about that. Avert your eyes, hold your nose, and let it lie there. Thank God, so far no one has asked for your views or help; that too may come. Charlotte must know everything. If it were only a question of Jon’s having an affair, it would be tempting to advise her to shrug it off. Something on the order of, Look, Charlotte, Jon is an idiot, an idiot with a big legal brain, that’s all. It isn’t a world premiere for a fellow like him to have a fling with an attractive female lawyer—after they’ve spent hundreds of hours working on a deal together, evenings and nights included. Was that in fact the case? Had this woman and Riker been thrown together irresistibly, or was he always on the make and incapable of discretion? Did postfeminist young women like Charlotte shrug off a husband’s peccadilloes? An idiot, a moral imbecile, who may have also brought the roof down on himself and damaged the firm! Unforgivable. Where did that conclusion fit, in a marriage made for better and for worse? Schmidt wasn’t sure whether in fact that old-fashioned promise had been made in the bizarre Jewish ceremony Charlotte and Jon had cooked up, which he had observed from the enormous distance the painkillers had put between him, the bride and groom, and the groom’s parents. Killing which pain? The leftover ache from the accident or his rage at those proceedings?
It is said that until the Last Judgment, when their understanding will be wholly extinguished, the souls of sinners consigned to hell will make out dimly the shape of the distant future, peering at it as though at dusk. Afterward, no more cognition. That is why hell swarms with gossips, shadows pitifully eager to extract the news of the day from recent arrivals. So it is with parents of grown sons and daughters: children’s lives become opaque, closed to them, and they scavenge for every clue, desperate to understand, oblivious of their impotence. There was an unaccustomed hoarseness in the voice of Jack DeForrest, Schmidt’s law school classmate and once-upon-a-time partner and best friend, now serving out his last year as the presiding partner of Wood & King—a signal of mounting though
still-contained rage. Schmidt had called the great man, thinking he would ask how the firm was doing and let anything that might relate to the trouble between Charlotte and Jon Riker float to the surface naturally and spontaneously. True, the chances of learning anything helpful by snooping around at W & K were small. At the same time, old habits of not leaving a stone unturned when a client’s welfare was at stake kept him from doing nothing; he simply couldn’t wait until the talk he and Charlotte might have on Saturday—and he supposed that no such a conversation, however hard he tried, would take place on Friday evening. Not right after the jitney ride from the city, without giving her first a chance to take a dip in the pool, not when they sat down for a late dinner with Carrie at the table.