At the same time, I thought that we were caught up then too, sitting there and drifting in her mood. I thought it would not be possible for us to feel this way if she were not completely for me.
IV
Mr. Pelham got back today. He’s been away for two weeks or so, so I haven’t seen him since Ann told me their ancient history. At first it bothered me a little, but then I thought that, after all, he’s over sixty now, and there might as well be a statute of limitations on that sort of thing.
In any case he was very subdued. No essay on France, where he’d been. He asked me if I knew that Ann was taking a trip to France and I said no, but that it didn’t surprise me, since she went every spring. Then he asked me how I was doing on the job, and I said O.K., although that is something he could certainly find out better from one of the other partners. Then he just mumbled around for a while. Not one of his brighter days. But I have to ask myself, Am I faster now to pick him up on signs of bleariness? Do I try to see him as gone by?
I have changed some, at least in one respect. My “ear,” as Ann—or Mr. Pelham—would say, is attuned.
Ann told me this: “If you are ever miserable, Charlie, I can tell you that you shouldn’t despise Job’s comforters. I remember when Alfred and I were divorced, which was a perfectly good idea, but nevertheless a painful experience—like a physical illness—an aunt of mine, who was an extremely kind and silly woman, took me to lunch and comforted me. She said, ‘Ann, my dear, it was really too perfect. Too good to be true. You were both too glamorous, you know. I mean, it was just too perfect and unreal for you to keep your minds on each other. What you really needed was someone less high-powered. He was too ambitious to give you the kind of attention that would nurture you. You simply weren’t nurtured, because he never gave a thought to it. I remember saying something like this to you some time ago. I’m sure you don’t remember, because there was no way you could have understood at the time. I’m not saying I could have saved you any unhappiness, but it was just so clear to someone outside, to someone who really wanted you to be happy. And I hope you will be, dear.’ Of course, she was nowhere near right. If anyone ever insisted on nurturing, on the hothouse, green-thumb approach to wives, it was Alfred. I assure you, his current wife would win a tulip contest in Holland. But everything my aunt said was strangely comforting. It made the whole subject seem remote. Something that I knew more about than anyone in the world but that was essentially a very obscure, useless subject. Something it would do me no good to think about anymore but that I was satisfied to have figured out.
“And my aunt took me to have my hair done and bought me some new clothes, all of which was so beside the point, but helpful. In fact, I think I cut my hair short the next week. But my aunt’s carrying on reminded me that there was a ritual, and that where there is a ritual there must be a midden of old experience nearby, and that I could just go on for a while impersonally until I felt like taking over myself again.”
Some time after Ann told me this, I realized that it could be construed as advice, and even as fair warning.
I’d never seen a steel mill. It’s a good thing I went through after the conference. I couldn’t have got it out of my mind when I laid out the memos for the various company officers. It would have made me think there must be more to them than there really is.
Mr. Leland got sick. I went to Pittsburgh by myself. Scared the hell out of me. Even though I knew that I knew what they wanted to know.
The client’s v.p. who was in charge of setting up the conference had written to Mr. Leland that it would be O.K. for Mr. Leland to send his second-in-command. I guess the v.p. figured that with the money they pay us, there must be at least a half dozen old gray lawyers working full time. So when I walked into his office the v.p. assumed I was the second-in-command’s clerk. His mistake aggravated me some, since I was nervous. However, I soon realized he was a jerk. While he was still a little embarrassed and thought maybe I just looked young, he actually asked my age. I said, “Twenty-seven going on twenty-eight.” He didn’t even smile. His secretary laughed and then he managed to get it.
I laid out the issues for them without much trouble. At first I thought one of them was laying some elaborate groundwork with his questions, but it turned out he was just a little slow. After that the only thing that surprised me was how much dead wood they carry in their executives. They could get along just as well with a couple of the bright ones. And then I guess I was surprised at how conservative they were even just discussing, or rather not discussing, litigation. They moaned once or twice about the cost of litigation, even though that should be peanuts to them.
But the tour of the steel mill impressed me. Oddly enough, I thought of Ann talking about what art should be concerned with—i.e., the changes that are ordinarily hidden from us. But I suppose you don’t really see the transformation here, although the impression is that you do. The coal and ore coming in one side and steel being rolled out the other, and the cooling sheets visible from a catwalk. It was the colors that amazed me most. They looked like red clouds being blown across a bright moon. They seemed to have a shape and another side down in the cooling steel.
I was impressed with my response too. To the color and to the brute force of the process. It amazed me that a process so violent and precise should have a by-product as momentary and delicate as those shades of red. I admired both. And then I finally thought: Here is an analogy for Mr. Pelham: I was raw material before I went to law school. Practically useless. I was fed into the mill, and by a violent but precise process I became useful. But not until Ann and Mr. Pelham came along did I realize there were appreciable by-products, that I was not so colorless—and did not have to be so grimly thrifty with myself—as I had grown used to thinking.
But without the original crude effort there would have been much less now. Both the violent energy and its precise control served me, and they would not have worked on me so well had I been able to imagine there was any other way.
I must admit that this line of thought would not have occurred to me without the influence of Ann and Mr. Pelham, and I am going back to New York gladly. With relief to leave here. I don’t have the simple single-minded drive I once had. There were dark hints here from the company—room for another house counsel, not a surprising thing for house counsel to find himself in key positions on a number of matters, and so forth and so on. That would have knocked me over not so long ago. I still don’t take it lightly, but it doesn’t hit all of me. I suppose the hints of the company are useful testimony of my value, but I’m not so interested anymore in my brute usefulness.
I suppose the extreme of that last position would be Mr. Pelham.
I called up Ann when I got back, but she’d already left for Europe. I was surprised, and a little worried, but then traveling, especially flying, makes her so nervous that, I suppose, she suddenly found the nerve to get on and so she just got on.
I told Mr. Pelham about the company’s feeling me out. He was amused, but he took it seriously too. He asked me if I’d told Mr. Leland. I said no. I wasn’t even considering the offer, so I didn’t want him to think I was. Mr. Pelham told me to go ahead and tell him. He said there was always a chance that someone from the company would tell him—“Ho, ho, your boy sticks pretty close to the apron strings. No, seriously, I admire loyalty”—and so I’d better tell him first. Mr. Pelham also pointed out that even if I wasn’t considering it at all, it would do Mr. Leland good to hear it.
He said, “But I’m glad you like being in a firm better. I can’t imagine being house counsel. That’s not really law. I must say I have come to appreciate law in my nonage. I appreciate it now even in its capacity as men’s club, monastery, temple of high Protestant rite. There is a reassurance in its formality, which is, after all, not a superficial aspect of it. I’m in favor of communal formality, and mental formality. Look at the mess in which people suddenly find themselves—people who have lived solely by their own personal achievements. Those ca
n collapse in a minute. Money, personality, taste, social life. I mean a modern social life; I suppose there was a time when family tradition provided a framework for life. The proud Don Pedro in his Spanish ruff seeking death before dishonor. Now all there is of anything approaching like magnitude is professional tradition. The rest of life is merely existential. What a wonderful word, ‘merely.’
“Lately I’ve been considering law as magic. It’s not so far off—it’s all done with words, the proper spells. Think of an argument on appeal: two wizards hurling incantations at each other, until finally one of them finds the properly binding words, and—e presto!—the material world is rearranged in accordance with them. And lawyers are possessed by their clients’ problems even more thoroughly than shamans were by their patients’ evil spirits. Until the case is decided, at least.
“Perhaps we’re not sorcerers so much as earthworms. The compost of the nation passes through our digestive tubes and emerges rich with nitrates. Our briefs and counselings are almost pure nitrogen. Very little is created anymore, and nothing is destroyed. Isn’t that basic physics? But disposition is still a possibility, and enrichment. Of course, this is the most optimistic view.”
I wonder if she planned it that way—that I would be so confused by her letter that I would have to go to Mr. Pelham to find out what was really going on. And there I’d be with Mr. Pelham, who would fill me in gradually, making sure I wouldn’t choke on it. Save herself a lot of worry.
Q: “Did she know all along that this guy in France wanted to marry her?”
A: “Yes, for some time, in fact. But that is not to say she knew she wanted to marry him. Even after she’d left.”
Q: “But he’s old.”
A: “He is one year younger than I am.”
Q: “Rich and all that.”
A: “Rich? Oh, surely not rich. No more than Ann—”
Q: “I don’t know about Ann; I never asked.”
A: “She had a settlement in lieu of alimony that was well invested over the years, and she lived a comparatively simple life, which is to say—”
Q: “That they won’t be in the old folks’ home.”
A: “No. They’ll live half the year in Paris and half the year in the country. I’m sorry I can’t indulge you in the momentary satisfaction of discovering flawed motives—some venality, some despicable calculation. But I’m sure that in the long run you would prefer—”
Q: “In the long run she would have been way too old.”
A: “I’m equally sure that you never held your feelings to that calculation.”
That was a week ago. I’ve begun to care some that I made a fool of myself. Not so much that I care what Mr. Pelham thinks or even what he knows. I shouldn’t have tried to find out anything. Bits of information stick in my mind, no matter what. I’ll never know enough, so I’d just as soon know nothing at all.
I don’t know how to take it; I can’t satisfy myself by reducing it to any formal proposition. The only hypothesis that I came up with that showed me anything worthwhile was this: If I had left her, I would have felt worse.
I also suppose that she would have left out of pride within five years, in any case—even though she must have had ample grounds for believing I was fairly attracted to her beyond the original impulse, for reasons that were not only self-renewing but increasingly forceful.
I think that although she felt the imbalance between my future (far off and largely deferrable; I could stay with her for five years and still marry a girl in college) and her future (imminent and brief; if she stayed with me for five years we would have gone to more funerals than weddings)—although she felt that imbalance more keenly than I did at the time, nevertheless I think that she also sensed that the longer we went on, the more I would be the one to suffer, having no accumulation of any comparable experience to offset it with. It would have been more and more all there was to my life.
Still, all these arguments are not enough to move me very far one way or another. There really isn’t anything to decide. I just run arguments through to cool off. There is some calm in just going if click then clack, click clack, click clack.
No better. I have been noting a number of unfamiliar gestures—e.g., I hold my head in my hands as though it were a separable globe, I stare at my open palm. I do find myself resisting, however. I’m perfectly capable of functioning. But it takes a certain determination to function exactly as I did before.
I have noted a good point of resistance, which is Mr. Pelham. Taking his disappointments gently and reflectively must have done a lot to make him the way he is. Of course, he was more disposed to it in the first place. Not just by education. And he’s good at it. I myself would make a lousy Mr. Pelham.
I will not let myself be like Mr. Pelham.
When I use the term “Mr. Pelham,” I’m not sure I really know the definition. Has he made sure that nothing has its hooks in him? Or do a lot of things have their hooks in him? So that he’s strung up in involuntary equilibrium?
Either way, functionally speaking, it works out that he has given up whatever drive and traction he once may have had. I haven’t, even if I may be temporarily without traction.
Today Mr. Pelham offered to borrow me from Mr. Leland and to take me to Japan on one of his trips. I said no, since I’m getting back to work with some solidity, but I was grateful.
I’ve got back into a routine of work and exercise. It is a great help just to do everything by numbers—swim fifty laps, brush my hair a hundred strokes—and work regularly but never beyond the set time. No hanging around, no getting run down. Mere routine is very helpful. Just to keep in motion, to give some structure to what I think during the slack in my schedule.
I thought: I am like an astronaut. They might as well have shot me to the moon. I handled it, I came back the same.
Q: What was it like?
A: It was nice.
Q: Nice?
A: If you wanted to hear more details you should have sent someone like Mr. Pelham. I didn’t hire out for that part of the job.
Q: We had to send someone like you. We hoped the rest would just come.
Maybe it did. Maybe it just came for the astronauts too, and we’ve never heard about it. I imagine they are something like me—small-town boys with B minds, who learned how. And owe it all to learning how. Are they any different now? Are their thoughts any different? Maybe we should send someone to ask them if their thoughts are any different. Maybe we should send Mr. Pelham to ask them.
Maybe the change comes later. Maybe the time to ask them is not when they’ve just got back but much, much later. When they’re old and making it up.
Mr. Pelham got up his nerve the other day. He said, “Have you heard anything more from Ann?”
I could have turned him down with a hard no, but something stopped me. I said, “No, have you?” and he looked a lot easier about the whole thing.
He said, “No. I wonder how she is.”
I said, “I’m sure she’s doing fine.”
He said, “Well, I assume the best.”
It came to me very strongly that I was more or less myself again but that he misses her terribly.
And so he wants to pore over everything. O.K. I don’t mind. More than that—there is something about the way he looks, the way the loose skin of his throat is tucked inside his collar, the way he’s slowed up.
It’s not pity on my part. He is the first old man I’ve known who is interested in what I feel. I suppose in a way I produce for him just the same way I produce for Mr. Leland. But if there’s a mutual benefit in his questions and my answers, that’s only a small part of it. If it’s a bargain, it’s certainly not one necessary to any enterprise of mine. When he comes I feel I should take care of him, although he may not need any concern of mine—he could easily find solace in the bosom of the senior part of the firm. No, I suppose it is the closest thing I have to a moral concern. In the sense of unfounded belief. I should deal with this man, help keep him from som
ething—growing coldness, slowing down. He needs to be in use, to talk about something more than old coarse light on empty buildings, than his trips to Japan, and it seems right in some overreaching scheme of things that he should. But he is a commentator, and appreciator, not an initiator, and so for the moment he will use me to tell him things.
I told him about the first time Ann’s maid brought her breakfast on a tray into the bedroom and I pulled the bed covers over my head. He thought that was funny, and he wanted to know if Ann laughed and when she laughed—while the maid was still there? He was interested. He said, “Another Lord Chesterfield letter—‘What to do in my lady’s chamber when the maid comes in.’ Once one didn’t have to notice, I suppose. But now no one can avoid being somewhat democratically aware. It would be inhuman. I think I recommend a pleasant smile. Not that I fault you. I mean, I understand your solid urge for privacy, even if it’s carried out with ostrich-like futility. But the completely admirable solution is a smile. And as for the maid—also a delicate part. What did she do?”
“She brought another tray.”
He said, “Exactly. And people say there’s a servant problem. Of course, she wouldn’t ever work on Sunday.”
I could do without his finicky lines on servants and etiquette, and some of his other old-nob talk, but I suppose that’s the least of the things it’s too late for him to change at this stage. What I do get along with in him is this: I think he has always tried just as hard as I do.
In fact, I think he probably even submitted himself to the process of being a lawyer the same way I did. For all his talk about dream careers, he chose the one he’s had. And it’s held him together pretty well, even though I suspect his life has been lonelier than mine will be. All that’s wrong now is that there are a few loose ends. I’m sure he’ll work out a few essays on the subject. Not directly on the subject, but close enough so that I’ll be able to listen for the flaw in his well-being. Like a doctor listening to a patient’s breathing while the patient talks on about his other symptoms.
Testimony and Demeanor Page 20