“Stop,” she whispered. He pushed down her knees and crawled up onto the chaise until his chest was between her legs and his face was nestling against her stomach. “Please. Please stop.”
Something in her tone—what was it?—woke Helen. She got up, crossed the room, looked at Jane with disappointment, and hobbled out to the hallway.
“Janey,” he whispered, and ran his hands up the sides of her body and cupped her face.
“Please,” she said. “Stop. Please, please, please, please, please.”
Thirteen
Childish Behavior
1.
The bedroom was hot, even with the windows open and the ceiling fan spinning slowly overhead. The honking and braying of the traffic on West End Avenue was filling what little space in the room wasn’t taken up by the oversized furniture, making the air seem even heavier and denser. With the shades drawn against the afternoon sun, it felt and looked like midsummer. Russell had taken the air conditioner out of the window too early, probably on one of the few cool days they’d had this fall. How kind of him, except it was the sort of chore he always left to Desmond, and the fact that he hadn’t waited until Desmond returned to let him do it was just one more piece of suspicious information to slip into the file of evidence Desmond was carefully compiling in his head: self-help book, eyeglasses, air conditioner, possible weight loss, sideburns. (Suspicious or not, this new flaring facial hair had one thing going for it: very unbecoming.)
Russell was in the shower. His parents had called that morning to announce that they were attending a conference of the American Psychological Association at a vast hotel in Midtown Manhattan and would love to have dinner with them. “Notice,” Russell had said, as soon as he’d clicked off the phone, “that they waited until the last minute to call. They’ve probably known about this conference for months, and ordinarily, I would have had something planned for a Saturday night.”
Like what? Desmond managed not to ask.
Russell’s incessant grumbling about Gloria and Leon was an indication of his devotion to them; he’d arranged his life and career in ways that were guaranteed to displease them mostly because he was afraid that he’d fail at any attempt to earn their approval. Better by far to take himself out of the running than to risk losing the race. Russell’s parents usually showed up in New York two or three times a year, most often unannounced, and the four of them would grimace through a tense dinner. Afterward, Russell would retreat into a thousand-page book for several days.
Listening to the hiss of the shower, Desmond felt defeated by all that he understood about Russell’s defenses. What was the point in knowing someone this well when it helped bring their betrayals of you into the light?
The most unsettling part of the past twenty-four hours hadn’t been Desmond’s gnawing suspicions and jealousy, hadn’t been the way Russell acted so blasé and accommodating; it had been the way anger routinely rained down on Desmond and then, unaccountably, rearranged itself, molecule by molecule, into lust. Russell would turn his head a certain way or rub at his eyes, or make some other unsurprising, inconsequential gesture, and Desmond would find his whole body dripping with rage. Next thing he knew, he’d be lurching across the room, wrestling Russell to the floor or down onto the bed or pushing him up against a wall, unbuckling and unbuttoning.
At some point last night, Desmond had come to the realization that it was all a matter of reclaiming his territory. Maybe that’s what lust boiled down to in the end, a battle over property lines; his had been rekindled by the discovery that a sleazy developer was possibly digging a foundation on his land. It would have been easier, and probably a lot less exhausting, if they’d had one terrible fight and someone, preferably Russell, had ended up getting clobbered.
Desmond maneuvered his way around the furniture to the bureau and opened the top drawer. Inside was a jumble of ties and undershirts and socks, his and his, undifferentiated, tangled up together the way their lives and their identities were now tangled together. How foolish he’d been for agreeing to Russell’s suggestion they store their clothes in the same bureau; he should have known that as soon as you give someone what he wants, he loses interest in it.
Underneath a pile of white socks was a pair of black lycra shorts, part of a posing outfit Russell had bought for a sweaty, exhibitionist yoga class he’d attended twice. He tugged at the stretchy material, feeling a strong urge to take hold of each leg and yank them apart at the seams. Instead, he buried his nose in them and inhaled deeply, hoping to catch a whiff of Russell’s body. But no, there was no hint of anything more personal than the recycled plastic they were made of and Tide.
He tossed the pants back and began groping toward the corners of the drawer. Early this morning, as he and Russell were lying side by side on their too-big bed, Desmond had reached over and picked up the idiotic self-help book. He’d read the title aloud and asked, “Yours, sweetheart?” trying to sound disapproving in a lightly bemused way.
“Melanie left it here the other night,” he said calmly. “She insisted I read it, said it changed her life.”
The book, Desmond noted, was closed flat with only a scrap of a New Yorker cover someone had been using as a bookmark between the pages. Assuming Desmond hadn’t dreamed the things up, that meant Russell had taken the glasses out and hidden them away somewhere. What else would you do with a smoking gun?
“How has her life changed?” he’d asked.
Russell put down the book he was reading, a volume of short novels by Thomas Mann. “Well, for one thing,” he said, “her latest crush is on an honest to God, unconflicted, uncloseted lesbian.”
“Ah. Progress.”
“Yes, it is.” He mulled this over for a moment and added, “Although it’s true this woman has been in a relationship with a very wealthy woman for the past fifteen years and they have two kids together and are partners in a small advertising agency . . .”
It usually turned out that the people who claim they’re looking to change their lives are really looking for a way to justify making the same mistakes over and over. No wonder these self-help books were so popular.
As he poked through the array of generally unused clothing, Desmond knew that if he found the glasses in the dresser drawers, then at least he’d know Russell had stashed them away. By the time he’d rummaged his way to the bottom of the bottom drawer, the bedroom floor was littered with underpants and jerseys and T-shirts, and he was sweating.
“Looking for something?”
Russell’s hair was wet from the shower, and there were traces of shaving cream around the edges of his silly muttonchops.
Their eyes met and it was apparent to Desmond they’d seen each other’s cards. Even so, he found himself saying, “I’m looking for a sock.”
“Top drawer. Same as always.”
“Right.”
He crammed the clothes back into the drawers. Russell stood at the closet door, naked, pondering which combination of clothes would displease his parents most. His back looked lean and muscular, a perfect combination of skin, bones, and sinew. What a great, gorgeous front the human body is, a splendid storehouse for secrets and deceptions.
He went to Russell, thinking he’d like to strangle him and found instead that he was running his hands down his back. “Better not,” Russell said. “We’ll be even later showing up at the restaurant than my parents and lose our edge.”
2.
“You just know the food’s going to be vulgar in this kind of amusement park,” Gloria Abrams said. She took off her glasses and let them fall against her chest on their leather cord, folded up the menu, and tossed it into the middle of the table. “Not that I expected anything else. Morganthal said the dinner they had here last night was ‘pretty good,’ so I should have known it would be a disaster. I couldn’t believe the paper she delivered this afternoon. Complete drivel from start to finish. I was so enraged by the end of it, I could barely stay seated.”
Desmond felt Russell grab his thi
gh under the table and squeeze tightly, his usual signal that he was trying to control the anger he felt toward his mother’s scathing disapproval of everything, each shred of which he took personally. Yet, given the current state of things, it felt like a vestige of their former intimacy rather than intimacy itself. Desmond reached down and put his hand over Russell’s. “We could have gone somewhere else,” Russell said.
“Unfortunately,” Gloria said, “we’re staying in this hideous hotel, so it was too convenient to resist the temptation to crawl down here and get a table.” She gazed at Russell as if she were looking at him for the first time. “Interesting sideburns, darling. I hadn’t noticed that look as a new trend.”
“I’m trying to start one. My goal is to get photographed for the Style pages of the Times: ‘Son of infamous child psychologist wearing childish facial hair.’”
“Well, bonne chance. You always were ambitious.”
Gloria had her long white hair pulled off her face and woven into a complicated braid that she wore draped across her shoulder as if it were a pet snake. She was an attractive woman who frequented hairdressers and manicurists and dance classes but seemed to be preserving the beauty of her face and figure mainly through sheer force of will. She was in her late sixties, and the sunken appearance of her cheeks and hazy pallor of her green eyes gave her an intimidating elegance. If only, Desmond had often thought, Gloria weren’t Russell’s mother, the two would have been great pals. She was exactly the kind of confident, intelligent, belligerent woman Russell found irresistibly glamorous.
“Oh, no!” she whispered. “There’s that Simmons woman. She isn’t coming this way, is she? Check for me, will you, Leon?”
Without lowering his menu, Leon said, “She walked past.”
“You see how they all avoid me? They’re terrified of me, as if I’m strolling around with a bomb in my briefcase. Which, by the way, I am, and plan to deliver at eleven tomorrow morning.”
Gloria had based her career as a child psychologist on the theory that treating children like mere children was an insult to their intelligence and integrity, and that most would grow into happier and healthier adults if they weren’t forced to waste the first twelve years of their lives playing games and reading silly, witless books. Recently, she’d done a reversal of sorts by publishing a series of papers which attempted to prove that personality and adult behavior were largely the result of the genetic equivalent of Russian roulette and had almost nothing to do with parental influences on either nature or nurture. “Absolving herself,” Russell liked to point out, “of any responsibility for the way her children turned out.” That might have been the case, but Desmond had always felt that she was motivated most strongly by a terrible fear of receiving the endorsement of her peers; they, after all, had dismissed her early work and to prove to herself and everyone else that those initial attacks had been personal, she had to make sure they dismissed everything that followed. It wasn’t all that different from the stand Russell took with Gloria and Leon.
As Desmond sat politely listening to her describe the paper she was going to deliver tomorrow morning, it occurred to him that Gerald Cody-Miller was, in many ways, Gloria’s ideal child: a shrewd, sarcastic, self-possessed adult in an undeveloped body, a six-year-old who showed no discernible interest in childish things and was insulted by any suggestion that his opinions were less valuable than anyone else’s. Jane would undoubtedly take enormous comfort in Gloria’s harsh theories. He’d have to buy her a copy of Gloria’s first book as soon as he got back to Boston.
“I met a child I think you’d find interesting,” Desmond told her. “His mother claims he’s scoffed at every toy that was ever put in front of him, practically since birth.”
“Wonderful. And have they forced them on him?”
“No, I don’t think so. They buy him computers and pastry bags and food processors.”
Gloria clapped her hands together. “Just delightful. I’d love to meet him. Children are such extraordinary creatures.”
“As long as they’re not childish, right, mother?”
“As long as they don’t have childishness forced on them.” She reached across the table and patted Russell’s arm. “For some, it comes naturally.”
“Yeouch,” Russell said, as if her touch had burned him.
The restaurant was located somewhere in the confusing maze of lobbies and gift shops and coffee shops and theaters and big blank ballrooms in one of the many Midtown shopping malls that were trying to pass themselves off as luxury hotels. It had taken them fifteen minutes of walking up and down hallways and stepping into and out of elevators before they found the right eatery. It was so immense, loud, and impersonal, with such a mob of waiters and diners rushing in and out, it could easily have been an airline terminal. At least an airline terminal held the promise that in a matter of minutes you’d be up in the sky somewhere and away from it all. You had to eat your way out of this glass and steel box, no easy task judging from the immense platefuls of food being whisked past the table.
Leon finally put down his menu and yawned. “We should have let Desmond make the reservations. That last place you chose was wonderful.”
Leon and Gloria tended to heap praise on Desmond for small, insignificant triumphs like picking out a decent restaurant, while completely ignoring his career, as if it were an embarrassing disfigurement they’d trained themselves not to notice.
“Desmond’s been in Boston,” Russell said. He tried to remove his hand from Desmond’s thigh, but Desmond held it tightly in place. “I would have been happy to make reservations for you. Especially if you’d given me more time. Hint hint.”
“We called at 11:30 and it’s now 7:30,” Leon said, “which by my calculations is eight hours.”
“I have 7:50,” Gloria said. “I hope your watch isn’t going bad, Leon.”
Leon frowned and knocked back the dregs in his wineglass. While Gloria had the posture and sleek tidiness of a retired ballerina, Leon Abrams tended to look like a sofa that needed reupholstering. He was two years younger than Gloria but appeared to be aging at a much faster clip. It often happened that one person in a couple siphoned all the health and energy from the other. In Pauline Anderton’s case, she’d enjoyed an unprecedented string of vitality beginning virtually on the day her husband had been diagnosed with cancer. On more than one occasion, Desmond had tried to engage Leon in a conversation about his work and academic career, but Leon had merely smiled wanly and assured him that it wouldn’t interest him, which, Desmond had to admit, was probably the truth. He didn’t really know what an economist did, in a practical sense, and his interest in money went only as far as making sure he had enough to meet his monthly expenses.
A robust young woman dressed in stiff black and white approached the table, flung her hair around and took their orders, uttering vaguely obscene, carefully rehearsed murmurs of approval at each of their choices (“Mmmm, that’s my favorite.” “Oooo, you’re going to love that.” “I haven’t tried that one yet, but I’ve heard it’s sinful!”), so that by the time she’d left the table, they all were a little uncomfortable.
“Deerforth College,” Gloria said, stroking her braid. “Didn’t we know someone there, Leon? It wasn’t George Forstein, was it?”
“I’m afraid so.”
“That friend of yours who killed himself?” Russell asked. “The biochemist?”
“I don’t think either of us ever considered him a friend, did we, Leon? He married that woman who made jewelry and went around selling it out of the trunk of her car. She insisted on having all those babies.” Gloria held out her palm, as if she’d just offered them the explanation for the suicide.
“Did this happen at Deerforth?” Desmond asked hopefully, thinking it finally might give him something to discuss with senior faculty.
“No,” Leon said. “His behavior became so erratic, even Deerforth wouldn’t keep him. In retrospect, he probably had a brain tumor.”
“He had a horri
ble marriage,” Gloria corrected. “He was bored senseless by that wife, and on top of that, he was lazy. How are things at the store, darling?”
“Interesting segue, mother. Things are fine. If you come down tomorrow I’ll give you the employee discount on any purchase over fifty dollars.”
“Ah, well, if you throw in shipping, I’ll consider it.”
Before Russell had a chance to lob back the next sarcastic rejoinder, the long-haired waitress and a coterie of helpers lugged overflowing plates to their table, set them down in front of them, and then stood back admiring their handiwork. Every gesture, every comment from the staff seemed to have been scripted by an army of market analysts in the home office of whatever multinational corporation owned this hotel. Even the arrangement of the food on the plate appeared overly rehearsed.
“They must use shovels back in the kitchen,” Gloria said, giving the pile of food on her plate a nudge with the back of her fork.
Desmond looked in dismay at the greasy mound of pasta in front of him, one more obstacle to overcome today. The only thing more appetite-suppressing than slow service was having the food delivered this quickly. The evening was not going well. No worse than these evenings usually went perhaps, but Desmond was beginning to feel like a corgi, desperate to run circles around the table and herd everyone together, to reassure Russell, if only for a moment, that his was a convincing facsimile of a happy family.
A few years ago, he realized that Russell read as voraciously and ambitiously as he did to please his parents; but given the push-me pull-you nature of their relationship, Russell usually told them he was reading a mindless potboiler or scandal-mongering memoir to shock and dismay them. There was some potential for actual conversation in Thomas Mann, since he wrote the only novels in world literature Leon didn’t consider “gossip with commas.”
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