A Long Island Story Page 14

  This attitude, unusual enough in his experience, piqued his interest. Indeed, that may have been its purpose: to self-present as a woman of mystery who came into his life fully formed, without antecedents or personal history. Santa Barbara? Boring. Brothers and sisters, yes, three, lovely people, adored them. No more. Life at Stanford? Tolerable enough, bit rich.

  She never finished the sentence, left it hanging: something to reveal . . . What? Never mind, it would come sometime, or not, maybe it was nothing. He had no more right to press her than she, him.

  She was whoever she chose to be, came fully furnished with reading, knowledge, opinions and was well-travelled – had spent a number of summers, or perhaps it was years, in Europe, spoke fluent French and tolerable Italian, hated the idea of saying even a single word of German (though she could). Some of these journeys featured a companion, male, about whom she said almost nothing and wouldn’t be drawn. His name was Jean Paul.

  Ben thought about Jean Paul occasionally, though the less he knew, the less he wanted to know. A boyfriend, presumably. Or perhaps a husband, now estranged? Or deceased? Who gave a damn?

  They’d lived in Rome together, she working for a small Italian publisher, in ‘a nice apartment’ in some piazza or other. He was expected to recognise the name, God knows why, he’d never even been to Europe, knew nothing of Italy save some reading of Dante, fat lot of good that did. He was – he knew he was, there was no way round it – unsophisticated. Compared to her. So was everybody else. When she talked of Italian neo-realist films, of Visconti and Rossellini, of novelists like Svevo and Calvino, or the hill towns round Rome, trips to the Amalfi Coast, he faded into silent incomprehension, felt envy, felt patronised. She didn’t mean to, said she was sorry, simply had this, at least, to share. Italy was far enough away, but it was too far for him.

  It was all he was going to get; closer to home she closed up entirely.

  ‘I’m bored with this woman of mystery persona,’ he’d said once, as they were walking down a corridor from their offices towards the elevators. ‘I am longing to know you. I’m a writer, I need to fill in the blanks.’

  ‘Blanks? I prefer creating them, especially in this world!’ She’d looked round, motioned to him to look behind him, took his head in her hands and turned it to the side.

  ‘What do you see?’

  He was puzzled. No elephants, no raging fire, nothing out of the ordinary.

  ‘See?’ he asked. Thought for a moment. See? Seeing is what I do, what I am here for, the part of me that I give a damn about. To notice things that go unnoticed, unrecorded. To be one on whom nothing is lost.

  What do I see?

  He closed his eyes, that was how you saw things, recollected in tranquillity. Sort of a party trick.

  ‘OK: offices painted the same drab colour as a hospital corridor, mushroom/beige/taupe, nothing on the walls except government-issue photographs of TVA projects and a few badly framed diplomas from indifferent law schools, worn and chipped wooden furniture, pre-war, linoleum floors that smell of oil and industrial polish, disembodied drones like the workers in Nineteen Eighty-Four, badly dressed, eyes down, no sounds of laughter, an air of quiet desperation with floating dust motes . . . I could go on, you want more? I got plenty!’

  ‘Please God, no!’

  ‘OK, glad to have satisfied.’ There had been a pause. She hadn’t said anything, just stood there in front of the elevator, not pushing the Down button.

  ‘Oh. OK then, what do you see?’

  ‘Men,’ she’d said.

  He looked round, the corridor was bare, the office doors closed.

  Rhoda waved her hand, dismissing the emptiness as chimerical. What she saw was a place replete, inhabited by the usual antagonists.

  ‘I can see them, smell them, if it weren’t an inappropriate metaphor I would tell you I can taste them, everywhere, every hour, they take up all the space, breathe all the air, and the more I am here and with them, the more I need to enfold and protect myself . . .’

  ‘You mean men are the enemy?’

  ‘No, that’s too strong. I dunno, maybe they are? But this is hostile territory and if men are not my enemy they are not my friend either. Generically I mean, I don’t mean you!’ She took his hand, but it was only a gesture and he rather resented it. ‘Come on! I am relentlessly monitored, observed, distrusted and desired. Ignored or stalked. I’ve been here for six months and no one comes to my office for a chat or to discuss a case – and I’m smarter than most of them, I have to be or I wouldn’t be here at all. No one knows who I am or where I come from . . .’

  ‘I don’t either! You don’t give much away . . .’

  ‘Why should I? Half of them – of you – notice my tits and ass more than me, me. And the other half are too shy to leer, but I can feel the impulse as they avert their eyes. I get arms on the arm, arms round the shoulder, pats on the back, which would be on the ass except they know I’d deck them. And when I draw away, draw back, I can hear them thinking ice maiden, frigid bitch, dyke. Fun! Hours of fun! I hate most of the pathetic bastards and I don’t show it. Shouldn’t have told you really, but you’re you, I guess . . .’

  Ben had never thought about this, at least with regard to women. Negroes, yes: you didn’t see a lot of them in government service, unless they were the cleaning staff. It was DC after all. The South. Fancy that! He’d ended up whistling Dixie!

  ‘Do you actually feel discriminated against?’

  ‘How many women lawyers are there in this department?’ she’d asked.

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘How many women lawyers work for the federal government?’

  ‘I don’t know that either.’

  ‘Neither do I. So I asked, here and there, everywhere I could think of. And you know what? Either nobody knows, or perhaps they won’t tell. But one thing is for sure: hardly any. One day I walked round the building counting. Lawyers only, not associates, administrators or secretaries or cleaners – proper lawyers. Only saw seven, maybe less, with one or two it was hard to tell. And hundreds of men. Lawyer-men.’

  ‘You should be very proud of yourself then, shouldn’t you?’

  She shrugged. ‘I guess so. Maybe. What I actually feel is mildly ashamed.’

  Again he’d been puzzled.

  ‘Why is that?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she’d said. ‘I don’t want to talk about it.’ She’d stepped forward and pressed the Down button firmly. It came on, yellow, insistent, round and bright as a sun.

  In the enclosed space, heading downwards slowly, he always feared that this time, today, might be the one that it stopped, shuddered, gave up the ghost, and he would begin to panic at the very thought, aware that he would soon claw at the doors, then weep, then cry . . . Many days he took the steps, even when it was hot.

  ‘So,’ he said, sitting propped on the pillows, daring to raise the question. ‘What is it you’re so ashamed about? You’re not married, are you?’ Though that might have been a relief, a solution really.

  She laughed and shook her head.

  ‘God forbid! It’s just this . . .’ She paused, moments of self-revelation unusual for her, and discomfiting. ‘I have some money. My grandparents left it to me. And I’ll have a lot more, a trust fund that matures when I’m thirty-five. I don’t really need to work, not much anyway. I have enough to get on with. And you know what?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I’ve hardly spent a penny of it, just keep it in the stock market, even reinvest the dividends. I always told myself I would wait until something necessitated it, and now . . .’

  ‘Now?’

  ‘It does. You do. I’d like to invest in you, in us. Let them all move to that bungalow place, they’ll be fine there! You stay in DC, write, I can stay on in my job. It’s perfect. It’s what you want.’

  It was hardly a disinterested offer, though lightly made, entirely in her interests rather than his. He wasn’t tempted, was he?

  ‘Stop it!’ h
e said, cross. ‘I’m not for sale!’

  ‘I’m sorry. Let’s get up,’ she said. ‘We can go round to the trattoria for supper, then maybe come back for a nightcap, and who knows what?’

  ‘That’d be nice, I’d like that.’ He sat up and walked across the room to the shower, knowing how lucky he was on this enveloping humid evening, knowing too that it could not last, that one thing was about to slop over into another.

  ‘Mere anarchy,’ he thought wryly, ‘is about to loose itself upon my world. And there’s nothing I can do to avoid it.’ He wondered for a moment what was so mere about it.

  The restaurant was only five minutes away, tucked under a faded awning on a row of shops set just off the road. There was no need to make a reservation. They walked in and sat themselves down at a table in the window. Their usual.

  ‘I love this place.’

  She looked round, smiling, waved to the owner behind the cash register. His eyes lit up and an extravagant smile distorted his features.

  ‘Well,’ Ben said, ‘it’s awfully modest, but the food is OK and it’s convenient.’

  ‘No, I mean I like it. I like the lack of pretension, the checked tablecloths, these funny lamps with candles, the old cutlery, these fat glasses and heavy plates . . .’

  ‘Sometimes I wish I could take you somewhere good!’

  ‘You mean fancy, don’t you?’

  He paused.

  ‘I guess so. Like my father-in-law sometimes takes me to, you know, the 21 Club or one of those places in New York.’

  She laughed.

  ‘Do you actually enjoy it?’

  He considered for a moment.

  ‘Actually, I hate it! I always feel out of place, as if everyone is patronising me. I suspect that’s why Mo – Addie’s father – takes me there. He is always glad-handing the waiters, showing me how at ease he is, making me feel a rube.’

  ‘I bet he’s not confident at all. You don’t need to do that if you are.’

  She sounded as if she knew what she was talking about.

  ‘I saw him there once, at one of those places . . .’

  ‘Him? Who do you mean?’

  ‘The Prince of Darkness himself.’

  ‘McCarthy?’

  ‘Who else?’

  Ben shuddered.

  ‘I cannot bear the sight and sound of him, it makes me nauseous. He’s disgusting! My kids have a name for him, whenever they hear him on television or on the radio.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘They chant it together, and go on and on. It makes us all laugh. “JOE! JOE! THE BIG FAT SCHMO! JOE! JOE . . .” You get the idea.’

  She laughed. ‘The Big Fat Schmo! It’s perfect, he would hate that so much, he cannot bear being ridiculed.’

  She paused for a moment, reflecting.

  ‘You have no idea how disgusting he is . . .’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I mean, physically. Repellent, scrofulous, skin like a hairy reptile. You can smell him from a yard away.’

  Ben was rather taken aback.

  ‘How do you know this? Don’t tell me . . .’

  She had the sense not to be offended. After all, she was being provocative.

  ‘I sat next to him at dinner once.’

  ‘At dinner? Where?

  ‘The Colony.’

  ‘Never heard of it. In DC?’

  ‘Fancy new place, decked out to look like a place in Paris. Pathetic, pretentious food. You feel ill for a week after you eat there, all that cream and butter. And they flock to it, all the men in suits who want to make themselves feel important.’

  ‘So, how’d you get there?’

  She laughed.

  ‘With a man in a suit, naturally. And at the table next to us was the Senator with a couple of his cronies. You could hardly believe it – the maitre d’ was appalled – but he ordered two steaks, well done – charred! – with a bottle of ketchup. It made the whole restaurant stink.’

  ‘Have you met him personally?’

  ‘No, I see him in the street sometimes. Have you?’

  Ben winced.

  ‘I have never even seen him, but in his absence he is still one of the major characters in the story of my life – he surrounds and defines it. Like that London smog last year, he makes it hurt to breathe and impossible to see clearly, to find your way . . .’

  She shook her head vigorously.

  ‘He’s of no real importance, and anyway his day has come and gone. He may be a schmo, fair enough, but he is only a symptom of what is wrong with this country. The witch-hunts were going on long before he was elected – they are why he was elected – and they will go on after he is gone. The problem with America is not McCarthy, it’s Americans. The public has an insatiable need for someone to blame!’

  ‘And for someone to fix it!’

  Yes, the Senator’s days were waning, you could sense that, but the national misery would go on and on.

  There was no need to look at the menu, or to order. The usual. Over her spaghetti alle a vongole, emboldened by a couple of glasses of Soave, she risked a return to their post-coital conversation. His recurrent silences, if anything exacerbated by their sexual happiness, had originally been a source of attraction, and then of satisfaction to her. At last a man who wasn’t desperately anxious to please, who was complete and replete in himself, didn’t send a thank you note after making love, who asked little and demanded nothing.

  Of course he had no right to do either, and she felt that the imperative to a reciprocal passivity ought to apply to herself as well. She knew what she was getting into, and for. It came as no surprise, but it couldn’t go on.

  She reached across the table and took his hand, held it, increased her grip as he tried gently to withdraw.

  ‘It doesn’t have be like this,’ she said. ‘You know it doesn’t. Why not choose the life you were made for? And the woman?’

  He squeezed her hand back, unresigned to having to hurt her. He couldn’t bear being a source of pain to another, it was one of his major weaknesses, and his many prevarications and evasions were simply ways of avoiding an unpleasant emotional confrontation, a scene. When he’d been an undergraduate he’d had a few girlfriends, and it was never he who broke off the relationship, he couldn’t bear the tears and recriminations, being the cause of such unhappiness. So he withdrew, behaved badly in measures, and created the conditions under which he would be rejected.

  They saw through it, most of them, knew they’d been rejected by someone without the backbone simply to say: No, sorry but no, it’s better this way, anyway it’s what I need. Nothing so difficult about that, was there? He couldn’t do it.

  She knew this, and was not going to be manipulated by it.

  ‘You have choices, you know? Why not choose freedom and happiness, be a writer, not a crappy lawyer? Why not commit to the delight we have taken in each other? You know it’s better, much better!’

  ‘But . . .’

  ‘No buts. We’ve been through this too many times! Twenty per cent of marriages end in divorce. Children might suffer at first, a little, but children are survivors, they recover.’

  She knew nothing of children, had hardly encountered any, had a couple of fugitive nieces in California whom she hadn’t seen for years. Encountering a child in a park or museum, or worse in its home, she would shy away as if from contagion, breathe carefully, sidle away . . .

  In a foolish moment he had once asked her if she might want children, there was plenty of time, perhaps with the right man. (Not him!)

  ‘There’s enough goddamn children already,’ she said firmly. ‘This whole country is filled with children, little ones and big ones, Chucks or Busters, nicknames that make them all sound the same, add a “-y” to every one. And every one of them infantilised and entitled, empty-headed, it’s no wonder they are so biddable, easy fodder for anyone who can convince them he is a leader. They are natural pickings for demagogues and Fascists. In no time at all, this country
. . .’

  ‘Oh, do shut up,’ said Ben, trying to sound light and fond, and failing. ‘You have no idea what you are talking about.’

  He had turned away.

  ‘I bet your friends call you Benny, admit it, don’t they?’

  ‘They don’t,’ he said firmly.

  She shook her head at what was no doubt a lie. She was in danger of losing him.

  ‘The money issues can be handled, you can pay child support, we’d have enough money, plenty really. And can I say one more thing?’

  It was incomprehensible, this nonsense. Twenty per cent? Where did she get that figure? Made it up probably . . . He hardly knew any couples who had divorced, one or two who had married too early at Penn, otherwise . . . He thought for a minute. No one, nobody. Divorces happened, he knew of them the way he knew about Bulgaria. But not to Jews. Divorces were for the goyem, for the rich, the ostentatiously unfaithful, terminally entitled, the psychotic and psychopathic . . .

  It was clear that Ben was pursuing a hostile line of thought, the silence had gone on too long.

  ‘I do love you,’ she said. ‘I do. Doesn’t that count?’

  He felt himself thinking, ‘For what?’ as if she’d made a point that could turn a case; she was good at that, sharp in court, head-turning not merely because she was so striking to look at but also to hear.

  She’d been determined to remain calm and loving, knew how easily he could slide away, but she was drinking more than she was eating, and could hear her tone morph into the stridency that embarrassed her and made him cringe.

  ‘It’s toxic,’ he said. ‘Polluted.’

  She stood up abruptly, shaking the table, the glasses wobbled but settled down.

  ‘Toxic? Polluted? How dare you!’

  He didn’t mean that, it, her, them. It was useless to explain.

  ‘For someone so smart,’ she said bitterly, ‘you’re as emotionally stupid as a chimpanzee. Worse!’