About Schmidt (9 page)

I sort of doubt it.

And then Schmidt no longer cared whether he broke one of Gil’s and his rules.

Gil, he said, I am lonely and lost. Don’t badger me. I feel like a big enough fool already. Mary wouldn’t have let this happen. I make no sense without her.

I think we will have that brandy.

Gil drank his, ordered another one, and told Schmidt, You are right. You are lost—I mean in your feelings—without Mary. You are probably also right about that house. If you have a new place to live, one that you have put together yourself, you can make a less complicated new start. You can motor over to your baby-sitting job. But there is some stuff going on between you and Riker that’s like a subplot I don’t understand. What do you have against him? Am I hearing code words: Psychoanalyst parents? Background? Not romantic? Schmidtie, have you been hinting that the boy is a Jew?

He is.

And is that upsetting you, the last of the Grove Street Schmidts is marrying a Jew?

That’s the least of it.

Gil finished the second brandy.

Schmidtie, you’re keeping me in suspense. This is where you are supposed to remember suddenly that you are speaking to a Jew. You should turn red and say, Oops, I don’t mean your kind, you are so different!

As a matter of fact, you are.

You mean famous, known to you for forty-three years, and, above all, a sort of artist!

Isn’t that better?

Not really. In any case, I don’t want you to be my father-in-law. Call me when you come back from Thanksgiving. If those Riker parents haven’t got you on their couch I may try mine.

They were the last lunch guests still in the restaurant. Their waiter had disappeared. Gil paid at the bar, interrupting a low-voiced colloquy between the owner and a pensive fat woman in a jersey dress almost the same shade of green as her rubber shoes. Her hands were badly chapped. In one she held a watery whiskey and in the other a filter cigarette. The Black & White ashtray beside her was full of butts—hers by the look of the lipstick smudges. A few stools away, the video store man and a companion Schmidt feared might be a child pornographer were staring at their draft ales. No conversation there. It occurred to Schmidt that the woman might be the owner’s sister, come to visit from Montauk where she managed a cabins-in-the-dunes sort of motel for low-ranking Mafia types, or his bookkeeper. The former hypothesis would account for their having the same pig-blue eyes with no lashes, the latter for the attention with which he had been listening.

The light outside was still very strong. Schmidt stooped more than usual, because Gil had draped his arm over his shoulder. This was a notable gesture of solidarity, not to be interfered with.

Hi, Mr. Schmidt.

This was Carrie, on the sidewalk, out of uniform, in black wool tights and a red ski parka. The legs were good: long neck and long thin legs. Thin but differentiated—harmonious calves, knees that didn’t draw attention to themselves, and strong, bold thighs rising toward the zone of mystery under the aforesaid unseasonable garment. Surely, the poor
child yearned for a warmer climate, but then, why not wear trousers? Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth, Schmidt! Hasn’t your wish been granted? At last, you’ve seen her legs.

She did not have the look of someone about to cross the street. Did that mean she was waiting for a ride?

I saw you were paying so I waited to say hi.

This is Gil Blackman, Carrie. Carrie kindly stops to chat with this old man as he eats his lonely hamburger and has one drink too many.

Just make sure you come back soon!

That hoarseness—then it wasn’t just her evening voice. Schmidt wished she would say something more; any words would do. Late night, barroom scales. A muddy Honda Civic with a dented rear fender and a scratch along the door on the driver’s side was parked at the curb. She unlocked it, eased herself into it with the grace of a swan on point, arms tremulously lifted in a gesture of farewell, and started the motor. The wheels turned. As the car was pulling away she lowered the window and called, Have a nice evening! For the second time in the space of five minutes, Schmidt had got his wish.

Not half bad!

A sweet child.

Arm in arm they reached the parking lot.

Well, here I am.

Here was a long Jaguar. Gil sighed, raised his eyebrows, and hugged Schmidt. Onset of atavistic sentimentality? Effect of Schmidt’s impending admission to the tribe via Charlotte, though presumably only as a corresponding member? The priest of Midian was blessed with seven daughters. What became of him after the connection with Moses? Did his herds multiply? These were questions to be researched.

Be of good cheer, Schmidtie. Think grandchildren, ocean and pool, and baby-sitting. And that doesn’t mean you should look right away for a second Corinne, you old goat!

Schmidt ambled over to his car, wishing Gil hadn’t said that. The memory was distant; he thought it still had the power to move him because he had been so careful not to summon it too frequently, guarding it like a bottle of old brandy, not to be often uncorked. The summer in question had begun badly, with rainy weekends and mosquitoes. Far too early, a hurricane struck. They lost the landing on the pond that Foster had given Martha permission to build and maintain, the sailing dinghy, and a copper beech as old as the house itself. Falling, it blocked the garage, and if it hadn’t been for Schmidt’s car, which he left during the week at the station, they would have had to rent a car or make do with bicycles until Foster’s handyman sawed the huge tree into a supply of logs that lasted two winters or more. It was the first time Mary had obtained the right to work at home during July and August, so they could dispense with day camp and give Charlotte a real season at the beach. But Mary had just settled down with Charlotte and the new au pair, Corinne (Schmidt’s vacation was scheduled for August), when she began to suffer from migraines of a severity she had never experienced before, which left her staggering from nausea and fatigue. The first attack was enough to make her withdraw from the club tennis tournament and stay away from the beach. The glare, the beating of the waves, and the wind all seemed unbearable. The west porch was screened; that’s where she tried to read manuscripts a few hours each day. When she met Schmidt at the station she asked him
whether he thought she had a tumor. He was able to reach David Kendall in Westchester that very evening; Kendall in turn called the neurologist. Mrs. Durban, the cleaning lady, agreed to sleep in the house and keep an eye on Charlotte and Corinne, and on Sunday night Schmidt took Mary with him to the city for tests. They saw the neurologist together the following Wednesday. As he had expected, the results were negative. He thought the headaches were the by-product of a mild depression linked to or aggravated by office tensions at Wiggins, the publishing house where Mary worked. Evidently, the depression should be treated, beginning in the fall—when the psychiatric profession returned from Well-fleet. For the time being he would equip her with tranquilizers to take during the day and sleeping pills guaranteed to give her a sound night’s sleep. He advised her to sleep as much as possible. That was a form of psychotherapy in itself, and not the worst one either.

Although Schmidt was working on a ship mortgage financing that had to be signed up before the end of the month with only a first-year associate—the firm was unusually busy and, with half the lawyers on vacation, understaffed—he took Mary back to the country that afternoon. There was no point in suggesting that she stay in the city until Friday. She had already told him about Charlotte’s worried little voice on the telephone, the manuscript she had forgotten to put in her overnight bag and left on the hall table, and her suspicion that Mrs. Durban was raiding the liquor closet. And there was no possibility of her returning alone. He had seen the hurt look on her face when he ventured a question: Would she prefer to drive his car from the station, or have him order a
taxi to meet her? He took it back at once. Of course, he would take the train with her to Bridgehampton and spend the night. He too wanted to see Charlotte. It was stupid not to have thought right away of the early train. He would catch it, and be in time for the meeting at the bank.

She thanked him and then added: Isn’t this nice for you? You will be able to explain to all your partners and all your friends that you aren’t just overworked. You also have a wife who is sick in the head. They will feel sorry for you.

That piece of nastiness surprised Schmidt. Nothing of the sort had been a part of their discourse; he didn’t know how he had deserved it. Was she off her rocker more seriously than the neurologist had hinted? He decided it was like one of those moments when a searingly bitter bile comes up, unexpected, from one’s stomach into one’s mouth. Depression could mean loss of self-control. What else was there she was hiding?

As soon as it was time for Charlotte to say good night he got Mary to go upstairs as well and, while she was getting ready for bed, made her a cheese sandwich and a bowl of tomato soup. When she had finished, he gave her one of the new sedatives. The effect was almost immediate. Mary was lying on her back. Mouth open, she began to snore, as Schmidt’s father used to do, whatever the position or circumstance in which he had happened to fall asleep, and, faithfully, every night while Schmidt had lived at home. Each creak in the floor, each clearing of the throat, could be heard throughout the Grove Street house. In his room, separated from his parents’ by a narrow corridor with a red runner, Schmidt would listen and imagine his mother’s resentful, forever obsequious
figure cowering at the edge of the black bed. It was a noise Schmidt had studied. Negligible at first, and almost amusing, like the whirring of a hobbyist’s model airplane or the buzz of a mad fly, one doesn’t mind it because it will end very soon, as soon as the toy engine runs down. Instead, the noise gathers strength, turns fearsomely rowdy and urgent, vastly larger than the placid, self-satisfied body from which it issues, and only a stake driven through the sleeper’s heart will make it stop.

And this was Mary, who forced herself to stay awake in trains and buses, maintaining that one mustn’t sleep in public! He sat down on the bed. Knowing how embarrassed she would be to know she had snored, he pinched her arm and shook her, then tried turning her on her side. Nothing. A drunken and implacable satyr crouched inside her, playing the same scale over and over on a scandalous pipe.

He put his hand under the light summer blanket, found the hem of her nightgown, pulled it up, and stroked her thighs. When he tugged and pushed, they parted. She had been shaving them since she was a girl but of late used wax. Her headaches must have made her neglect that chore. The stubble was rough, reminding Schmidt of the first time she had allowed his hand under her skirt. His eyes on Mary’s face, watching for a change of expression, he uncovered her legs. Like her buttocks, the thighs were heavy, as though formed for the saddle. Mary was ashamed of those thighs, but they and her rear were Schmidt’s joy. Still careful not to awaken her, he lifted her knees until she was ready to be mounted, continued stroking the insides of her thighs, moving up gradually, and then opened the lips. She was dry. He licked the
middle finger and began a circling motion. There was no quickening in the tempo of the snoring, in fact no change at all, but she began to wet abundantly, and he moved his finger, and later two, easily up and down between the lips and inside her, and then lower. Without warning, pleasure overcame him with such force that he didn’t even have time to put his other hand inside his trousers. When the spasm was over, he placed one of her hands, which had remained crossed over her stomach, where his hand had been, drew the covers back across her body, and turned off the reading lamp. Although the blinds were lowered, the room remained light, the days were so long. Mary’s face was completely still. He wondered whether snoring so loud and so long—he supposed that, like the old man, she would keep it up until the morning—ever damaged the vocal cords. But perhaps they weren’t involved, and all that rasping and sawing took place somewhere behind the nose. He checked her hand. Its position hadn’t changed, but the fingers had a comfortable, lively look about them. Mary claimed that she never touched herself. He wanted her to learn to masturbate, in the hope that it might unlock her, make it easier for her to come instead of being so generous and telling him not to worry, she had really liked it anyway.

He swam laps in the pool and changed. Then he went into the kitchen, feeling a great hunger. No one was there; presumably, Corinne was still putting Charlotte to bed or had gone straight to her room, which was at the other end of the pantry. The glass of bourbon he poured for himself warmed him. Standing at the stove, he ate the rest of Mary’s soup and the cheese and was about to put the plates and the casserole
in the dishwasher when she stopped him. Monsieur shouldn’t wash dishes, she said to him, that’s my work.

He looked at her with curiosity. The girl was barefoot. That’s why he hadn’t heard her come in; quite possibly these were the first words she had ever addressed to him directly. He had been getting home late since the beginning of June, when she arrived, and on weekends she had seemed more timid than her predecessors. In any case, she had hardly any accent in English, and, according to Mary, her French was very pure. Perhaps being half Indochinese accounted for her shyness. He couldn’t remember what Mary had said about her father’s having been an official in the French administration in one of those places of which he, Schmidt, was good and sick: Vietnam, Cambodia, or most probably Laos. Whichever it was, he had married a local woman of good family and brought her and the child back to France quite late, some years after Dien Bien Phu. Then he died.

I don’t mind at all cleaning up after myself, he replied. In fact, I think one should.

Please. Monsieur should be in the salon.

He made himself another bourbon—on second thought, took the bottle and the ice bucket—and avoiding the living room, went into the library. It was his and Mary’s favorite room, especially pleasant in the summer, when all the windows were open. Seeing that she had turned on the lamps, he decided Corinne was a pearl: apparently good with Charlotte, beautiful, silent, and thoughtful about the house. Installed on the sofa, he closed his eyes. Should he in fact sleep here? Or perhaps he could take the big guest room and tell Mary that he had gone there so as not to disturb her. Sleeping through
her snoring was out of the question, and so, it seemed to him, was telling her that she snored if he wanted her to follow the neurologist’s orders.