Behold the Dreamers (13 page)

E
VERY
TIME
C
LARK
WAS
IN
THE
CAR—MORNING,
AFTERNOON,
EVENING—
he was shouting at someone, arguing about something, giving orders on what had to be done as soon as possible. He seemed angry, frustrated, confused, resigned. This place is a mess, Leah told Jende whenever they were on the phone. He's going crazy, he's yelling at me and making me crazy, they're all going crazy, I swear it's like some kind of crazy shit is eating everyone up. Jende told her he was truly sorry to hear how bad it was for her and assured her repeatedly that he knew nothing more than what she already knew from the memos Tom was sending to Lehman employees, memos in which he told them that the company was going through a bit of a tough stretch but they should be back on top in no time. Jende felt awful for Leah, and the fact that she was working at a job she no longer loved because she was still five years away from receiving Social Security. It saddened him that she couldn't quit her job even though her blood pressure was rising and her hair was falling out and she was getting only three hours of sleep a night, but it wasn't his place to tell her anything about what Clark was saying. Or doing. He couldn't tell her that Clark was sometimes sleeping in the office, or going to the Chelsea Hotel some evenings for appointments that often lasted no more than an hour. He couldn't tell her that after these appointments he usually drove the boss back to the office, where Clark probably continued working for more hours, his stress having been eased. His duty, he always reminded himself, was to protect Clark, not Leah.

“Where are we going to, sir?” Jende asked on the last Thursday of August, holding the car door open in front of the Chelsea Hotel. Clark's appointment that day had lasted exactly an hour, but he had returned to the car still seeming weary, his face tightly bound by perpetual exhaustion. It was as if his appointment had been only half-effective.

“Hudson River Park,” Clark said.

“Hudson River Park, sir?” Jende asked, surprised the answer wasn't the office.

“Yes.”

“Anywhere in the park, sir?”

“Go close to Eleventh and Tenth. Or somewhere near the piers.”

“Yes, sir.”

Jende dropped Clark off at the end of Christopher Street and watched as he crossed the West Side Highway to the pier, his already slender shoulders sagging under the weight of the heat and the sun.

“Where are you?” he called to ask Jende ten minutes later.

“Around the same area, sir,” Jende replied. “I backed up into a good spot that opened up behind me.”

“Listen, why don't you come join me? There's no need for you to sit in the car.”

“At the pier, sir?”

“Yes, I'm sitting all the way at the front. Come and meet me here.”

Jende locked up the car and dashed across the highway toward the pier, where Clark was sitting on a bench, his jacket off, his face turned toward the sky. When Jende got to the bench, he realized Clark's eyes were closed. He seemed to be finding respite in the bountiful breeze blowing toward them; for the first time in months, he looked relaxed as the wind tussled his hair and wiped his brow. Jende looked up at the empty sky, which bore no resemblance to the thick air below. In a couple of days, August would be over, and yet the humidity was still dense, though it felt good to him, the sultriness mingled with the wind blowing over the Atlantic-bound river.

On the bench, Clark breathed in. And out. And in, and out. Again, and again. For five minutes. Jende stood next to him and waited, careful not to move and disturb him.

“You're here,” Clark said when he finally opened his eyes. “Have a seat.”

Jende sat down beside him, took off his jacket, too.

“Beautiful, huh?” Clark said as they watched the Hudson, nowhere as long, but every inch as purposeful and assured, as the Nile and the Niger and the Limpopo and the Zambezi.

Jende nodded, though confused as to why he was there, sitting on a bench at a pier, gazing at a river with his boss. “It is very nice, sir.”

“Thought you might enjoy it, instead of just waiting on the street.”

“Thank you, sir, I am enjoying the fresh breeze. I did not even know there was a place like this in New York.”

“It's a great park. If I could, I'd come here more often to watch the sunset.”

“You watch sunsets, sir?”

“Nothing relaxes me more.”

Jende nodded and said nothing, though he thought about how funny it was that both Clark and Vince loved sunsets—the only people he'd ever met who went out of their way to sit by a body of water and stare at the horizon. He wondered if Vince knew this about his father, and what difference it would make if he didn't know and then discovered it by chance; how differently Vince would feel about his father if he realized that they shared a great love for something only a sliver of humans make a deliberate effort to see.

For a few minutes the men sat in silence, watching the river flowing leisurely, in no rush for its meeting with the ocean.

“I'm sure you know by now that Vince will be moving to India in two weeks,” Clark said.

“No, sir, I did not know. India?”

Clark nodded. “No more law school for him. He wants to wander the earth.”

“He is a good boy, sir. He will come back safely to America when he is ready.”

“Or he may not, for a long time. That's fine. I'm not the first father to have a son who defied him and decided he wanted to live his life in an unorthodox manner.”

“I hope you are not too angry with him, sir.”

“Actually, Cindy thinks I'm not angry enough. And that makes her angry, like somehow I'm giving up on him because I don't love him enough. But the thing is, I almost admire him.”

“He is not afraid.”

“No, and there's something to be said for that. At his age, all I wanted was the life that I have right now. This exact life, this was what I wanted.”

“It is a good life, sir. A very good life.”

“Sometimes. But I can understand why Vince doesn't want it. Because these days I don't want it, either. All this shit going on at Lehman, all this stuff we would never have done twenty years ago because we stood for something more, and now really dirty shit is becoming the norm. All over the Street. But try to show good sense, talk of consequences, have a far-long-term outlook, and they look at you as if you've lost your marbles.”

Jende nodded.

“And I know Vince has got a point, but the problem is not some system. It is us. Each of us. We've got to fix ourselves before we can fix a whole damn country. That's not happening on the Street. It's not happening in Washington. It's not happening anywhere! It's not like what I'm saying is new, but it's only getting worse, and one man or two men or three men cannot fix it.”

“No, sir.”

“But everything I have, I worked hard for, and I'm proud of, and I'll fight to the end to preserve it. Because when this life's good, it's very good, and the price I pay, that's just part of it.”

“Very true, sir,” Jende said, nodding. “When you become a husband and father, you pay a lot of prices.”

“It's more than your duty as a husband and father. It's your duty to your parents, too. Your siblings. When I went to Stanford I was going to study physics, become a professor like my dad. Then I saw what was possible on a professor's salary and what was possible on an investment banker's salary and I chose this path. I'm not going to sit here and be one of those self-righteous assholes, because my original reason for choosing this career was never noble. I can't say I didn't fantasize about the sports car and private jets. But it's different now. Now it means the world to me how well I'm taking care of my family. No matter how bad it gets at work I know that at the end of the day I can send my parents on vacations to see the world, pay for every medical bill that comes up, make sure my sister doesn't suffer because her husband's dead, make sure my wife and sons have far more than what they need. That's what Vince doesn't understand. That you don't only do what makes you happy. You think about your parents, too.”

“Vince doesn't see this side of you, sir. He sees a father who works at a bank and makes money but I tell him, I say, your parents have other sides you do not see because you are their child. It is only now that I am old that I look at some things that my father did and I understand.”

“I told him. I said, I'm not asking you to stay in law school and become a lawyer so you can be like me. I'm asking you because I know what it takes to be successful in this country. You've got to separate yourself from the pack with a good education, a good-paying career. I read about folks who thought it was all fun and games when they were younger and look at them now, barely getting by, because unless you make a certain kind of money in this country, life can be brutal. And I don't ever want that for him, you know? I don't ever want that for my son.”

Jende nodded, looking afar.

For several minutes the men were silent, just as the sun was one third of the way below the low-rises of New Jersey. They watched as it went down ever so slowly, bidding them adieu, bidding the city adieu, until it rose again from behind the East River to bring a new day with its promises and heartbreaks.

“Wow,” Jende said, mesmerized by what he'd just witnessed. “I know the sun comes up and goes down, but I never knew that it does it so nicely.”

“Amazing, isn't it?”

“Sir,” Jende said after a brief silence, “I think Vince will stay in India for a few months and run back to law school.”

“I won't be surprised,” Clark said with a laugh.

“I don't know how India is, Mr. Edwards, but if there is heat and mosquitoes there like we have in Cameroon, I will be picking him up at the airport before New Year.”

The men laughed together.

“I will not worry about Vince for one minute, sir. Even if he stays, he will be happy. Look at me, sir. I am in another country, and I am happy.”

“That's one way of looking at it.”

“A man can find a home anywhere, sir.”

“Funny, as I was thinking about Vince today, I wrote a poem about leaving home.”

“You write poems, sir?”

“Yeah, but I'm no Shakespeare or Frost.”

Jende scratched his head. “I'm sorry, sir,” he said. “I have heard a little about Shakespeare, but I don't know the other man. I did not make it that far in school.”

“They were both great poets. I'm just saying my poetry is pretty remedial, but it keeps me going on many days.”

Jende nodded, and he could see that Clark could tell he didn't quite understand the last point, either. “You learn how to write poems in school, sir?” he asked.

“No, actually, I just started a few years ago. A colleague gave me this little book of poetry, which I thought was a rather odd gift—why would anyone think I could use a book of poetry? Maybe it was just one of those lazy gifts where people pull stuff off their shelves.”

“A Christmas gift, sir?”

“Yeah. Anyway, I kept it on my desk, picked it up one day, and loved the poems so much that I decided to try writing one. Feels real good to just write out lines about whatever you're feeling. You should try it sometime.”

“It sounds very good, sir.”

“I wrote one for Cindy, but she didn't like it much, so I just write for myself now.”

“I will be glad to read one, sir.”

“Really? I can show you … Dammit,” Clark said, looking at his watch. “Didn't realize it was getting this late.”

“Oh, I'm so sorry, sir, I should have kept my eyes open. I was just talking and talking without paying any attention to the time.”

“No, no, I'm glad we talked. Thanks for joining me; I really appreciate it. I hope I didn't put you in an awkward position, throwing out my feelings about work and shit.”

“No, sir. Please, Mr. Edwards, thank you so much for inviting me here.”

“Well, thank you for listening,” Clark said, smiling. “And I'll be glad to recite the poem to you. It's called ‘Home,' and if you don't like it, I'd rather you don't say anything.”

“Yes, sir,” Jende said, smiling, too. “I will not say anything whatsoever.”

“Okay, here goes:

T
HE
ONE
THING
SHE
MISSED
ABOUT
THE
H
AMPTONS
(BESIDES
THE
BOYS,
Mighty especially) was the food—the scrumptious catered food served at the Edwardses' cocktail parties. All her life she'd thought Cameroonians had the best food but, apparently, she was wrong: Rich American people knew something about good food, too. Despite having to work fifteen hours on the days when Cindy hosted the parties around the pool, she looked forward to them because the food was too good, so ridiculously good that she had called Fatou one evening and told her she was sure she'd died and gone to food heaven, to which Fatou had replied, how you gonno be sure the cook no piss inside food to make it good? Neni was sure the cook hadn't done anything to the food, since the three chefs Cindy always hired for the parties prepared most of it in the kitchen, and their three servers, with her assistance, took it directly from the kitchen to the backyard. All kinds of foods were there, things she'd seen in magazines and wished she could taste just by looking at the perfectly lighted pictures, wickedly delectable creations like sesame seared tuna with lemon-wasabi vinaigrette; beef tenderloin and olives on garlic crostini with horseradish sauce; California caviar and chives on melba toast; mushroom caps stuffed with jumbo lump crabmeat; steak tartare with ginger and shallot, which she loved the most and devoured without restraint though she'd never once imagined she'd one day find herself eating raw meat like a beast in the forest.

She was certain she'd gotten her fill, thanks to the ample leftovers at the end of all three parties, but she was nonetheless glad when Anna called and asked if she could come help out at a brunch Cindy and her friends were having in Manhattan.

“Are they going to use the same chefs from the Hamptons?” she asked Anna.

“No,” Anna said. “This one is just brunch. Two chefs from here and no servers. So me and you, we going to serve and clean after. The other girl who works for Cindy's friend used to work with me every year, but she quit last week, so Cindy tell me to call you.”

“All those people for just the two of us to serve and clean after?”

“No worry, not too many people. Just her and the five friends and their husbands and some children. Cindy says one hundred dollars for you, only three hours. It's fair, no?”

Neni agreed it was beyond fair, and arrived at June's apartment on West End Avenue the next Sunday afternoon. There were no more than six children there, and Mighty, thankfully, was one of them. He ran to her when he saw her entering the apartment and hugged her so tightly that Neni had to remind him he wasn't her only baby, she had another baby growing inside her.

“How were the last two days in the Hamptons?” she asked him in the kitchen as she and Anna waited for the chefs to hand them the first appetizers.

“Boring,” Mighty said.

“You did not have any fun after I left?”

“Not really.”

“But now I feel bad, Mighty,” Neni said, inflating her cheeks to make a funny sad face. “Your mom gave me those last two days off, but next time I will stay if that is what Mr. Mighty demands.”

“I'll demand!” Mighty said.

“Yes, sir. Or maybe you'll come with me to Harlem instead. That way we can continue making
puff-puff
for breakfast in the morning and playing soccer on the beach in the evening. Do you want that instead, Mr. Mighty?”

“Really? It'll be so cool to go to Harlem … but, hold on, there's no beach in Harlem.”

“Then we will … I will—”

“We'll watch stupid movies, and I'll beat you at Playstation and arm wrestling every time!” Mighty said, his hazel eyes glowing with delight.

“You should never be proud that you beat a woman,” Neni said, contorting her face to feign indignation as she picked up a tray of appetizers. “Come, everyone is going to start eating.”

As she walked the appetizers around the room before setting the leftovers on the table, she smiled and nodded at Cindy's friends, all of whom she'd met in the Hamptons. They had been kind and polite to her: offering her advice on the benefits of prenatal yoga and telling her where the best yoga studios in the city were (thank you so much for the information, madam, she always said); reminding her it was okay for her to call them by their first names (something she could never do, being that it was a mark of disrespect in Limbe); complimenting her smooth skin and lovely smile (your skin is so smooth and beautiful too, madam; you have a lovely smile too, madam); wondering how long it took her to get her braids done (only eight hours, madam). Their friendliness had surprised her—she'd expected indifference from them, these kinds of women who walked around with authentic Gucci and Versace bags and talked about spas and vacations and the opera. Based on movies she'd seen, in which rich white people ate and drank and laughed with nary a glance at the maids and servers running around them, she'd imagined that women who owned summer houses in the Hamptons wouldn't have anything to say to her, besides ordering her around, of course. After she'd met no fewer than four of them, all of whom had smiled at her and asked how far along she was in her pregnancy, she'd spoken about this unexpected congeniality with Betty, and she and Betty had agreed that the women's behavior was likely due to the fact that it wasn't every day they met a beautiful pregnant Cameroonian woman from Harlem. Such women couldn't possibly be kind and polite to every housekeeper, they surmised. Cindy, on that Sunday afternoon, was the kindest and politest of them all, reminding Neni to do only the easiest work and make sure she didn't overexert herself. Watching Cindy chatting with her friends and laughing with her head thrown back, Neni had to convince herself that the strange episodes in the Hamptons had indeed happened.

“We have to talk about Cindy,” Anna whispered in her ear in the kitchen.

“What?” Neni quickly asked. “What is wrong with her?”

Anna pulled her by the arm to the far end of the kitchen, away from the chefs and the guests entering and exiting with plates of egg-white omelets and glasses of smoothies.

“She got problems,” Anna whispered.

“Problems?”

“You don't see no problems in the Hamptons?”

Neni opened her mouth but said nothing.

“You see something in the Hamptons, no?” Anna said, nodding rapidly. “You see it?”

“I don't know …,” Neni said, confused by the direction of the conversation.

“I come in the morning for work and she is smelling alcohol,” Anna whispered, waving her hand in front of her face as if to disperse an invisible smell.

“Yes,” Neni said, “she likes wine.”

The housekeeper shook her head. “This is not liking wine. This is problem.”

“But—”

“Last week I look in the garbage, three empty bottles of wine. Mighty do not drink wine. Clark is not home. I see him one, two times every week.”

“Maybe—”

“Can someone please refill the punch for the kids and get some more napkins?” one of the chefs called out. Anna gestured for Neni to stay put while she took care of it.

“To be honest,” Neni whispered when Anna returned, “I saw it in the Hamptons, too.”

“Ah! I know I'm not crazy.”

“I didn't know a woman can drink like that.”

“This family has problems. Big problems.”

“She wasn't like this before?”

“No. Before, she drink like normal person—little here, little there. Twenty-two years I work for them and I see no problems like this. But always they have other problems. They eating dinner, not too much talking. You don't see them fight too many times, you don't see them happy too many times.”

“You think he knows?” Neni asked, looking over her shoulder.

Anna shook her head. “He don't know anything. No one knows. See how she looks out there. How can people know if they don't see the bottles?”

Neni sighed. She wanted to tell Anna about the pills but thought it would be no use further upsetting her. The alcohol was bad enough. “Maybe one day she'll just stop,” she said.

“One day people don't stop drinking,” Anna quickly replied. “They drink and drink and drink.”

“But we cannot do anything.”

“No, don't talk like that,” the housekeeper said, shaking her head so vigorouslythe two clumps of hair that made up her bangs swung away from her forehead. “We cannot say we cannot do anything, because something happen to her, then what about us? A man in my town, he drink until one day he die. If she die, who will write me check? Or your husband check?”

Neni almost burst out laughing, half at Anna's reasoning and half at the way she was so terribly and unnecessarily afraid. Lots of people in Limbe drank seven days a week and she'd never heard of alcohol killing any of them. One of her uncles was even known as the best drunkard in Bonjo—he serenaded the whole neighborhood to Eboa Lotin tunes on his best drunken days—and yet he was still living on in Limbe.

“You think it's little thing,” Anna said, “but I know people lose the job because the family got big problem. My friend with family in Tribeca, she lose her job last month—”

“Oh, Papa God,” Neni gasped, moving her hand to her chest. “You're scaring me now.”

“I know Cindy for many years,” Anna went on. “Ever since her mother die four years—”

“You knew her mother?”

“Yes, I know her. She come to the house four, five times. Bad woman. Bad, bad woman. You see the way she talk to Cindy, angry with her, nothing make her happy.”

“No wonder …”

“But Cindy's sister, the child of the mother's husband who die long ago, the mother always nice to her. When they come together, everything the bad woman say to the sister is sweetie this, sweetie that. But with Cindy …” Anna shook her head.

“I'd cut that kind of person out of my life, if it was me.”

“No, Cindy goes to see her for Mother's Day every year, until the bad woman dies.”

“Why?”

“Why you ask me? I don't know why. And this Mother's Day, Mighty comes to me, telling me he's sad because his family no longer go to Virginia for Mother's Day, because he wants to see his cousins there. I want to shout at him and say you want to go back to Virginia for what? Cindy's sister, ever since their mother died, I never see her again in the house. Cindy, she has no family now, except for the boys and Clark.”

“But she has a lot of friends.”

“Friends is family?” Anna said. “Friends is not family.”

Out in the living room Cindy was laughing, perhaps amused by a story a friend was telling. How could anyone have so much happiness and unhappiness skillfully wrapped up together? Neni wondered.

“We got to tell Clark about the alcohol,” Anna said.

“No, we cannot!”

“Dessert is ready to be served,” the second chef called out. Neni hurried to take out the desserts while Anna cleared the entrées.

“We don't have to be the ones to tell him,” Neni said after they'd returned to their corner. “He'll find out. Maybe you leave the empty wine bottles on the table for him to see.”

“How he's going to see when he's not home? And she will know that I'm trying to do something if I just go take bottle out of trash can and put on the table. You have to be the one to tell him first.”

“Me!”

“We do it together. If I alone I tell him, he will not think it is serious problem. But if you tell him, too, he knows it's serious. Just tell him somebody was drinking too much wine in Hamptons. You don't know who. He is smart man, he will know.”

“And he will tell her, and she will know it's me!”

“No man is stupid like that. After you tell him, next week I, too, I'll tell him the same thing about some person drinking the wine in the apartment. Then he'll know it's really true. He can do what he wants to do. We know our hands are clean.”

Neni walked to the kitchen island, picked up a bottle of water, and gulped down half of it. Maybe Anna was right, she thought. Maybe they had to do the right thing and warn Clark. But she didn't think it was ever right to get involved in other people's marriages, marriage already being complicated and full of woes as it was. But Anna had made a good point: Clark was working all the time and would never know the extent of what his wife was going through. The whole time Neni was in the Hamptons, she'd seen him in person only on the days of the cocktail parties, where he and Cindy had acted as if they slept in the same bed every night. At the first cocktail party, which was to celebrate Cindy's fiftieth birthday, they had floated around the pool hand in hand, smiling and hugging guests in the warm candlelit evening as a string quartet played on. Cindy, in an orange backless dress and blow-dried hair, looked like Gywneth Paltrow that night, maybe even more beautiful and certainly not much older. Toward the end of the party, they had stood with their arms around each other, flanked on either side by their handsome sons, as Cindy's friends toasted to her, speaking of what a wonderful and selfless friend she was. Cheri tearfully told of the evening she'd called Cindy crying because her mother had fallen at her nursing home in Stamford and needed surgery the next day and Cheri couldn't be there because she was stuck at work in San Francisco. As an only child, Cheri told the guests, it was hard, really hard, but on that day Cindy made it easy for her. Cindy offered to be there for her mother and took a five
A.M.
train from Grand Central to Stamford. She stayed at the hospital until the three-hour surgery was over and Cheri's mother was comfortably settled in her room. Cindy wasn't just her best friend, Cheri said, choking back tears, Cindy was her sister. The guests, tanned and clad in designer labels, smiled and clapped as Cheri walked over to Cindy and the friends held each other in a prolonged hug. Clark asked everyone to raise their glasses. There wasn't much he could add to what Cindy's friends had said, he said, except that it was all true, Cindy was a gem, and my, was she the hottest thirty-five-year-old or what? Everyone laughed, including Vince, who hadn't been smiling much all evening. To Cindy, they cheered. To Cindy!