Schmidt Delivered (20 page)

She fell silent and tousled her hair. Then in a very low voice she said, Yes, I look like an old woman. You wouldn’t
think anymore of making a pass at me. This happened the week your firm threw Jon out. Sorrow and shame. My great-grandmother’s hair turned white during a pogrom. They beat her father in the street, in front of the house, and pulled out his beard. She watched them from the attic, where she and the other children were hidden. Think of it: she was only nineteen!

He began a murmur about being sorry, which she immediately interrupted.

You look just fine, Schmidtie, I can see you haven’t a care in the world. Such remarkable upbringing! It really never occurred to you to try to stop what they were doing to Jon? To stand up for your son-in-law? Against injustice?

No, he replied, it didn’t. As I’ve already made clear, it seems to me the firm did what it had a right to do.

You can’t get away so easily. Don’t you know in your heart that Jon never gave the court papers to that woman? The judge realized it. There was no punishment, no reprimand. The case is closed.

Jon was very lucky. He must have impressed the judge by his remorse.

Well, shouldn’t those men take him back? Make up for what they did?

You mean take him into the partnership? Back to Wood & King? That’s preposterous. I can’t think he would want it.

Why? He won his right to be there.

And then he lost it. It’s a partnership, Renata. As I’ve said, the partners voted against him because in their judgment he
had to be removed. That’s a fact that can’t be changed. By the way they aren’t only men. We have many women in the firm now.

To have been forced to speak as though he were still a member of Wood & King annoyed him. He cleared his throat and continued: There is no going back on it. How could he and the other partners work together again? If I had known this was what you wanted to discuss I would have refused to see you.

Your partners at Wood & King have broken our children’s marriage. Isn’t that of interest to you? Don’t we have to talk about it if we are to talk about the children?

To my knowledge, the problem in the marriage was Jon’s philandering and indiscretion. That’s what did it, not Wood & King. Oh, I don’t mean to suggest that Charlotte is without fault.

He stopped there because it seemed to him that if he were to continue he would have to say that the marriage was also beyond fixing, like Jon Riker’s broken career at the firm. Who was he to take that stand? To hell with sobriety. He drank his glass of wine, told the waiter to pour another one, and got back to his lunch. The thing to do was to eat fast and run.

She too wanted another glass of wine. Looking at him hard, she said, Very well, let’s stick to the children. You have written a cruel letter to Charlotte. Of course, she has shown it to me.

Of course. Is she still taping my rare conversations with her for your benefit as well?

Schmidtie, do you ever forgive her anything? Do you ever forgive anybody? How many years ago did she make that tape?

Not nearly long enough ago for me to forget.

But I explained to you at the time she only made the tape to be sure she understood all your talk about money. This time you have laid it out in writing: it’s a choice between your money and Jon.

Not at all. It’s a choice between making sure her financial dealings with Jon or any other man are honest and having a trustee after I die who will make sure she isn’t robbed. I believe that all three of you, excuse me, four, I forgot to count your husband, are able to understand that easily. You have such finely honed minds.

That’s not what you intended. You were aiming only at Jon, working to prevent their getting back together. That was clear even to Myron.

She tousled her hair again. Of course, it’s a clever letter.

There is something here I don’t understand. The farm or whatever it is—the place near you in Claverack—was bought with Charlotte’s money. The apartment in the city that you said would be paid for by you was in fact also bought with Charlotte’s money. Because Charlotte is a romantic, title to both properties is in Charlotte’s and Jon’s joint names. Then they decide to separate, never mind why. Is there any justification for Jon’s refusing to return to Charlotte what’s clearly hers?

There is the loan, she muttered.

Right, she’ll take it over—get Jon released from any obligation. I don’t think there has been any question about it from her side, but if there is a question I will take it over myself.

Schmidtie, it’s true, you don’t understand. Jon can’t sign these properties over. Not now. He can’t. It would mean giving
up Charlotte—definitively. Besides, it’s the only property he owns. Thinks he owns.

Someone else’s property!

It doesn’t matter. It’s all he has. He’s drowning, Schmidtie. Your partners, your horrible bigoted self-righteous partners, have broken him. He is hanging on to it as though it were a raft.

Then you should straighten him out. If you can’t do it as a mother, get him professional help. Or give him some money! For instance, the money you promised to give them for the apartment.

We can’t—it’s quite impossible. My practice has fallen off. I still do analysis, as I have been taught to, as I believe it should be done, but very few patients can afford it. Almost all of them are old. Insurance reimbursement for analysis isn’t worth talking about. Myron has been doing group therapy. There are positions for clinical psychiatrists he could get if he weren’t bumping against the retirement age. It all pays badly. Years ago we used to think we were more than all right. Now I’m scared.

I am truly sorry to hear this. Look, out of curiosity: The story Charlotte told me about your not putting up the money for the apartment, how that was supposed to prevent Jon from being overly dependent on you, is that just humbug you invented because already at the time you couldn’t afford to give him the money?

Yes, I did invent it.

Really!

No, Schmidtie, in fact I’ve just told you a lie. Jon made up the story because he knew we were doing badly. He didn’t want Charlotte to know it, not just then. It was foolish of him.

Not just foolish. Incomprehensible. And inexcusable. As a W & K partner he could have borrowed more. They could have put off buying the apartment. They could have talked to me. None of this alters Jon’s duty. I am truly appalled. By the way, don’t let him cry on your shoulder. He should be able to find a partnership in another firm in New York—not on the same level as W & K but still perfectly all right. Or a good position with a corporation. The market for experienced lawyers is quite strong.

How do you know?

She had caught him out. He was improvising and wasn’t about to admit it.

That’s what I’m told, he continued, many headhunters specialize in placing senior lawyers.

He should meet some.

She began picking at her ravioli, stopped, searched in her pocketbook, produced a minuscule embroidered handkerchief, seemed unable to decide what to do with it, put it back in its place.

Schmidtie, have you understood what I’ve just told you about Jon’s position, his feelings?

Of course.

Do you admit the possibility that they love each other?

I know nothing about that.

And you still stand by your letter.

Yes. There is nothing in my letter to stop those two from getting together, if that’s what they want, provided he forgets about getting hold of her money. Quite simply, I won’t give Charlotte a dime in a way that would make it possible for him to get hold of it.

You mean steal it.

That’s not what I said.

You are certain to make Charlotte unhappy. How can she go back and be happy in the face of your disapproval? You scorn Jon.

You have no reason to question my motives. My feelings about Jon—I mean Jon’s not returning to Charlotte her property—are what they are. But I can assure you and Charlotte, since no doubt you will speak to her—if Charlotte needs assurance—that I will do everything in my power to help her, to make her happy. Of my free will. Sensibly. Without any need for coaching from you.

He beckoned to the waiter.

I hardly ever have dessert. Do you mind skipping it? No? Then I’ll get the check.

He had just finished paying when she asked him, Schmidtie, you said at the beginning of this meal that Jon has behaved execrably. Could that be said of anything you have done in your career? I don’t mean cheating on your wife. You know, like what you did with that Vietnamese baby-sitter. Charlotte has told me about that. I meant the sort of thing they’ve accused Jon of. Something for which you would like to be forgiven.

That sort of thing? Never.

A
N UNARTFUL
question artfully answered: “That sort of thing? Never.” True enough. He had never given documents filed under seal to someone who wasn’t entitled to have them or put himself in a position from which such execrable behavior could be inferred. But as for hideous baseness, risks taken against all reason, and needless lying! Never take no for an answer. One would have thought Dr. Riker knew enough about the human abyss to probe more deeply. Perhaps misfortune took off her edge. Speeding homeward on the Long Island Expressway, exhilaratingly empty in the early weekday afternoon, Schmidt let the subject sit there, like a letter of whose baleful content we are certain from the moment we have glimpsed the familiar handwriting on the envelope. It remained unopened as he steered his car and fiddled with the radio.

Little time passed before he resumed the weekly telephone calls to Charlotte, usually in the morning on Wednesday, to give her an opening to announce casually that she would like to come for the weekend. He could not bear to lose contact.
They talked about her work—she had received the additional responsibility of a rich Native American tribe that would soon open a casino on its land—and the weather. The latter was Schmidt’s subject. Part of it was promotion of Long Island in the early fall—mild days, the air so clear on the beach you thought you could see all the way to Montauk, long lazy breakers, and an ocean still warm enough for an energetic swimmer to dive into, the late roses in his garden—and part an attempt to let her know how constantly he thought about her. This took the form of warnings about the downpour predicted for the city, let’s say, on Friday, just when she had to make a presentation downtown, and concern about her being able to get a taxi at first to her office and then to the client’s so she wouldn’t arrive looking soaked, and, after a dry week, worries about the drought. Of course Charlotte stayed in the city on all those discreetly, longingly vaunted Long Island weekends, unless indeed she made trips, which she didn’t take the trouble to mention to Schmidt, to other destinations. For instance, to Claverack. Or would it be to the Berkshires? There was no way to tell: possibly she and Mr. Polk were once again office friends, so that she might visit him and his wife at the house in Egremont. She did not mention the letter that had stirred Renata into action, or Jon Riker, or the Riker parents. The peculiar fact that he didn’t know where Charlotte lived—where she slept was the way he thought of it—was uncomfortably present in Schmidt’s mind. He wondered whether it was present in her consciousness. It seemed more likely that she thought she had told him. Not foreseeing any urgent need to reach her outside of
office hours, he decided not to ask. As Mr. Mansour might put it, he didn’t need trouble, the recriminations that an illtimed or ill-conceived question might provoke.

The second Sunday of October, while Carrie and Jason competed as a team in the Riverhead police association triathlon, Schmidt received a telephone call from Mike Mansour. Sorry to have missed you these last couple of weeks. You’re doing well? I’m in great shape, really great. I had to be in L.A. to look at rushes and talk to some boys about distribution. Right,
Chocolate Kisses
, it’s the greatest yet! I’ve got to hand it to him. Since I became his executive producer he’s been bearing down hard, really taking advice. I tell you, it shows. When’s Gil coming back? At the end of the month. By the way, I’m going to visit all of my foundation’s centers. That’s right. All forty-two of them. That will bring me back in time for Thanksgiving. I expect you and Carrie for Thanksgiving lunch, all right? By the way, I want to have Jason with me. I let him take this weekend off to do the triathlon with her, but she’ll have to make it on her own until we come back. You make sure you keep her busy in the meantime.

Mike, what are you telling me about Carrie and Jason? he asked, his throat dry, finding it impossible to let that go by.

Nothing your eyes can’t see. Excuse me, it’s a funny thing, Schmidtie. If you had said yes to me, if you had taken the job at my foundation when I made my offer, we’d be making this trip together. Maybe the next time!

Right. There is always another day.

What the next day in fact brought was a package, delivered by courier, from the Mansour Life Institute. It contained a
“welcome kit”: annual reports, a year’s accumulation of press clippings, many of them in languages unfamiliar to Schmidt, and reports on betterment of living conditions commissioned from outside scholars. Also in the package Schmidt found a separate scarlet folder marked
HIGHLY IMPORTANT
with a letter from Eric Holbein, thanking Schmidt for his interest in the Mansour Life Institute and confirming the invitation extended by its chairman, Mr. Mansour, that Mr. Schmidt consider a significant commitment to the institute and involvement in its activities. Either the letter had been backdated to the week when Mike Mansour asked Schmidt to run the foundation or it had languished on Mr. Holbein’s desk, having been placed at the bottom of a pile of even more important correspondence ready for signature. It really didn’t matter, although Schmidt wondered how far Mr. Mansour would want to lead him by the nose.

Make vast promises and then let them fade against the horizon of other people’s harsh and empty desert. It’s a rich man’s game. You might as well start by practicing on a dog. Hold high a bone with meat on it, and let the poor brute get up on his hind legs and strain—tail wagging, eyes wild, hungry tongue out, saliva splashing. You wait until he thinks he’s got it made. That’s when you burst out laughing and toss the object of such hot desire right over his snout, beyond the high fence that shuts in the kennel. The dog falls forward on all fours, confused and yelping. That’s the time to scratch him behind his ears, tell him he’s been a good dog, and move on to the next game. With your first billion stashed away, you graduate to people. They’re not all that different. To one guy
who thinks he’s invented hot water you say you’ll be partners with him to develop the business, to another that he’ll run your foundation. The fun is all in making some thirsty, panting fool follow the mirage and then convincing him that it’s his own fault if it’s not real. If only he had gotten going earlier, before dawn, when the air was still cool and fresh, if he had rationed his strength, if he had run harder, the dream would have been realized, the prize his to take! And so it goes: billions accumulate, and with them broken promises that would have been seen at once as practical jokes if the shimmering mountain of cash hadn’t dazzled the eye. Large people need large names. Time comes to worry about the billionaire’s reputation. It wouldn’t do to have him shown up as a jerk with a big mouth. That’s where retainers like Mr. Holbein come in, circumspect operatives learned in the art of turning the dross of the boss’s word of honor into prophecies of the Sybil, which, if deciphered, come down only to this: There is no such thing as a free lunch. Generosity begins and ends with gratifying the giver.