The Bonfire of the Vanities (30 page)

“That may well be. She’s probably talking about C.C.N.Y. That’s the City College of New York.”

“I believe Mrs. Lamb did mention that.”

“City College has an open-admissions policy. If you live in New York City and you’re a high-school graduate and you want to go to City College, you can go.”

“Will Henry Lamb graduate, or would he have?”

“As far as I know. As I say, he has a very good attendance record.”

“How do you think he would have fared as a college student?”

A sigh. “I don’t know. I can’t imagine what happens with these kids when they enter City College.”

“Well, Mr. Rifkind, can you tell me anything at
all
about Henry Lamb’s performance or his aptitude, anything at
all
?”

“You have to understand that they give me about sixty-five students in each class when the year starts, because they know it’ll be down to forty by mid-year and thirty by the end of the year. Even thirty’s too many, but that’s what I get. It’s not exactly what you’d call a tutorial system. Henry Lamb’s a nice young man who applies himself and wants an education. What more can I tell you?”

“Let me ask you this. How does he do on his written work?”

Mr. Rifkind let out a whoop. “W
rit
ten work? There hasn’t been any written work at Ruppert High for fifteen years! Maybe twenty! They take multiple-choice tests. Reading comprehension, that’s the big thing. That’s all the Board of Education cares about.”

“How was Henry Lamb’s reading comprehension?”

“I’d have to look it up. Not bad, if I had to guess.”

“Better than most? Or about average? Or what would you say?”

“Well…I know it must be difficult for you to understand, Mr. Fallow, being from England. Am I right? You’re British?”

“Yes, I am.”

“Naturally—or I guess it’s natural—you’re used to levels of excellence and so forth. But these kids haven’t reached the level where it’s worth emphasizing the kind of comparisons you’re talking about. We’re just trying to get them up to a certain level and then keep them from falling back. You’re thinking about ‘honor students’ and ‘higher achievers’ and all that, and that’s natural enough, as I say. But at Colonel Jacob Ruppert High School, an honor student is somebody who attends class, isn’t disruptive, tries to learn, and does all right at reading and arithmetic.”

“Well, let’s use that standard. By that standard, is Henry Lamb an honor student?”

“By that standard, yes.”

“Thank you very much, Mr. Rifkind.”

“That’s okay. I’m sorry to hear about all this. Seems like a nice boy. We’re not supposed to call them boys, but that’s what they are, poor sad confused boys with a whole lotta problems. Don’t quote me, for Christ’s sake, or
I’ll
have a whole lotta problems. Hey, listen. You sure you couldn’t use a 1981 Thunderbird?”

At that moment, also on Long Island, but sixty miles to the east, on the south shore, the beach club had just opened for the season. The club owned a low, rambling stucco building athwart the dunes and about a hundred yards of beachfront, bounded by two dock ropes threaded through metal stanchions. The club facilities were spacious and comfortable but were maintained, devoutly, in the Brahmin Ascetic or Boarding School Scrubbed Wood mode that had been fashionable in the 1920s and 1930s. So it was that Sherman McCoy now sat on the deck at a perfectly plain wooden table under a large faded umbrella. With him were his father, his mother, Judy, and, intermittently, Campbell.

You could step or, in Campbell’s case, run directly from the deck onto the sand that lay between the two ropes, and Campbell was just now somewhere out there with Rawlie Thorpe’s little girl, Eliza, and Garland Reed’s little girl, MacKenzie. Sherman was attentively not listening to his father tell Judy how Talbot, the club’s bartender, had made his martini, which was the color of pale tea.

“…know why, but I’ve always preferred a martini made with sweet vermouth. Shaken until it foams. Talbot always gives me an argument…”

His father’s thin lips were opening and closing, and his noble chin was going up and down, and his charming raconteur’s smile was wrinkling his cheeks. Once, when Sherman was Campbell’s age, his father and mother had taken him for a picnic out on the sand beyond the ropes. There was a spirit of adventure about this excursion. They were roughing it. The strangers out there on the sand, the handful who remained in the late afternoon, turned out to be harmless.

Now Sherman let his eyes slide off his father’s face to explore the sand beyond the ropes again. It made him squint, because where the cluster of tables and umbrellas ended, the beach was sheer dazzling light. So he shortened his range and found himself focusing on a head at the table just behind his father. It was the unmistakable round head of Pollard Browning. Pollard was sitting there with Lewis Sanderson the elder, who had always been Ambassador Sanderson when Sherman was growing up, and Mrs. Sanderson and Coker Channing and his wife. How Channing had ever become a member was beyond Sherman, except that he made a career of ingratiating himself with people like Pollard. Pollard was president of the club. Christ, he was president of Sherman’s co-op board, too. That dense, round head…But given his current frame of mind, Sherman was reassured by the sight of it…dense as a rock, solid as a rock, rich as Croesus, immovable.

His father’s lips stopped moving for an instant, and he heard his mother say, “Dear, don’t bore Judy with martinis. It makes you sound so old. Nobody but you drinks them any longer.”

“Here at the beach they do. If you don’t believe me—”

“It’s like talking about flappers or rumble seats or dining cars or—”

“If you don’t believe me—”

“—K rations or the Hit Parade.”

“If you don’t believe me—”

“Did you ever hear of a singer named Bonnie Baker?” She directed this at Judy, ignoring Sherman’s father. “Bonnie Baker was the star of the Hit Parade, on the radio. Wee Bonnie Baker she was called. The entire country used to listen to her. Totally forgotten now, I expect.”

Sixty-five years old and still beautiful, thought Sherman. Tall, lean, erect, thick white hair—refused to color it—an aristocrat, much more of one than his father, with all his dedication to being one—and still chipping away at the base of the statue of the great Lion of Dunning Sponget.

“Oh, you don’t have to go back that far,” said Judy. “I was talking to Garland’s son, Landrum. He’s a junior, I think he said, at Brown—”

“Garland Reed has a son in college?”

“Sally’s son.”

“Oh dear. I’d totally forgotten about Sally. Isn’t that awful?”

“Not awful. Up-to-date,” said Judy, without much of a smile.

“If you don’t believe me, ask Talbot,” said Sherman’s father.

“Up-to-date!” said his mother, laughing and ignoring the Lion and his martinis and his Talbot.

“Anyway,” said Judy, “I happened to say something to him about hippies, and he just stared at me. Never heard of them. Ancient history.”

“Here at the beach—”

“Like martinis,” Sherman’s mother said to Judy.

“Here at the beach you’re still permitted to enjoy life’s simple pleasures,” said Sherman’s father, “or you were until a moment ago.”

“Daddy and I went to that little restaurant in Wainscott last night, Sherman, the one Daddy likes so much, with Inez and Herbert Clark, and do you know what the owner said to me—you know the pretty little woman who owns it?”

Sherman nodded yes.

“I find her very jolly,” said his mother. “As we were leaving, she said to me—well, first I must mention that Inez and Herbert had two gin-and-tonics apiece, Daddy had his three martinis,
and
there was wine, and she said to me—”

“Celeste, your nose is growing. I had
one
.”

“Well, perhaps not three. Two.”

“Celeste.”

“Well, she thought it was a lot, the owner did. She said to me, ‘I like my older customers best of all. They’re the only ones who drink anymore.’ ‘
My older customers’!
I can’t imagine how she thought that was supposed to sound to me.”

“She thought you were twenty-five,” said Sherman’s father. Then to Judy: “All of a sudden I’m married to a White Ribbon.”

“A white ribbon?”

“More ancient history,” he muttered. “Or else I’m married to Miss Trendy. You always have been up-to-date, Celeste.”

“Only compared to you, darling.” She smiled and put her hand on his forearm. “I wouldn’t take away your martinis for the world. Talbot’s, either.”

“I’m not worried about Talbot,” said the Lion.

Sherman had heard his father talk about how he liked his martinis mixed at least a hundred times, and Judy must have heard it twenty, but that was all right. It got on his mother’s nerves, not his. It was comfortable; everything was the same as always. That was the way he wanted things this weekend; the same, the same, the same, and neatly bounded by the two ropes.

Just getting out of the apartment, where
May I speak to Maria
still poisoned the air, had helped considerably. Judy had driven out early yesterday afternoon in the station wagon with Campbell, Bonita, and Miss Lyons, the nanny. He had driven out last night in the Mercedes. This morning, in the driveway outside the garage behind their big old house on Old Drover’s Mooring Lane, he had gone over the car in the sunlight. No evidence at all, that he could detect, of the fracas…Everything was brighter this morning, including Judy. She had chatted quite amiably at the breakfast table. Just now she was smiling at his father and mother. She looked relaxed…and really rather pretty, rather chic…in her polo shirt and pale yellow Shetland sweater and white slacks…She wasn’t young, but she did have the kind of fine features that would age well…Lovely hair…The dieting and the abominable Sports Training…and age…had taken their toll on her breasts, but she still had a trim little body…firm…He felt a mild tingle…Perhaps tonight…or the middle of the afternoon!…Why not?…That might give the thaw, the rebirth of spring, the return of the sun…a more solid foundation…If she would agree, then the…ugly business…would be over…Perhaps
all
the ugly business would be over. Four days had now passed and there had not been a shred of news about anything dreadful happening to a tall skinny boy on an expressway ramp in the Bronx. No one had come knocking at his door. Besides,
she
was driving. She had put it that way herself. And whatever happened, he was
morally correct
(Nothing to fear from God.) He had been fighting for his life and for hers…

Maybe the whole thing was one of God’s warnings. Why didn’t he and Judy and Campbell get out of the madness of New York…and the megalomania of Wall Street? Who but an arrogant fool would want to be a Master of the Universe—and take the insane chances he had been taking? A close call!…Dear God, I swear to you that from now on…Why didn’t they sell the apartment and move out here to Southampton year round—or to Tennessee…Tennessee…His grandfather William Sherman McCoy had come to New York from Knoxville when he was thirty-one…a hick in the eyes of the Brownings…Well, what was so wrong with good American hicks!…Sherman’s father had taken him to Knoxville. He had seen the perfectly adequate house where his grandfather had grown up…A lovely little city, a sober, reasonable little city, Knoxville…Why didn’t he go there and get a job in a brokerage house, a regular job, a sane, responsible job, not trying to spin the world on its head, a nine-to-five job, or whenever it is they work in places like Knoxville; $90,000 or $100,000 a year, a tenth or less of what he so foolishly thought he needed now, and it would be plenty…a Georgian house with a screen porch at one end…an acre or two of good green lawn, a Snapper lawn mower that he might operate himself occasionally, a garage with a door that opens with a Genie that you keep clipped onto the visor of your car, a kitchen with a magnetic bulletin board where you leave messages for each other, a cozy life, a loving life, Our Town…

Judy was now smiling at something his father had said, and the Lion was smiling in pleasure at her appreciation of his wit, and his mother was smiling at both of them, and at the tables beyond, Pollard was smiling and Rawlie was smiling and Ambassador Sanderson, his lanky old legs and all, was smiling, and the sweet sun of early June by the sea warmed Sherman’s bones, and he relaxed for the first time in two weeks, and he smiled at Judy and his father and his mother, as if he had actually been paying attention to their banter.

“Daddy!”

Campbell came running toward him, from out of the sand and the dazzling light, onto the deck, between the tables.

“Daddy!”

She looked absolutely glorious. Now almost seven years old, she had lost her babyish features and was a little girl with slender arms and legs and firm muscles and not a blemish anywhere. She was wearing a pink bathing suit with the letters of the alphabet printed on it in black and white. Her skin glowed with sun and exercise. The very sight of her, of this
…vision…
brought smiles to the faces of his father and his mother and Judy. He pivoted his legs out from under the table and opened his arms. He wanted her to run straight into his embrace.

But she stopped short. She hadn’t come for affection. “Daddy.” She was breathing hard. She had an important question. “Daddy.”

“Yes, darling!”

“Daddy.” She could scarcely get her breath.

“Take it easy, sweetheart. What is it?”

“Daddy…what do you do?”

What did he do?

“Do? What do you mean, sweetheart?”

“Well, MacKenzie’s daddy makes books, and he has eighty people working for him.”

“That’s what MacKenzie told you?”

“Yes.”

“Oh ho! Eighty people!” said Sherman’s father, in the voice he used for small children. “My, my, my!”

Sherman could imagine what the Lion thought of Garland Reed. Garland had inherited his father’s printing business and for ten years had done nothing with it but keep it alive. The “books” he “made” were printing jobs given him by the actual publishers, and the products were as likely to be manuals, club rosters, corporate contracts, and annual reports as anything even remotely literary. As for the eighty people—eighty ink-stained wretches was more like it, typesetters, pressmen, and so forth. At the height of his career the Lion had had
two hundred Wall Street lawyers
under his whip, most of them Ivy League.

“But what do you
do
?” asked Campbell, now growing impatient. She wanted to get back to MacKenzie to give her report, and something impressive was clearly called for.

“Well, Sherman, how about it?” said his father with a big grin. “I want to hear the answer to this myself. I’ve often asked myself what it is you fellows do exactly. Campbell, that’s an
excellent
question.”

Campbell smiled, taking her grandfather’s praise at face value.

More irony; and not so welcome this time. The Lion had always resented his going into the bond business instead of the law, and the fact that he had prospered at it only made things worse. Sherman began to feel angry. He couldn’t sit here and present a picture of himself as a Master of the Universe, not with his father and mother and Judy hanging on every word. At the same time, he couldn’t give Campbell some modest depiction of himself as a salesman, one among many, or even as the chief bond salesman, which would sound pompous without sounding impressive and wouldn’t mean anything to Campbell in any case—Campbell, who stood there panting, primed to race back to her little friend, who had a daddy who
made books
and had
eighty people
working for him.

“Well, I deal in
bonds
, sweetheart. I buy them, I sell them, I—”

“What are bonds? What is deal?”

Now his mother began laughing. “You’ve got to do better than that, Sherman!”

“Well, honey, bonds are—a bond is—well, let me see, what’s the best way to explain it to you.”

“Explain it to me, too, Sherman,” said his father. “I must have done five thousand leveraged purchase contracts, and I always fell asleep before I could figure out why anyone wanted the bonds.”

That’s because you and your two hundred Wall Street lawyers were nothing but functionaries for the Masters of the Universe, thought Sherman, getting more annoyed by the second. He saw Campbell looking at her grandfather in consternation.

“Your grandfather’s only joking, honey.” He shot his father a sharp look. “A bond is a way of loaning people money. Let’s say you want to build a road, and it’s not a little road but a big highway, like the highway we took up to Maine last summer. Or you want to build a big hospital. Well, that requires a lot of money, more money than you could ever get by just going to a bank. So what you do is, you issue what are called bonds.”

“You build roads and hospitals, Daddy? That’s what you do?”

Now both his father and his mother started laughing. He gave them openly reproachful looks, which only made them merrier. Judy was smiling with what appeared to be a sympathetic twinkle.