The New Yorker Stories (64 page)

Nicholas was a junior at Notre Dame. He had his father’s wavy hair—Edward hated that kind of hair, which he called kinky—but not his blue eyes. Charlotte had always been sad about that. Nicholas had her eyes: ordinary brown eyes that she loved to look at, although she could not say why she found them so interesting. She had to remember not to look at him too long. Only that morning he had said at breakfast, “Charlotte, it’s a little unnerving to roll out of bed and be stared at.” He often called her Charlotte now. She had moved to Charlottesville six years ago, and although it was a very sociable town and she had met quite a few people (she had finally reached the point with most of them where they had stopped making jokes about a Charlotte coming to live in Charlottesville), she did not know anyone with a son Nicholas’s age. Oddly enough, she knew two women about her age who were having babies. One of them seemed slightly abashed; the other was ecstatic. It was a scandal (people parodied themselves in Charlottesville by calling scandals—which they did not believe in—
“scandales”
) that the ecstatic forty-one-year-old mother-to-be, a recent graduate of the University of Virginia Law School, was not married. Other gossip had it that she was forty-three.

Charlotte worked as a legal secretary for an old and prestigious law firm in town. She had left New York after she and Edward separated a dozen years ago, and had moved to Washington, where she enrolled in American University to resume her B.A. studies in preparation for entering law school. Nicholas went to Lafayette School, and was taken care of on the weekends by her parents, who lived in the Cleveland Park area, while Charlotte sequestered herself and studied almost around the clock. But there were problems: Nicholas had a hard time making friends in his new school; also, the bitterness between Charlotte and Edward seemed to escalate when there was actual distance between them, so Charlotte was constantly distracted by Edward’s accusatory phone calls and his total lack of faith in her ability to get a degree. It had all been too much, and finally she decided to abandon her plans of becoming a lawyer and became a legal secretary instead. Edward began to make visits, taking the Metroliner from New York to Washington; one day he turned up with a dark-haired, dark-eyed young woman who wore a bit too much jewelry. Soon after that they were married. The “and family” part of the gift card referred to her daughter from a previous marriage. Charlotte had never met the child.

Charlotte looked out the back window. Horatio was in the yard, sniffing the wind. Nicholas had stopped on the way south and bought a stake and a chain to keep Horatio under control during the visit. Actually, the dog seemed happy enough, and wasn’t very interested in the birds or the occasional cat that turned up in Charlotte’s yard. Right now, Nicholas was upstairs, talking to Andrea on the phone. Someone throwing a life ring to a drowning child could not have been more energetic and more dedicated than Nicholas was to the girl.

Charlotte poured another bourbon, into which she plopped three ice cubes, and sat on the stool facing the counter, where she kept the telephone and pads of paper and bills to be paid and whatever odd button needed to be sewn back on. There were also two batteries there that were either dead or unused (she couldn’t remember anymore) and paper clips (although she could not remember the last time she used a paper clip at home), a few corks, a little bottle of Visine, some loose aspirins, and a broken bracelet. There was a little implement called a lemon zester that she had bought from a door-to-door salesman. She suddenly picked it up and pretended to be conducting, because Nicholas had just put on Handel upstairs. He always played music to drown out his phone conversations.

“For the Lord God omni-potent . . .” She had forgotten to get back to the Tazewells about Father Curnan’s birthday party. She had promised that she would find out whether Nicholas would come, and then call back. She had meant to ask Nicholas at breakfast but had forgotten. Now she suddenly saw that Horatio might be her salvation. Whenever he came indoors he ran through the house in an excited fashion, and if that happened to get Nicholas off the phone, who would blame her? She went outdoors and, shivering, quickly unhitched the dog and led him in. His fur was soft and cold. He was glad to see her, as usual. The minute they were inside, he bounded up the stairs. She stood at the bottom, listening to Horatio’s panting outside Nicholas’s door, and then, sure enough, the door banged open. Nicholas was at the top of the stairs, staring down. He did look as if he had been rescuing a drowning child: disheveled, with not an extra second to spare. “What’s he doing inside?” he asked.

“It’s cold out,” she said. “Nicky, the Tazewells are having a dinner for Father Curnan’s birthday tonight. Will you go with me?”

The sopranos soared in unison. She must have looked alarmed—surely he noticed that she had suddenly put both hands on the banister railing—and perhaps that was why he quickly nodded yes and turned away.

Back in the kitchen, with her boots off, Charlotte stroked the dog with one stockinged foot, and in response he shot up and went into his little routine, his famous trick. Almost complacently, he sat and extended his right paw. Then he rubbed his snout down that leg, put the paw back on the floor, and lifted and rubbed the left paw in the same fashion. He sneezed, turned twice in a circle to his left, and then came over to be patted. The trick meant nothing, of course, but it never failed as a crowd-pleaser. Sometimes Charlotte had even come into a room and found him doing it all by himself. “Okay, you’re wonderful,” she whispered to Horatio now, scratching his ears.

She heard Nicholas’s footsteps on the stairs and called, “Where are you going?” It dismayed her that he kept to himself so much. He stayed upstairs most of the day studying, or he talked on the telephone. He already had on his coat and scarf. Instead of hanging them in the hall closet, he kept them up in his room. He kept everything there, as if he were forever on the point of packing up for some quick journey.

“Back to the garage,” he said. “Don’t get upset. It’s no big thing. I asked them yesterday if they had time to line the rear brakes, and they said they could fit me in this afternoon.”

“Why would that upset me?” she said.

“Because you’d think the car was unsafe. You’ve always got your images of disaster.”

“What are you talking about?” she said. She was addressing Christmas cards, trying to convince herself that there might be some truth to Better late than never.

“When I had the broken thumb, you carried on as if I was a quadriplegic.”

He was talking about the year before—a bicycling injury, when he’d skidded on some icy pavement. She shouldn’t have flown out to Indiana, but she missed him and she hated the idea of his being hurt. College was the first time he had ever lived away from her. She hadn’t made a scene—she had just gone there and called from a motel. (It was in the back of her mind, she had to admit now, that the trip might also be a chance for her to meet Andrea, the off-campus student who had begun to turn up in Nicholas’s letters.) Nicholas was horrified that she’d come all that distance. He was fine, of course—he had a cast on his left hand was all—and he had said almost angrily that he couldn’t tell her anything without eliciting a huge overreaction.

“You didn’t forget the dinner, did you?” she said now.

He turned and looked at her. “We already talked about that,” he said. “Seven o’clock—is that right?”

“Right,” she said. She began to address another envelope, trying to pass it off.

“It will take approximately one hour at the garage,” he said.

Then he left—the way his father so often had left—without saying good-bye.

She wrote a few more cards, then called the florist’s to see whether they had been able to locate bird-of-paradise flowers in New York. She wanted to send them to Martine, her oldest friend, who had just returned from a vacation in Key West to the cold winds of the Upper East Side. Charlotte was happy to hear that someone had them, and that a dozen had gone out. “I thought we’d have good luck,” the woman at the florist’s said. “If we couldn’t locate some paradise in New York, I don’t know where paradise
could
be tracked down.” She had a young voice—and after Charlotte hung up it occurred to her that she might have been the VanZells’ daughter, who had just been hired by a florist in town after having been suspended from college because of some trouble with drugs. Charlotte clasped her hands and touched them to her lips, in one of her silent prayers to the Virgin: No drugs for Nicholas, ever. Protect my Nicholas from harm.

The Tazewells’ sunken dining room was done in Chinese red, and against the far wall there was an enormous glass china press edged in brass, illuminated from within in a way that flooded the cut glass with light. The shelves were also glass, and their edges sparkled and gleamed with a prism-bright clarity. Charlotte was not surprised to see that Martin Smith, who ran the Jefferson Dreams catering service, was there himself to oversee things. People in Charlottesville followed through—even fun wasn’t left totally to chance—and Charlotte liked that. Edith Stanton, the host’s cousin, almost Charlotte’s first friend when she had moved here to Charlottesville (she could remember their first lunch together, and Edith’s considering gaze above the seafood salad: was this nice-looking new single woman who was working down at Burwell, McKee going to
fit in
?), was talking with Father Curnan. Charlotte looked hard at his face—the round, open face of an adolescent, except that there were deep lines around his eyes—and saw on it the look she called Bemused Monsignor. He could nod and smile and murmur his “not to be
believed
” as Edith went on in her breathless way (surely she was telling him again about her session in a bodybuilding shop for women out in Santa Barbara last summer), but his interest was feigned. Edith was not a Catholic, and she could not know the sort of complicated, surprising man Philip Curnan really was. He had told Charlotte once that after working his way through Cornell (his father had an auto-repair garage in upstate New York somewhere), he had ridden across the country on a Harley-Davidson, while searching his soul about his desire to enter the priesthood. Charlotte smiled now, remembering the confidence. Just last week he had told her that there were still times when he longed to get back on a motorcycle; his helmet was still on the top shelf in his bedroom closet.

A server passed by, and Charlotte finally got a drink. Surveying the room, she was pleased to see that Nicholas was talking to the McKays’ daughter, Angela, home from Choate for Christmas. Charlotte thought of the day, a month before, when Angela’s mother, Janet, had consulted with the head of Burwell, McKee about filing for legal separation from Chaz, her husband. Chaz, a lawyer himself, stood with his arm around his wife’s waist, talking to a couple Charlotte didn’t know. Perhaps Chaz still did not know that she had made inquiries about getting a divorce. M.L., the hostess, passed in her peach-colored gown, and Charlotte touched her shoulder and whispered, “It’s wonderful. Thank you for having us.” M.L. gave her a hug and said, “I must be somewhere
else
if I didn’t even say hello.” As she moved away, Charlotte smelled her perfume—at night, M.L. always wore Joy—and heard the rustle of silk.

Martin VanZell came up to Charlotte and began talking to her about his arthritic knee. He tapped a bottle in his breast pocket. “All doctors dote on Advil,” he said. “Ask any of them. Their eyes light up. You’d think it was Lourdes in a bottle. Pull off the top, take out the cotton, and worship. I’m not kidding you.” He noticed that he seemed to have caught Father Curnan’s attention. “Meaning no disrespect,” he said.

“Who was being slighted?” Father Curnan said. “The pharmaceutical company?” His eyes met Charlotte’s for a second, and he winked before he looked away. He speared a shrimp and ate it, waving away the napkin a server extended in her other hand.

Frankie Melkins suddenly swooped in front of Charlotte, kissing the air above her cheek. Frankie had been in a bad car accident last New Year’s, and had returned to the Church after Father Curnan’s hospital visits. That had been much talked about, as well as the fact that the case was settled out of court, which led people to believe that Frankie had got a lot of money. As Frankie and Martin began to compare painkiller stories, Charlotte drifted away and went to the side door, where someone had been knocking for quite some time. Oren and Billy! Oren could be such a devil. He gave drums to his nephews for Christmas and once threw rice during a party that wasn’t at all like a wedding. The minute she opened the door, he gave her a bear hug.

“What on earth!” M.L. said, staring out the door after the two men had come in. “Why, I’ll bet Frankie has left the cabdriver out there waiting.” She began to wave her arms wildly, whistling to him. She turned to Charlotte. “Can you believe it?” she said. She looked beyond Charlotte to Frankie. “Frankie!” she called. “Were you going to leave your cabdriver out in the driveway all night? There’s plenty of food. Tell him to come in and have something to eat.”

Father Curnan stood talking to the host, Dan Tazewell. They were looking at the mantel, discussing a small drawing of a nude that was framed and propped there. She overheard Father Curnan lamenting the fact that the artist had recently left the art department at the university and gone back to New York to live. Charlotte accepted another drink from a server, then looked back at Father Curnan. He was scrutinizing the drawing. On her way to the bathroom, Charlotte heard Nicholas telling Angela McKay details about hand surgery, spreading his thumb and first finger wide. Angela looked at the space between his fingers as though staring at some fascinating thing squirming beneath a microscope. His hand? Had Nicholas had hand surgery?

One of the servers was coming out of the bathroom as Charlotte got to the door. She was glad it was empty, because she had had two drinks before she left the house and another at the party. She put her glass on the back of the sink before she used the toilet. What if she left the drink there? Would anybody notice and think things?