An Unfinished Season (17 page)

I go there because when I am there no one knows where I am.

An hour of serenity, Henry said, before the racket of the newsroom.

The thing about a game of pool, the playing field is small, the variations infinite.

Unlike the newsroom.

What does he look like, your Henry Laschbrook?

Tall, I said. Very thin. Wears double-breasted blue suits and a fedora.

Aurora looked at me and asked, Jewelry?

A pinkie ring, I said. One small diamond.

What else? she asked.

Well-groomed. Barbered, I'd say.

Shoes?

Wingtips, I said. Black and white. Why are you asking?

Thank you, Wils. It's for my archives.

 

The party season ended and my work at the newspaper was soon to end. Most days I met Aurora after work for long walks along the lakeshore, Lincoln Park to Michigan Avenue, and down the avenue to the Water Tower and, farther on, the Art Institute, where we would wander through the rooms until closing time. Aurora was taking courses there in the morning, the Impressionists at ten, Persian miniaturists at eleven. There was a sultan in a turban and red robe that reminded us, in his girth and stillness and imperturbability, of Richard J. Daley. Aurora and I would dine somewhere nearby and go to a movie on the Near North Side and then I would take her to Lincoln Park and drive home alone. My parents were soon to leave for New Orleans and Havana and I was busy devising a scheme whereby she could spend a few days with me in the empty house in Quarterday with its terrace and screened-in porch, the one with the white shag rug, the soft lighting, and the matching chaises.

Were we absorbed in each other? Here's how much:

On our third or fourth date—it seemed to me that we had been talking for half our lifetimes and I could not remember what I had talked about before I met her except it was surely inconsequential and she believed the same, and wasn't it remarkable how many variations there were on the philosophy of the Midwest when you had a sympathetic listener, one who picked up where you left off, building on the idea the way a composer builds on a simple melody, the notes coming so fast and with such intensity that you had to concentrate like a virtuoso because the worst thing would be to say something foolish or inattentive—I asked Aurora when I could meet her father. Parents, I corrected myself. Your mother, too.

My mother? Aurora asked. My mother does not live with us. My mother lives with her new husband in Detroit. Grosse Pointe, rather. They're particular about it being Grosse Pointe and not Detroit. He does something with cars. And they have a child of their own, a boy, five. His name is Dwight. Named for our general, much admired by her husband. His name is Robert. Probably he was named for a general, too, but I can't be sure. He's from the South so you can probably guess which general, if it is a general. Aurora spoke as if she were reciting from a prepared text, and it took me a moment to understand what I had heard. She had never spoken of her mother but I thought nothing about it because I never spoke of mine. Our parents were absent during the long conversations concerning the philosophy of the Midwest. Aurora had paused, waiting for me to catch up. She said, When they separated I was given a choice, him or her, and I chose him. My mother is a very modern woman. At least, that's how she sees herself.

She didn't always, Aurora added.

The place she wanted to live more than anywhere in the world was the North Shore. She liked its apartness. She liked the North Shore for the opposite reason your Henry Laschbrook likes his pool hall. When she was there, everyone knew where she was.

But then Robert came along and she had to settle for Grosse Pointe because they don't make cars in Chicago.

We were walking up Astor Street in the late afternoon, the air most mild. The street was quiet but all around us were animated voices heard clearly through open windows, people at predinner cocktails. Now and then a phrase of music drifted by, and the ballgame, second half of a double-header at Wrigley, bottom of the seventh, one out, one on, count two-two, outfield deep for Cavarretta, fouls once, fouls twice, steps back from a breaking ball inside, count three-two, and the noise from the stands rises a decibel and falls when Cavarretta steps out of the box, looks to third for the sign, steps back in, the tedium of waves on the surface of a windless sea and the sea is bottomless. We walked on. That part of the Near North Side was like a village, none of the row houses more than three or four stories high, looking like filing cabinets back of the great stone wall of Lake Shore Drive apartment buildings. You expected to see village shops, a shoemaker's or an ironmonger's, but commerce was not allowed. Baby carriages and bicycles crowded the front stoops, gate-bounded gardens facing the sidewalk.

I said, Do you see her often?

Christmas and Thanksgiving, Aurora said, except I missed last Christmas because they wanted to take Dwight to Key West. He's a swimmer. And I didn't want a Christmas without snow. My father is not exactly Mr. Ho-ho-ho Christmas Spirit but he makes an effort and the big thing is that in Chicago there's always snow for the holidays, mountains of it. You can count on it, set your watch by it. We always went to the Drake for Christmas lunch when my mother lived with us, so each year my father and I go, just us two, and have a fine time. Last year he ordered a bottle of champagne to go with the goose and analyzed everyone in the room, even the maitre d'hôtel. The dining room was full, all the waiters tricked out in tuxedos, season's greetings at the Drake. There were plenty of people for him to analyze. We had a baked alaska for two but he gave his portion to a little girl at the next table. Her parents tried to protest but he insisted. Aurora was quiet a moment and then she said, So there are those two holidays and whenever else I feel like it.

There's no formal custody agreement, she said.

They share custodial responsibilities.

I always thought a custodian was a kind of janitor, she went on.

My parents promised the judge they could work it out between themselves, and after listening to them, the judge agreed. He was a friend of my mother's and knew my father, too, though they were not friends. My father does not have many friends. Later on, I had my say and Judge Maxwell called me a very poised young lady and consented to the Christmas-and-Thanksgiving-and-whenever-else-I-feel-like-it, which I don't, often. They have their own life and I don't like suburbs, the lawns and the empty sidewalks and you need a car whenever you want to go anywhere, even to the movies. That's all they talk about, by the way, cars and the advertising slogans for cars. Did you know they call a Buick “the doctors' car”? Bet you didn't.

So that's the story of my modern mom and her modern marriage, where she lives, and who she lives with for now.

I was trying to form a picture of Aurora and her father at the Drake Hotel drinking champagne on Christmas, the room full, a tinseled tree in the corner. That was as far as I got.

I know what attracted her to him, Aurora said. He's big, as tall as my father but thick. Beefy. He has that molasses accent, always sounds like he's making a speech on the floor of the Senate. He has a big mane of yellow hair that he's proud of. He believes good grooming is an essential part of success. He plays the piano. Probably the most important thing about him is that he isn't my father. He chain-smokes, for one thing. And he talks all the time.

Like us, I said with a smile.

Not like us, Aurora said firmly. Not anything like us. He talks to fill the air. No silence so golden that a word from him wouldn't improve. And since my father rarely talks at all, I suppose she was attracted to someone who does. Talk all the time. Even when he plays the piano, which, incidentally, he's good at. They chatter together like a couple of railbirds and they're always trying to get me to join in but I don't. I listen to my own thoughts. I'm sitting at their table and I'm wishing I was home where it's an event when my father says, Please pass the salt. I began to laugh but Aurora put up her hand, palm out. She said, Yes, there is one other thing. I think he's afraid of my father.

I nodded. I knew at once she was correct.

Unpredictable, she said. He thinks my father is unpredictable, “not right,” and he's not alone. People worry about my father, men and women, too. I'd say he enjoys it but I'm not sure he's aware of it.

I wouldn't call him unpredictable, I said.

It's not my word, it's Robert's word. But it's more than that.

I said, Unreliable?

No, she said. Not at all. That's the last thing he is.

Are you? I asked. Afraid?

She looked at me crossly. No, she said. Of course not.

We strolled on. The air and sky had an end-of-summer look and feel. I was conscious that our time together was short. After Labor Day she was headed east to Barnard and I was remaining in Chicago and that was that. We rarely discussed the matter but it was always with us, uncomfortable baggage.

She said, I worry about him but I'm not afraid of him. Why would you think I was afraid of him? I'm not afraid of him or anybody.

I was only asking, I said.

You should have known the answer without asking. He would never do anything to harm me. Never. Not ever.

I know, I said.

Then why did you ask?

We walked on, quickly now, not in tune. I remembered our conversation of the night before, when she told me she could read my mind. I said I believed it but the reverse was not true. She had said, Try harder.

I said, Do you think a lot about New York?

She said, Now is not the time to talk about that.

It was not the time last night, either, or the night before. I knew she wanted out of Lincoln Park as badly as I wanted out of Quarterday, and I wondered if she had chosen Barnard to spite her father, as I had chosen the University of Chicago to spite mine, and how passionate was her desire to leave all else behind, making her way in New York. But this was not a subject she cared to discuss, beyond saying that we would write letters to each other and plan to meet at Thanksgiving. Of course I was afraid she wanted to cut all ties to Chicago, including me, in order to arrive in New York unencumbered. Listening to Aurora, I knew she was in distress, preoccupied with the life her mother led and the life she herself had made with her father, a difficult personality who frightened people though he did not frighten her. She had waited all this time to tell me of her split-up family life. It occurred to me that we were suddenly a crowd, my family and her two families including a stepfather and the swimmer, Dwight. When I looked into the rearview mirror now I saw a multitude, all of them with competing claims. Last night we had been at the jazz club to hear the closing set but the band was off so we sat at the bar. I wanted to talk about the future, her life in New York and mine in Chicago and how these would fit together. I wanted the future to begin at once and she said that wasn't possible. We had to take things on faith. We had to assume that our life together would work out, and meanwhile she was going to New York alone and that was the end of it. Discussion closed. Earl, the bartender, had been listening to us and put in that the future began with the first night you spent in jail. Same as losing your virginity, you never forgot it. I smiled, thinking of Earl, and explained to Aurora that I was thinking about this crowded past we had suddenly acquired, but I did a bad job of it because she did not reply. I was not certain she was listening carefully.

I said, What's his name, anyhow? Your stepfather?

Robert Elliott, she said. Two
l's,
two
t's.

I thought I ought to know in case I become a doctor and need to drive a Buick.

She smiled marginally and said, Give it a rest, Wils. I should have kept my mouth shut.

No, I said. I put my hands on her elbows and turned her so that we were face to face. I said, We must have no secrets between us.

She said, Everybody has secrets.

I'd like it if we didn't, I said.

She shrugged and turned from me.

Honestly, I said.

Secrets are what get you from one year to the next, she said, pulling away. Secrets are what make the difference, one person to another. That's what a personality is, secrets. One mask after another. Secrets known and secrets kept. Secrets treasured. Secrets honored. Otherwise, what's the point?

There shouldn't be secrets between us, I said stubbornly.

That's impractical, she said.

What's impractical about it?

It sounds too much like work, she said.

And now we're having our first fight, she added brightly. She was smiling and looking over my shoulder at someone across the street.

Look there, she said. It's Adlai Stevenson.

He was alone, lost in thought, carrying a heavy briefcase, hatless. We watched as an older woman approached him and nodded, the governor grinning cordially, moving on. I thought he would be hard to pick out in a crowd, a nondescript middle-aged man in a gray summer suit that looked a size too small, his face pale and fleshy, his hair thinning. He looked like any tired businessman on his way home after a hard day at the office. Not so long ago he had been a presidential nominee, Americans attending to his every thought and deciding at last that they were the wrong thoughts, perhaps too precise for the perilous times and that, all things considered, muddled syntax from a five-star general was preferable. On the night of his defeat he quoted Lincoln to the effect that he was too old to cry and it hurt too much to laugh, and with that quip returned to private life and now, on a warm August afternoon, was strolling up Astor Street alone, a common citizen once again. I wondered where he was bound at this hour, imagining that he had an appointment with his advisers, perhaps to contemplate another campaign, perhaps only to complain about the last one, out of time, out of money, harassed on all sides by the miserable Republican press. The ghosts of a hundred secrets would be present at such a meeting, secrets among the advisers, secrets of the candidate, secrets concealed from the public and the press, secrets shadowing every word uttered. They were the war plans in the commander's tent, and would never be disclosed. The reason given would be “confidentiality.”