Rodin's Debutante (28 page)

Someone had opened a window to clear the cigarette smoke and the room was suddenly chilly. I saw another red star appear, next to Number Nine, and self-consciously turned my back and stepped to the open window. A line had formed at the movie house down the street,
An American in Paris.
Georges Guétary's version of "I'll Build a Stairway to Paradise" drifted up from a loudspeaker. The street was crowded with people going to dinner or the movie. I looked left, past the movie house and beyond Michigan Avenue to the lake, a black void in the darkness. Rain was in the air. A limousine was stalled in traffic and I remembered Tommy Ogden, his open Cadillac and his chauffeur, his whiskey flask and his sneer, his disdain of the Great Books, and his advice on the way of the world. You don't learn a god damned thing from defeat, a chain around your neck. Win always. Keep it to yourself. The world doesn't give a shit. Surely Tommy Ogden would be pleased at my success this evening. But as I stared at the lake-void I remembered Augustus Allprice and his
Omoo
lecture, life below decks, a life of uncertainty and sudden peril, all of it supervised by an unreliable navigator. But these were the ingredients of a well-lived life. I had no idea what had happened to the headmaster and his beautiful Anjelica; surely there was something beyond Patagonia. One could not live in Patagonia forever. People were always moving on, looking for a place to belong to, Dr. Petitbon going home to Louisiana, my mother abandoning New Jesper for the North Shore. Why not Patagonia forever? In its self-sufficiency, its apartness, its occasional violence, Patagonia bore some relation to Hyde Park. I raised my glass in the direction of the lake-void and wished Gus Allprice well.
Gus Gus Gus.

Then Laura was at my side, her arm through mine. I looked around and found the guests beginning to disperse. Someone came by and patted me on the shoulder and said, Well done. A photographer was circling the room, the first time I had seen him. He was dressed in a well-worn black suit and a fedora, an unlit cigar in his fist. He maneuvered us in the direction of my marbles and took two quick shots, his flashbulbs blinding. I turned to Laura and asked when she thought we could decently leave, maybe go down the street for a drink and a light dinner.

I'm worn out, I said.

She said, Harold and June want to take us and your parents to dinner.

Can't we just slip out?

They're proud of you, darling. They want to celebrate.

What do you think?

It's your night, she said. Enjoy it. You don't look as if you're enjoying it.

I'm enjoying it. That's why I want to slip out for a drink.

We can do that after dinner, she said.

The photographer was suddenly in our faces, asking us to smile nicely for the newspaper. I forced one and he went away after writing our names and ages in the little black book he carried in his pocket.

It'll be fun, she said.

I thought of the photographer and then of Tommy Ogden and his prescription for happiness, or anyway dominance, and the decision was made. Tell Harold and June okay, I said. The sooner the better.

That was quick, she said.

I laughed sourly and said I had good advice. I had decided to cast against type.

But in the event, I was not much good at dinner, even though my father and Harold got into a spirited argument over the election, darkened when Harold referred to General Eisenhower as Bubblehead. My father took offense and inquired whether Harold would have preferred Adlai to supervise D-day. Adlai was an egghead. Adlai would not know how to end the war in Korea because he did not understand the worldwide communist threat, whereas the general, with the reliable Nixon at his side, understood the Asian situation root and branch, to which Harold replied that Nixon was a scoundrel and a threat to the Republic—and June intervened to raise her glass and propose a toast to Laura and her successful dissertation and to me and my successful marbles and to our marriage which would be more successful still, especially when there were grandchildren.

Meanwhile, a summer storm lashed at the windows of the restaurant on Rush Street. I was distracted and bone-tired, as if the strain of all the work of the past years—laborious, shadowed always by doubt—had settled upon me all at once. I was not accustomed to attention. I was not accustomed to praise except for the periodic pep talks I gave myself and Laura's evident confidence. Now and again I did look back to the final game of the undefeated season, walking alone on the football field in a state of the purest satisfaction. I was bone-tired then too, but fully focused and looking to the future. I was not now looking to the future. I wanted only that the marriage ceremony be over and done with so that Laura and I could begin a normal life. The truth was, I was rattled and wanted to go home with Laura. Even Mumm's champagne did not ease my torpor as I listened to Harold and my father disagree amiably on the shape of the Eisenhower foreign policy until my father observed that John Foster Dulles, the general's principal adviser, was unsound. New York lawyers were fundamentally unsound, owing to their allegiance to Wall Street and to Europe. Democrats or Republicans, it made no difference, to which Harold said he couldn't agree more except for the Europe part; and that left them in a quandary. Minutes went by without my saying one word, and my father noticed and asked me if anything was wrong, and I said no, of course not, only a mild postpartum depression that would disappear as soon as I got back to work. Laura and I left early for Hyde Park and I fell asleep in the cab.

I am bound to say that the newspaper reviews, both of them, were merciless. They know how to do that in Chicago, a jack-boot to the kneecap without remorse, indeed with a sort of civic glee. Another impostor exposed, Chicago saved from an obscurantist arriviste. I was badly wounded but not destroyed, and in due course went back to work as before.

ONE MONTH LATER
Laura and I were married by my father in the university chapel. The old man's judicial baritone was never put to better use; and yes, he did have a pompous quality but I found him endearing. June insisted on the reception being held at home instead of at Harold's downtown club. This is a Hyde Park affair, she said. It has nothing to do with the city. June also had the idea of hiring the pianist from the Blue Note, who arrived with a drummer and a bassist and played the most supple blues. Improbably, the pianist was Russian by birth and before long had a devoted following from members of the Russian department at the university, all talking Russian while requesting the usual standards. He struggled to keep up his end. I remember fondly my parents dancing to the music with something like abandon until my father tired and had to be assisted to a chair and handed a glass of champagne. He and my mother were elated and she kept pulling at his arm to return to the dance floor and at last he did, with a helpless shrug and a wide smile, his cheeks as red as tomatoes. I had never seen them so affectionate with each other and when at last they switched partners with Harold and June my father was in a state of happy collapse, but even so, he managed an athletic two-step to the pianist's signature solo, "Sweet Georgia Brown." I watched the pianist's fingers dancing left and right, his head nodding like a metronome, and I thought his economical style somehow reminiscent of Chekhov rather than, say, the turbulent Dostoevsky. But that may have been simply more wretched obscurantism from an arriviste impostor. I decided it would be a great thing to be a musician with a signature piece, no version identical. That was what I tried to do with my marbles, all recognizable members of the same family but each with a unique personality, and probably the musician would believe the same thing, each melody delivering a different emotion or a different definition of the same emotion, "Sweet Georgia Brown" played as a march or a dirge or a plink-plink of happy popular music, depending on the tempo and the mood of the musician. He was playing it now as it might be played at a debutante's cotillion, without a debutante in sight except for Jill of Fifteen Hundred, doing a frantic Charleston with Anand. Other dancers made way for them, and it was then that I noticed Alfred Swan looking on with an expression of the utmost alarm as if he were witnessing the prelude to something unseemly, a bacchanal or an orgy, perhaps a coup d'état. Near the bar, a glass in hand, Dr. Petitbon listened to the music with his customary expression of anxiety. He had explained to me that he did not care for jazz music, blues in particular. He had French blood and preferred cabaret, Piaf and Jacqueline François. The blues inspired unhappy memories whereas cabaret offered consolation.

Laura and I cut the cake and moved to the dance floor as the pianist swung into
Fidelio
as Jelly Roll Morton might have played it. I danced with June, Laura danced with my father, and then the floor came alive with dancing friends and family, even Alfred Swan with portly Mrs. Swan. The trio played until nine, when they hurriedly packed their instruments and departed for the Blue Note to begin their evening engagement. Everyone clapped and cheered when they finished their final set and Laura gave the pianist a red rose from one of the vases on the buffet table. The company was momentarily bereft without the piano, the drums, and the bass. The room went silent, then someone rapped a spoon against a glass and the toasts began—Harold, then June, my father, my mother. I had never heard my mother give a toast or speak in any public way but she spoke fluently and affectionately about her new daughter-in-law and when she finished everyone cheered. Professor Altschuler delivered a witty tour of philosophers on the subject of marriage, beginning with Wittgenstein and the
Tractatus
and ending with Vico, the Neapolitan philosopher and jurist, Laura's particular favorite for his theory of "ideal eternal history." Vico's great subject was justice, so Professor Altschuler expatiated on justice as it related to marriage and of course vice versa. Laura grinned all the way through and when the professor finished there seemed nothing to add, but the additions came nevertheless, from Anand and Professor James James and Jill of Fifteen Hundred and my old schoolmate Hopkins, who offered a sarcastic version of the married life, not neglecting the erotic. Alfred Swan contributed a gruff commentary on the virtues of small-town sentiments and the preparation they gave for civic engagement, notably the presence of a community newspaper of conscience, publishing always without fear or favor. The Hyde Park professoriate appeared puzzled by the theme but applauded with enthusiasm, even as it noted the little Ike button in the publisher's lapel. But what could you expect from an Illinois newspaper publisher, reactionary almost by definition? And Ike wasn't all bad—not very bright and a soldier but accustomed to command. Things could have been much, much worse. The nominee could have been the hopeless Taft.

Laura and I managed to steal away for a moment or two in Harold's study. We sat on the window seat and looked at the elms across the street, now in full leaf. The night was calm but very dark. From far away we heard a police siren. Laura said, Is it going to be all right? Yes, I said. Fabulous. She meant our honeymoon. The following day we were booked on the Twentieth Century Limited to New York and a ship bound for Naples. Laura was eager to visit the birthplace of Giovanni Battista Vico, assuming it still existed and could be located. Vico had been dead for two hundred years. This would be Laura's first trip abroad, and mine too. My idea: I thought we should see something of the world before we settled down in Hyde Park. It was easy to believe that Hyde Park was the world, but it wasn't really. Laura was dubious at first. She had always wanted to visit New York and Boston for the museums and symphony orchestras, though the orchestras would be inferior to the Chicago Symphony. But she agreed at last and I engaged a travel agent to make the bookings, the train and the ship and more trains in Italy and the accommodations.

The travel agent warned me that the war was still present in Italy, not literally but figuratively, and to expect communist demonstrations wherever we went—the hatred of the government was palpable and since the government changed every week or so the hatred only increased and the violence with it. Do not expect anything truly first class. The trains were unreliable. Naples was dangerous. Rome was more dangerous. Tuscany was least dangerous, and of course we would want to see the Uffizi and the many palaces and churches not only in Florence but in Siena and Lucca. For that you will need a reliable car. The roads are appalling. The streets are filthy. The people could be warm but they were sly also and always expecting a handout. There is a word you must know.
Chiuso.
That means closed, and you will find that shops are often
chiuso
at exactly the time you want to shop. In addition, you must be vigilant at all times owing to the many pickpockets who stalk American tourists. The travel agent said she did not understand why we wished to travel to Italy. Have you thought about Paris? Paris was not subject to the fascist boot, in the manner of Italy and the operatic Benito Mussolini, and despite what you may have heard or read, the trains do not run on time in Italy. They also say that Rome is the Eternal City. Rome is not the Eternal City and it never was. Paris is the Eternal City. You will eat well in Paris whereas in Naples and Rome you may starve.

I told Laura none of this. We talked about our Italian plans as we sat on the window seat and looked into the street and the lights of the houses opposite. We agreed we had had a memorable wedding and reception and how miraculous it was that everyone had gotten along so well together, not a single argument save for the professor's wife who had challenged Alfred Swan's Ike button, Swan not giving an inch until the professor's wife gave it up with the remark that she wished the Republicans well, undeserving though they were. It had been so long since they had run a country, she hoped they had not forgotten how to do it.
Wilkommen
Herbert Hoover. Poor Adlai. Laura laughed then and remarked that there were so many toasts of such duration that we had not thought of our own and no one brought it up.