Schmidt Delivered (6 page)

The menu was fish lasagna, followed by a green salad and raspberry mousse. She had a small portion of the lasagna ready on a dessert plate and handed it to him.

Here, taste. But careful, it’s real hot.

Carrie, that’s a great dish. If you made it you are a great cook. Where did you get the idea for this?

It was, in fact, extraordinarily good, with a light taste of nutmeg. Nothing about the way he had seen her grill hamburgers or lamb chops on the kitchen stove—which was all he ever let her prepare, and at that only rarely, suspicious of what she might do to food and preferring the known and reliable quality of his own limited repertoire—had given him a hint that she might be a full-blown chef.

Surprise, surprise! You want to try the mousse?

He did. There was a separate portion of that waiting for him as well.

Fantastic! Why haven’t you been whipping up these dishes for us every evening? How come you know how to make them?

Mrs. Gorchuck. My mom.

And she?

Haven’t I told you, Schmidtie? Until she retired, she was a cook in an Italian restaurant off Atlantic Avenue. Boy, she can make anything.

But why have you kept your light under a bushel?

You dodo, I haven’t cooked for you because you’re always there in your apron cooking for me. Plus you do the dishes. It’s a good deal. Why should I mess with it?

Well, that’s over. The new deal is I stick to washing dishes and you do the rest. We’ll never go to a restaurant again.

I’ll stick to the deal I have. Schmidtie, you think she’ll like it? Maybe you should tell her the food was catered. If she knows a dumb Puerto Rican waitress cooked it she’ll think it can’t be good. Also she’ll think I’m like all over everything here. She’ll freak out.

No, Carrie hadn’t learned manners watching old movies. Mrs. Gorchuck had taught them to her, as well as recipes and skills that Brillat-Savarin would have found worthy of note, on her days off from that restaurant located on a street corner somewhere in the mythic Hispanic and black slum, once full of Jews, that stretches to infinity past Brooklyn Heights, the only part of Carrie’s native borough Schmidt had visited, or late in the evenings, after the trip home on the graffiti-covered subway, dead tired though she was from the heat of the stove, her forearms covered by burns all the way to the elbows. Also true modesty and tact of a princess, precious matters of heart, more valuable than deportment, if indeed they could be taught. Or had these been the contribution Mr. Gorchuck, the retired board of education employee, whose
former functions there were a mystery, had made to his only daughter’s remarkable upbringing? Schmidt had on occasion imagined, during higher flights of his idiosyncratic humor, that Mr. Gorchuck, descended from Muscovite princes and czarist generals, had been guilty of his own misalliance, so that in the veins delicately lining Carrie’s dusky skin the bluest blood of the steppes mixed with the cocktail of Puerto Rico. Less fanciful but appealing was the notion that Carrie might be a foster child, if not a foundling, whose native grace this pair had tenderly allowed to flower. Views as to the relative importance of nurture and genes were shifting anyway; the meaning of nurture was itself in question. Carrie’s case, it seemed to Schmidt, called out loud for scientific study. His personal research had not progressed far. Occasional suggestions, both veiled and explicit, that he should really meet the parents and that he would enjoy going to their house (that is how he put it, from persistent habit of speech, although he realized that home might be a walk-up apartment) or receiving them in his own house—the latter prospect being, of course, one that filled him with dread—had been pushed off with a vague, Jesus, Schmidtie, they’re doing OK, which he took to be another way of saying, Lay off. All right. That was her business. He supposed she had let Mr. and Mrs. Gorchuck know she was living with a man in the Hamptons and no longer working at O’Henry’s, but not necessarily that he was a rich fellow, older than her own father. That had to be the simple explanation for her refusal. He couldn’t believe that she, his brave and passionate Carrie, was ashamed of them. But he didn’t know much, not even the father’s age or
whether he was, in fact, retired. Retired! Of course, he was. New York City employees could retire with full pay practically the day they started work. This was a subject better to avoid with Schmidt unless one wanted to get an earful.

Sweetie, I’ve told you, you really can’t be sure with Charlotte. I haven’t had a meal with her in so long I don’t know what’s on her approved list these days. Fish and pasta used to be right up there. Don’t worry about it. I’ll finish anything she doesn’t eat.

Jeez, Schmidtie, you don’t need to do that. I’m a big girl. I can take it.

He pulled her over to him, put his hands on her breasts, waited till the nipples hardened, and squeezed. Holy God. The stirrings of an erection. He rubbed it against her hip.

Later, Schmidtie. Keep the little guy in your pants until tonight, when we’re in bed. Hey, let me put the mousse in the refrigerator. The pasta I’ll let cool on the counter and then reheat real slow so you can eat anytime you want. Unless you want the food at room temperature? Mom likes that, like when she cooks for a party or whatever.

      That evening, waiting for Charlotte at the bus stop, Schmidt tried to keep his mind on that conversation and the way Carrie had set the table for dinner in the kitchen, because that would be cozy with just the three of them. Lurking nearby were taxi drivers ordered in advance or hoping for a passenger no one was picking up, a man with hairy legs in shorts and dirty running shoes, two oversize secretaries with New York voices and fluffed-up hair, and other
indistinguishable summer-rental types he preferred not to examine. His nerve had failed him. He hadn’t agreed with Charlotte that she should call when she arrived so he wouldn’t have to wait at the stop until the jitney pulled in. Since there was no telling whether the bus would be on time, that was what local residents did—except, perhaps, the most ardent lovers and anyone expecting a child or a passenger too infirm to get to the phone and wait for a ride. But suppose she had forgotten the custom and took amiss his not standing there at attention to welcome the returning prodigal daughter. It was not a risk worth taking.

Just then a bus from New York arrived, the vision causing great disturbance in Schmidt’s feelings. Ceiling lights turned on by the driver revealed indistinct figures, standing up, gathering their belongings, reaching for overhead racks. Avidly, he scrutinized them one by one. Such a long time ago—could it really be twenty years?—waiting in a group of Brearley School parents for the bus that brought the whole class back from a field trip, and, as the girls filed out, he realized that he could not summon Charlotte’s face before his eyes. It was as though he had forgotten it. At that very moment she appeared at his side and threw her arms around him. He knew that not being able to make her out in the dim light, through tinted windows of the jitney, with the summer people milling around, was different, perfectly understandable, but the anxiety that he had disastrously lost the memory of her silhouette, possibly even of her face, was the same. The last passenger got off. No Charlotte.

Is this the six o’clock bus? he asked the driver.

Nah, five-thirty. The traffic’s real bad.

When do you think the six o’clock will get in?

You tell me. Could be fifteen minutes, could be more.

This was the worst of all worlds. If he went home, intending to return in half an hour, assuming the man’s estimate was realistic, he’d be wasting fifteen to twenty minutes on the round-trip. Besides, the bus might have traveled fast, so that it would arrive in Bridgehampton before he returned, in which case Charlotte would be waiting on the sidewalk, fuming. Unless she called the house. Then she and Carrie were bound to have the first of what was apt to be a series of testy conversations. The advantage of going home, though, was that he could hug Carrie and be hugged by her and drink a large bourbon. The image of Carrie’s embrace was in itself so immediately comforting that he found himself able to postpone, for a brief while, its physical realization. A bourbon could be had at O’Henry’s. He would get his drinks at the end of the bar and every few minutes take a step or two toward the sidewalk to keep an eye on the bus stop and the road beyond it. But he had better call Carrie and tell her the jitney was late.

The hoarse voice responded: That’s cool. Say hi to Pete. I’m going to wash my hair. Don’t worry, silly, I’ll be ready. I won’t bother drying it, that’s all.

Pete the bartender winks at Schmidt. The old-timers at O’Henry’s are given to winking at him—when he walks into the restaurant, when they run into him on the street. Why not? He is the old geezer who walked off with the big prize. Does Schmidt want the usual? Yes, a double sour mash, with
lots of ice. The liquor relieves his tension, like diving into a wave. Forgiveness and absolution. Knot after knot dissolves. The place is packed and unbearably noisy; a chorus gone mad, singing crescendo. The roar invades the sidewalk outside. Pete has another question for Schmidt, but there is no way he can be heard. Schmidt smiles back and shrugs his shoulders. Gestures do work. Pete pours him a single. It has just made it down the hatch when Schmidt registers the huge shape of the jitney slowing down, then drawing up at the curb.

There was no mistaking his daughter; how could he have thought otherwise even for a moment. Her strong and open face, a little tired but so beautiful, rich blond hair gathered in a knot at the back of her head, an Amazon’s gait, even though she is carrying a duffel bag and a heavy briefcase, both of which he takes from her hands in the prolongation of a gesture that began with kissing her. A quick, surreptitious look at her clothes. Deplorable: a parody, possibly self-conscious, of a man’s charcoal-gray pinstriped double-breasted suit, the jacket ridiculously long, aggravating the disgrace of the skirt that ends a good five inches below the knee, the shoulders heavily padded and too wide. Clunky black shoes with thick high heels. Why would one dress like that, and especially on the most beautiful summer day, at the end of which one was leaving town for the beach? Mysteries of fashion and unfulfilled aspirations. Her business and none of yours, Schmidtie.

I am so very happy to see you, sweetie. Welcome. The car is across the street.

It’s good to get out of the city. You know, you didn’t have to come to get me yourself. A taxi would have been just fine.

The thought didn’t cross my mind.

It certainly hadn’t, and, if it had, Schmidt would have rejected it indignantly. Is she giving signs of a new considerateness that borders queerly on humility? Or firing a first salvo intended to rattle the old guy, put him in his place? If so, for what purpose? Most likely it’s nothing of the sort: she just doesn’t give a damn. She took the bus because she has something she wants to talk to him about in person, that’s all there is to it, nothing to make her heart go pitter-patter. Irritated by the silence, but unwilling to be the first to speak, he turns on the car radio.
Rigoletto
comes on, his favorite moment, when the old clown begs Marullo and his accomplices to say what they have done with the kidnapped Gilda.

Can you turn that off, Dad?

Sure.

Her name is Carrie. Right? Will she be there?

Carrie Gorchuck. Yes, she’s at home. In point of fact, she has prepared a rather nice dinner for us.

I’m not sure I want to eat.

Suit yourself. If I were you I’d have a dip in the pool, get out of this Al Capone outfit, and come to dinner—whether you eat or not. Otherwise you will make me very annoyed. And, above all, please don’t talk back.

Sure, Dad. Thanks for the nice compliment about my clothes.

They’re fine, baby. I was just trying to be funny. You know me and my sense of humor.

Don’t bother.

That was to stop him from carrying her bags. He nodded, although she did not turn back to look, and waited beside the car. Such a beautiful night! With the moon lost somewhere in a sky that had finally turned black, the stars had no competition. Every constellation known to Schmidt was on parade. Not a mosquito, and yet the breeze off the ocean was so light that he hardly felt it. A screen door slammed. That would be the pool house. Such wretched waste—why hadn’t he for once resisted making a crack? It was no use following her to plead for peace; she wouldn’t listen. He had better be patient. Unless she had gorged on peanuts and pretzels aboard the jitney—which would be unlike her—he could count on hunger after that ride. It would bring her to the table. Luckily, he hadn’t stocked the pool-house refrigerator. And if she proved malevolent enough to hold out anyway, he would send her packing to New York first thing in the morning. Would Carrie tell him he’d gone crazy in the head or congratulate him on his strength of character?

      I’m here.

By the time Charlotte thus announced her presence in the kitchen they had started dinner. Her place was still set, Carrie having stopped Schmidt when he had made a move to clear it. Why do you want to spook her, she said. So what if she’s taking a bath or feeling upset or whatever. The food’s cold anyway.

That’s nice. Now sit down and help yourself. I’ll pour you some wine. You know Carrie, I believe.

Hi, Charlotte.

Oh, yes.

She put her hand over the wineglass, reached for the water pitcher, and reconsidered.

You have any Perrier or other bottled water?

In the icebox. You know the water is still from our own well.

OK, I’ll drink the tap water. Since when do you eat dinner in the kitchen?

Since whenever we aren’t numerous and no one’s waiting on table. Do you mind? I thought you liked this kitchen.

Sure, sure. What’s this in the ovenware dish? Some kind of pasta?

Fish lasagna, Charlotte.

Is that rice over there? I’ll just have the rice. Pasta and rice together. Isn’t that rather odd? Another innovation?

Unusual, but it tastes good.

Oh, I believe you.

What was he to do? Hit her? Leave the table? First call a taxi to take her to New York, and then slug her? Carrie’s expression was one he knew well from the restaurant: a dreamy, disconnected smile that illuminated her face when she took orders from a party of boors or when an impatient diner snapped his fingers for the check. When she was like that, nothing short of an irresistible fit of the giggles could break down her composure. He thought the giggles were about to start, when, instead, she addressed Charlotte: Gee, that’s one of my mom’s ideas. They serve lasagna with rice on the side in the restaurant where she cooked. It’s like an Italian specialty.