White Man's Problems (17 page)

In the rear of the room, a busboy dropped a plate on the black-and-white marbled floor, sending a smash through the club. Neither man flinched.

Browning shook his head. “No, I am not willing to believe that…that you cannot see through her.” He looked down at his water glass and kept his eyes there. “What I
am
inclined to believe, though, is that once this came into your sights, you
did not take it on for the money.” Stevens listened. “I think you took it on because you saw my name. And you saw—you see now—a chance to strike justice. I think you are out for something.” He tilted his head down and cut his fish. As he took a bite, he said, “Am I right?” The question stayed in the air for a beat before the old man made a swatting motion with his hand. “Never mind. You don't have to answer. But it is not justice, Eliot. I want you to know that.” Browning put a lifetime of practice with persuasion into what he was saying now. “It's not just. Not right. And in the end that will not benefit you. Or your client. Or the child.”

Stevens said, “Believe what you want.”

Browning put down his fork and wiped his mouth. “Look, my grandson made a mistake. A terrible mistake that has created a terrible problem that we now have to face and do our best to solve consistently with our consciences and the good Lord.” Stevens thought he saw Browning's hand shake—an almost-imperceptible tremor. “Now, I am quite certain that this young woman will trust and follow your advice. So, really,
you
, Eliot, are the principal in this discussion, and
you
will make a decision based upon your own personal prejudices.” Browning let go of the drinking glass and returned his arm to his lap. “When there is a mistake, I move swiftly to correct it. I am not interested in fighting with you or with this girl. What should come as no surprise is that I do not want any damage done to my family or to its name. You and I need to come to an understanding. There is a child involved—a human life. A life that will last, God willing, for many years after you and I are gone. There is nothing to argue about here. From this point on, I am personally guaranteeing you things will be looked after.”

Stevens felt the opening Browning was giving him click like a door unlocking. The waiter interrupted again to check on their food, and the men nodded him away. When he was out of earshot, Stevens outlined a financial arrangement, beginning with a large sum of money to be transferred to Carole Lee. It would ostensibly be for medical expenses but well in excess of any realistic estimate of such needs, a point that Stevens artfully avoided making directly to the old man, who nodded quietly. After covering the payment to Carole Lee, Stevens proposed that a trust be established for the child and enumerated another healthy—this time monthly—sum the family would be required to pay. Browning swiftly agreed to the child-support payment and added that, in fact, the financial settlement as a whole was acceptable. He even went so far as to give Stevens a compliment on the deal, like an experienced carpenter judging a well-made table. Browning said his only request in return was that Carole Lee sign a confidentiality agreement. Stevens expected as much. “Mr. Browning,” he said, “Carole Lee has no intention of embarrassing your grandson or your family.”

Browning nodded, satisfied. He called for the waiter and asked Stevens, “Do you have time for a cup of coffee?”

Stevens, aware he had just leveraged a very wealthy man, was experienced enough in the denouements of negotiations to maintain his composure throughout moments like this. Sometimes it was ironing out paperwork; other times it was discussing the timing of payments. He had taught himself to exit gracefully and not rub it in. “Sure,” he said.

“Do you take anything with it?”

“Just a little milk.”

To O'Hara, Browning said, “Two cups of old-fashioned coffee, one black and one with cream. And bring us a piece of that cheesecake.”

“Your cordial, as well?” said the waiter.

Browning smiled at Stevens, who was happy to once again play the role of the lunch guest. “A habit adopted from my father when he was alive, I'm afraid.” The old man seemed tired.

“Do you spend much time in the city anymore?” Stevens asked.

“A few times a month I come in. These days I only get in for my work on the board at Saint Matthew's.”

“You've done so much there.”

“Why, thank you, Elliot. That's quite kind of you. Do you know the church?”

“Of course,” said Stevens. “We are at Old First, but I've been many times. Many weddings.”

“That's better than many funerals.”

“Yes, to be sure.”

The coffee and dessert arrived along with Browning's little drink. Stevens figured it was probably cognac. Browning swirled it and sipped. Stevens thought about the style with which he did it—it was an efficient and brief motion. In the hands of another man, another type, it would be an affectation, an air. But it fit the old man perfectly. Stevens could see all the generations of Brownings sipping cognac after lunch at polished tables under painted ceilings. It was a touch off-center in the stuffy club, a touch Scotch-Irish, giving a hint of their individuality within their elite world, like all families in such circumstances: their clan being utterly unique to their own minds, while the rest of the population wouldn't see a whit of difference in any of the room's denizens at any point in the last fifty years. The drinking of the cordial showed—more than any kind of conformity—Browning's complete comfort.

“You have to try this,” he said, dipping his fork into the cheesecake. Stevens did so, made a suitably surprised face, and told Browning that it was, in fact, delicious. “Speaking of Saint Matthew's,” Browning said, “I must tell you that the annex is a tremendous resource. It is entirely your business, of course, but I am happy to assist.”

Stevens nodded, pretending to know what Browning was talking about. He assumed the old man was weary and, with the cognac, trailing off a bit. He thought suddenly and inexplicably of his own father. “I know the church covers many things.”

“Yes, the social services staff handles sensitive matters like these terribly well. You know, I can remember when the annex got started forty years ago.”

“These matters?”

“Yes. The adoptions. They find wonderful homes—reputable families who have not been blessed with children.”

Stevens closed his eyes and sought the same reservoir of control that allowed him to stay calm in victory. “Mr. Browning, you don't seem to understand. Carole Lee is going to keep the child—the boy. That is what the trust is for.”

“Oh no, no,” said Browning, his eyebrows arched. “I thought it was understood…She has to give the baby up. We are not having her raise my grandson's child. I'm surprised you even…”

The blood ran out of Stevens' face. The room, the club, and the occasional fully male sound of wood chairs jerking across marble all conspired to add to his disbelief. He had an impulse to backhand the drinking glass off the table and envisioned ice and water spraying the old man's suit. He got hold of himself. “You are not going to be able to do that, Mr. Browning,” he said. “If you go down that road, you will only cause yourself and your family embarrassment. I can't tell you what to do—you can listen to me or not listen to me—I don't really care. I'm just her lawyer. But you can't fix this one. Not even you. There is a child. Your grandson is that child's father. She will keep the baby, and he is responsible for helping her. The law is the law.” Stevens folded his napkin, set it on the table, and stood. “I'm happy to let a judge decide all of this from here. Thank you for lunch.” Stevens walked downstairs and out of the club. It was the last he ever saw of Robert Browning Sr.

V.

M
aribeth made a habit of collecting the Christmas and holiday cards in a large Mexican ceramic bowl. That way Stevens did not have to peck away at three or four sets of matching sweaters with smiling faces in the daily mail or pay attention to the mass preprinted corporate throwaways, which seemed like soon-to-be remnants of a distant age, like the well-written letters opened by Lord Grantham on
Downton Abbey
. Stevens liked to wait for Christmas Eve, and then, as Maribeth was cooking and Alex and Jen sat in the kitchen with wine glasses, he would pour himself his one scotch of the winter, put Nicholas on his lap, and go through the cards, sifting slowly through the whole accumulation, showing his grandson the colors and pictures while he cataloged the growing offspring of neighbors and clients and relatives. He and Maribeth had a private contest in which they each tried to discover the craziest card, so he kept his eyes peeled for the one—there was always one—that signaled a card maker for whom the stitching had come off the ball. The winner usually came from an overstressed woman with teenagers who was chucking in the towel by sending something reckless, the housewife version of not showing up in court. It might be a black card with red block letters reading
Merry Christmas
and nothing else—not even signatures. Or, in the other direction, it might be a themeless, titleless, multiphoto, rococo monstrosity so blazed up with braces, soccer uniforms, and formless-faced infants that one could almost see its author drunk with the power of new corner-cutting software.

He had come to look forward to this annual half hour now that Nicholas was five. It had settled the way quirky family customs do, with Maribeth and Alex and Jen bending toward its occurrence at the appointed time. It was becoming, all in all, a nice time of life for Stevens. “A grandson on your lap will do that,” he thought to himself. Nicholas fished in the bowl and handed Stevens a dark-red card. The front cover said
Happy Holidays!

“What do we have here, buddy boy?” Stevens opened it. Under the lettering was a large photo of a little girl, probably three years old, with a giant smile that reached out and snatched the heart. She was in a puffy red dress with a blue belt and black-and-white saddle shoes. The composition of the card—its background, the letters, and the dress—was confident and happy. “Adorable,” Stevens said out loud, which was not like him—perhaps he was feeling the scotch a little. He lingered on the child's face and found he was taken in by something: a sparkle or maybe just the color and the openness of the eyes. He had a remote feeling of recognition, something he couldn't quite put his finger on. His gaze trailed over to the message, which read,
Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above. James 1:17. Much Love This Christmas from Carole Lee and Scarlett Lee.

Beneath the printing was a handwritten note:
Eliot and Family—sending you warm wishes and lots and lots of love. May all your dreams come true. xxx.

“Maribeth, come look at this,” he said in a voice loud enough to reach the kitchen.

Stevens thought back to Robert Browning Sr.'s death notice. He remembered something about great-grandchildren, and he wondered now how the issue had been treated by the people who submitted it to the
Times,
what their thoughts and calculations must have been. Nicholas reached for the card to put it in the pile of ones that had already been reviewed, but Stevens held it back gently. “Wait a second, kiddo,” he said. “Let me show this one to Nana.”

White Man's Problems

T
he battlefield at Fredericksburg was smaller than Doug Hansall expected, encroached by real-estate development below The Sunken Road, the high ground from which the Confederates blew away a good chunk of the Union Army. “Just drop me off here,” Hansall said to the limo driver. He handed the guy a twenty and wheeled his bag toward a busman overwhelming the driver's seat of a tour bus in the Visitor's Center parking lot.

“Do you have a bunch of California kids?” Hansall asked.

The fat man jerked a finger backward, toward the battlefield. “Out there.” Sensing the driver was acting as the group member and treating Hansall as the outsider, Hansall thought he should explain, “I'm catching up with them. You with us all week?”

“Yup.”

“Great. You can put my bag in with the others.”

Uphill on the grassy incline, he saw a schoolteacher standing next to a tour guide who was dressed like a state trooper. Hansall's son, Will, was seated Indian-style with the rest of the Webster Elementary fifth grade, listening to the trooper's talk. “Unlike the Union Army, who couldn't seem to keep a general,” said the guide, “the South was blessed with leadership...” Hansall circled the semicircle of kids to give Will a hug. The weight of connection and filial duty not yet outbalanced by embarrassment at what the world might see, the eleven-year-old boy greeted him with a quick kiss.

Hansall stood back among the other chaperones, parents he knew vaguely from drop-offs on Thursday mornings and every-other-weekend stints in the bleachers at Little League and soccer. A woman he recognized from the school approached. It was Will's teacher, a girl in her midtwenties.

“Hey, you made it,” she said.

“Yes, hi. I hope my office got you the message that I had to go to New York.”

“Oh sure.” She gave him a slap on the arm. “We all know you didn't want to fly in coach.” A woman standing nearby gave a sideways smile.

“No, no,” he said. “Just couldn't get out of it. How was the flight?”

“Will was fine,” she said. “I think they are all tired. We had to be at the airport at
four
, you know.” She waved at the other adults. “I know
we're
all tired.” The mom gave another smile; she had a sweeter face than the botoxed women he normally saw at the school. A little horsey, but with kind eyes. The teacher said, “Will you please just check in with your guys?”

He looked at the sea of kids. “Remind me, which ones are mine?”

She pointed to four boys for whom he had preassigned responsibility. “You have Will, Jobie, Declan, and Harry.” Declan and Harry he knew for years, but Jobie was new to him. He was an Asian, maybe Vietnamese.

“Let's walk down the road,” said the tour guide trooper. “There is an authentic section of the wall at the end. It might be hard to believe now, but this ground you are walking was the site of some of the most awful killing in our history. It's a great place to start a trip.”

The kids rose and followed and the adults moved with them. Hansall said hello to Declan and Harry, who were a lot like Will: polite at first bite, but beginning to enjoy being far away from their parents. The teacher said to Jobie, who was trailing the other boys, “Come here and say hello to Mr. Hansall.”

Jobie looked at him. His eyes were respectful, his manner deferential, but not obsequious. Fifth graders on this trip, like Will, Hansall suddenly felt, were at the edge between the sweetness of childhood and the bored, gawky disposition of teenagers. But Jobie challenged this assumption, and the contrast sent a pang through Hansall about his own child. Jobie seemed younger, more innocent. He had parts of Will that were gone for good.

The teacher produced a small envelope from her bag and presented it to Hansall. Inside was a clip of bills; she held onto it for an extra second for emphasis. “This is Jobie's money. His mom would like you to hold it for him. Jobie is going to ask you for it whenever he wants to buy something, right, Jobie?”

The kid nodded.

“Ok,” said Hansall. “How much are we starting with?”

“One hundred and fifty-three dollars,” Jobie said.

“All right, man. You come to me when you want something.” Hansall tousled his black hair.

Jobie ran back to the pack, and Hansall and the teacher continued at the rear of the group as it made its way alongside the famous stone wall. He looked downhill to the right, from the position where Confederate soldiers shot down the waves of approaching Yankees.

“You have to use your imagination,” said the trooper, now next to him. “The houses kind of run up on us here.”

Two hundred and fifty yards from the wall was a housing development. Blacktop surrounded the homes, which were arranged in four lines running away from where the tour group stood. The structures were middling; not the kind of fancy development for middle managers and accountants seen in the suburbs, but neither were they shitholes with clotheslines and junk cars in the front yards. The trooper said, “You have to picture the Union soldiers coming up from two miles away. Coming and coming, all the while getting massacred by the Southern guns behind this wall.”

“Pretty stupid,” replied Hansall to no one in particular.

The woman walked past and made eye contact again, but was soon distracted by a girl, her daughter, Hansall assumed, who reached up to whisper to her mom's ear. They glanced at him while she spoke.

Will did not sit next to Hansall on the bus, preferring to join Declan in a seat in the back near the bathroom, which Mrs. Coyle, the other schoolteacher on the trip and chief disciplinarian, had admonished the kids not to use. She had a chipmunk's cheeks and a helmet of caramel and gray hair. Hansall chose a seat about four rows deep—not back with the kids, but not in the front with Mrs. Coyle, her younger colleague, and a smattering of mothers, all yapping and eating snack foods.

“I'm Linda,” said the woman, now seated across from him. “I guess you're the only dad.” He introduced himself and then they smiled for a moment, staring ahead.

Finally, he said, “How long you in for?”

“Oh, it's not that bad,” she said with a wave. “C'mon, we'll have fun.”

“Just kidding. You have a daughter?”

“Yes. Rebecca.”

“Wait, I know Rebecca.” A lean black-haired thing with worrisome teeth, he recalled. “We were in third grade together, right?”

“Right. We never really met.”

“Yeah, that was a crazy time for me. I wasn't around too much.”

Hansall knew Linda knew why. His thoughts returned to when it had all gone down. The affair, the discovery of the affair, the pregnancy, the separation, and the divorce. The conversation with Will about living apart. The conversation with Will about having a new baby sister. The conversation with Will about having a new baby sister who was going to live in New York, where Hansall would have to be a lot.

“Do you know Will's mom?” he said.

“Not really. We say hi, but we've never really spent much time together.” She held her hand to the side of her mouth in mock secrecy. “You know. I have a
girl
.”

“Oooh, Yeah. Right.
Boys and Girls
. Sheesh.”

The conversation stalled and Linda went back to her book. He looked out the window as they drove toward Williamsburg, where they would spend the next two nights. He then moved to Linda's side of the aisle. She lowered her book to talk. “Is your husband happy to have the house to himself?” Hansall asked.

“I'm divorced, too,” she said, seeming eager to surprise him. “Two years.” She gave a forced smile. “Club D.”

Her confession surrounded him like warm water; it was like she had told him that she, too, had been touched in a bad place. “What do you do for work?”

“Real-estate broker. You?”

“Lawyer.”

***

Mrs. Coyle left them on the bus while she strode ashore of the lobby of the Williamsburg Marriot like a GI hitting Normandy Beach. Upon her return, she read off names and handed the adults room keys. The kids without parent chaperones were assigned three to a room, while the grownups were given doubles to share with their own offspring.

Will immediately objected to the arrangement. This petition was joined in by Declan and Harry. Hansall made a quick calculation of the risks involved in contending with Mrs. Coyle versus making Will happy and getting his own room. His better angel wanted to be close with his son, to bond over teeth brushing and shower taking; his bad angel wanted to be left alone, to sleep deeply and without obligation in the hotel sheets. The trump factor, though, was that he recognized why Will wanted to be in a cheesy Marriott with other kids, where they could jump on the beds and sleep on the floor and ring the girls' doorbells and run back into their room
He cut the corner by getting permission for the room charges from the young teacher instead of Mrs. Coyle, who was busy putting down a clamor among the girls.

He led the way down the long Marriott hallway until the boys, reading the signs faster than he, sprinted down to 406. Hansall got them inside and surveyed the grounds as sleeping arrangements were made. Then he went to his room, 412, took the comforter and half the pillows, and brought them back to 406. Harry and Declan assembled a pillow/blanket pod between the two beds, where Will, as last man in, would sleep.

“Do you have my money?” Jobie said.

Hansall hit his pant leg. “Right here.”

The boys were told to brush their teeth and get to sleep, but Hansall knew and they knew that his instructions were toothless business. Hansall didn't care. He had discharged his duty.
Let them have some fun
. The teachers would come down on them when need be. He went to his room.

His cell phone rang as he walked over the threshold.

It was Johanna. “How is he?” she said.

“He's fine. He's asleep.”

“How are Dana and Marjorie?”

“Who are Dana and Marjorie?”

“The teachers. Marjorie is the older one. Dana is the one you'll be hitting on.”

“They're fine.”

“Do they all know you lied about the New York trip so you didn't have to ride in coach?”

“As a matter of fact, I think they do. I think they hate me. I think they all hate me, so you'll be happy.”

She exhaled, “I told you, don't fuck this up. I never should have let this happen.”

He heard her shake her head. The ability to hear her actions was actually something he acquired long ago, during the earliest years of their relationship, when arguments were the normal arguments of two people invested with each other. Arguments that people know they have to end. But now the tone had changed, the investment was gone. The fights were the fuel which got them through the day. They were adversaries. Not just in matters of the heart; not just betrayal and bonds broken. They were actual litigants now that she was moving to reduce his custody rights and increase his support. His financial deposition was in three weeks.

“Ok, let's not do this,” he said.

“No one is fooled, just so you know. Everyone knows what you're doing.”

“Can I go now?”

“Make sure he calls me in the morning.”

Fifteen minutes later Hansall was in bed. The room quality was beneath his low expectations. No minibar, no nothing. The only extravagance was a small coffee maker and the accoutrements for a one-cup morning pop, complete with a spongy to-go cup and powdered dairy packets.

Thankfully, the Marriott's no-frills attitude did not extend to the world of pay-per-view movies. With a product loyalty he could never muster in the supermarket when trying to pick a medium hot salsa or organic oatmeal, Hansall scrolled past the “Still in Theaters” and “Best of TV” and went right to “Adults Only.” He navigated past the traditional porn offerings (
Driving Miss Daisy Crazy
) and attendant seals of approval (
AVN Rated Top Sex Scene of 2008
) to the Real Amateurs section. He was turned on by the images of real people being caught on camera having real sex, even when he knew they were probably not so amateur. Finding really good amateur porn was difficult: his special area of porno connoisseurship. He didn't go around buying the stuff. But when he found himself in a hotel room, or occasionally when drifting on the Internet late at night—that is, at those times when porn presented itself—he liked the amateurs.

He especially liked auditions. This usually involved a guy behind the camera, the surrogate narrator, the embodiment of “you” in the fantasy, who conned young girls into sitting on a couch and submitted themselves to an interview which eventually led to taking their clothes off and performing sex acts with the anonymous guy behind the camera. The sex was titillating, but the mental exercise of discerning the level of truth to the setup was the real trick to it. It was easy to make the girls seem inexperienced, but the real accomplishment was to make the corruption seem true. Like the finest jazz or a revelatory Bordeaux, it was layered complexity that set off a fine piece of audition porn.

Hansall didn't reflect on it. He knew it was not a problem, the way excessive drinking or gambling can be. He wasn't like that; addictions didn't plague him. But as with the seemingly hundreds of other consumer choices a normal American faces in a day or week or lifetime—
what
your signature soft drink is
,
or
what do you think about electric cars, recycling, Guantanamo
,
do you wear
the size that's smaller or the one that's more comfortable, even if it is XL?
—he thought it through in great detail, punishing himself for an instant, processing a matrix of factors such as title, descriptions, third-party endorsements. He knew the girls on the promo page were never in the video itself, yet he couldn't help imagining he was moments away from seeing them with dicks in their mouths. Was there any kind of process which protected the porn consumer, he wondered, against false advertising like this? He selected
Amateur Screen Test
.