Starting Out in the Evening Page 26
Finally Schiller emerged, dressed in a tie and jacket.
“I think I’ll do a little work,” he said. And to Casey’s amazement Schiller, leaning on his walker, set off slowly toward his study. In a little while Casey heard the sound of Schiller at work—the weak but somehow relentless march of the typewriter keys.
He was amazed by the man. To see him struggling on like this was an education.
He dragged himself to the little guest room and closed his eyes.
The last few months had been very different from what he’d expected. He was finally ready to begin a project that he’d been thinking about for years, and he’d been hoping for a few distraction-free months in which to concentrate. But now he was getting dragged into the middle of life’s confusions. Worrying about having children with Ariel; worrying about Ariel’s father—it wasn’t a good time to be dealing with these problems. A part of him wished that he could refuse all this, just close the door on it all and do his work. But of course you can’t refuse it; you mustn’t even try. You have to let it in.
He woke from what might have been the heaviest sleep of his life to see Ariel sitting on the edge of the bed, grinning at him madly. It was probably her smile that had awakened him.
“Stop glowing at me,” he said.
She didn’t say anything, just kept smiling.
“What?” he said.
“I talked to my dad.”
“And?”
“He didn’t seem to want to tell me the specifics. But I think he loves you.”
“What did he say?”
“He said you held his hand in hell.”
“Not hell. I don’t think he said hell. It was Ninth Avenue. He must’ve said Hell’s Kitchen.”
Ariel was undiverted by this dodge. “He said you’re a good man.”
“He’s getting sentimental in his old age.”
“Maybe,” she said. “Maybe.”
55
The next day Schiller seemed better. Ariel and Casey were planning to borrow a friend’s car that night and drive up to Westchester to see Russell’s Comet.
“Do you want to come?” she asked her father.
“Once in a lifetime,” he said. “Twice would be greedy.”
Ariel was eager to see it—both because she wanted to make this link with her family past, and because the comet, even though it was described in the newspaper as “of only modest brightness,” was supposed to be beautiful. The article in the paper said it had a “long blue tail.”
There was a state park about an hour north of the city where people were gathering to watch.
Needless to say, it made Ariel sad to contemplate the possibility that no child of hers would see it when it returned during the next century.
Could she live with that? She didn’t know.
Casey met her at her father’s place as it was getting dark. On the drive up he talked about how he would like to have some of her father’s qualities. “He’s unstoppable, your old man.”
“Sometimes it seems that way,” Ariel said.
She wished her father had come along with them, but she understood why he hadn’t. It wasn’t really because he thought it would be too greedy; it was because he wanted to do his work.
He was working longer hours than ever these days—staying up late in his study, pushing himself to the limits of his strength. It worried her, but she knew him too well to try to persuade him to take it easy. This was the way he wanted to spend the time he had left. He had one task, one passion in life, and he wanted to give it everything he had.
There was hardly any traffic on the way up. It was delicious to be sitting next to Casey, moving swiftly through the dark. It felt exciting, and it felt safe.
They reached the park at about nine-thirty; a series of signs guided them up a hill toward the field where people were gathering.
It was a beautiful clear night; the sky was alive with thousands of stars. She hadn’t seen so many since she’d moved back to New York.
She was happy to be here. “We’re in the heart of the country,” she said.
“I wouldn’t exactly call it the country. Technically, I think we’re still in Yonkers.”
“It feels like the country to me. All of a sudden I feel like a farmer.”
Casey was one of those people who never felt comfortable outside Manhattan. “I hope we don’t get Lyme disease,” he said. “There might be ticks.”
There were already a lot of people on the broad field—families with backyard telescopes, couples, lone romantics. She and Casey found a spot that was secluded enough and spread their blanket on the ground. He had brought bread, cheese, cider, and two paper cups; they had a little picnic as they waited.
She didn’t quite believe this comet was going to show. When she was in college there had been a lot of talk about Kohoutek: supposedly it was going to be the brightest comet in centuries. But Kohoutek turned out to be all hype. By the time it got close to the earth it had fizzled out; you couldn’t even see it without a telescope.
Here in the country, or whatever it was, the stars were throbbing with life. Out here, far from the haze of the city, you could see that they aren’t merely white: where the stars are in their nakedness, they are red and yellow and blue.
“I used to know all the constellations when I was little,” Casey said. “Mostly because I loved the Greek myths. When Greek heroes and heroines died, the gods would put them in the sky.”
He pointed out some of the constellations and told her their stories: Castor and Pollux, the inseparable twins; Perseus and the rescue of Andromeda. You could see Perseus, just above the horizon, reaching out, but Andromeda was hidden below the curve of the earth. She rose into the sky every autumn.
“It should be visible in about five minutes,” Casey said. She put her cup aside and lay down to face the sky.
They lay on the blanket, hand in hand, looking up, waiting. The comet, which for some reason she had personified as a lady in her mind, seemed like an exceptionally reliable lady, arriving right on time every sixty-four years, tripping across the night sky with a special subtlety and discretion—beautiful, but only to those who knew enough to look for her. Ariel imagined her as a bride, a perpetual bride, perpetually returning to renew her vows. The night was warm and the sky was thick with stars. She was eager to see the comet—to see it delicately stepping across the sky, trailing its long blue train. But as she waited, holding her lover’s hand, she found herself thinking that she wouldn’t mind if it never even appeared: the night was astonishing already, just as it was.
1
Florence Gordon was trying to write a memoir, but she had two strikes against her: she was old and she was an intellectual. And who on earth, she sometimes wondered, would want to read a book about an old intellectual?
Maybe it was three strikes, because not only was she an intellectual, she was a feminist. Which meant that if she ever managed to finish this book, reviewers would inevitably dismiss it as “strident” and “shrill.”
If you’re an old feminist, anything you say, by definition, is strident and shrill.
She closed her laptop.
Not much point, she thought.
But then she opened it up again.
2
She didn’t feel strident or shrill. She didn’t even feel old.
And anyway, old age isn’t what it used to be—or at least that’s what she kept telling herself.
This was her reasoning. Florence was seventy-five years old. In an earlier era, that would have made her an old lady. But not today. She’d been a young woman during the 1960s, and if you were young in the sixties—“bliss was it in that dawn to be alive”—there’s a sense in which you can never grow old. You were there when the Beatles came to America; you were there when sex was discovered; you were there when the idea of liberation was born; and even if you end up a cranky old lady who’s proud of her activist past but who now just wants to be left alone to read, write, and think—even if you end up
like that, there’s something in your soul that stays green.
She wasn’t—this seems important to say—a woman who tried to look younger than she was. She didn’t dye her hair; she had no interest in Botox; she didn’t whiten her teeth. Her craggy old-fashioned teeth, rude and honest and unretouched, were good enough for her.
She wasn’t a woman who wanted to recapture her youth. In part this was because she found the life she was living now so interesting.
So she was a strong proud independent-minded woman who accepted being old but nevertheless felt essentially young.
She was also, in the opinion of many who knew her, even in the opinion of many who loved her, a complete pain in the neck.
3
She was writing a memoir that began with the early days of the women’s movement—the modern women’s movement, her own women’s movement, the one that had been born in the 1970s. If she could finish it, it would be her seventh book.
Each book had posed its own difficulties. The difficulty with this one was that she was finding it impossible to bring the past to life. Her memory was efficient; she could recall the dates and the acts and the actors. But she was finding it hard to remember the texture of the past.
Tonight she had finally begun, she thought, to crack the code. She’d remembered a moment that she hadn’t thought about in years. It was just a moment, not important in itself. But precisely because she hadn’t thought about it in so long, she was able to remember it now with a sense of freshness, and she was hoping she might have finally found the door that would lead her back into the past.
She was free for the rest of the night. She’d had dinner plans with friends, but with a secret glee she’d canceled so she could stay home and work. It was seven o’clock on a Friday in early May; she was through with her academic obligations and her mind was clear. And this evening, in which she’d finally, finally, finally begun to make some progress—this evening was the happiest one she’d had in a long time.
Except that Vanessa kept calling.
Her friend Vanessa kept calling, and Florence kept not picking up. After the fifth call, she thought Vanessa might be in some sort of trouble, and on the sixth, she finally answered.
“Thank God you’re home,” Vanessa said. “I’ve got a problem.”
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing big. Nothing terrible. It’s just that I got pickpocketed, evidently, and I don’t have anything except my phone. I need some money to get back home.”
“Where are you?”
“That’s why I called you. I’m three blocks away.”
She named a restaurant.
“Well I’m right here,” Florence said. “Just come up.”
“That’s nice of you. But it’s a little bit complicated.”
“Why?”
“Ruby and Cassie had to run, and I stayed to pay the check, and that’s when I found out my purse was gone. So the owner doesn’t want me to leave. He wants to be sure I’m not going to skip out on him.”
“Vanessa, you’re a very respectable-looking woman. You’re a very old woman. You’re obviously not skipping out on him. Tell him you’re not Bonnie Parker.”
“That’s just what I told him. That’s exactly what I told him, in fact. I told him I’m not Bonnie Parker. But he’s not being very understanding. I think he thinks I am Bonnie Parker. I’m really sorry. But it’ll just take a minute.”
People, Florence thought as she put on her shoes. What do I need them for again?
He’s afraid she’ll skip out on him. As Florence waited for the elevator, she was muttering to herself. She reminded herself of Popeye the Sailor Man.
She crossed the street, still muttering. Muttering, and clenching and unclenching her fists.
She was doing this with her fists because she’d been having some trouble with her left hand. Carpal tunnel syndrome. Her fingers sometimes jumped around as if they had five little minds of their own. A neurologist had told her to get an ergonomic keyboard and an ergonomic mouse and an ergonomic splint for her wrist; she’d gotten all of it, and she’d faithfully done the exercises he prescribed, but none of it was working so far.
Muttering, clenching, unclenching: I must look, she thought, like a madwoman.
4
The restaurant was on Sixty-seventh Street, between Columbus and Central Park West. She went inside, couldn’t see Vanessa.
It was a fancy, expensive, somewhat full-of-itself restaurant. It didn’t seem like the kind of place where the owner would hold you hostage.
The greeter, a somber-looking man, asked her if she needed help.
“I’m looking for a friend. Woman my age? Couldn’t pay her bill?”
“Oh, yes. I know who you mean. She’s in the back room.”
They’ve got her in the back room, Florence thought. They’re working her over.
He led Florence down a hall and gestured toward an entryway, behind which the room was unaccountably dark. She stepped in, and the lights went on, and the room was filled with people shouting “Surprise!”
Surprise.
Friends from NYU, friends from the movement, friends from the writing world. Even her family was there: her daughter-in-law, her granddaughter.
Vanessa was embracing her.
“This was the only way we thought we’d be able to celebrate you.”
“It’s not my birthday.”
“I thought if we did it too close to your birthday, we’d lose the element of surprise. You’d know what was coming and you’d never show up. It was a delicate operation. Like trapping the mythical yeti. We wanted to celebrate you. And we wanted to get you out of your apartment so you could have some fun.”
It was astonishing how little people know each other, even old friends. I was having fun, Florence thought. I was having fun sitting in my apartment and trying to understand our life, our collective life. I was having fun trying to make the sentences come right. I was having fun trying to keep a little moment in time alive.
And now that was gone. She had been so close to seeing things clearly, but it had felt so precarious, so fragile. Who could know whether that little flicker of clarity would still be there in the morning.
Janine, her daughter-in-law, and Emily, her granddaughter, were at her side. They’d been in New York for months now, and she hadn’t arranged to see them. She felt guilty for a moment, then realized that the guilt was merely a sort of tribute she was paying to convention—in fact, she simply hadn’t wanted to see them—and she stopped feeling guilty.
“Happy birthday, more or less,” Janine said.
“Not that you look that happy,” Emily said.
“I wish someone had nipped this in the bud.”
“I tried. I tried to nip it,” Janine said. “I told them it was a bad idea. But . . . Vanessa. She’s almost as much of a force of nature as you are.”
Oh Christ. Even Saul was here.
He put his arm around her shoulder. He seemed to be half drunk.
“I couldn’t not be here,” he said. “And I mean that literally. Your friend wouldn’t take no for an answer.”
Someone Florence half remembered materialized at her side and told a long story about how hard it had been to get there from Rockland County. Someone else told Florence a story about how hard it was to tear herself away from her adorable but not yet housebroken puppy. As Florence smiled and nodded and pretended to listen, all she was trying to do was hold on to the moments of clarity she’d experienced at her desk, and all she wished for was to go back home.
In the women’s room, she looked at the window. It was ten feet off the ground. Maybe if I stood on the toilet seat I could lift myself up to the top of the stall . . .
No. Too craven. Too undignified.
She returned to the room where the celebration was in progress, picked up a glass, and tapped a knife against it until she had everyone’s attention.
“My friends,” she said, “I’m touched that you decided to do this. I’m touche
d, and I’m honored. What was it Yeats said? Something like ‘Think where our glory begins and ends, and say my glory was, I had such friends.’”
There was a murmur of appreciation.
“One of the things that I find beautiful about you all is that you understand me. I know I’m not easy to be with. I’m a difficult woman.”
“You’re a gloriously difficult woman,” Vanessa said—she always gushed too much—and others made noises of agreement.
“Well, thank you. But whether I’m gloriously hard to get along with or just plain hard to get along with, each of you has found ways to get along with me. Which is a tribute to your generosity, tolerance, and ingenuity. Because I’ve asked you to put up with a lot.
“And now I’m going to ask you to put up with one more thing. I’m delighted by this surprise party, but I’m going to leave you now, because I need to get back to my desk. I hope you know that I truly do appreciate this, and that I’ll be here in spirit. And I hope you have a wonderful evening.”
She turned and left. It would have been nice to avoid meeting anyone’s eyes, but it was more important to keep her head up, and therefore she saw the faces of several friends as she passed them. They looked as if they weren’t sure whether she was serious.
She’d left her computer on, and as soon as she got home she sat back down in front of it. It took a while for the fog to burn away—the fog of embarrassment or ambivalence or whatever she was feeling—but after a time she found that she was not so far from where she’d left off. She worked for the rest of the night with satisfaction, and didn’t give her friends and well-wishers another thought.
5
After she left, no one knew what to say. Nobody even seemed to want to look at anyone else.
“Now you understand why I divorced her,” Saul said.
People laughed, and went back to eating and drinking.