About Schmidt (12 page)

She recrossed her legs. Whatever their condition might be inside the tights, they were well formed. He had finished his cigarillo. Should he now find a safe place for his sweating glass, bow, and thank her for the lunch and the chat? Was his dignity threatened if he stayed and, if so, was it worth saving? What would she say about him if he left, what would she say if he stayed? He lit another cigarillo, drew on it, and decided he might let Dr. Renata have some of her own medicine.

Not so long ago, he told her, while I was still a practicing lawyer, whenever I went out to dinner or lunch or when company called, I would make a point of leaving my small legal learning, and my lawyer’s mannerisms and habits of speech, in some safe space. Let’s say the umbrella stand or the coat closet. Not all lawyers make that effort, and I’m not sure I always succeeded, although I really tried. I know very little about the social habits of psychiatrists, but you have just talked to me the way I imagine you talk to your patients, not the way one speaks to a guest. I am a relatively patient man, but I am not your patient. I have not come here to consult you.

She smiled at him quite gaily, with her whole mouth and, for a change, curled her legs up under her. He wondered whether at her age such perfect white teeth could be real. If a new technique had been invented and it wasn’t painful, he might want to try it.

Is that the longest nonlegal statement you have ever made? she inquired. I think I have got a real rise out of you.

As a matter of fact, I haven’t quite finished; you interrupted, and I don’t like that. If you are going to practice on
me whatever therapy you think this is, I am going to practice a little bit of law. We’ll break down the problem into smaller segments. First, the segment called Charlotte. Let’s assume for the sake of the argument that I actually know something about her—perhaps even as much as you. After all, her mother and I did bring her up. So let’s put her aside, or leave her for the very last, and deal with the segment called Jon Riker. You have just made the claim that I terrorize him. I put it to you that the claim is preposterous. He has always been one of my favorite associates. I don’t mind telling you, in the privacy of this room, something he knows perfectly well even if you don’t: he worked for me so much that he couldn’t possibly have become a partner if he hadn’t had my full support. I did support him. That was done out of deep respect for his value—and selflessly, too. It had already been agreed that he would veer off toward litigation. Nobody could accuse me of backing a candidate in order to have him stay in the firm and go on doing my work. If analogies amuse you, think of me rather as Jon’s good fairy godmother: I gave your son what he wanted most!

Have you finished now?

No, but I’ve talked for so long that it’s all right to break in.

That’s exactly what Jon has told Myron and me: you made it happen. He was very grateful about it, and so were we—his entire family. We knew that Jon was bright and worked hard, but we also knew, because he said it over and over, that at Wood & King deserving to be made a partner is only the beginning. He was especially grateful that you treated him just the same, and supported him, after he began to go out with Charlotte.

As a matter of fact, I introduced them!

But that was unintentional; anyway, he didn’t think you intended it to work out quite the way it did—Charlotte becoming his girlfriend. You see, all during those years when he worked for you he had the feeling that you relied on him and had confidence in his work but didn’t especially like him. I mean, as a person. He thought that would begin to get in the way once he began to see a lot of Charlotte, even if you hadn’t allowed it to matter before.

I see, said Schmidt. You mean that by going with Charlotte—if I may use their euphemism—he was doubling the stakes. The heart as well as chances of partnership put at risk! But why complain now? He’s got the girl and the job. Isn’t that enough? What else can he want?

To feel that you accept him, like him! You made no comment when I mentioned that, his feeling that you have no affection for him.

I liked him well enough to want him to be my partner, and I haven’t refused him my daughter’s hand—though I might add, entre nous, that he dispensed with the formality of asking for it. I repeat, isn’t that enough? How voracious—after all, he doesn’t want to marry me!

Was there something dreary about what he had just said? It had left him uncomfortable and dissatisfied.

You’re an odd stickler for the truth. You know you have no affection for Jon, and so you are unwilling to bend even a tiny bit, not enough to hint for instance at the possibility that at bottom you do. Even though you are sitting here talking to his mother, and that’s what she clearly wants to hear. And yet you seem to want Charlotte to act like a sweet, loving daughter! What was the second segment of the problem you were willing to examine?

Terror. Schmidtie as the totemic, terror-inspiring figure. That is also preposterous. Perhaps my classmates and I were scared of Dexter King when we were Jon’s age. In fact, I didn’t get around to calling him by his first name until I had been a partner for a year—maybe longer—even though he had told me, I don’t know how many times, that it was the right thing to do. And to the day he died I wouldn’t have sat down in his office without being asked. But today! The kids in the mail room occasionally called me Schmidtie to my face. And you should hear the accents! By the way, I have never pretended to enjoy it! And the way Jon and the other young partners talk back to Jack DeForrest and the couple of other relics of ancient times still left in the firm! I don’t mean that there is anything wrong with giving a senior partner a hard time about the law, you are supposed to do that as soon as you arrive, or with expressing your opinion about whether one should tell a client this or that. I am talking about challenging seniors on matters of judgment that have to do with fairness within the firm, and expecting to prevail—for no reason except that you are young and will inherit! Actually, that’s something I managed to get used to. Provided people are reasonably polite, having them challenge you all across the board is more stimulating than the old prep school cult of your elders.

I don’t think that’s it. Jon and the other young lawyers who worked with you weren’t afraid of you because you were so senior, but because they thought they weren’t as right as you, and you gave them the impression that you thought so too. The father figure who is right and has the last word—that’s very scary. Also, most of them, Jon included, didn’t think
they were living up to your expectations. It’s as though you wanted them to succeed but then were quickly disappointed.

Well, I’m gone, and that’s one thing less for them to worry about! Anyway, since you have discussed all these things with Jon—by the way, isn’t it odd that Charlotte has never talked to me about them?—you must know that my own practice had stopped growing. I was losing my value to the firm. That’s another argument against the theory of terror.

Jon never saw it that way.

That’s the nicest news I have heard in a long time. If only it were true. But, true or not, you have put me into such a cheerful mood that I must leave now, before you say anything that might spoil it!

On the contrary, you must stay. We really should reach out to each other.

“Reaching out” was not among expressions or activities Schmidt liked. He associated it with affirmative action, of which he disapproved, and justifications offered for hiring lawyers who didn’t make the W & K grade. Therefore, he stood up to deliver what he thought might be his closing remarks.

Renata, he told her, you want to accomplish too much in one afternoon. Of course, I won’t be a witch or some other sort of sinister presence at my only daughter’s wedding or other family gatherings or at any other time! Have I acted today in a way that gives you any reason to think otherwise? I don’t think so. On the other hand, Charlotte and Jon can’t behave toward me like a pair of selfish brats. I am a lonely man, and I have suffered a dreadful loss—you can’t measure it because you didn’t know Mary. Those two have to treat me
nicely—no more than that. They haven’t; I won’t go into details because they are petty. And they must make small, minimal allowances for the way I am. I know I am not all sweetness and light all the time, even though I really try to put up a-good front. That I am sometimes sarcastic can’t be news to either of them—or that my bark is worse than my bite.

Come, Schmidtie, sit down on the couch next to me. There is plenty of room.

How was he to disobey? The further rearrangement of her legs, which occurred as she turned toward the space he was to occupy, fascinated him, as did the grin that spread from ear to ear. When he sat down, she took his hand, not to shake it, but apparently because she meant to hold hands with him. Then, after a moment, she asked: What was your life with Mary really like?

He took his hand away and felt himself blush.

What kind of question is that, and why do you feel authorized to ask it? Has Charlotte been complaining about her home life?

Oh no. She has always conveyed the picture of an idyll—out of a stylish play. Two elegant and polite people, serious about their work, refusing nothing she asked for if it was “educational,” very affectionate to her and friendly but distant with other people, and liking to be alone or with her.

Then I really don’t understand your question. Charlotte seems to have given you an accurate if somewhat idealized account. We were a nice New York couple of our time.

It comes across though that you were rather stiff, maybe constrained, don’t you think?

No, I don’t. Busy, as you implied, and fond of our family life. We saw nothing wrong with the way we lived, and I don’t now. And now I’m really going. Thanks once again for an extraordinary Thanksgiving.

Before he could stand up she took his hand again. Please don’t be angry. I need to know you better. I need to know how you see your life. It’s because I want to help you make things easier for yourself. You will be surprised how much easier that will make it for the children. That’s all.

Am I to become a patient? I have never done this sort of thing, you know.

She laughed.

You couldn’t be my patient, one doesn’t do these things within the family. Anyway, I wouldn’t recommend therapy for you: you are the wrong age, and you seem pretty well accustomed to the way you are—except for the effects of your loss, which will recede. To be in therapy, one needs to want to change. You don’t, and why should you, if you can get over this rough patch?

Schmidt’s mouth had become completely dry, as it always did whenever he felt himself pressed beyond the point where he could still control his irritation. There was a half-melted ice cube left in his glass. He tipped it into his mouth and chewed.

And your help, he asked, what might it consist of?

Companionship. Helping you to recognize certain kinds of trouble so you can stay out of the way When I know you better, I may be able occasionally to give you a nudge, point you in a better direction.

Here she let go of his hand and gave him a poke in the ribs.

Like this. Don’t worry about it.

The hand returned, warmer and very caressing.

I had a good life with Mary, Schmidt told Renata. I wish she were alive and could have outlived me. I don’t know anything better one can say. As I said, Charlotte described the way we were accurately. We were every close. For one thing, from the beginning, we were orphans: well meaning, bright, and clinging hard to each other.

It was like this later as well? No great crises either after Charlotte was born?

Important ones? There might have been one, over a stupid indiscretion that Mary stumbled upon, but she didn’t allow it to become anything. It left a hurt, but it was never looked at again or mentioned, even though it may have never quite healed. That’s all.

A woman. And that’s all? No other women?

No.

That was a lie. He let Renata go on playing with his hand. There had been the other world, where Mary never set foot, a world that consisted mostly of business trips. Schmidt arranging to avoid a meal with an associate or a client, or arranging to have the dinner end early Then you could find him at the bar of his hotel, checking the place out, to make sure that the associate wasn’t there too, in some corner or on a bar stool, hidden from view by an obese fellow drinker. Some evenings nothing happened. More often, he would manage to find a woman drinking alone. Women of all sorts: high-class bar girls, sluttish telephone operators, secret drunks, too chummy with the bartender, who might turn out to be anybody—an unmarried hairdresser, a librarian, the wife of a
doctor. First an inane conversation, and then sex in his room that he would think about for months, while in bed with Mary. They brought a kind of excitement to sex that had been absent except during the time with Corinne. Why? He had never asked her for things that he did at once with those other women. But then, why hadn’t she offered?

No, he continued, and there certainly weren’t any crises about money or about Charlotte’s upbringing or about our jobs. No midlife crises! We both liked our work and knew we were good at it. Of course, Mary had less tranquillity in her job. Power struggles in publishing houses are ferocious, and editors need to feel they have power. If they don’t, they feel they can’t publish their authors right.

And Mary?

What do you mean?

Did she have other men? Were you jealous? She must have been, after that indiscretion.

I’m not sure she was jealous. She probably thought she had taught me a lesson that would last me for life—and, in fact, in a rather good way, it did. I never gave her any reason to be jealous again.

That was true enough. Nothing ever happened after the encounters with those women. No presents, no letters, no phone calls. No diminution in Schmidt’s ardor. Absolutely nothing to be jealous about.

But Mary? Did she have adventures?

Schmidt laughed. She had loosened her grip on his hand. He took advantage of it to stroke her forearm. He wondered if he dared to extend the motion a little higher, where he might encounter her breast.