Middle Age (75 page)

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J C O

nature. None of us chooses his nature. God can’t wish to punish us for being what we
are
.”)

Camille promised Lionel she would find “decent, deserving homes” for most of her dogs. In the fall, she was to be involved in an ambitious fund-raising campaign to raise money for a new branch of the Rockland County Homeless Animal Shelter—“There’ll be kennels for sixty more dogs, we’ve been assured!” It was Camille’s intention that the dogs be confined to a part of the lawn and the garage, bounded by a new, ugly chain-link fence, and if Camille allowed them into the house they were to be confined absolutely to a small part of the downstairs, yet somehow—who knew how?—one or another of the dogs was always slipping free of these constraints, and a number of the expensive antique furnishings had been damaged. Lionel complained with extravagant bitterness, “The air is rife with dog hairs and the lawn is rich with dog dung. I wake in the middle of the night and know from the smell that I’m in Hades, though still alive, and the three-legged Cerberus is guarding my door to keep me captive.

On my own property!” Living now in the guest house, about thirty feet to the rear of the main house, Lionel spent much of his time alone, brooding.

Camille was often away at the Rockland County Homeless Animal Shelter, doing volunteer work, and rarely prepared meals; had she prepared them, Lionel might not have wished to dine with her; he was permanently furious with her, and deeply hurt by what he believed to be, fairly or unfairly, her preference for her “dog-disciples” over him. “Is it revenge? Because I’d been unfaithful? Or—would it have happened anyway?” He detested all the dogs but harbored a passionate dislike for Apollo, the dog that had “started it all”—“Adam Berendt’s damned dog”—and had come to think, in his misery, that his friend Adam had somehow betrayed him, advising him to emerge from his cave-existence into the light. But where
was
the light?

Lionel’s physical therapist A. D. Jones, a six-feet-four Haitian-born young man with rippling muscles and a quick, warm, placating smile, came to work with Lionel several times a week, at considerable expense, but Lionel’s progress was slow; he’d come to believe he would never walk normally again. This, A. D. Jones rejected as “negative, pessimist” thinking. (When Jones seized and massaged Lionel’s slack white flesh with his supple fingers, how desperately Lionel willed himself not to think of
her
.

Never, in his waking hours, did he allow himself to weaken, and think of
her
.) For a few weeks in the early summer, Lionel spent hours each day at
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his new computer, trading stocks, but he had no luck, and grew discouraged after losing $, in a single nightmare week—“It’s a young person’s world in the machine. Nasty, brutish, and short.” He walked cautiously, with his cane. His recovery from surgery was slow, and now his right knee was giving him pain. There were often shooting pains in his neck. If the air smelled even faintly of dog, Lionel coughed, wheezed, sneezed. He blew his nose until his nostrils flamed. He was insomniac by night, and by day groggy and lethargic. Though he refused telephone calls from the Hoffmann family, and never spoke of Hoffmann Publishing, Inc., he seemed to miss the mechanical routine of commuting into the city and to his office. There was a mysterious emptiness, like a cave, at the core of Lionel’s existence. “What was the point of my life?” He was sincerely perplexed, like a man slapping his pockets for something he has mislaid, but damned if he can remember
what
.

C  her troubled husband with a confused, tender love, like a mother regarding a handicapped, difficult child. She knew it was shameful that Lionel Hoffmann should be living in the guest house (though, in fact, the guest house was a handsomely modernized two-bedroom suite overlooking the pool and hillsides) and that all of Salthill was talking of this new, so very perverse “separation” of the Hoffmanns.

Camille’s women friends strongly advised her to get rid of her dogs, have the house thoroughly cleaned, and invite Lionel back—“Surely you don’t want to drive him away a second time, do you?” Marcy was even more adamant—“Mo
ther
. Next time Daddy will get a divorce, and the new wife will take over everything. And you and your precious dogs will wind up somewhere in a
kennel
.” Camille agreed, guiltily; of course she didn’t want to drive Lionel away a second time, especially when he was unwell and needed her—“But my dogs need me, too. My dogs love me.”

How plaintive the claim.
My dogs love me
.

Camille wondered: had the predatory young woman with whom Lionel had been involved contacted him, since he’d returned to Salthill a broken, defeated man? So far as Camille knew, she had not. Lionel had never spoken of her by name; he’d confessed only that he’d made a

“hideous, humiliating mistake”; he hoped Camille would “forgive” him.

Camille had said without hesitation yes, of course, she forgave him, she loved him, she was so relieved he’d returned . . . But Lionel’s return had

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marked only the end of his adulterous affair in New York City, not the beginning of a new marital romance. Marcy warned her mother that Lionel might be slipping away to see the woman again, or other, even younger women, for “once a man begins, he becomes an addict,” but Camille was certain that Lionel’s days of slipping away were over. The poor man could scarcely walk! He suffered terribly from asthma and sinus headaches. His head seemed permanently congested, as if with wet cement. Though his pale, handsome face was surprisingly unlined, and his silver-tipped hair hadn’t thinned, Lionel had clearly aged. Sometimes without wishing to, Camille caught sight of him grimacing at himself in a mirror: how like a death’s-head he’d become! Sometimes he shook his cane at one of the dogs, and it shocked her to see how his shoulder blades protruded through the cloth of his shirt, like malformed wings.

T , the Hoffmanns’ physician, a Salthill resident and an old friend, telephoned to speak with Camille about Lionel. Though this doctor apparently knew nothing of Lionel’s anxiety about infected blood, he expressed concern for Lionel’s mental health, as well as his physical health. He told Camille, “I’ve been hearing from Lionel’s specialists, and they all report the same thing: Lionel calls them frequently, never believes what he’s told, expects the worst and thinks we’re all lying. Then again, he often doesn’t follow instructions. He thinks we’re trying to ‘dope him up.’

He threw away two prescriptions I gave him. His therapist says that Lionel is either despairing and lethargic, or angry and hyperactive. Lionel was always the most reasonable man of my acquaintance, Camille, and now he’s becoming a disturbed man. He
is
a disturbed man. It might be advisable for him to see a psychiatrist.” Quickly Camille said, “Lionel would never see a psychiatrist! I could never bring the subject up, he’d be furious. He’s a man of pride, you know.” “He’s beginning to be a very disturbed man.” Camille, stung as if the insult were lodged against her, made no reply.

Though after the accident she would think
Why didn’t I speak with
Lionel, as I’d been advised! His life might have been saved
.

T   C had been bringing to Lionel was wholly unexpected: the elderly dowager Florence Ferris had died, and had left $ million as a gift “to my dear friend Camille Hoffmann who has made me so
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happy, providing a loving home for my beloved Fancy.” Camille had received a call from Mrs. Ferris’s attorney, and sat down, stunned by the news. Her first reaction was to protest, “Oh, but I can’t accept Mrs. Ferris’s bequest! It’s too much money. Her heirs would be furious with me.” The attorney assured Camille that this would not be the case, Mrs. Ferris’s estate had been divided into numerous bequests many of which might be characterized as eccentric, and the $ million to her, as Fancy’s keeper, was typical. “But—I love Fancy for her own sake, not for
money
. I never expected to be
paid
.” Camille hung up the phone, and sat for some time in a daze, as dogs licked her hands and nudged whimpering against her, sensing the turmoil of her thoughts. “Oh, Shadow! Belle. And Fancy.” She stroked the dogs’ heads, and allowed the curly-haired white poodle to clamber up into her lap; Fancy was in one of her nervous-quivering moods, hungry for her mistress’s assurance she was loved. “You, Fancy, are a very good dog. You’ve brought us all such a blessing . . .”
Now I am free.

If it’s freedom I want
.

She could leave Lionel this property, and buy another house, in a more rural area of Rockland County, where she could live with her dogs undisturbed. With so much money she could virtually fund a new wing of the Shelter. She could help enormously in the campaign to make cruelty to animals a felony in New Jersey. Elation filled her heart: at last! But she felt guilty, too. Was she, Camille, now becoming the unfaithful spouse? Was she behaving immorally?
I must do what is right. What is best for all. But—

what?

Camille waited until the following day, when she hoped Lionel might be in a better mood, to tell him the news. But even as she approached the guest house, and the pool in which turquoise water shimmered in autumnal light, she heard Lionel’s raised, angry voice.

He’d found dog excrement in the pool. He shouted at Camille, waving his cane, “God damn it, Camille! I’ve had enough. I want those repulsive beasts
gone
.” Camille too was shocked at excrement in the exquisite turquoise water, though there wasn’t much of it, a smallish sort of dog turd, clearly not the work of one of the larger dogs; murmuring apologies, Camille awkwardly took up the pool net, and tried to fish out the excrement, while Lionel followed after her limping and cursing. He continued to shout, “Camille, God damn it! God damn those dogs, and God damn
you
.” His face was contorted and not so handsome now. His eyes were a madman’s eyes. He lifted the cane, he brought it down on Camille’s

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shoulder, causing her to scream in pain. Camille would afterward claim that Lionel hadn’t meant to hit her, he wasn’t the sort of man to hit a woman, he’d merely meant to warn her, but in his disturbed state of mind he’d misjudged, and struck her, and she’d overreacted perhaps, by crying out; and there came, snarling and barking, as if he’d been guarding his mistress at a distance and awaiting just such an emergency, Apollo; and close behind Apollo came Thor, barking furiously; and there was Shadow charging on three legs, teeth bared; and there came Belle, wheezing and snarling; and Fancy in a savage mood, teeth bared and slobbering saliva; and, in deadly silence, charging like twin missiles, the thick-bodied deep-chested mastiffs Soot and Hungry. Camille cried for the dogs to stop, but Lionel was shouting and swiping at them with his cane, like a scythe, which provoked them past restraint. “Beasts! Filthy things! Get away! I’ll have you put to death!” Thor leapt for Lionel’s throat, and Lionel managed to shove him aside, but there was Shadow sinking her teeth into his leg, and there was Apollo leaping in a frenzy, and Thor quickly leapt again, and Lionel slipped to one knee, screaming in pain, and there was Belle with bulldog tenacity sinking her teeth into Lionel’s ankle, and the excitable mastiffs Soot and Hungry were crazed, though still silent, tearing at their prey with powerful teeth and jaws . . .

For years to come the Hoffmanns’ neighbors on Old Mill Way would tell of hearing human screams on that idyllic October morning in the country, and the frenzied barking and snarling of the dogs, for many minutes— “The most grisly, blood-chilling sound you can imagine. But you would not want to imagine!”

O C H’ seven dogs, she would insist that only three were “actively” involved in the attack. These were the mastiffs, covered in blood when rescue workers arrived, and the mixed-breed bulldog, which seemed to have gone mad in the attack, her muzzle and chest also covered in blood. Though Camille was in a state of shock, and would be in a state of shock for some time, she was adamant in speaking with authorities. The other four dogs were shut up in the garage, wetted down, still excited, but (as Camille insisted) remorseful. Knowing Mrs. Hoffmann’s involvement in the Rockland County Homeless Animal Shelter, authorities decided to take her word, and only three dogs were taken from her and, in the somber parlance of the trade,
put down
.

T B

T
his gift,this beauty.For you
.

On the Sunday following Lionel Hoffmann’s tragic accident, as the incident will come to be called, Abigail Des Press takes Gerhardt Ault’s thirteen-year-old daughter Tamar into the city for a mati-nee performance by the New York City Ballet. Abigail has gone to some trouble to secure excellent seats, in the eighth row, center of the theater; how tense Abigail is, and how hopeful, that this New York outing will go well. She’s pleased to see that Tamar is deeply absorbed in the first dance, in the way that Abigail herself would have been thirty years before.

There’s a new young ballerina dancing, a serenely beautiful girl with long straight dark hair, flamelike, fascinating to watch. The troupe of gifted young dancers, female and male, are all Caucasian with the exception of a young black man and an Asian-American girl of astonishing suppleness and grace. The ballet, revived from the eighties, is lushly romantic, with dissonant “post-modernist” interludes, a jazzy-sexy beat, but at the end romantic again, and resolved. No ambiguity here: this is the triumph of wish-fulfillment.

The night before, Abigail had prepared dinner for Gerhardt and Tamar at Gerhardt’s house, as she has several times done, and Tamar helped in the kitchen. Tamar is a vegetarian, and Abigail has recently become a vegetarian, or almost; she no longer eats “red meat,” and imagines that Tamar approves of this decision, though Tamar, characteristically, has said nothing. The dinner was vegetarian for Tamar and Abigail, and Abigail prepared a grilled steak for Gerhardt.