Schmidt Steps Back (35 page)

Yeah, anyway. He’s got a kid, a girl, twelve years old. She goes to Friends Seminary. He lives on Perry Street.

Good school, interjected Schmidt.

She’s a good kid.

Can you tell me something about this young man? You know, his name and what kind of art he does?

She snickered. Josh White, and no, Dad, he isn’t Jewish. I know that’ll be one load off your mind.

Very carefully Schmidt did not rise to the bait. Was this possibly one of the Box Hill Whites? he asked himself. There are so many artists among them.

He’s an abstract artist. His gallery is in Chelsea. It’s well-known. He’s well-known too. Yeah, and he teaches at Cooper Union, not only Sunset Hill.

I’m very glad for you, said Schmidt. I hope I can meet Josh sometime soon.

Dad, don’t push. Just find me some divorce lawyer who’ll know how to get back my property and get me out of that marriage.

The very next day, Schmidt lunched with Mr. Mansour, not at Schmidt’s club, for which he was thinking he might propose his friend, but at the Four Seasons Grill, which Mike, like Gil, used as a substitute for all the even more exclusive institutions to which he did not yet belong. Schmidt came to the point directly, asking who had represented Mike in his two divorces. I need someone, he said, who can break knees, elbows, the works.

Pas de problème
, said Mr. Mansour, I’ve had two, one for divorce number one and the other for number two. Both are killers, but I think number one has retired. Who’s the happy couple? Let me guess. Charlotte wants to leave that guy Riker.
L’chaim!

He raised his glass to Schmidt and continued: Tell your Jewish uncle the details. The details!
Pas de blagues!

Having heard Schmidt out—Schmidt had resigned himself to no longer censoring the accounts of his travails with Charlotte—Mr. Mansour turned pensive and said, It’s no good. There isn’t a divorce lawyer alive who can blast him out of that apartment or that house upstate. Not anytime soon. She wants to marry this painter?

Schmidt nodded. She hasn’t said so, but I think that’s probably the idea.

So she had better get divorced and get the marriage license before the guy changes his mind, replied Mr. Mansour.

He reached into his coat pocket and brought out the worry beads.
Click click. Click
.

I have an idea, he said. I know about Riker’s firm. I had it checked out when you told me he went to work there. They do good work. The senior guy is Irv Grausam. He’s a litigator, doing a lot of environmental litigation. Superfund cases, and so on. We have a company in Mississippi that’s in a big mess. They’re being sued for discharging all sorts of dreck into some stream. It’s all bullshit, and we could settle, but I have a rule against settlements. I say make those plaintiffs and their lawyers fight: make them spend money and fight every inch of the way. Once you start settling, you’re roadkill. I’m going to call Irv in and say we’ll retain him to litigate this big mess for us—and when I say a big mess I mean it—but on condition he makes this character Jon give back her property to the daughter of my best friend. It’s a free country! If he doesn’t want the retainer, doesn’t want the fees, that’s fine with me. There are lots of other lawyers who’d die to work for me. But if he wants the job, he’s got to straighten out his boy Riker. I want him to give back to his wife her property and sign the separation agreement. The whole deal.
Pas de problème!
Now tell me, am I a good friend?

Mike, you’re the best. But let me think for a moment. I don’t want you to get in trouble.

You mean I’m threatening Irv? I’m not. Don’t ask me to clear it with Holbein. I’m not going to. Leave it to me!

Schmidt heard first from Renata. She called the New York apartment. You are a bastard, Schmidtie. First you let those awful men at W & K wreck Jon’s career. And now you sic
your attack dogs on him at Grausam & Trafficante. God will punish you. She did not ask him to call back.

So it worked, Schmidt said to himself.

The call from Jon Riker came a few days later, on a Saturday. Schmidt was at home in Bridgehampton.

Al, said his son-in-law, is there anything you won’t sink to? Getting that Egyptian of yours to call Irv Grausam so that he’ll pressure me? On a matter that had no connection with the Egyptian or with my law firm? Only one purpose: to fuck me. You’ve always been a prick and you’ll always be one so let me tell you my bottom line. I won’t transfer the apartment or the house to your lovely daughter until and unless I’m fully reimbursed, with interest, for every cent I spent fixing them up and every cent I paid on the mortgage and the apartment loan. I know she has no money, so you will have to pony up. Did you get that?

Yes. You can tell your lawyer that as soon as you transfer the properties to Charlotte and sign a separation agreement that Joe Black approves you’ll get that money.

Charlotte called two weeks or so later. Schmidt was at his office.

Dad, Joe Black says the papers are ready to give me back the apartment and Claverack. The separation agreement is ready too, but Jon won’t sign unless he gets reimbursed for what he had put in. Why should that asshole get anything? He lived in the apartment and in Claverack, didn’t he?

The reason to pay him is to get this done, to get Jon to go away. Isn’t that what you and Mr. White want? asked Schmidt.

Yeah, but he should be paying me. Are you going to give me the money for this?

Yes.

She said, I guess then it’s OK, I guess I’m grateful to you, and hung up.

That the separation agreement had been signed Schmidt inferred in the course of a telephone call from Charlotte, in which she asked for the name of a broker to handle the sale of her apartment. He gave her the name of the young woman who had handled the sale of his Fifth Avenue apartment after he retired. She had obtained what seemed at the time to be a spectacular price. When he asked Charlotte whether she needed a broker for Claverack, she said she already knew someone in Hudson. Schmidt had not yet met Josh White, the response to a couple of requests that all three of them get together having been a particularly elongated rendition of the word “Dad.” Translation according to Schmidt:
Get off my back
. He was in the meantime dutifully paying Dr. Townsend’s bills, which now came to him directly, as well as Charlotte’s allowance, rent for her apartment, and the extortionate premiums on her individual health insurance policy. That she had not bothered to thank her father beyond her one grudging “I guess I’m grateful to you” was a sort of harshness he had come to expect. Her failure to thank Mike Mansour, without whose help the stalemate in the war of the Rikers would have doubtless continued, was another matter. Each time he remembered it, he felt the sting of shame.

The letters he had written to Charlotte since Mary died, typically at times when his exasperation needle had entered the red zone, had not been a success if improvement in her behavior was the right measure. They did, however, make him feel better. It was with eyes wide open that he wrote:

It was not one of his finer efforts. Nevertheless he mailed it. Some six months later the broker he had recommended to Charlotte called him and announced that she had a buyer with good credit, who would have no difficulty passing the co-op board and was willing to pay Charlotte’s asking price. She had also referred Charlotte to a lawyer who would handle the closing. Incorrigible, knowing that his advice wasn’t wanted, Schmidt nonetheless asked whether his daughter knew that she could perhaps avoid paying a capital gains tax on the sale if she bought another apartment within a year. The broker told him that both she and the lawyer had discussed that possibility with Charlotte, but it appeared that Charlotte preferred to keep the cash and stay in her present apartment or move in with a man she was seeing. That was interesting.
Schmidt wondered whether there would be a wedding and, if so, whether he would be invited or left to learn about it from the announcement in the
Times
or some printed card sent after the fact. Some weeks later, during the weekend, the telephone rang in his kitchen, and a conversation commenced preceded by a
Daad
of medium duration.

I bet Gwen told you I’ve sold the apartment.

Schmidt acquiesced.

So I’ve got all this cash I need to invest. Will the man who looks after your money take me as a client? I mean it’s chicken shit compared with what you have.

He’ll be happy to take you, and I think he’ll give you a break on his fees. He’ll calculate them on the basis that you and I are members of a family group.

That’s good.

Have you got his number?

Somewhere. You think you can send it to me?

Certainly.

I’m starting again at my old firm. Three days a week.

Schmidt remained silent longer than usual to see whether anything more would be said on this subject. Nothing was.

That’s great, he said, that will give you a chance to get your sea legs before you start working full-time.

Oh yeah? I think they’re jerking me around. They’ll never take me back full-time. Anyway, I won’t need my allowance once my money is invested. But can you go on paying the doctor and the rent? The rent, that’s just for the time being.

She couldn’t see him, so Schmidt shrugged and made a face.

Certainly, he replied. Let me know when you want me to stop the allowance.

Yeah, I will. Oh, and can you pay the health insurance?

I already have. I’ve paid the first year’s premium in advance.

OK. That’s good. See you!

Before she managed to hang up, he said—cried out might be closer to the truth—Charlotte, don’t you think I could meet your friend Josh?

Daad, she replied, will you lay off? I don’t want to spoil it with him. He’ll think it’s pressure or something.

With that she got off the phone.

Little Albert’s third birthday came and went without Schmidt’s having met Josh White. Fortunately, there was a different treat in store for him: Carrie asked him to take the kid for his first haircut. They went to the barber in Sag Harbor whom Schmidt used when it was inconvenient to get his hair cut in the city. The old fellow was ready for his new customer and went to work in accordance with Schmidt’s instructions: just a trim and completely natural. We want to give his hair shape, but we don’t want him looking as though he’d just been to the barber. Through it all, Albert maintained perfect poise, sucking on one of the big green lollipops reserved for good little boys. As the locks of hair fell—Albert’s hair was now the color of Carrie’s and promised to become as heavy and lustrous—Schmidt felt a pang of regret. He took one of the locks from the white apron with which the kid was covered, asked for a tissue, wrapped the hair in it, and tucked it into the watch pocket of his trousers. If he had kept his father’s huge gold watch, which the old man had worn on a chain, he could perhaps have had some ingenious jeweler alter the cover so that it would hold the hair like a locket, and he could see it whenever he opened it to expose the face. The other solution might be to put the hair in a frame, something like those boxes
used to display butterfly specimens. He would ask Carrie for advice.

That’s a fine grandson you have, Mr. Schmidt, said the barber when Schmidt pressed the tip at last into his hand. I hope he will be a regular customer.

Thanks! He really is a good boy, Schmidt replied.

He took Albert back to East Hampton, watched him blow out three candles on his cake, and for about an hour looked on while the boy and his friends from the nursery school played some of the games that Schmidt found he remembered from Charlotte’s birthdays.

Then he went home, put the lock of hair in his desk drawer, and forgot about it until a lunch with Gil Blackman at O’Henry’s a couple of weeks later. So far as he was concerned
The Serpent
was ready, Gil told Schmidt. It had been a long haul, much too long. Working with Canning hadn’t been a picnic, and they had been forced to wait until Sigourney’s schedule opened up. But now that it was done, he was pleased. There would be a screening of the director’s cut for Mike, Joe and Caroline Canning, the indispensable Holbein, top studio executives, and, to Schmidt’s delight, Schmidt.

I’m inviting DT too, said Gil, though I can’t figure out where I will seat her at the dinner afterward. If she isn’t at my table, she’ll be unhappy. But if she is, I had better have a good story ready for Elaine. I haven’t worked all that out yet. The good news is that, as you’ll see, the film is great. Even better news is that I’ve got Canning out of my life! That really rates this joint’s best bottle. It’s my treat. We’ll drink to my liberation.

Are you serious about having DT at the dinner with Elaine?

I can’t help it. She’d scratch my eyes out if I didn’t. She’s
got a terrible temper. I’ll explain that she’s been working on the project since the start, but behind the scenes, as it were—that’s pretty funny, you’ve got to admit—and just couldn’t be excluded. Besides, you’ve just given me a great idea. I have to have her at my table because both you and Mike will come alone. That way there will be only one extra man.

Gil, you’re playing with fire.

What’s new about that? Mr. Blackman said, his face darkening. But let’s talk about something else. For example you. How are you, old pal?