Schmidt Steps Back (36 page)

Schmidt had been having lunch with Gil, or dinner with him and Elaine, so regularly that there was nothing, literally nothing, he could think of that he was doing or not doing that might amuse Gil. It was like the good old days—or bad, depending on your point of view—when Schmidt kept his nose to the financing grindstone at W & K. What exciting happenings did he then have stored up to relate to his glamorous friend? That the loan to Podunk Cement Company had closed, and he had another one in the works, with Dumboville Power Company as the borrower? That he had felt left out of the conversations and overwhelmed by the company at the National Book Awards dinner, at which Mary had naturally taken a table, and had been ready to dance on it because her author won? But yes, there was one anecdote, and, even if somewhat sentimental, it was pleasant.

You’ll laugh at me, he said. Ten days ago, I took little Albert for his first haircut, on his third birthday. I wish Norman Rockwell had been there to paint us. I got so broken up that I picked up a lock of his hair, wrapped it in a Kleenex, and took it home.

And you still have it? asked Mr. Blackman.

Of course.

Schmidtie, this is your chance. Your chance to get the answer to the big question. One that has to be answered or your life will become more and more difficult. Are you that boy’s father or not? I think you need to know. Not so that you can tell Carrie, or God forbid Jason, or even me. But for your own stability. I happen to know of a lab that does DNA testing. It’s a reliable outfit. Do it, old pal! You mustn’t go through the rest of your life not knowing where you stand.

I don’t know, said Schmidt. I’m not at all sure I want to know. Suppose I’m not his father, am I supposed to love him less? I don’t want that. Suppose I am his father, what would I do beyond what I’m doing now? Carrie’s pregnant. When that baby comes, do I care for it less or more depending on the result in little Albert’s case? I think I know the answer. Whatever I learn, I will always love Albert best. For a crazy reason: he came so soon after Carrie left me. He’s swathed in my love for her. And that won’t change even if it turns out I’m not his father. So what would be the point?

Putting your house in order.

That was something Schmidt understood instinctively—perhaps craved, even though it went against the advice he had given Carrie soon after the kid was born.

I’ll do it, he said. I hope I won’t live to regret it.

Y
CHROMOSOMES DON
’
T LIE
, Mr. Schmidt, the technician at the SureDNA laboratory told him. Normally I don’t touch cut hair, there just isn’t enough DNA there, but this sample was productive. Here, look at the slides. You can see for yourself. There is no way this individual and you are related.

Schmidt thanked the man, got into his car, found the Long Island Expressway entrance, and headed west back to the city. Well, now he knew. The oracle had spoken. Was that the answer he had wanted? Not entirely: in some part of his besotted brain had dwelled a half-formulated, timid, guilty wish to be told that the beautiful little boy was his child. It had coexisted with the certitude that, lest he unhinge Carrie’s marriage and thereby visit untold harm upon little Albert, any knowledge he thus gained must go with him to the grave, and that, indeed, he must do everything in his power to affirm Jason’s paternity. Carrie’s adorable Age of Aquarius notion that it didn’t matter who was the boy’s father, to think that Jason, even if he knew that it wasn’t he, would be a good stepfather and love the kid because Carrie was its mother, was great, so far as it
went. It might work just fine for Jason and would certainly be the best result possible if the real father were dead. And the effect of such knowledge on Albert Schmidt, Esq., still very much alive and residing a few miles up the road? Unspeakable torment: forced to stand by and watch stoically while Jason reaps the best of the boy’s love and Jason, or Jason and Carrie, take decisions concerning the boy with which he, Schmidt, disagrees, and to accept being excluded—as by the force of circumstances would inevitably happen—in many moments of crisis or joy. None of this vision implied suspicions of future bad faith or ill will. Far from it. It was just the way it would happen, and unlike divorced fathers who haven’t custody of their children, he would not be able to assert any right to be heard. Of course, he would continue in his role of honorary uncle or grandfather, his wallet always open, melting from happiness each time the kid smiled at him. But at some point, when the little boy notices that Albo’s or Uncle Schmidtie’s largesse somehow diminishes his dad, won’t he turn against Uncle Checkbook?

You consult oracles at your own risk and almost always to your harm, the knowledge they impart being laced with poison. It had been a narrow escape, but he had indeed set his house in order. He would love little Albert as Carrie’s son, a child who could have been his but wasn’t, and he would be able to look Jason straight in the eye. He had not been a party to slipping a stranger’s egg into his nest. The blond giant was raising his own son and working for his own son’s future. A virtuous example for Schmidt to follow, a reminder to concentrate his efforts on the well-being of his only issue, his own Charlotte.

Opportunities to do so had begun to present themselves, at first hesitantly. Almost exactly a year earlier, the day after Timothy McVeigh was sentenced to die for the Oklahoma City bombing, Charlotte telephoned. It being mid-August, Schmidt was in Bridgehampton, on vacation, reading the account in the
Times
, remembering how the news of the carnage at the Federal Building had intersected the board of directors’ meeting to which he had rushed from the arms of Alice. Dad, said Charlotte, for once pronouncing the word normally, I thought you’d like to know I’ve finally sold the house in Claverack. You can stop making the mortgage payments.

Congratulations, Schmidt replied, were you able to get a good price?

Pretty good. I’m going to look for a house in Connecticut, somewhere near Sunset Hill. It would be convenient for Josh. He teaches there Mondays, Tuesdays, and Wednesdays. I hope what I got for Claverack will be sufficient.

Now this is good news, thought Schmidt. She’s talking to me as though I were a human being, she’s still with this guy White, and she’s actually made a plan, a sensible plan.

He replied: What a good idea.

Oh yeah, and I’m going to be full-time at the agency, starting in September.

That is simply wonderful. Congratulations!

And one other thing: Alan Townsend and I agreed that it’s enough if I see him twice a month starting when he gets back from vacation. He’s also going to take me off medications, but he wants to be there when he does it.

I’m thrilled.

Got to go, said Charlotte. See you!

Schmidt felt his jaw drop. Was this Charlotte or a particularly able impersonator? On the supposition that he had in fact been talking to his daughter, he called the florist in the city and sent her a large white orchid plant with a card reading
Congratulations and love from your dad
. As he was placing the order, he remembered his failed attempt to apologize to Alice, a memory that still burned like a hot wire and could have sufficed to keep him from ever saying anything with flowers again. In fact, he came close to canceling this order but didn’t, deciding—in his opinion reasonably—that the fault then had lain not with the orchid but with his own behavior. His astonishment grew when Charlotte thanked him, sending a Hallmark card with a kitten in a basket on the outside, and inside it the words
Thank you
in red script. It was a first, and he wished he could have chuckled over it with her mother. She had, however, signed it. Until then, the only ready-made thank-you notes he had received had been from elevator men, garage attendants, delivery boys at various establishments, and mailmen to whom he gave cash presents at Christmas, and retired cleaning ladies to whom he sent annual checks. But then it occurred to him that Charlotte must know—but how? had he told her?—of his love affair with Sy and was very gently teasing him. That seemed to him a clear sign of returning health.

The next call came on Friday after the Labor Day weekend. Mother Teresa had died that day, and after reminding Schmidt that she was going back to work “like a real person”—a statement that wrung his heart—she expressed her admiration for the saintly nun. Schmidt was momentarily at a loss for words, remembering vaguely that she had received the Nobel Peace
Prize many years back, as had such worthies as de Klerk and Arafat (each being paired with his better to share the distinction). He had had no prior inkling of Charlotte’s interest in India’s poorest.

Still, he recovered in time to say: Yes, it’s sad. She did have a very long life, and I suppose she was very tired.

Eighty-seven is not so old, replied Charlotte. She could have gone on with her work. And poor Diana! It’s so sad, so tragic!

It seemed to Schmidt that she was crying very softly. The accident in which the Princess of Wales died had been five days earlier, the previous Sunday, and while Schmidt was aware of the outpouring of national grief in England, the depth of Charlotte’s feeling once again surprised him. He hadn’t known her to be an Anglophile, and he had certainly never seen her display any interest in the follies of the British royals. But sensing again that he stood at the edge of a minefield, he remained perfectly still.

Yes, that was very sad too, he said. How old was she? Forty-one, forty-two? She had two sons, didn’t she?

Dad—the word had edged toward Daad—she was thirty-six! Only four years older than I! It’s so dreadful, so terribly dreadful, to be so unhappy and never get a chance to make up for it!

Now she was really crying, and not bothering to hide it.

Sweetie, said Schmidt, I’m so sorry about her, I’m so dreadfully sorry you feel so bad.

She blew her nose and continued: Can you imagine, yesterday at the office this jerk Olson—Schmidt remembered vaguely that one of the managing directors of the firm went by that name—called her a little slut? Said he couldn’t understand
what all the fuss was about? If I didn’t want so badly to go back to work, I would have thrown something at him—I don’t know what, maybe the trash basket. It was full of half-empty coffee cups. Would have served him right.

Oh my, said Schmidt, people are so unfeeling.

He realized that he would have been capable of making a similar if probably less harsh remark.

Jenny has a photograph of Lady Di on her desk and has a candle burning in front of it. Sort of like the people outside Buckingham Palace she saw on TV.

Schmidt remembered that Jenny was Josh White’s daughter and hoped she wasn’t going to set the apartment on fire.

How old is she now, he inquired, is she still at Friends?

Thirteen. She’s a great kid. Yeah, she’s still at Friends. Dad, she continued, the reason I’m calling is that we found this amazing house in Kent. It would be just perfect; it has an artist’s studio that’s now being used as a sort of super guest room and an artificial pond. We’re going to look at it again tomorrow. The money I got for Claverack isn’t quite enough. Will you help me buy it? I don’t want a mortgage if I can help it because I haven’t got enough money coming in to carry one. So if I can, I’d rather buy it free and clear.

Certainly, replied Schmidt, I’ll help you. Are you going to have to do much by way of repairs? Remodeling?

Nothing. Just a coat of paint. Josh says he’ll slap it on himself. I guess that’s what you do if you’re a painter!

She actually laughed.

Schmidt wondered how much capital would be required to “help” but decided not to ask. Whatever it was, he would find it. To hell with worries about the gift tax and tax efficiency There was enough money to fulfill his promise to Carrie and
Jason about the kids’ education and enough for him to live on if he tightened his belt. He wasn’t going to spoil this moment for Charlotte.

That sounds fine, he said. Let me know how it goes and how much you need. And do get a competent lawyer. If you need a recommendation, I can ask around.

It’s OK, Josh has someone. A Sunset Hill graduate like me, who practices out there. I guess we Sunset alums got to stick together.

She laughed again before saying, Got to go—her current sign off, which did not get Schmidt’s goat—and was gone.

Sy had climbed into his lap during the phone call and was purring vigorously. That meant that he wanted to be fed and found it politic to make himself agreeable, an approach whose obvious merits Schmidt thought he could highly recommend to anyone who wanted his money. Charlotte hadn’t exactly purred, but, given her vast talent for making herself odious, she was doing pretty well at the capture of benevolence. The chief virtue of the house seemed to be that it suited the still-unknown Mr. White! About to shrug, he restrained himself: Sy, who detested sneezes and other loud noises and ill-considered gestures, might have been spooked. It occurred to Schmidt that Sy had taught him a lesson he could apply in his dealings with Charlotte: be patient and let her take the initiative. She would produce her Josh, and his Jenny too, but in her own good time.

A world gone mad. With scary consistency, Charlotte’s calls were intertwined with news of disasters and disgrace. Before the end of the year, in a Manhattan federal court, a jury convicted the terrorists who had exploded a truck bomb in the public garage under the World Trade Center in 1993, while in
Egypt other terrorists killed more than sixty tourists who had hoped to visit Luxor. The White House reeked of trailer trash sexual scandals, the tempo of repugnant revelations accelerating until a year later no one in the nation—perhaps no one on earth in reach of a television signal—could be ignorant of the nice chubby Jewish girl who had spat the presidential ejaculate out on her blue dress, the liquid that dozens upon dozens of porn queens and princesses would have lapped to the last drop, and threw the dress into her closet instead of sending it out to be cleaned. In the closing days of the year, the president was impeached, but not before he had ordered air strikes against Iraq to enforce the no-fly zones. Other events, pregnant with menace and resonant, had preceded that premonitory act: India and Pakistan each conducted tests to show the other that it had the bomb; other murderous terrorists attacked U.S. embassies in Dar es Salaam and Nairobi, leaving hundreds dead and thousands injured; U.S. missiles rained on terrorist bases in Sudan and Afghanistan. Outside of Laramie, Wyoming, a gentle, waiflike gay student was tortured and beaten to death. Frequently Charlotte called to commiserate with Schmidt about these and other catastrophes. He took those conversations, her knowledge of current events, and her eagerness to discuss them with him as nothing short of miraculous. He still hadn’t met Josh—and she had given no sign that she thought an introduction was in order. But she had sent Schmidt photographs of the house in Kent and actually thanked him for the hefty contribution he had made to paying for it. He hoped that she’d had the sense to keep the title to the house in her name, but he didn’t dare to ask. In the old days one could have presumed as much, since to the best of Schmidt’s knowledge Charlotte and Josh weren’t married,
but times had changed. Even stranger than not knowing Josh was the fact that he had seen Charlotte only three or four times since his second visit to Sunset Hill, briefly over coffee or a sandwich. He risked her ire by making a crack: now that he had pictures of the house, wouldn’t it be a good idea to send him one of her?