Silver Lake (21 page)

Robbie patted his jeans pocket and removed his cell phone. Carlo and his father waited. The phone had beeped and the red light was flashing. He had a text message. Who sent him text messages?

“Who sends you text messages?” Carlo asked.

It was from Jay. He said he enjoyed their time together—they’d spent two hours in a café, chattering, two hours that could have been fifteen minutes. Jay was headed down to his parents’ for the holiday but wanted to know if Robbie was free to hang out again over the weekend.

“It’s nothing,” Robbie lied. “A phone company promotion,” he added and then quickly replied yes to the text. “There. I told them to go away,” Robbie said.

“I do miss that old coot,” Henry said, referring to the artist-friend. “We’re dying off, the old gang.”

“Now, now,” Robbie said.

“Don’t you now-now me,” Henry said. “It’s fine. It may even be natural. We’re here a time, we do what we can, which isn’t much, and then we rot and are forgotten.”

One didn’t challenge the old man. Robbie had learned this early on in his career as a son-in-law.

“I’m in the guest room?” Henry asked, and headed into the hall with Carlo in tow, although Carlo hesitated at the threshold.

“What is it, son?”

“No one has slept in here since …”

Robbie slipped past Carlo into the room and drew the curtain. Henry sat down on the bed, slid his hand under a pillow.

“It was a vexing episode, no?” he asked.

Both men nodded. They were avoiding each other’s gaze, focusing instead on Henry.

“Eerie,” Henry said. “Mystifying.”

Outside, there were abrupt gusts of wind that rattled the glass. Not a storm approaching, but something of the East Coast early winter brought along with the guest.

Then Carlo looked at Robbie but addressed his father. “Mystifying, definitely. This man, Tom—he said all sorts of things, and who knows if any of it was true.”

Robbie wrinkled his brow, What? Why was Carlo saying this—where was this coming from?

“I think he could be trusted just fine,” Robbie said.

“You yourself said he was prone to exaggeration,” Carlo said.

“No, I didn’t.”

“Very dramatic, you said.”

“Well,” Henry said, standing, intervening, “I am always more than happy to be the one to break a curse. And I am quite certain I shall sleep well. Robert, you know how I prefer a martini.”

“Yes, sir,” Robbie said.

They wore jackets and had their cocktails outside, but it was too chilly to serve dinner on the patio, as well, so they ate à table, a light supper, trout, lentil salad, red wine. The night was cold yet the sky held few stars.

The old man removed the rubber tip from his epee when he drank. His latest diatribe was on the failure of the political parties to effect lasting growth: “I mean boom-or-bust-resistant change. I mean progress irregardless of a fickle Street.” Also he held forth on free trade, the admission of certain countries into economic unions, and the ethics of war journalism. Also the use of force by the police. Also how bored he was the other evening at the ballet.

He asked after Robbie’s parents and sister and demanded news of them, though there was none of significance.

“We must do that thing where we all meet up in the City,” Henry said.

“I’m sure my folks would love that,” Robbie said.

“There must be some show on the
Broad
-way they’re all dying to see—”

“Dad,” Carlo said.

Robbie looked at Carlo to say, It’s okay.

“What?” Henry asked. “What?”

Carlo sighed and asked, “Another drink?”

In Germany, Henry Stein had married very young and had a son, and two years later the family was split up and sent to different camps. Henry never again saw this wife or this son, and he also never talked about them or showed anyone photographs (if photographs existed). It wasn’t until Carlo’s mother was dying and Carlo told her he’d invited over his father who had begged to see her, not until then that Carlo’s mother said: “Poor Henry—to lose two wives—poor Henry.” Which was how Carlo learned of the existence and demise of his father’s first family. He didn’t tell Robbie about this the entire first year they knew
each other, and whenever Henry was around, the past remained a taboo topic.

Robbie had always wanted to interview his father-in-law about the years between arriving in America and marrying Carlo’s mother, about how he found life again and made life again. Was it necessary to avoid remembering his first wife and son, which was why he kept them secret, at least from Carlo when he came along? Or did Henry think about them every day? And what then: If he revealed his secret and spoke about what and whom he’d lost, did he worry that details about them would dissipate in the telling and he would begin to forget them? With each public recollection, his memory would lose a dram more vapor until one day that precious memory was little more than an ethereal fiction.

The old man was arrogant, an elitist, he always had been, but Robbie always read these traits as necessary to a kind of survival he could never fathom. Nevertheless, Robbie knew Carlo tired of his father. How could Henry be so certain about everything? So many opinions. His utter doubtlessness became oppressive. Sometimes Robbie marveled at Carlo for making it through his youth with this man. Whatever had caused Carlo to get riled up about Tom before—Robbie decided to let it go.

Later in bed, he reached his arm around Carlo, and Carlo, as if surprised, as if caught off guard, waited a beat before taking Robbie’s hand and pressing it against his, Carlo’s, chest. They’d not had sex in a fortnight nor discussed that fact. Then they were facing each other, and Robbie was frisky, but Carlo seemed to want to slow things down. They were off tempo. Carlo nuzzled his cheek against Robbie’s neck and shoulder, grateful, and he was on top of Robbie, with Robbie’s knees moving up, Robbie’s thighs against Carlo’s ribs, Robbie’s calves against Carlo’s back, a familiar story. There was something in the way Carlo stared at Robbie—what?—solicitous, trusting, apologetic. How are you
doing there? he was asking. Fine—and you, signor? Quite good at the moment, quite good indeed. And for better or worse they agreed upon a meter, or their bodies did the way bodies do, and they belonged to each other. When they fell back to their respective sides of the bed, Carlo yawned and drifted off first as was the new norm. Robbie was restless and didn’t sleep well at all.

• • •

N
EITHER DID CARLO.
His father’s presence always made him think about his mother. For a long while after she’d died, Carlo had only been able to conjure her at the end of her life with straw-like hair, half herself, her cheekbones too big for her face, her reading glasses sliding down her nose. Then time passed and when Carlo thought about her, he retrieved a deeper memory, a boyhood nightmare. At a school assembly, a police officer had screened a cautionary film about how to move through the world safely, not talking to strangers, looking both ways before crossing the street, and so forth. At one point in the movie, a woman ran across Fifth Avenue toward the Park and was hit by a taxi. The impact wasn’t depicted, only the running into the traffic and the aftermath. What Carlo learned was that apparently one’s shoes came off when one was hit by a car. A woman dead in the street, both sneakers yards away from her body—this stayed with him. Carlo’s mother was a world-class jaywalker, and so in his dream, Carlo was strolling home from the bus stop when he noticed there had been an accident outside his building, and when he was closer and could see it was his mother lying in the street, he wanted to reach her side where paramedics were attempting resuscitation
but first needed to retrieve her favorite black velvet pumps from the gutter. He could actually feel the square heels, one in each palm—he awoke and was gripping the wood rails of the headboard.

Then this nightmare receded, too, and what he thought about when he remembered his mother (what he pictured as he lay awake now) was her at the stove pinching spices from bottles with cork stoppers, stirring bolognese in a sauce pan all across the span of a winter afternoon, opera on the stereo. Carlo had been a reluctant reader and his mother heard about a young-adult serial and got him hooked. Each night after dinner they read passages aloud to each other. A prairie girl, her blind sister, a house roofed with sod. In those days, Carlo told his mother he was going to become a writer and she said, “Wonderful, but don’t mention it to your father. You know he believes you should be an artist, or if not an artist, worst case scenario, a concert pianist.”

Also he remembered sitting in the backseat of an idling car with his mother behind the wheel. They were out by the train station of the town where they had their country house. His father’s train was late and his mother appeared tense, and it was possible she’d been crying, but Carlo couldn’t see his mother’s eyes behind her dark sunglasses, which she was wearing even though it was past dusk and dark out.

When Carlo, extra-groggy, served his father breakfast Thanksgiving morning and made him his special coffee with the cocoa, Carlo felt as though he’d been conversing with him all night. After breakfast, he showed his father where the new fountain would be, and then the three men took a walk around the Reservoir, even though the wind was brittle. The ever boatless
lake looked forbidding, almost icy, a mirror longing for something bright to reflect.

“I come to Los Angeles for this kind of bone-chill,” Carlo’s father complained.

“Los Angeles heard what you said about her the last time,” Robbie said.

“My true son.”

When they got home, Carlo sautéed apples for the dressing and set about stuffing the goose. His father removed his cuff links and folded back his shirt sleeves and reached around Carlo to tip the goose so Carlo could finish the task. Henry handed his son skewers and then the string. They worked without chitchat, the one seemingly anticipating the other’s next move and stepping aside or handing over what was needed. Carlo rubbing the goose with salt and pepper. Henry piercing the skin with an unused skewer.

Carlo asked Robbie to put on some music, and Robbie chose a requiem. His role as sous-chef had been supplanted, but he hung around the kitchen while Carlo and his father turned their attention to preparing dough for an artichoke-and-pea pie, to baking a chocolate torte. Whatever disdain the old man held for the holiday-like manufacture and consumption of a big late-afternoon meal was not in evidence, and Carlo found himself slipping into a good humor, as well. He winked at Robbie. That they’d made love the night before certainly helped, the recharge of sex. However, Robbie seemed preoccupied, and at one point he touched his pocket, his cell phone going off again. He answered, grinned, said, “Oh, hey, hold on a second,” then grabbed a pair of garden shears from a drawer. He didn’t say anything
more until he was out on the patio with the door closed behind him, and then once on the patio, he continued down into the yard a-ways and out of view.

Carlo glanced at his father. Did this seem strange to him, Robbie receiving random phone calls on Thanksgiving Day? No, why would it? What his father didn’t know was that Robbie had already spoken with his family back East. Carlo’s paranoia flared up. He wondered if the caller in some way was related to Tom, and if so, what information he or she might be feeding Robbie. Carlo tried to read Robbie’s expression when he returned a short while later clutching a bundle of tea bush branches and long sprigs of sage and lavender, which Robbie then put together in an unwieldy arrangement that was far too tall as a centerpiece and instead positioned at one end of the table. His expression: goofy, giddy about something other than his oversized arrangement.

“Brilliant,” Carlo’s father said. “The way things grow out here. Disquieting, but brilliant.”

• • •

T
HEY SAT DOWN AT FOUR.
There was the goose and its dressing and the artichoke pie and also zucchini with oregano, stewed pearl onions and sautéed carrots with fennel—all the recipes (save the goose) came from Carlo’s mother’s cookbook. Robbie played his accustomed role, leaning in toward Carlo’s father and nodding at one story or another about some near-miss with a forgery, feigning shock, even though his father-in-law had been telling the story for a decade. Robbie kept Henry’s goblet full, served him another sliver of pie. Carlo watched the old man
carve some food on his plate then set down his knife. His fork hand quivered a bit, his browned, hairless hand all blood vessels. Earlier, Carlo had heard his father talking to himself: “You forgot to tell the maid to take the tux to the dry cleaners.” “What do you need with another rug in your house? Where will it go?” Ah, maybe he had aged. Maybe he’d lived too much of his life alone.

“The Italians always knew what to do with peas,” Henry Stein said, referring to the presence of the peas in the artichoke pie.

“The same could be said about fennel,” Robbie said.

“Very true. Oh, my word—”

“Whoa,” Carlo said.

Out of nowhere, Gabriel had appeared at the sliding glass door to the back patio. The men hadn’t seen him come around back and were startled. Robbie waved him in.

“I didn’t mean to interrupt your dinner,” Gabriel said.

“Why are you coming in the back?” Carlo asked. “Did you knock in front?”

“I was on my way down to do some work,” Gabriel said.

“All by yourself?” Carlo asked.

“It smells good in here,” Gabriel said.

“Aren’t you with your aunt today? Or your parents?” Robbie asked.

It was obvious the question made Gabriel uncomfortable. “Things didn’t work out as planned,” was all he said.

“Such pressure,” Carlo’s father muttered, “to all get along. It’s too much really.”

“Are you hungry?” Carlo asked. He set Robbie’s flowers on the floor.

“I had a cheeseburger,” Gabriel said, although he sat down at the table.

Robbie brought him a plate, utensils, and a napkin.

“You remember my father,” Carlo said.

“You are looking very much the model of youth today,” his father said.

Gabriel seemed uncertain what to make of the comment, although his response was to take off the leather jacket he still had on and drape it over the back of his chair. He filled his plate with food.