Wanting Rita (22 page)

“Yeah. Kids define the culture,” Nicole added. “They drive everything, from music and art to clothing styles and politics. We’re already too old to influence cultural creativity. We’ve got our professions and our predictable lifestyles.”

“We’re not that old,” I said, lightly. “I’ve still got a dance or two left in me.”

“No, but it’s the kids—the young people—who define a generation. Kids are what keep a couple from getting stogy and set in their ways. They keep things stirred up and fresh.”

“Well, the culture that’s coming out of this generation is frighteningly vulgar and low class. And they sure don’t vote,” he said. “And most of them are painfully illiterate.”

“My children will vote,” Nicole said, forcefully. “I’ll see to that!”

Melinda, a thin blond with bold and beautiful eyes said, “If our government was serious about supporting our educational system, kids would have the knowledge to vote.”

Bob bristled. “Give me a break, Melinda. You blame the government for everything, and you want the government to pay for everything! For God’s sake, you’d have people like us footing the bill for the lazy and poor until we all went broke.”

Melinda stiffened. “I’d rather foot the bill for education and helping the poor, than giving corporations huge tax breaks while they rape the land.”

I sought to truncate the argument, but stumbled badly. “Today’s kids will be working until they’re a hundred to pay off all the national debt.” I stood, feeling a little silly, unthinking. “So, I say we should all be making as many kids as possible…” I stopped, realizing the stupidity of my words.

Nicole narrowed her hot angry eyes on me. “That’s not funny, Alan.”

A deep chilly silence ensued.

Nicole recovered swiftly, presenting a forced smile to the couple. “So, how are you feeling, Melinda? Any morning sickness?”

“A little.” She slanted Bob a disparaging glance. “Bob was supposed to keep it a secret… until the end of the first trimester… But we all know that Bob tells everything he knows whenever he knows it.”

Bob shot Melinda an angry glance.

Nicole’s sad eyes looked out on the bay. “He’s excited, Melinda, and why shouldn’t he be? He just wants to share it.”

Bob twisted awkwardly, studying his glass. “It will happen for you two. I just know it will.”

Melinda added quickly. “And there are so many ways now to…” she looked at me. “Well, you know that, Alan. You’re a doctor.”

Nicole inhaled, smoothing out her cream-colored linen blouse. “Yes, of course. But we had hoped to have a child the natural way.”

I sat stiffly, feeling defeated and small. They knew the details of our problem. I was quiet while the conversation shifted precipitously to the dinner menu and the next day’s itinerary.

That evening, as we lay in bed, wide awake, I turned to Nicole. Tension pulsed. The window fan hummed and did little to cool the humid room.

“Are you okay?” I asked.

“I wish we could leave without hurting their feelings.”

“We can’t. Melinda would feel terrible.”

She rolled away from me. “In college, it was Melinda who was the feminist. She always said she’d never get married or have kids. She hated the idea. I was the one who tutored 6-year-olds, while she was out protesting some stupid cause. How’s that for irony?”

I laced my hands behind my head. “We all change.”

“Well I haven’t changed.”

I kicked the sheet off, wiping sweat from my forehead. “Let’s try and get some sleep,” I said.

An hour later, I quietly slid out of bed, and went for a long walk.

In Starbucks on Saturday mornings we often repeated the same comforting phrases. “All marriages have their difficulties and challenges. We’ll grow closer and laugh at all this once we have a child,” we’d say.

We kept trying to conceive, while polishing our positive spirits and public and private faces.

“We can adopt,” I said once, so softly that I wasn’t certain Nicole had even heard me.

She didn’t look up from the newspaper. “Yes…” she’d said, flatly. I saw a flicker of impatience in her eyes. “…Then we might as well go the donor sperm route.”

“I’m not ready for that,” I said, sharply.

“And I’m not ready to have my eggs retrieved and stuck in some laboratory dish where there’s only a 35% success rate that I’ll get pregnant and deliver a baby. I don’t have the time or the inclination.”

“Okay, fine. We could go back to trying hormone therapies,” I said.

“We’ve been there and done that, Alan. It didn’t work! For God’s sake, stop bringing that up!”

Whenever Nicole and I talked over the options, calmly and intelligently, beating back nerves and depression, the issue remained unresolved. We carried choices within us like dying lab specimens, hoping for some kind of miracle: that my sperm would eventually come through.

I remember the day we stopped discussing it. We were walking in Riverside Park in early spring. The world had exploded with color and life. Birds soared, bees lumbered in yellow buttery petals and hovered over red and yellow tulips. The sky burned a brilliant blue. Nicole and I passed a playground where children screamed, hopped and scattered with abandon. It was a playful battlefield, as parents struggled to keep up, their sharp protective eyes anticipating a stumble, a slap, a brilliant new discovery.

Nicole turned away from the scene, increasing the pace, aloof and insulted. I caught up with her a few minutes later.

“How about a glass of wine?” I suggested.

“How about a bottle,” she said, quietly.

We became busy, flushed with achievement, work and friends. We seldom made love and, when we did, it sputtered—or worse, it left us depressed.

I grew strange and unfamiliar. I laughed more. Nicole noticed and commented, “You’re in a good mood these days, Alan.”

“Yeah, why not? Life’s too short.”

I bought a silver gray Mercedes Sports Coupe´ and drove it to Shelter Island on summer weekends, where Nicole’s parents had a house. We sped along back roads, the car moving like a sharp knife through the hot butter of the day, rising and laughing with the unraveling dips and curves, over the Bridgehampton horse fields and out to the Montauk Lighthouse. We stopped by the classic car competition in Bridgehampton with its lineup of the 80 classic cars: Jaguars, Ferraris, Rolls Royces, and Mercedeses, all gleaming in the afternoon sun.

We began regular weekly visits to French restaurants, including Bouley, Le Bernardin, and Jean Georges.

Nicole and I grew further apart, civilly, in refinement and style, in intimate and golden snug décors with fresh yellow roses; at tables, shining with fine crystal and silverware, enjoying sautéed frogs’ legs dripping with brown butter and garlic, and pike quenelles in Champagne sauce; sharing bottles of Chateau La Mondotte Saint-Emilion 1996 or Chateau Lafite Rothschild Pauillac 1996.

We drank our wine with a slow, greedy, mirthless pleasure. Our pointless conversation resonated with inflated excitement about the promising future: purchasing a house in Montauk, overlooking the jagged cliffs and panoramic sea; returning to Harvard for a fellowship in cardiology; vacationing in Venice, where Nicole and I had hoped to go on our honeymoon; we wound up in Bermuda instead.

“So a house in Montauk would be perfect,” I said, repeating a now familiar phrase, as I stood by the kitchen counter one morning, sipping coffee. We both were already late for work. “We could rent the thing out for $20,000 a month during the season.”

Nicole listened with a mechanical interest, like a weary high school guidance counselor after a fatty lunch. She ate a piece of rye toast and reached for a glass of freshly squeezed orange juice. “Sure…why not. I know old Rod Evans would rent it from us. He’s always looking for a new place to take his Latino mistress. You should have heard him singing
Row, Row, Row Your Boat
, the other day in the courtroom.”

“What was that all about?”

“He’s crazy. Judge Waxler denied his Motion For Summary Judgment so he starting singing as loud as he could. He was terribly off key.”

I belted out an exaggerated laugh. But it was the first time Nicole and I had seen each other in three days. She’d been working on a trial and I had been to a medical seminar in Chicago.

“What did the judge do?”

“They’re old friends—probably old lovers. She told him to take singing lessons and to get his overweight ass out of her courtroom.”

I laughed again and so did Nicole, but during the entire conversation, our eyes had never met. We had become professionals at circumventing the approaching emotional storm.

I made some calls to doctor friends and got the name of a therapist, a Jungian. I was drinking too much wine and losing too much sleep. I knew I was in trouble. Nicole seemed to improve and become skilled at engaging in brilliant conversation about the insignificant. She didn’t enlighten. She didn’t provoke. She didn’t really say anything at all and yet, she could keep the dialogue going when I failed.

After a few sessions, I asked Nicole to join me, mostly at the therapist’s suggestion.

“Too busy right now, Alan,” she’d say, breezily, or in an urgent, preoccupied tone. “I’ll come when things settle down some at work. How’s it going?”

“…Good, I think.”

“Good…real good. You’ll work it all out, Alan. You’ve got that special kind of talent for things like that. All of our friends think you know exactly how to make these kinds of things enlightening.”

I had no idea what she meant, but it covered up our problems with the best damned manure a law degree could buy and I envied her for her ability.

I finally stopped asking her and I stopped the therapy. Nicole worked longer hours, and was made a partner.

As it turned out, Rita and I did celebrate Darla’s birthday together. It happened because of a party—a party given for Nicole by Walker Towne, the managing partner of Towne, Wilkes and Fried. Of course, I had been invited. It was held at his upper East Side suite, with a “breathtaking view.” Walker Towne, Nicole had often told me, “came from old money.”

That afternoon, black clouds swept in, lowering the sky, bringing a sharp wind and the promise of a chilly rain. When I left the office at 7:30, the rain was pouring down, filling every crack and crevice. The entire city seemed to have a terrible head cold. You could almost hear the buildings sniff and taxis sneeze as they raced by, their tires spraying water. Rain charged head on, like thin gray arrows, and the wind chopped and punched, as if daring you to swing at it. Dog poop melted on the sidewalks, umbrellas went for the eyes and the subway smelled of new urine and old ammonia.

The subway stalled and went out of service, leaving us poor slobs to search the drenching streets for a taxi. Fifteen minutes later, wet and agitated, I found one.

I stepped out of the cab at East 77
^th
Street and Park Avenue, and looked up at an impressive 25-story building. I started toward the front door, passing a tall, ponderous woman with poodle-like gray hair; she was walking two white prancing poodles, whose eyes were alight with authority and intelligence. A cleaned and pressed doorman in blue and white led me into a palatial lobby of polished brass, marble, gold leaf ceilings and glistening mirrors. Another blue and white uniform asked me for my name and whom I wanted to see.

“I’m here for the Towne party,” I answered, smugly.

The doorman directed me to the elevator operator. I was whooshed up to a top floor in seconds and found myself standing in the hallway, inhaling some kind of strange orange disinfectant. I strolled easily across the thick royal blue carpet and, as instructed, found a polished oak door and pressed the doorbell. The bolt slid off and the door opened. A tall, remarkably white man of perhaps 60 looked back at me. He wore a dark suit and tie and smiled thinly. His hair was silver and perfectly placed, eyes detached, stern mouth tight. There was no real friendliness about him and not much of anything else either; an animated mannequin, programmed for aloof service.

“How pretentious,” I thought, “hiring a butler for the night.” He ushered me into a broad foyer, peeled me out of my wet London Fog and took my dripping umbrella. He handed them off to a cold-looking coat check girl, with copper hair, who sniffed at my coat and then at me and the butler. She had a head cold.

With wet shoes and damp sticky socks, I followed him across the brown swirling pattern of the marble floor to the living room. It was grand and spacious, decorated in blues, greens, whites and burgundy. Guests had arrived and were grouped in twos and threes, lingering near the little oak bar, with its six wooden stools. A bartender, with I-don’t-give-a-damn stiff black hair, shook up Martinis, Bellinis and Cosmopolitans.

Designer furniture made of suede, leather and oak looked uncomfortable. Little colored silk pillows looked like big candies. There were modern paintings: water colors, oils, swirls of white, blue stripes and green circles; sculptures in white marble; marble and glass-topped coffee tables and stained glass windows.

The floors were polished hardwood and spotted with an occasional oriental rug. Plants bloomed everywhere, hung from the ceiling and skirting the French windows that overlooked Park Avenue. A white grand piano in the far corner of the room drew my eyes. Seated behind it was a prim and proper young man in a tux, playing waltzes, show tunes and Chopin. On the gleaming surface of the piano were photos—mostly of Walker, posing with various New York City dignitaries and the Governor of New York.