Westlake, Donald E - Novel 42 (11 page)

           
It is still very possible that this
whole thing will blow up in my face, and I’ll lose everything: thrown out by
Ginger, no more editorial conferences, and
The Christmas Book
at the
mercy of an editor who hates me.

           
In the meantime, before disaster
comes—if disaster is to come—Vickie and I are averaging three conferences a
week. She likes variety, Vickie does, drama, sweat, agony, fireworks,
sequential explosions. And then I come home to Ginger, who expects to be
treated like the girl I left my wife for. It takes it out of you. I mean it.

           
I just delivered The Christmas Book\

           
Five days early!

           
Just this week I got my final little
cluster of submissions, and they were all fine, and they brought the book up to
a size where any more would be too much of a muchness, so I closed the giant
doors. And the last through were some of the best.

           
Roddy McDowells lovely pictures of
celebrities giving their children Christmas presents, for instance, which
arrived just barely in time for inclusion, makes a very nice counterpoint right
after Buckleys “Floating Celebration.” (Even Mary couldn’t find anything
negative to say about those photos.) And until Paul Theroux sent in his grim
and nasty piece about having a nervous breakdown alone in a motel room on
Christmas Eve, far from one’s family, I hadn’t had anything that really
wonderfully
followed Dickens’s “A Christmas Carol.”

           
As for leading
in
to “A
Christmas Carol,” I had originally planned to use Galbraith’s
childhood-in-Canada reminiscence, but the Ann Beattie story I now have is much
better for the job. In it, a young woman goes to three households on Christmas
afternoon: her ex-husband’s, who is married to a woman with two children and a
St. Bernard; her current boyfriend’s, he being a junior college English teacher
endlessly planning to go live in Mexico; and her parents’, they being retired
but unwilling to move to Florida until they can believe their daughter is
“settled.” The story is called “Lies.”

           
Let’s see; what else? Russell Baker
sent along a deceptively slight piece about the Christmas presents given and
received during each of the Seven Ages of Man. It’s funny and well observed,
but also surprisingly sad when you stop to think about it. And from Calvin
Trillin an oddity, a parody of a
New Yorker-sty\e
local journalism
piece, the kind of thing where
The New Yorker
goes to somewhere in South
Dakota or North Carolina and does an in-depth but oblique piece about some
fierce local controversy. In this one—“Journal: Bethlehem”—there are interviews
with innkeepers and shepherds and Roman soldiers and the local gossipmonger,
all on the ostensible subject of Herod’s census but somehow circling around and
around the birth of Christ. It’s nicely done, but the strange thing is, of
course, that Calvin Trillin himself is the one who does those things in
The
New Yorker.
It isn’t often a man parodies himself (at least not
consciously), but I must say he did it well.

           
As for Mailer and Capote and their
Death Row pieces, about a month ago I wrote both of them explaining the problem
and saying that, while very different, both pieces were wonderful, and I would
like their permission to run them both, with an editorial comment from me about
how these two items show how
individual
true genius is. I said I wanted
to run them one after the other—in my format they’ll be about three pages
each—either in alphabetical order or with their position determined by the toss
of a coin or whatever method they would prefer.

           
Well. Both writers immediately
telephoned
me—an
experience,
let me tell you—demanding to see the
other guy’s work. I sent out Xeroxes with a request for a fast reading, and
early this week I got approval from both; apparently, neither of them feels
terribly threatened by the other. Capote did insist on alphabetical order,
while Mailer suggested a refinement I rather like, which is to run the pieces
together
,
on facing pages, with slightly different typefaces. So that’s what I’m doing,
with my own introductory comments on a right-hand page followed by six pages of
their work, with Capote’s piece on the left sides (to give him alphabetical
precedence). A skimmer who reads it all as one six-page Death Row article will
probably come away crosseyed, but that’s okay.

           
With luck, this turning
,in
of the manuscript will bring to an end, or at least give
temporary respite from, another problem that’s been getting increasingly
tricky; namely, Ginger’s desire to give dinner to my editor and her boyfriend.
I’ve been stalling and dancing on that one, not even mentioning it to Vickie,
although of course I do realize the eventual meeting is inevitable.

           
(Speaking of food and Vickie, while
I am continuing to lose weight—nine pounds these last six weeks—Vickie is
absolutely blooming. There had originally been a boniness about her that
reminded me a little too specifically of the narrow-eyed lady waiting for me at
home, but in the last few weeks she’s become sleeker, just a bit fuller all
over.)

           
In any event, after delivering the
book I came home to find Lance already back from work (yes, he’s still here,
dammit; almost two weeks now), and he helped me shlep all the rest of the
Christmas
Book
materials out of the bedroom and pile them in one corner of my office,
near his cartons of stereo equipment and framed transparencies from
Fantasia.
Then he bathed in Brut and polished his bald spot to a high gloss and went
hopefully out to a party (I’m using
hopefully
correctly there; hope I
didn’t confuse you). And now I’m waiting for Ginger to try on every garment she
owns before we go out for our celebratory the-book-is-done-and-we’ve-
spent-the-advance dinner.

           
I wonder what I’ll do next.

           
LANCE and I are both in the doghouse
with Ginger. What happened was
,
we got drunk.
“Stinking drunk,” in Ginger’s felicitous and original phrase.

           
We have just had a long weekend,
yesterday being Memorial Day, and long weekends are
hell
on separated
daddies. You don’t have the kids Saturday and Sunday, you have the kids
Saturday and Sunday
and Monday.
They’ve seen the Central Park Zoo and
the Bronx Zoo, they’ve seen the
Empire
State
Building
and the
World
Trade
Center
and the Statue of Liberty. The
Staten Island
ferry has ceased to enchant. Strolling
around quaint neighborhoods like
Chinatown
and
Greenwich Village
is something your native
New York
kid
never
wants to do. Movies are
over in less than two hours, and there you are on the sidewalk, and
now
what the hell?

           
To complicate matters, I now seem to
have four weekend children instead of the standard two. Lance used to come
obediently and take his away on Saturday and return them on Sunday, like
everybody else, but now that he’s living in the goddam apartment he no longer
has to visit his children, so he doesn’t. Also, the weekend is the best time
for his two searches: an apartment, and a woman. It doesn’t seem right to leave
Joshua and Gretchen home alone when every other middle-class child in
New York
is out being entertained by daddy, so I’ve
been bringing them along; the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens on Saturday to see the
spring flowers, and the Cloisters on Sunday, because we hadn’t been there for a
while.

           
Yesterday, Monday, the traditional
Memorial Day itself, I took the kids to lunch in a Columbus Avenue fern bar and
then we walked down to one of the small movie houses near Lincoln Center to see
some raunchy R-rated French film the kids wouldn’t be allowed admittance to
without the presence of a consenting adult, but when we got there that showing
was sold out and there was no other movie in the neighborhood they all wanted
to see. My capacity for invention had just reached overload, so we stood around
on the sidew
^r
alk until Jennifer took pity on me and said, “Let’s go
home and play Uno.”
\'7bHome
has become a strange and slippery word
these days, impossible to define except in context; in the circumstances of
that moment, by “home” Jennifer meant my place on
West End Avenue
rather than her place on
17th Street
, which everyone else automatically
understood.)

           
So we went home, and Lance was
there, wandering around stripped to the waist; which I thought was inappropriate.
“I thought you were going apartment-hunting,” I said.

           
“I’ve been,” he told me. “No luck. I
thought you were taking the kids to the movies.”

           
I explained our misfortune, and went
on to the bedroom to change out of my jacket, where I found Ginger, in a thoroughly
bad mood for some reason, dressed in her robe and stripping the bed. “If you’re
going to change your
plans,”
she said, “I wish you’d tell me. I intended
to get a lot of cleaning done around here today.”

           
“The movie was sold out.”

           
Ginger banged open both bedroom
windows. “Well, get out of
here”
she said. “I have to air this place
out.”

           
“It is a little musty,” I agreed.

           
“
Out
.”

           
Back in the living room, Lance
apparently was feeling some belated sense of parental responsibility, because,
having put a shirt on, he offered to join our little group and—since Ginger
was, through various crashing noises deeper in the apartment, making it clear
she didn’t want any of us around right now—he even had a suggestion: “Let’s go
over to the park and do a little touch football, the Patchetts against the
Diskants.”

           
Everybody
thought that was a
great idea. Bryan went to help Joshua clamber through his closet until he found
his football, which was only slightly soft, and then we six left Ginger to her
cleaning and her bad temper as we made our way eastward across 70th Street to
Central Park, tossing the football back and forth along the way.

           
With frequent hilarity and many
pauses and breaks and a few sidetrips to snack bars, we played a ridiculous
game of touch football until nearly four-thirty. The Diskants won, eighty-four
to thirty—we weren’t doing extra points— primarily because every time Lance
passed to Gretchen the ball was intercepted by Jennifer, who is very lithe and
quick, with long skinny arms and the true competitive spirit. Gretchen began to
look a little teary after a while, her underlip receding, so once or twice in
our Diskant huddle I suggested to Jennifer she ease off the pressure, let
Gretchen catch a pass or two—we did have a comfortable lead, after all—but
Jennifer simply couldn’t stop herself. Finally I deliberately threw a bad pass
that
Gretchen
could intercept, and she ran with it for her only
touchdown of the afternoon, which was enough to lift her spirits quite a bit.

           
Back at the apartment, there was a
note from Ginger that she’d gone out shopping. I had to take my kids home,
Gretchen and Joshua immediately plunked themselves in front of the television
set, and Lance volunteered to come along “for the ride,” adding, “In fact,
since my team lost, I’ll spring for a cab.”

           
“You’re on,” I said, and the
children cheered.

           
The main reason I was pleased to
have Lance along was as some protection from Mary, whose topics of conversation
are invariably trouble. There’s her career in photography, there’s the subject
of my moving back, there’s the childrens’ emotional condition, but the worst of
all is sex.

           
This is increasing. Is it because
she has no other sex life since I left?
(More
guilt.)
Whatever the reason, we’ve reached the point now where every time she sees me
she has another sexual encounter to describe, with friend or stranger. She
can’t take a subway without some man rubbing an erection against her. She can’t
go to a party without at least one male acquaintance subtly sliding his knee
between her legs. She can’t make a phone call or a purchase without somebody
talking dirty to her.

           
I find all this disturbing. Well,
naturally I do, because Mary is technically still my wife, after all, and
nobody wants his woman—or his former woman—treated basely. But more than that,
I don’t want Mary
telling
me about it. She describes exactly the way it
feels to be rubbed against in the subway, and how she knows the guy has had an
ejaculation. She can remember every double entendre, every obscene gesture,
every
excuse this fellow or that fellow makes for touching
her breast or her thigh or her behind. She never expresses an opinion about all
this, never lets me guess if it frightens or angers or arouses her, but merely
describes
it all, as though she found it quite interesting and was sure I would, too.

           
I don’t. Or, sometimes, I do, but
that’s worse. Of
course
I could go to bed with Mary, I know that, but
then what? The whole point is
,
I’ve
left
,
right? She’s supposed to find a fella, get on with her life,
ease
my financial burden. We’re separated, apart, it’s
over
, she isn’t
supposed to look at me calmly with her clear blue eyes and tell me all these
sex scenes. One way and another, it’s, well, upsetting.

           
So that’s why I was glad to have
Lance along, which worked fairly well up to a point. That is, at least Mary
didn’t tell me about anybody coming in her pocket. She simply offered us
coffee, which we both refused, but then she settled down to chat anyway, saying
to Lance, “I understand you’ve moved back home.”

           
“Well, not exactly,” he said,
grinning and looking uncomfortable. “You know about
Helena
. ...”

           
“She went away, didn’t she?”

           
“To
Santa Fe
,” I said. For some reason, the choice of
city still offended me.

           
“So you had to go home,” Mary
finished.

           
“I’m looking for a new place,” Lance
told her.
“Something small.
Just a one-bedroom is all
I need. If you hear of anything—”

           
“I’ll be sure to call,” Mary
promised. To me, she said, “Tom, do you want to stay to dinner?”

           
She said that every time, ritually,
and every time I gave her
back
the same ritual
response: “No, thanks, I’ve got to get back uptown.”

           
“With Lance up there,” she said,
going beyond ritual, “I thought you might be more comfortable down here.”

           
Quickly, Lance said, “I’m going out
for dinner. I don’t, uh, I don’t really
live
there.”

           
“No, he doesn’t,” I said. “He just
sort of sleeps there.
In the office.”

           
“Just until I can
find an apartment.”

           
“Tom? You don’t have an office? How
do you work?” “I’m set up in the bedroom.
It’s
fine,”
I said, annoyed to hear myself protesting too much.

           
“And it is only temporary,” Lance
said, also protesting too much.

           
“Very temporary,” I protested.

           
“I’ll be out of there any day now,”
Lance protested. Before we became totally absurd, I stood and said, “I’ve
really got to get uptown.”

           
“Me, too,” Lance said. But then he
couldn’t resist adding, “Uh, a different part of uptown.”

           
Mary walked us to the apartment
door, and as we were leaving she said, “Tom, if you need an office, your room
is still here, you know. You could come down and work any time.
Until Lance finds an apartment.
Just
temporarily.”
Was she making fun of us? I decided to take it straight.
“Thanks for the offer,” I said. “I appreciate it.”

           
Down on the sidewalk, Lance sighed
and looked gloomy and said, “Mary still wants you, you know.”

           
“Noticed that, did you?”

           
“It’s nice to have somebody want
you,” he said.
“Whether you want them or not.”

           
“Rough out there, huh?”

           
“Oh, you don’t know, Tom,” he said,
shaking his head. “You just don’t know. And this last weekend,
Jesus.
The bitches I stand around talking to.”

           
“Let’s have a drink,” I said.

           
Lance perked up a little at that, so
we went over to Sixth Avenue and turned south and entered a bar, where we had a
drink and Lance said, “I’m not a teenager any more, Tom, I don’t like these
goddam mating rituals. With Helena, I already knew her, I was leaving Ginger
anyway, or she was leaving me, she’d already started on the side, you know . .
. . ”

           
“Absolutely not,” I said. “Lance,
it’s water under the bridge, doesn’t matter any more, but I absolutely swear
you were already out of the house when Ginger and I got together
. ”

           
“Oh, not you,” he said, shrugging it
away. “There were a couple of other guys before.”

           
“Oh.” I hadn’t known about that.

           
“The point is,” he said, “I was
never in this goddam undignified position of
hunting
for a
woman.
It was all kind of like a square dance, everybody just moved one step over.”

           
“Except Mary,” I said bitterly.

           
He looked surprised. “That’s right,
isn’t it? She never got hooked up with anybody else.”

           
We were both silent then a minute,
and I knew we were both thinking the same thought: Was Mary the solution to
Lance’s problem? Was Lance the solution to
my
problem?