Читать книгу And Sons - David Gilbert - Страница 14

IT WAS WELL PAST EIGHT when I showed up at 2 East 70th Street carrying two suitcases and an old backpack, a weary traveler of twenty blocks. The doorman announced my arrival via intercom—“Philip Topping is here”—but the permission to rise took longer than was comfortable. I stood there, forcing a smile, thinking I should have called ahead and reconfirmed, while the doorman—Ron was his name—waited for the answer like a noncommissioned officer serving the higher ranks, prepared to stop even the best-dressed bullet. Across the street was the Frick, and I surveyed its exterior as if appreciating the opportunity to reacquaint myself with its architecture. Truth is, I’ve always loved the place, with its collection of Turners and Titians and Vermeers. It’s a grand home but a small museum, its economy multiplying its pleasure, much like a play without an intermission. Each visit yields a new favorite: Bellini’s St. Francis, I’ll think, then months later, no, no, no, El Greco’s Purification of the Temple. Right now Jan van Eyck’s Virgin and Child holds the title, its finely considered details, like the brocade Oriental carpet, the crisp backdrop of a cityscape, the blond Christ child with his round belly, like my own boy at that age, Ashley taking on the bodeful Mary role, they restore me. Art seems to be the only thing that makes me happy nowadays—happy being the wrong word, less miserable, perhaps. Staring at that van Eyck I can feel my eyes peering into the murk of creation, at the glimmer down near the lower depths. We all live. We all die. Even the great ones. Funny how that can be a comfort. The shifty-looking donor in the painting might as well be me. Tonight the Frick was in party mode. Town cars shadowed the properly parked Civics and Corollas, and a clutch of young smokers clouded the front door, costumed in high Belle Époque style: men in top hats and waistcoats, long white gloves for the ladies in silk evening dresses trimmed with embroidery and a velvet fringe. I was once one of these people. I hate them now.

After seven minutes Doorman Ron got the okay and let me up.

“Thank you,” I said.

I would have waited a month.

The Dyers had lived here for as long as I could remember, a sprawling duplex on the sixth and seventh floors; the elevator opened onto a private vestibule, the orchid-themed wallpaper losing its hold along the edges, like a slow change of seasons. Before I could decide between knocking and ringing, the front door swung open and there was Gerd Sanning. Her grin was both polite and distrustful, like a character in an Ibsen play receiving an unexpected visitor. “Mr. Topping,” she said.

“Please, Gerd, call me Philip. It’s been a long time.”

“Yes, yes, yes,” she said, flushed. “Sorry to keep you waiting.” She was dressed in a white T-shirt and pajama bottoms, obviously ready for bed, though I always imagined her sleeping in the nude, on a bed of straw. Gerd was in her late thirties, blond and blue-eyed, of solid proportions, hardly a curve on that slab, yet despite this, she managed a sneaky allure, as if within that plain box lay a wonderful ergonomic piece of Scandinavian design. She had begun her career as the baby nurse for Andy but then evolved into nanny, into cook, into secretary, and finally into official woman of the house, a sort of secular feminine spirit. At Buckley she attended every one of Andy’s school functions: the plays, the performances, the athletic events, even the parent-teacher conferences. “She might as well be the mother,” Andrew insisted, all matter, no fact. I think this employed maternity made Andy self-conscious, and brought up the question, What did she do for love and what did she do for money? Was there a line? The feudalism of fourth grade in fifth gives way to latent capitalism.

“I’m sorry to hear about your father,” Gerd said.

“Thank you.”

“He was a very nice man.”

We walked into the main entry. The parquet floor was long neglected, strips of wood cracked or missing, loosened by that first set of heavy-footed sons. I saw the curving staircase that stood in my mind as a prop for a series of stuntman falls, Jamie throwing himself down with annihilating grace—backward, forward, shot, stabbed—until Richard came along one day and decided to ride him like a sled and busted Jamie’s chin on the bottom. I tried to recall when I was here last. Twenty years ago? Nothing much had changed except for the added burden of time, which colored the atmosphere with uncertain guilt, the furniture sitting about like characters in an Agatha Christie mystery. The divan in the living room looked particularly suspicious. We all know how memories of a place can tower over us but when revisited decades later might barely reach our knees, yet here was the opposite effect: what once struck me as normal-size now struck me as grand. Upstairs had four bedrooms with three bathrooms and an attic’s worth of closets, while downstairs had a living room, an eat-in kitchen, a maid’s room, where Gerd lived, a pantry that led into a dining room, and finally, down a short hall with a bathroom on one side and a wet bar on the other, behind a thick mahogany door, A. N. Dyer’s inner sanctum, with wood paneling and built-in bookcases, an Aubusson rug, two club chairs posed around a fireplace, and an old partner’s desk, all these things conjured by his mother, who closed her eyes around the fantasy of being a writer and decorated the room accordingly. The apartment was her wedding present to Andrew and Isabel.

“Is he around?” I asked Gerd, peering down that hall.

“Yes, but he’s working.”

Did she notice the change in my posture, like a dog listening for his master?

“He doesn’t like to be disturbed when he’s working,” she told me.

“Of course. I understand. I’m the same way with my writing.”

“He’s been working very hard lately. Too hard, if you ask me.”

“Really?”

“He barely eats, barely bathes, barely leaves his desk. I’m forbidden from entering. I hate to think of the mess in there, and the smell. I’ve been trying to get him out and about, especially with Andy home, but he refuses, just stays in that room, typing away, even sleeps in there.”

I was intrigued.

“If he refuses to see you, don’t take it personally.”

“I won’t.”

“Also if he gets mean for no good reason.”

Gerd led me upstairs to my room. What with the late hour and with A. N. Dyer locked away in his study, my gothic mind imagined her ascending those steps with a torch in hand. I recalled the second-floor hallway as being chockablock with family photos, thanks to Isabel and her ever-present camera: Richard and Jamie hung salon-style, babies, teenagers, toddlers, on vacation, during holidays, the summers on the beach, the winters on the slopes, Andrew and Isabel making their rare appearance, Andrew always posing like his author’s photo, as if he had only one look to give. I even had a place up there, posing with Jamie at our Exeter graduation, the two of us buddied together without conviction. Between the tremor of my smile, the fire of my acne, the tidal wave of my hair, I resembled the Lisbon earthquake, whereas Jamie was Candide. But I was touched to be included. Or once included. Only their silhouettes remained. Isabel must’ve taken them.

I asked if Andy was here.

“No,” Gerd said, sounding pained, “he’s met a girl.”

“I think I’ve met this girl. Jeanie Something,” though I knew Spokes.

“She’s older,” Gerd mentioned.

“I know.”

“Not sure if I trust her.”

“Luckily Andy’s not looking to invest money with her.”

Gerd stopped in front of Richard’s old room. “I hope this is all right.”

It was scrubbed of all things Richard except for the bureau, which was almost entirely spackled in Wacky Pack stickers. I gently recalled the era of Crust Tooth Paste and Rinkled Wrap Aluminum Fool. It was like a piece of folk art.

“This used to be my room,” Gerd told me, “before Andy got older. He had terrible night terrors as a boy. Wake up shrieking and I’d have to run in and try to settle him down. He also sleepwalked, or crawled, like he was looking for something, something tiny but important, like a screw. He still does that, rarely now, thank goodness, but if you see him on his hands and knees just guide him back toward his room.” As she talked, Gerd struck me as someone too accustomed to the whims of man, like Eve if she had arrived in Eden first and formed Adam from her own rib, but after a few weeks Adam abandoned her, and so she offered up another rib, without condition, and soon enough this second Adam disappeared as well, and so another rib was plucked and she stooped a little bit further hoping this one might take. She asked if I needed help unpacking.

“I’m good, thanks.”

“Well, good night then,” she said, tugging at her fingers.

I know some biographers—actually just one in particular and hardly a biographer but rather an opportunist who has spun herself intimate with this tale, which, while technically true, is true in the way the evidence of wind can be gathered by its effect on trees without ever stepping outside and feeling its force against your cheek, yet this person, watching from her closed window, wants you to imagine Gerd Sanning and A. N. Dyer intertwined in storm and stress, all because they lived under the same roof for all those years. But Gerd Sanning was no concubine. Her part in this tale is a hundred times more interesting.

After squaring away my clothes, I washed up and peeked into Jamie’s old room. Most of the furniture was gone, replaced by cardboard file boxes piled high and arranged with an almost Stonehengean precision, as if on certain days the afternoon sunlight explained their meaning. While I was curious what was inside—there must have been fifty of them—I refrained from looking, but I did notice a specific year written on the side of each, the years stretching over six decades. I turned off the lights. I noticed that those glow-in-the-dark stars were still stuck to the ceiling, its Milky Way spelling FUCK YOU.

I went downstairs under the guise of a drink of water. The kitchen was one of those New York kitchens that predate the use of stainless steel and marble, and seem, in their lapsed luxury, almost quaint, as if a butter churn could have been in the corner. I opened a cabinet and found a glass, opened the fridge and found a pitcher, poured, and as I performed this basic task I suffered a brief but intense moment of crisis, puzzling over what I was doing here and what I had done, panging for my wife and kids, mourning for my father and his long-drawn-out death, missing my mother, cringing over Bea, absurd Bea, my huge screw-up, in general indulging in a wave of hopelessness and helplessness, the everythinglessness of my current existence. I thought about calling a friend, but it was late and being separated from my wife I suddenly realized my woeful lack of social connections. It was a pitiful drink of water.

As I stepped back into the vestibule an inevitable force drew me down the short hall toward the closed door. I could hear the typewriter going, the keys never pausing, like how writers write in the movies, typing and typing, never napping between sentences, or staring at their own faces in the mirror, or picking up random books and reading random passages, feeling briefly inspired and then mortally defeated. The temptation to knock was undone when I touched the door and sensed the heat of my own infatuation. Step away, Philip, the great man knows you’re here, and obviously he has no desire to greet you. Either way I had no problem being the eavesdropper, imagining in that persistent clatter the opening lines to Ampersand:

An alarm sounded, shrill and insistent, and we boys of Moulder rushed from our rooms for the nearest exit and once outside lined up as a rank shadow of our dormed self. Some had smudged burnt cork on their faces though they didn’t extend the theatrics by coughing. Absolute silence was the rule. Others, athletes mostly, imagined themselves caught mid-shower and emerged fully lathered and covered in just a towel. Newbies were forced to brave the outdoors in skivvies alone. As always, a few glum students recused themselves from all comedy. I myself wore my father’s WWII gasmask, a prized possession rarely employed for its original use. Then there were Stimpson, Harfield, Matthews, and Rogin, our prefects, their names already incorporated into Shearing legend. They stood at attention in front of their command with smoke billowing from their blazers. They were men on fire if fire were the most casual of elements. I remember thinking those smoke bombs in their pockets would ruin their clothes, and I think that’s what impressed us most, their absolute dedication. Willetts the dorm master called roll. He refused to acknowledge the joke, as he did every year, a sign of his high good humor, and with all present and accounted for, he dismissed us with a limp salute. Thus ended the first fire drill of the school year.

I heard my name and for a moment wondered if A. N. Dyer had set an elaborate trap to catch me spying. I turned. It was just Andy home for the night. “I didn’t know if I should interrupt,” I tried to explain.

“He wouldn’t hear you anyway,” he said, grabbing at his pants like an overgrown toddler.

“Oh.”

“So you’re actually staying?”

“Not for long.”

“Like upstairs?”

“You’ll hardly know I’m there.”

I followed him back into the main entry. His shirttail was untucked in a sort of a preppy mullet, and I wanted to reach forward and give his shoulders an affectionate squeeze, like any old teacher or family friend, to break through the distance and reconfirm our shared past. But his posture did not invite easy companionship. He seemed a veteran of—I don’t know, adolescence, I suppose, which like all wars is particular to the combatant. I was closest with Andy when he was in my class, a sincere boy filled with nervous tics, always fiddling his fingers, always squinting even though he had perfect vision. Can you see this? I was always asking him. For most of fifth grade his number-one priority was learning how to juggle, which he did to stunning effect, thanks in part to my encouragement (I bought him these special beanbag balls). His blend of awkward grace and extroverted shyness led you to believe he might have a career in mime. As a teacher I was perhaps guilty of favoring him over the others. I gave him extra help and provided him with those spiral notebooks made for lefties and in general took on the role of father figure, since I knew his own father was not in tune with normal boyhood concerns. In some ways I was his best friend. Then he moved on to sixth grade and fell in love with Mrs. Hawes. They all fall in love with Mrs. Hawes.

“Did you really get fired from Buckley? I mean that’s what I heard tonight.”

It was obvious that Andy had been drinking.

“Sort of,” I said.

“Why?”

“Sometimes you become unmoored.”

“I heard it was a girl.”

“A woman,” I countered.

“And she like worked at J.Crew.”

I imagined the New York Post publishing my daily humiliations.

“Sounds totally excellent,” Andy said, swaying.

I tried changing the subject. “How about you? How’s Exeter?”

“Was she cute?”

“The woman?”

“Yeah.”

“Sure, she was cute,” though cute was hardly the word unless used sardonically, like when Bea tied a necktie around my balls and asked if she should blow my nose. In that way, yes, she was cute. Very cute. But more than anything I was in terrible awe of her vampish, almost anachronistic youth, like a silent film star straddling me with her eyes. The truth is, sex can make you fall in love. It might not be the deepest love imaginable, but it’s the kind of love I can grasp with both hands, even as I’m sinking. “What house are you in?” I asked, trying to steer Andy back to Exeter.

“She live nearby?”

I can’t say I enjoyed the direction of this conversation.

“I’m not really sure,” I said. She lived in Staten Island.

“And which J.Crew?”

“Um.”

“Were you like her best client? Are there like a hundred pairs of chinos in your closet?”