Bright, Precious Days

46

WHETHER OUT OF FINANCIAL DISTRESS or a desire not to appear extravagant in the midst of the crisis, many companies and individuals were scaling back or canceling their holiday festivities, leaving thousands of waiters and cooks and bartenders and coat checkers idle. The panhandlers, who’d almost disappeared from the city streets in recent years, seemed to multiply overnight, and the importunate year-end letters from nonprofit organizations to their patrons manifested a shrill, apocalyptic tone. When, two weeks before Christmas, a prominent money manager confessed that his business was a fifty-billion-dollar Ponzi scheme, half a dozen charities were forced to close their doors, and thousands of New Yorkers discovered that their wealth was illusory. What made this story so resonant was the widespread suspicion that it was emblematic of the economy in general, that the financial markets were houses of cards, built on sand.

Russell had his own liquidity crisis. The spike in sales on Jack’s book was staving off the inevitable, but McCane, Slade was still foundering. If he didn’t buy any books, and didn’t pay himself, he would just have enough money to meet the January payroll, and then, if he didn’t find a buyer or an infusion of capital, he’d have to declare bankruptcy. In the wake of the crisis, Corbin, Dern’s interest in buying the company had evaporated, despite Washington’s best efforts. At this moment, no one was sure what anything was worth.

His emotional coffers were similarly dry. His discussions with Corrine always ended at the same impasse. He’d endured two sessions of marriage counseling before bailing; the more she told him, the less he felt inclined to forgive her. Thanksgiving and Christmas, fraught as they were with emotional significance, required some sort of détente and accommodation, although Russell wasn’t ready to perpetrate the illusion of normalcy, or to be alone with Corrine and their kids. For the moment, Storey and Jeremy were shuttling between the loft and Casey’s town house, and they were both showing the strain. After a series of complex negotiations, it was decided that Corrine would take Storey and Jeremy to her mother’s for Thanksgiving, while Russell joined the Lee clan in their loft, where, with his best friend, he watched the Tennessee Titans annihilate the Detroit Lions.

“Jack would’ve been pleased,” Russell said afterward. “He was a big Titans fan.”

“Was there ever a memorial service?”

“I was thinking about organizing something in the spring,” Russell said. “A reading, maybe. Nobody else seems to be stepping up. Of course, there’s no money for that at the moment.”

After the feast, Washington suggested they cut through the ensuing torpor by taking a walk.

“How’d you like a partner?” Washington asked as he lit a cigarette just outside the door of his building.

“Like a drowning man would like a rope.”

“I had a little windfall.”

“You’re saying that you personally want to be my partner?”

He nodded, exhaling a vast cloud of smoke.”

“What kind of windfall?” Russell asked.

“I shorted the market back in September.”

“And you’re just telling me this now?”

“It’s unseemly to flaunt your Kiton suit when everyone around you is losing his shirt. Also, it would look really bad if it got out that my biggest short was Lehman Brothers.”

Russell had no idea how one shorted a stock, or even, exactly, what it meant, but Washington had always had a great head for business. “Jesus, that’s rich. And Veronica doesn’t know?”

“What do you think?”

“You’d really do this?”

“It’s not like I’m giving you the money. It’s an investment. Publishing’s my business. I already did the due diligence for Corbin, Dern, and I know you’re a great publisher. It’ll be like old times, chief, and I expect an excellent return on my investment.”

“I’m not sure you realize how much I need. It’s gotten worse since you saw those numbers.”

“I’m willing to kick in five large.”

“Five hundred thousand?”

Wash nodded.

“Holy shit, really? That could get me through to the summer. What kind of piece would you want?”

“We can work that out later,” he said.

“I don’t know what to say.”

“Let’s not get all sentimental here,” Washington said, taking a last drag from his cigarette. “It’s an investment.”

If only his domestic crisis had a comparable resolution, Russell thought. Christmas remained a dilemma, the negotiations fraught. “I don’t understand why we can’t all be together,” Jeremy had said on several occasions. He refused to accompany Russell and Storey on the search for a Christmas tree. Storey did her best to act as if nothing was really amiss, but as the weeks of separation dragged on, she seemed to grow weary of the effort, becoming increasingly withdrawn and sullen. Finally it was agreed that Corrine and the kids would spend Christmas Eve together with Casey and her daughter at the Reyneses’ town house. The young Calloways would be dropped off at the loft Christmas morning to spend the day with Russell, and on the day after, Corrine and the kids would drive up to Stockbridge to spend a few days with Corrine’s mother.

Two days before Christmas, Hilary called to thank Russell for helping her get the job at HBO. She’d come by a couple of times lately, watching the kids when Russell needed a sitter. He asked her about her Christmas plans.

“Don’t have any,” she said.

“You’re not going up to see your mother?”

“We’re not exactly getting along at the moment. I’ll just stay home, watch It’s a Wonderful Life and drink myself senseless.”

“You’re welcome to come here,” Russell said. Over the past few weeks, he’d found that he actually enjoyed her company. She’d picked the kids up at school several times and stayed for supper afterward. As different as she was from Corrine, she was a kind of surrogate for her sister.

“Really?” she said. “Actually, that would be great.”

After he hung up, he realized that Corrine would probably be furious when she found out that Hilary was spending Christmas with him and the kids, which made the idea all the more appealing.

—

“So what’s the plan?” Storey asked, after they’d been dropped off at the loft on Christmas morning.

“Presents,” Jeremy said, pointing at the pile under the tree.

“Well, yes, presents. And then I’m cooking a goose for the carnivores and a Tofurkey for our resident vegetarian.”

“Gross,” said Jeremy.

“What’s gross,” Storey said, “is slaughtering innocent animals when there are lots of humane, nonanimal sources of protein and fat.”

Russell shrugged and said, “Aunt Hilary’s going to join us.”

“Really?”

“Is that okay?”

“That seems kind of weird,” Storey said. “I mean, it’s Christmas.”

“Well, she is family.”

“I like her,” Jeremy said.

“Does Mom know about this?” Storey asked.

Russell couldn’t help being surprised that Storey was suddenly looking out for her mother’s interests, after being instrumental in her exposure.

“I haven’t mentioned it to her, no.”

“I don’t think she’ll like it.”

He almost said “Tough luck,” but thought better of it. “Well, I don’t suppose she has to know.”

“It would’ve been nice if you’d talked to us first.”

“She called to see how you guys were and sounded kind of lonely. I thought it was the right thing to do. As you yourself pointed out, honey, it is Christmas.”

“Fine,” Storey said as Jeremy rummaged under the tree for his presents.

—

Hilary arrived at five, wearing a Santa hat and bearing gifts. Underneath her coat she was wearing a short red dress with white faux-fur trim.

“I wanted to look festive,” she said.

“I’d say you succeeded,” Russell said.

Storey was decidedly chilly in her greeting, while her brother seemed determined to make up for his sister’s reserve.

Russell opened a bottle of champagne, giving each of the kids a small glass. Storey had no choice but to turn civil after opening her aunt’s present — a pink ensemble from Juicy Couture — but both she and Jeremy became mute at the dinner table, and Russell felt that his attempt to conduct a pleasant conversation wasn’t succeeding in convincing anyone that this was just another Christmas. After dinner, both kids seemed to welcome his reading from “A Child’s Christmas in Wales,” a Calloway Christmas ritual that went back as far as either could remember, but after fifteen minutes Jeremy stood up and said, “Mom should be here,” before retreating to his room. Storey, at least, had waited till the end of the reading before leaving the two adults and retreating to her room.

“Well, you tried,” Hilary said as Russell poured more wine into her glass.

“It wasn’t that bad, was it?”

“Not for me. For them, though, it’s heartbreaking. They’ll never be okay with you and Corrine not being together.”

“They’re probably going to have to get used to it.”

“Oh, come on. Get over yourself. You think you’re the first husband who’s been cheated on? It happens every day. Wives are supposed to get over it somehow, but when husbands get cuckolded, it’s like the laws of nature have been suspended. With you guys, it’s all about pride.

“You know, I’m kind of an expert on affairs,” she continued, “if I do say so myself. And if there’s one thing I can say with certainty, it’s that if somebody cheats, it’s usually because the other party isn’t giving them what they need. Think about it, Russell. Have you been there for Corrine? Have you been taking care of her needs?”

“If you mean sex, things were fine between us,” he said, immediately registering how hollow it sounded.

“I’m not talking about sex. When a woman goes looking outside the home, she’s looking more for seduction and understanding. She wants to be desired, not just used.”

“And you’re saying I used Corrine?”

“I’m saying it’s something for you to think about. It’s not just about having sex every few weeks.”

“This was a long-term thing; it happened over a couple of years.”

“Maybe you had your head up your ass for a couple of years. Wake up, Russell. Can’t you just forgive her?”

“I don’t know. I’d like to, maybe, but so far I can’t. She lied to me.”

“You’re being such a hypocrite. It’s not like you haven’t cheated on her.”

“Who says I did?”

“You’re saying you never cheated on her?”

He saw no reason to confess to Hilary. “No.”

“Jesus, Russell. What about that banker chick you worked with on your stupid leveraged buyout? And then there was that girl who worked for you, the one who confronted you at Talese’s Christmas party.”

Russell couldn’t believe she knew about these prehistoric transgressions — couldn’t believe that Corrine had confided in her. It felt like yet another betrayal.

“That’s ancient history.”

“And then there was your jaunt to Madam Gretchen’s house a few months ago. So let’s not get too righteous here. She doesn’t even know about that one, but she told me about the others. Maybe she forgave you, but that doesn’t mean she forgot. The point is, she let you off the fucking hook. So maybe you should just get over yourself and think about doing the same for her.”

—

While he called a car for her, she said good night to the kids, who were sprawled on the bed in Jeremy’s room, watching A Christmas Story.

Perhaps it was the influence of a not inconsiderable amount of champagne, but his good-night kiss must have been more intimate than Hilary might have expected from her brother-in-law, because she pushed him away gently, saying, “That’s enough of that.”

When he returned to Jeremy’s room, Ralphie had just opened his yearned-for Red Ryder BB gun.

“Mind if join you?”

He took the silence as assent.

“This is, like, the crappiest Christmas ever,” Jeremy eventually said.

“Sorry, guys.”

“It’s not Dad’s fault.” Storey said.

“I don’t care whose fault it is,” Jeremy said. “I’m mad at Mom and Dad.”

—

Washington made his investment through an LLC formed specifically for the purchase of part of McCane, Slade. They signed the papers on January 13 in Washington’s lawyer’s office, and afterward walked a few blocks south, bundled against the cold, to the Old Town Bar, a former hangout from the old days, where they’d once plotted to take over Corbin, Dern, their erstwhile employer, with borrowed money.

“When I saw the name you used,” Russell said, “I have to say, it aroused my suspicions. Art and Love, LLC?”

“That’s your shtick, isn’t it? An homage to your big theory about the two teams in life. Love and Art, Power and Money. We’re the former, right? What’s to be suspicious?”

“I don’t know. For some reason, I thought I sensed the hand of my wife. Did she, by any chance, give you the money?”

“Where would Corrine find a half mil?”

“That’s what I can’t figure out.”

“You know she’s looking at real estate in Harlem?”

“Still?”

“I’m not sure I approve of white people in Harlem.”

“Not sure I do, either.”

“She wants us to split a town house with you guys.”

“There is no us guys.”

“Fuck that. You know, you’re way less fun without her. You two are like a hyphenate: Russell-Corrine. You’ve always been the couple that made the rest of us think marriage was even possible. She loves you, not the other guy. But the hell with it — the papers are signed, so you should know, the money is from Corrine. She’s the one who’s saving your ass.”

“Where the fuck would she get that kind of money?”

“She told me it was an inheritance.”

“What inheritance? Her father left what little money he had to his second wife.”

“So maybe she had a rich uncle.”

Russell shook his head, because suddenly, it was perfectly clear. “No, but she does have a boyfriend who’s rich as Croesus.”

“That would be whack. I thought it was over and done.”

“Where else could she find that kind of cash?”

“Does it really matter?”

“Of course it matters. Why do you think she didn’t want me to know it was from her?”

“Because she’s good people. And because she was afraid you wouldn’t take it if you knew it was coming from her.”

“She knew I wouldn’t take it because it’s from that asshole.”

“Either way, Crash, the salient point is, she wanted to save your ass.”

—

His first inclination was to give the money back; the option of accepting a bailout from Corrine’s lover was completely unacceptable. Walking through an icy Union Square, he contemplated the situation. The company was out of cash and his personal savings would last another month at best. If he returned the money, his employees would be out of work in a couple of weeks and he and his children would be on the street within months. At the moment, it was nothing less than a lifeline, and he waffled over it for the next few days, alternately grateful to Corrine and furious at her for putting him in this position, his vast relief that his company had been saved eroded by the feeling that he’d been compromised.

They spoke frequently, their conversations focused on the minutiae of household finances and the logistics of shuttling Storey and Jeremy hither and yon. Corrine’s attempts to initiate discussions about their marital issues had inevitably ended in the same dead end.

The day before Valentine’s Day, after they’d worked out the schedule for the coming weekend, he asked, “What are you doing tomorrow night?”

“Nothing,” she said.

“No romantic dinner?”

“For God’s sake, Russell. With whom would I have a romantic dinner?”

“I’d prefer not to say his name.”

“I haven’t seen him in five months. I told you, I broke it off in September.”

“He didn’t give you half a million dollars?”

“What are you talking about?”

“Does Art and Love, LLC, ring a bell? Wash told me.”

“Told you what?”

“That the money came from you. But, I asked myself, where the hell would you get five hundred K?”

“I sold a painting.”

“That’s a good one. We don’t have a painting worth five thousand.”

“We didn’t, maybe. But I did.” She paused. “Twenty-plus years ago, when you were in Frankfurt, Tony Duplex gave me a painting….”

“Why would Tony Duplex give you a painting?”

“Because I did him a big favor.”

“What favor — you fucked him?”

“If that’s what you want to think,” she said before hanging up on him.

—

He was looking over the sales figures for Youth and Beauty the next morning at work when Gita brought in an envelope messengered over from Corrine’s office. Inside were two handwritten sheets on Corrine’s crisp stationery, and several sheets of yellowing, brittle onionskin:

February 14, 2009

Dear Russell:

When I was at my mother’s house for Thanksgiving, I found this letter pressed inside my old copy of House of Mirth. Reading it all these years later made me cry. (Your letter, not House of Mirth.) It made me incredibly sad to think of all the years that have passed, and all that we’ve shared since you wrote this, and sad most of all to think that our story might be over, and that I would spend the rest of my life with the guilt of knowing that I was to blame. Perhaps you can’t forgive me, or ever be able to entirely trust me again. But isn’t it possible that even in this diminished form, our marriage is still worth preserving, that however damaged, it’s better than most other marriages at their best, that ours is still one of the great love stories, especially if we can survive this crisis? I’ve never forgotten that quote from your thesis, was it from Julius Caesar? “…when the sea was calm, all boats alike/show’d mastership in floating…” Which I take to mean that nobody should get undue credit for doing well during the good times. It’s the storms that truly test us.

I’m sorry that I sailed us into a storm. You didn’t deserve it. And I don’t deserve to be forgiven, but I hope you will anyway.

I love you.

I’m sorry.

Corrine.

PS. You would have written this letter a few years before I got the painting. Jeff and Tony were in a jam with a drug dealer and I sacrificed a few of my grandfather’s twenty-dollar gold pieces to bail them out. I should have told you at the time. I’m sorry. On the other hand, it turned out to be a pretty good investment.

He carefully unfolded the brittle onionskin, recognizing his own loopy youthful cursive script.

Cloisters Attic

Oxford

March 2, 1979

Dear Corrine,

Feeling very restless tonight. It’s already spring here, one of those days when you can smell the earth thawing, the ferment of the soil, when you can almost hear the dormant vegetable life awakening, stirring and thrusting upward, and unlike some of the uniquely Limey odors of recent experience, like that of the fish and chip shop on the High Street, this is the universal scent of renewal and change and migration — and it inspires the desire to get out and do something, to go go go, like Kerouac’s Dean Moriarty. I am so restless, but unlike the south-wintering birds, whose instincts are urging them northward to their summer breeding grounds, I don’t know what it is I want to do. I certainly don’t want to be sitting here reading Coleridge’s Biographia Literaria, no offense to that august gentleman, but I can’t concentrate tonight. “Books! ’tis a dull and endless strife,” as his friend and bookish colleague Wordsworth said. Not usually, but that’s how I feel right this moment. In fact, I do know where I want to go. Hearing of you and Jeff and Caitlin and everyone in New York, I feel that you’re all moving ahead without me, while I’m back in school, in a backwater eddy, stuck in the nineteenth century. Meanwhile, Jeff writes to tell me that he met Norman Mailer at the Lion’s Head and they thumb-wrestled while arguing about Hemingway. I feel my life is passing me by. I miss you. I want to come home tonight and crawl into your bed. I want to be inside of you. Enough. Enough of this allegedly fond-making absence. What are we waiting for? I want my life to start now. I knew the first time I saw you at the top of that staircase at the party at Phi Psi that my life would be lived for you. You were like a goddess looking down from Olympus, not unbenevolently, but with a certain amused detachment at the roiling mob of beer-soaked mortals, of which I was a part. The Aphrodite of Phi Psi. I vowed at that moment that I would find out who you were and I would spend the rest of my days at Brown pursuing you. It wasn’t easy, but then, I wouldn’t have wanted it to be. Nothing truly worthwhile is easy, and nothing in my life has ever been so worthwhile as loving you. I would have waited for you for as long as it took to win your affections, and yet tonight I’m so restless, and even fearful, worrying suddenly that perhaps this is the night that your heart finally begins, out of weariness, to drift away or that you lose faith in our intertwined destinies or that you’ll meet someone in New York who has the unfair advantage of physical proximity, and I can’t stand it, it makes me crazy. Yes I’ve had a few drams of Bushmills tonight, but I’ve never been so certain of anything as I am of my devotion to you. Tell me you’ll wait, and I will be able to last this term out, though I want to fly to you now. I’m going to stick this out for the year, but I don’t have it in me to come back for a second year. I hope you won’t think less of me, but I’ve thought long and hard about this, and among other things I realize that I don’t want to teach; I don’t want to spend five or six more years in grad school in Cambridge or Palo Alto (if I’m lucky) in the hope of getting an assistant professorship in Duluth or Des Moines, only to hope at the end of another five or six years that I might get tenure and the privilege of spending the rest of my life there — and hope that’s something you might be willing to do. I don’t want to spend a decade writing yet another scholarly study of some minor aspect of Keats that nobody but my thesis advisers will read. I want to go to New York and start my life with you and I want to be a part of the history and literature of my time. By that I mean not only that I want to be to my era what Max Perkins was to his but I want to be part of the greatest love story of our time, of all time. Corrine and Russell. Russell and Corrine. Forget Troilus and Cressida or Romeo and Juliet, or Pyramus and Thisbe with their tragic fates. Ours will have a happy ending. We’ll create a love story for the ages. So please wait for me. A few short months and then we will have the rest of our lives.

“Grow old along with me. The best is yet to be.”

All my love,

Russell

When he finished reading, he realized there were tears in his eyes. He didn’t know if he had ever felt so bereft in his life — perhaps when his mother died of cancer, almost thirty years before, slipping away when Russell was only twenty-three. He was so sad, now, to think that she’d never gotten to meet her grandchildren. He was sad for the innocence he’d lost since he wrote that letter, for the ways he’d been careless with his life and of his romance with Corrine, and for all the damage it had sustained. Remembering the boy who’d written that callow and idealistic letter, he felt acutely that he’d let him down somehow, just as he’d failed to live up to all the sweet sentiments expressed in it. He was sad that the girl to whom that letter was addressed had betrayed him, and that he’d never feel quite the same way about her again. But the storm had passed. Maybe, or, in fact, definitely, it was time to try to patch the leaks in the ship and sail onward.

For a long time Russell stared out the back window at the naked trees in the courtyard and then he turned back to his desk, found a piece of stationery in the top drawer and started to write.

14 February, 2009

Dear Corrine,

The quote was from Coriolanus, actually, not Julius Caesar, but your reading of the line was spot-on….