Golden Age

1990

CHARLIE WAS THRILLED with Manhattan. He’d never imagined how wild the city itself was, and if you started at the southwest corner of Central Park, across from Columbus Circle, and ran north through Central Park to the corner of 110th Street and Cathedral Parkway, then down 110th Street a block to the southwest corner of Morningside Park, north from there to 123rd Street, then over to Riverside Park, then followed that park down to where it ended at Seventy-second Street, then east on Seventy-second to Central Park West and south again to Columbus Circle, it was only about nine miles — an easy run. He’d wangled a clerk’s job at a luggage store, and had submitted his application to an outdoor outfitters on Broadway. He and Riley were earning enough to rent a much-infested studio on 125th Street, though he told his mom it was on Ninety-eighth Street. Even his mom knew that 125th Street was in Harlem, and though his mom had laughed so hard she gagged when a woman from church said that if you drove through East St. Louis with your windows open, black people (she didn’t call them that) would jump on the roof of your car and take you captive, she also had never liked him driving around East St. Louis. New York, as far as she knew (she had never been there), was just like East St. Louis, because, well, it was a thousand miles east of East St. Louis. She vacationed in the Ozarks and was proud that Missouri had all five indigenous American poisonous snakes right within its borders. Iowa was flat, Kansas was dry, Arkansas was hot, and Illinois was damp. That was all she needed to know.

Their furnishings were sparse: a gray futon on a metal frame, two bookcases, a table for a desk, three chairs, some dishes and cooking utensils, and a collection of mouse, rat, fly, mosquito, and roach traps.

Since the reunion, he’d exchanged a few letters with Minnie, Christmas cards with Jesse and Jen, two phone calls with Debbie, and one with Arthur. His mom had written Arthur and heard back, sent baby pictures and one of Charlie’s funnier report cards from third grade (“Reads backward with unusual skill, must be prevented from walking the top of the monkey bars”). Arthur had sent two pictures of Tim as a child, but his mom hadn’t yet forwarded them. Debbie wrote his mom that Janet had been in contact with his birth mother, but that this woman hadn’t shown an interest in knowing more. Charlie didn’t remember who Janet was, and he didn’t blame his birth mother. His mom said that if she lived in Pasadena, California, it was probably better not to have anything to do with her.

His luggage store, four blocks south of Central Park, had some nice stuff. Charlie was rearranging the counter display for January markdowns when Michael entered. Michael’s glance passed over him without a mote of recognition; Charlie shifted his own expression from friendly to professional and went back to the wallets. Lisa, Jackie, and Mark were behind the counter — they’d just been arguing about where Jackie should go skiing over the weekend, and Charlie had been eavesdropping; he hadn’t been skiing in New York yet.

Michael went straight to Lisa and said, “Hello, there.”

Lisa, who lived with her parents at Eighty-eighth and York, was working here as a punishment for dropping out of Connecticut College for Women after the first semester of her sophomore year. She gave Michael a warm smile. All four of them were good at this, since they worked on commission. Michael set his briefcase on the counter and regarded it. Lisa said, “May I help you, sir?”

Michael flipped the briefcase over and pointed at something along the side. He said, “Do you see that stain? The oil stain?”

Lisa bent down, but she didn’t really look at it. She said, “I do, sir. I’d be happy to send that to our repair shop. I’m sure Giorgio could get it out.”

“I would always know it was there,” said Michael.

“Giorgio is really—”

“I need a new one.”

Charlie could practically see Lisa salivating.

“This one is Bottega Veneta,” she said. “I’m sorry, but we don’t carry that brand. I can show you—”

“I’m sure you can,” said Michael.

“—some comparable styles, however. Do you prefer Italian boutiques, sir?”

Michael gave her a brilliant smile, and she matched him; then he said, “This is a few years old. I personally think Bottega Veneta has gotten a little too flashy lately.” He surveyed the golden-lit displays along the walls and said, “What’s that one?”

Lisa pirouetted neatly and said, “Such a lovely piece. That’s an Asprey. Let me also show you the Valextra. They are Italian, but based in Milan. Not quite as…baroque as Bottega Veneta.” Charlie almost snorted with the pleasure of it. Mark went through the curtain into the stockroom. The wallets were now in a perfect line; Charlie stepped a foot to the left and started coiling belts. Lisa set two briefcases on the counter; they were both brown, the Asprey edging toward cordovan, the Valextra edging toward buckskin. She smoothed her hand over one, then the other. Michael said, “Mmmm.” Charlie moved even farther left, caught Jackie’s glance, and stepped into the window, afraid he was going to make real noise.

He could still hear them, though.

“That is nice leather.”

“The best.”

“The English is a little conservative. I hate to look stuffy.”

“I totally understand.”

“On the other hand, as I get older—”

“I wouldn’t worry about that, sir. I really wouldn’t.”

Pause.

“I am drawn to the Valextra. I’ve looked at those before.”

The Valextra was maybe 30 percent more expensive than the Asprey. Lisa said, “It’s a rare piece. It’s not for everyone. We sell maybe one a season, but I always think…”

She had been working here for two weeks. Charlie went deeper into the corner beside the window.

Outside, a woman passed him, her nose in a guidebook. She stopped, looked toward the street sign, then opened the door of the shop. Charlie saw Jackie intercept her — they went back out the door. The show went on.

Lisa said, in a regretful, almost lachrymose voice, “I have to tell you, sir, the Valextra is a fifteen-hundred-dollar item.”

There was a long pause, and Charlie peeked out from behind the stack of Tumis. Michael had one hand on the Asprey and one hand on the Valextra, and he was stroking them gently with a half-smile on his face. Then he hoisted the Valextra and gave a deep sigh, matched an instant later by Lisa. The curtain to the stockroom fluttered — ah, Mark was watching, too. Michael said, “How much is the Asprey?”

A pregnant pause; then Lisa’s voice half broke when she said, “Eleven hundred.”

Michael looked straight at her and said, “I’ll give you eleven hundred for the Valextra,” but he said it cheerfully, with a grin, as if he were joking. Lisa responded, “We don’t usually…Well, thirteen is as low as I can go. The manager is in Italy, looking at new collections. I don’t think…”

Another pause. Outside, the confused lady had walked on, and Jackie was talking to someone else, who was bundled in a full-length black down coat.

Michael shrugged, took his briefcase off the counter, gave Lisa one last winning smile, and turned for the door. Lisa let him get there, let him put his black gloves on, let him touch the handle, then said, “Twelve is okay. I can do twelve for you.” She put on a regretfully redeemed expression, and Michael strode back to the counter. A win-win situation. Everyone was happy, including Charlie, who knew that they sold the Valextra, full-price, for eleven hundred. Mark came out of the back, looking genial but uninterested, and Michael and Lisa completed the transaction. When Lisa put on her coat and they went out together (Lisa told Mark she was taking an early lunch), Michael still didn’t recognize Charlie, but he did smile at him this time.

It was Charlie’s job to make the jokes and tell the funny stories, and it was Riley’s job to laugh, but she didn’t laugh when he told her about Lisa and Michael — she was offended. Charlie had learned to make no assumptions about how Riley might be offended. It could be anything: Ripping off Michael? Lisa going off with him? But of course it was the waste that offended her, getting rid of a perfectly good leather item because of a small stain. And calfskin, at that; did Charlie know how much grain went into feeding cattle? This brought her around to hemp again, as so many things did. Or bamboo! Bamboo was verrry interesting, and Charlie heard all about it over the roasted vegetables and grilled goat-cheese sandwiches they had for dinner. The cheese was from the shores of Cayuga Lake, and that was where Riley wanted to go on their first trip out of the city.

—

HERE WAS HOW Michael told the story: Everyone in their group thought going on the Jolly Roger would be fun — just a two-hour cruise around Dickenson Bay, then back to Magnus King’s condo on Runaway Bay (Magnus King had started out life as Bruce King, but changed his name when he made his second million; he was up to ten now). The boat had several levels, and everyone wanted to see the view from the top level — it was sunset, the bay was flat. Michael was sitting on the railing with his feet on a cushion. Admittedly, you were not supposed to sit on the railing — you were supposed to sit on the cushions. The boat shifted, he lost his balance, and the next thing he knew was that he was reaching out to grab a lanyard that was hanging there, but it was attached to nothing, and he toppled over onto a white awning that collapsed underneath him, and then he was caught in the huge arms of the black chef who’d been grilling steaks on the poop deck for the partyers. The chef stood him on his feet. He went back to the bar, got himself another rum punch, and ran up the stairs. When he got there, everyone was gone.

Here was how Loretta told the story: Michael was smashed to smithereens. When he originally staggered up the steps to the upper deck, he’d been swaying, and Magnus King had made a joke about him. Loretta was embarrassed, and told Michael he needed to taper off; he told her to shut up, jerked backward, and disappeared. The seven of them looked over the railing and didn’t see anything, so they ran down the stairs, but it was a big boat with two sets of stairs, and as they were running down one set, Michael was running up the other set. They searched the lower deck, and then Loretta looked up and saw Michael waving his arm and laughing. She was really happy to see him. But, she said, at that point he had learned nothing.

The next thing, Michael said, was that when the cruise was over, and they had eaten their steaks and sobered up just a hair, they got so impatient with how slow the barge was that ferried passengers back and forth to the beach that Michael handed Loretta his wallet (as always!) and dove into the water, then Magnus went, then Tyler Coudray, leaving all the wives and Zeke Weiner, poor Zeke.

Zeke was happy to stay with us, said Loretta — why would he want to ruin his clothes and get wet and cold for nothing? By the time the five of them got to that crappy beach bar, Magnus, Tyler, and Michael were sitting in Buccaneer Cove with their drinks, out of their minds. Tyler threw up right when his wife got there, and the throw-up sort of spread around them and got on Magnus and Michael, and they didn’t even notice. All the wives were pretty fed up, but there was no going home while the Red Stripe beers were being extracted from the ice chest. And it was cold. It was something like California, how cold Antigua got in the middle of the night, and all they had was sweaters.

The miracle, Michael said, was the bwi dog. Not a big dog, not a little dog; brown with a black face.

The miracle, said Loretta, was that they got home at all. There was no public transportation by that time, they had to find their way across that isthmus—

And the dog led them every step of the way, said Michael, down a winding path, through the plants that were growing behind the beach — kassy, it was, prickly and tangled — and the dog just took them. It must have been three miles.

It seemed like a mile, but probably it was only a hundred yards, at least as the crow flies, said Loretta; if they’d been sober enough to look up rather than at their feet (Michael did fall down — not once, but twice), they would have seen that Dalla left the light on in the second-story window, they could have made it; and thank God they got there before the children woke up, it would have been such an embarrassment, their clothes all torn and covered with dirt and bits of plants; Michael had lost his shoes completely, though Loretta managed to carry hers — they were ruined, though.

No, said Michael, the miracle was the dog, a dog that gave himself to them, to lead them home, and then lay on the stoop for the rest of the night, even though, when Dalla got up with Chance, Tia, and Binky, she shooed him away.

And well she should, said Loretta, since there is rabies everywhere; we just don’t think about it. But the dog wouldn’t leave no matter what she did, so she couldn’t even take the children out for a swim in the pool. Dalla didn’t like the dog at all, and Loretta didn’t blame her. None of the adults got up until after lunch, and Michael, when he did get up, kept saying, “What happened, what happened, what happened,” and complaining like a broken record that his lower back and his shoulder hurt, until Loretta and Zeke sat him down and told him about the fall and the walk and the dog.

Then, Michael said, he went outside and found the dog and petted him and thanked him, and gave him a steak from the refrigerator, and the dog wandered away with the steak in his mouth, maybe to bury it. Everyone laughed, but Michael was changed; even he said so. He got sober, he let his mom talk to him about AA, he kicked out his latest girlfriend and put the place he’d bought for her in SoHo on the market so that he could buy a bigger place uptown where Loretta could live comfortably, and not like camping out. He would have remodeled the place in SoHo, but they had to be near the schools, and those were all uptown.

Loretta said, Well, finally, he scared himself enough to wake up, but I always knew he would.

What Michael said was, You get to the point where everyone has their hooks in you, not that they always want something, even if mostly they do, but they want to prove you’re wrong or you’re an asshole, or you’ve always been an asshole, and even if you have always been an asshole, you can’t let them prove it.

What Frank said was, If you don’t realize you’re an asshole around the time you’re thirty-seven, you never will.

What Andy said was, Well, we’ll see.

What Ivy said was, Everyone has always taken Michael too seriously; most of his rants and misadventures are jokes and stunts, and everyone like that goes too far once in a while. She could perfectly imagine the thing on the boat, Michael just making hay out of it all, waiting for the laugh and never getting one. Loretta’s sense of humor was about as big as the head of a pin, and, maybe because she was raised Catholic, she was really afraid of irreverence; no one blamed her for that, because she meant well, but she and Michael were a mismatch. But Ivy only said this to Richie, as they were pushing Leo in the stroller in Prospect Park.

Richie didn’t say anything.

—

ROSANNA HAD SPENT years regaling everyone who cared and who didn’t care with tales of the Langdon children; Minnie had always listened with interest, and sometimes wondered what her mother or father would have said of her. But she was seventy-one now, and Lois was sixty, and if there had been stories, they were lost. For that reason, she wrote down entries in a small diary about Felicity, who would soon be two — nothing lengthy or analytical, only notes about what she had said or done that she would give her someday, to go along with the pictures Jen and Jesse took. One thing she didn’t write down, but did think, was that this was the child she wished she had been — not good, not agreeable, like Guthrie and Perky, who were now seven and six — but intent. When Felicity talked, she talked to herself — if you entered the room or interrupted her, she zipped her lip and stared at you, and then, after you left, she would begin again, a dialogue with two or three parts. Twice Minnie had managed to write down some of the lines in her little book—“Please do sit down. Thank you very much. Once upon a time.” Minnie supposed that she was trying out phrases, maybe wondering what they meant or consigning them to memory. When she had to communicate, she was good for her age — precise and direct.

Jen had no complaints — Felicity ate well, slept well, was potty-trained, knew how to button her shirt, sat quietly in the shopping cart when they went to Hy-Vee — but she was not a cuddler. Jen seemed surprised that Felicity was restless in her lap and always climbed down after a moment or two. And Jen seemed disappointed that when she made a playful face, the kind that Guthrie or Perky at the same age would have laughed aloud at, Felicity only gazed at her, as if to say, What next? Jen would say, “She was born suspicious. I wonder where she gets that?” Minnie had an answer, but she never mentioned it.

Minnie’s pleasure was that Felicity would sit beside her on the sofa in the breezy, oak-paneled living room while Minnie crocheted or looked out the front window at the cornfield across the road, and she would pat Minnie on the leg, rhythmically. She would look into Minnie’s face while Minnie sang her a song—“Froggie went a courtin’, he did ride.” She made an “f” and an “o” sound with her lips. “Sword and a pistol by his side.” She made a little hissing sound. Her face had a studious expression. Minnie’s diagnosis, as a woman, former teacher, and former principal, was that Felicity was going to do things her way, and she thought that single-minded was the best strategy, even if you pleased few of the people not much of the time. Two, she thought, was the most ephemeral age, the age of incipient consciousness, when personality was first chinking into place. Felicity was her last chance to enjoy this, and so she did, day after day.

—

ANDY DIDN’T LIKE waking up facing the clock, because she didn’t want to know what time it was, for example, now, when it was one-fifty-nine. One-fifty-nine was too early, and as far as she could remember, she’d had no dreams, so maybe no REM sleep. Then, even though she was careful not to move, and did not roll over (she could still see the clock), Frank’s arms went around her and he kissed the back of her neck. She said, “I didn’t mean to wake you.”

“I was awake. I was watching the snow. There’s enough of a moon that it sparkles.” Frank didn’t draw the curtains; his vision was still sharp, and he could make out constellations and passing satellites.

Andy turned over. Frank was solid and warm even though the room was cold. Now that they were sleeping together every night, she’d had to buy lighter bedclothes, and a mattress firm enough to support the weight of both of them in one spot. He slipped his hand around the small of her back and pulled her toward him. She put her leg over his. Frank ran his hand down her thigh and rested it, then jiggled himself so that they were even closer. Andy kissed him on the lips, but it wasn’t going to lead to lovemaking. A pleasure of being seventy was that comfort seemed more appealing than passion.

In the last year, he had won her. He had come to Sleeping Beauty and kissed her again and again, and each time, she had awakened another degree, sloughed off another layer of skepticism. It was a surprisingly painful process. In all the stories, the prince went away, sometimes for ten years, sometimes for a hundred years. All the princess had to do was mind her own business, and that was what Andy had been doing for thirty-five years now. Sometimes her business had been trivial, sometimes her business had been misguided, sometimes her business had been useful and informative, and quite often she had been helped in her business by people who did and did not know they were helping her. But Frank, the prince, had been on the scene the whole time, and so she had put a layer on every time he grimaced, every time he left the room, every time he rolled his eyes, every time he looked around the restaurant or the theater or the parking lot or the airport as if he were searching for someone, known or unknown, who might save him from the troublemaking boys, the clingy girl, the unloved wife.

That night she had truly been sleepwalking. It wasn’t the first time. As a child she’d done it twice: Once out into the snow in January; Sven, who was only eight to her nine, had heard the door open, looked out the window, and told their parents. The other time, she was twelve — she walked into her parents’ room and lay down on the floor between their beds. They were sound asleep, and her father stepped on her when he got up in the morning. But no one delved into the book or the story or the nightmare that had produced the somnambulism. She had done it twice in this house, once to the kitchen, where she woke up sitting at the table; once to the car, where she woke up stretched out on the front seat, staring through the windshield. But Frank had known nothing about those incidents. And so she had been dreaming about something — she liked to think it was one of the children — and had gone into Frank’s room and inserted herself back into his life.

The result was that there was this time every day, between ten at night and eight in the morning, when they were alone, sleeping or talking, the lights out. They prepared by adjusting their pillows, straightening the covers, making sure the room was ventilated and cool. They coiled together; then Frank’s breaths started ruffling within a few minutes, while Andy thought blank thoughts — the names of islands or flowers or views she had seen of scenes that meant nothing to her, like a beach in Venezuela. Andy preferred dreams that made no sense and referred to nothing. By mutual consent, they did not talk about the boys, the girl, the collapsing investment in the farm, any beloved relatives who seemed to be effacing themselves from the world despite the kind attentions of a recently discovered grandson. In their room and their bed, they regretted nothing, recalled no missed opportunities, acknowledged no loss of beauty or grace. Sometimes, Frank told a joke: Did you hear the one about the guy who went to his doctor, and after a lengthy examination, the doctor said, “I’m sorry to inform you that you are very ill. You have six hours to live.” Andy laughed — she didn’t have to wait for the punch line. Frank kissed her on the forehead, and when she turned over and pressed her derriere against his crotch, he slipped his arm under her neck, along the line of the pillow. She put her hand in his. She could feel his warmth all along her back, animal comfort.

She fell asleep between “Oahu” and “Patmos” and woke up at seven-thirty-seven from a dream that she was trying to remove a box from the trunk of her car, which she had parked on the grassy shoulder of the Palisades Parkway. As she woke, she was turned toward Frank, who was looking upward, his profile as distinct and alluring as always. She gazed at him in the extra-bright, snow-whitened, Hudson River — inflected morning sunshine, and thought that these long, perfect nights were the best thing that had ever happened to her. But wasn’t it also true that they came over her faster and faster, warm, comforting waves that made everything that she got up for in the morning seem trivial and ephemeral? Perhaps, she thought, if you were happy half of every twenty-four-hour period, your punishment was that you sped toward the end of that happiness ever more quickly.