“Everyone gets a clean slate at Pioneer,” Jack Heath proclaimed. “You just leave everything to us.”
They talked about the days when Claire was a student there, when Woody Baxter ran the school. “I remember he drove this yellow Carmengia, ” she told them. “It was always breaking down. We used to go blueberry picking during math class.”
The folklore was making the Heaths squeamish, Claire realized.
“Times have changed,” he said flatly. “The community. It’s a lot different here now.”
In a tart, proud-wife vernacular, Maggie Heath began to list the myriad improvements her husband had made since Baxter’s retirement, but Claire noted something perfunctory in her delivery. A moment later Greer Harding interrupted Maggie to introduce them to another set of parents. Claire politely excused herself and asked the pleasant bartender for a glass of wine—this time Chianti. Behind the bartender was an enormous mirror with an ornate gold frame, through which Claire could watch the party behind her. The waiter handed her the wine and she sipped it gratefully. When she glanced up into the mirror a second time, another face was looking back. Joe Golding.
She could feel herself beginning to sweat. You don’t love me enough, his eyes seemed to brood, but you will.
He came up to her and ordered a glass of wine and they toasted each other silently, smiling like two dignitaries sharing a secret. What the secret was neither would say, but it wasn’t going away—a negotiation was in order. Golding introduced himself, taking her hand. He had rolled up his shirtsleeves and his forearms glistened with black hair. There was something intimate in the way he touched her.
“I’m Teddy’s mother,” she said.
“So that’s what you were doing in my kitchen.”
“She’s very beautiful,” Claire said. “My son has quite the crush.”
“It appears to be mutual.”
“I hope he’s behaving himself.”
“I wouldn’t count on it.”
“That’s some party you had. That band—where did you find those guys?”
“The Connie Winter’s Orchestra,” he clarified. “I’m a brass fan. There’s nothing quite like the sound of a trumpet. It hits me in all the right places.”
“You don’t look like the patriotic type,” she said.
“I’m a sap,” he admitted. “I start bawling whenever I hear taps.” He shook his head. “It was a nice party, but I knew there was someone missing.” He smiled at her with his gypsy eyes. “Promise me you’ll come to our next one.”
She couldn’t help feeling charmed. “I promise not to wear my raincoat. ”
“I knew your father,” Golding said. “He was a good man. I’m sorry.”
“Thank you.”
“We played golf a few times. He liked a good cigar. And he was a hell of a director. Nobody did Chekhov like Eddie—the best Cherry Orchard I’ve ever seen. There were these cherry blossoms everywhere. You came out of the theater—you were covered with them. It was brilliant.”
“I know he’d appreciate that.” She took a sip of the wine. “This is good.”
“Chianti from Tuscany. Very Hemingway.”
“Cheers.”
They touched their plastic cups. She smiled. The moment lingered.
His wife caught his eye and he motioned to her. “We’re all going out for dinner afterward. If you want to join us.”
“I’d like that.”
Golding kept his greedy eyes on her longer than necessary. “Bring your husband. I’d like to meet him.”
Before she could tell him otherwise, he had disappeared.
16
Gallagher couldn’t take his eyes off her. It was her hair that did it, the long yellow braid, the particular angular shape of her face, the fleeting gaze of inquiry. She was older now, and no less beautiful, but it was her, he was sure of it. It was the girl from his truck. The girl in the forgotten Polaroid. Claire.
She carried herself like a woman who knew her own beauty yet could not be bothered with it. Her dress a simple black tunic. Thin silver bracelets around her wrists. She wore small pearl earrings, her neck bare. Her skin very pale, a glimmer of color on her lips. He was much taller, of course, but he was taller than most women. He was just about to introduce himself when Maggie Heath appeared and took his hand. “I want you to meet some of the parents.” An expedition ensued through the enormous room with its tall castle windows and heavy mahogany furniture. There were the Madisons and the Liddys and the Sterns and the Fairchilds. “And these are the Goldings, ” Maggie said, beaming like a proud mother. Nate had anticipated meeting the Goldings a thousand times before this moment, going over their handshake in his mind as though he were replaying a single frame of film—they were, after all, something like relatives— although he ventured the Goldings would never recognize him. He suspected they had blocked him out of their minds long ago, as they should have. He had simply been a liaison to their happily-ever-after. For a few unpleasant hours, they had dealt with the burden of having a dead woman on their property and had even probably been a little grateful for her death—yes, he knew it was cruel to think so, but it was probably the truth. They were all older now. Nate was no longer the scrawny drug addict. Instead of the filthy clothes he had worn that day, he was dressed in a suit and tie and he had a beard now, which grounded him, he liked to think, in the realm of scholars and intellectuals. The Goldings too had changed. The wife, who had a sharp, reliable beauty, was afflicted with a back injury of some sort, and relied on a cane—he’d overheard her telling someone she’d been thrown by a horse the day before. And Joe Golding had grown stout over the years. He looked buffed up, like a good car—fully loaded— but nobody ever bothered to read the fine print. A physically powerful man, he had an air of magnanimity about him that Nate instinctively distrusted. Like an emperor, people fawned all over him.
“Here’s the man I’ve been telling you about,” Maggie announced. “This is my old friend, Nate Gallagher.”
They shook hands. “Your daughter’s a charming girl,” Nate said. “A talented writer.”
Golding smiled, pleased by the comment. His eyes held Nate’s a moment too long. Nate cleared his throat and the wife asked, “What sort of things do you write, Mr. Gallagher?”
“Short stories, mostly. I’m working on a novel.”
“Nate’s a wonderful writer,” Maggie chimed in. “But it’s in his blood.” Maggie explained about his father. “Nate was a faculty brat.”
“Well,” Golding said. “I’ll have to read your work. Where can I find it? Do you have a book?”
“I’m hoping to have one out soon,” Nate said sheepishly. He suddenly felt incredibly foolish.
Golding’s wife looked sorry for him, and put her hand on his arm. “You’ve really inspired our daughter. We appreciate it so much.”
“It’s my pleasure.”
Another couple interrupted the Goldings and Nate gratefully backed into the crowd. He felt a little light-headed and helped himself to another drink. Someone tapped him on the shoulder and he turned; it was Claire. “Hello there,” she said.
“Hello.”
“I’m Claire Squire. Teddy’s mom?”
“Of course.” He took her hand. It felt cool and soft, like one of Larkin’s doves. “He’s a great kid.”
She swallowed her drink. “Actually, I’m a little drunk. I’m not used to this kind of thing.”
“No?”
“People.” She grinned. “They make me nervous.”
“Let’s get some air.”
“What a good idea.”
They pushed through the crowd toward the enormous foyer and the wide front door. It was amazing to think that the building had once been home to a single family. The sun was just beginning to set and the air was cool and damp. Her arms had goose bumps, and he took off his jacket and offered it to her, draping it over her shoulders.
“You’re the writer, aren’t you?” she said. “ ‘Everybody has a broken heart.’ Tedd
y told me about it. It’s true, isn’t it?”
“To some degree.”
“What about yours?”
“I have my share of war stories.” He thought of the photograph of her in his truck, a premonition of some sort. He thought of telling her about it, but decided against it.
“You’re very tall,” she said. “You’re a skyscraper. What’s it like up there?”
“What’s it like?”
She took off her heels and put her hand on his shoulder and climbed up on the stone wall and now she was slightly taller than him. Standing there with the wind in her hair she was iconic, a goddess. She smelled of roses. “There.”
“How do you feel?”
“Tall,” she said. “You must feel terribly superior.”
“Just the opposite,” he said. “I’m pathologically insecure.”
“You can’t be. You’re much too handsome. You have this sort of nineteenth-century quality.”
“It’s the beard. I’ve been told I’m an old soul,” he admitted.
“Me too.”
He looked at her gently. “I believe that.”
“Maybe we knew each other in another life.”
She returned her hand to his shoulder and he helped her down and she stumbled a little and he gripped her and for a moment he could feel the ripple of her bones under his hands. She looked up at him and smiled in a shy way and he wondered if there was any possibility that she was feeling about him the way that he was feeling about her. He had an incredible desire to kiss her—but of course that could never happen. It wasn’t right, it wasn’t professional.
“Have you been teaching long?”
“Almost ten years.” He told her about his job at the high school in Brooklyn and she told him about the school her son had gone to in Los Angeles. “This is a whole new world to Teddy. No one’s ever taken him seriously before.” She paused a moment and looked away and when she met his eyes again they were moist and full of emotion. “Do you believe in fate?”
He coughed. “Fate?” If it had anything to do with her, he did. “Yeah, I believe in it.”
She nodded as if she were grateful and then her forehead went tight and she looked as if she were about to say something to him, something important, when a noisy crowd came through the door. It was a whole throng of people, laughing raucously. Joe Golding came up to Claire and took her elbow possessively. Nate couldn’t help thinking him arrogant. “We’re all going over to Colette’s, if you want to join us,” Golding told her, then glanced at Nate indifferently. “You’re welcome too, Gallagher,” he said, his tone very slightly patronizing. Nate was, after all, only an employee.
“I’ve got to help out here,” Nate told him.
Claire smiled at Nate and shook off his jacket and gave it back to him. “Thank you, Mr. Gallagher.”
“Sure.”
Nate stood there a moment, watching the group wander off into the parking lot. It brought him back to his days at Choate—the way he’d felt then and the way he felt now—separate—different. Unlike the other kids, he wasn’t there because of his abilities, and he would walk the paths of campus with his head hanging down, as though at any moment something would fall out of the sky and pummel him. The other kids were brighter, richer, confident. He was a mere tint among their vibrant colors and his father resented him for it. In those days, he’d felt secondhand, shopworn, but when he’d started shooting dope everything was new again. During those months with Catherine, he was right there. He’d felt connected to her, body and soul. The days unraveled the way they wanted to, uncontrived, inspired by little more than simple gravity. He could subsist on her tiny breasts, her flesh, her slow oboe voice. But the drugs had made him indifferent, and the world beyond their dark little room—the squealing buses, the strangers in the street, the fish market, the farmer’s stands, the open cafés, the airplanes, the abrupt whirl of daylight—did not welcome him. Cat could not depend on him. And, as it turned out, she’d found herself a much more faithful keeper: death.
17
Colette’s was a swishy bistro on Church Street. It was dusk, the sky violet as Italian plums. The restaurant was jammed, the parking lot full. Luckily, she found a spot on the street. She walked up the sidewalk under the yellow moon. The air was cold on her bare arms and she found herself missing the pleasing weight of Gallagher’s jacket on her shoulders. Nate Gallagher was a gentleman, she thought wistfully, reviewing their conversation in her head like the lyrics of a favorite song. She had no business thinking about him in any way that was even remotely wistful and she blamed it on the wine and made a concerted effort to push the idea of him, gentleman that he was, out of her mind.
The others were already inside and had been seated at a table in the back. She had a sudden impulse to back out of the crowded place and drive home, but Joe Golding caught her eye and waved her over and she put a smile on her face. People like Golding didn’t like to be kept waiting. They had the attention span of a peanut, and when they wanted something they figured out how to get it, no matter what. It was something the very rich and the very poor had in common.
It was a good restaurant, full of noisy, happy people. White walls, white table cloths, peonies in glass jars. They were a big group, thirteen in all. She took a seat at the end of the table next to Greta Travers, the other spouseless woman. Greta had short, boyish hair and wore very dark red lipstick and expensive gold earrings with tiny sapphires. They were the sort of earrings Claire might have worn for a state occasion, but when she complimented her on them Greta groped her lobes dispassionately, as if she’d forgotten she had them on. Joe and his wife, Candace, were sitting across from them. Greta was telling Candace that she had recently gotten divorced. Her husband, she explained, an orthopedist, ran off with his X-ray technician. “Apparently, she had very good bones.” She told the story of her escape from their Tribeca loft, her pugnacious thievery. She’d fled with her grandmother’s Spode and wedding silver. “I took the Alice Neel paintings,” she said, finally. “They were mine.”
“What about you?” Candace Golding peered at Claire over her bifocals. “Don’t you have a husband?”
“I’m an old spinster.”
“Hardly,” Candace said, waiting for an explanation.
“I’ve just never found anyone I wanted to marry.”
“Fascinating,” Candace said. “It is something of a challenge, I admit. It’s certainly not for everyone.”
“What’s not?” Joe said, turning back into the conversation.
“Marriage,” his wife said darkly. “I said it’s not for everyone.”
Joe nodded noncommittally and opened his menu. “What are we ordering?” He looked at Claire and said, “The food here is fabulous. The chef’s a genius.”
“They’re friends of ours,” Candace said. “The husband makes all the breads. He’s Italian. Whenever he comes to visit he brings us bread.”
“Look at this bread,” Joe said, taking one of the large rolls in his hand. “Look at it! Have you ever seen anything so perfect?” She watched him caress the warm bread. He ripped off a piece and gave it to her. “Here,” he handed her the olive oil and she dipped the bread and ate it and felt the oil running down her hand to her wrist. He motioned to the server to bring more. “It’s so simple. All bread should be this good. It’s not fucking rocket science.”
“Here we go,” Candace said. “Social commentary by Joe Golding. ”
“When you go to Italy even the poor people have good bread. But here in America the people with nothing eat shit. It’s a simple thing, this bread.”
“I want to move to Italy,” Greta said.
“I often ask the question: Is it impossible to have a simple life?”
“The world is not simple,” Claire said.
“The world is not simple.” Joe repeated the phrase like the line of a great poem.
“There are too many people, there’s too much stuff, too many choices. Even a trip to the supermarket’s a challenge,” Cla
ire said.
“Too many choices,” he agreed.
“But you can’t go backward,” she said. “You can’t just take it all away. You can’t take away things that people have gotten used to, even the bad things. Things like cars. Lawn mowers. Disposable razors. It’s not like people are going to start happily walking five miles down the road just to get their simple loaf of bread. It’s not like we can take all the computers and dump them someplace and go back to actually talking to each other.”
“We’re too used to pressing buttons,” Greta said.
Joe smiled. “It’s too bad, isn’t it? All the stuff that comes between us.” He looked at Claire. She had an impulse to touch him, to take his hand. They were connected somehow, more than the others at the table. She’d felt it earlier, at the wine tasting, a rift of desire that broke through from someplace dark.
The waiter came with the wine and poured it all around. Another server brought more bread, ceremoniously pouring the olive oil onto the plate. It was a bustling dining room, full of interesting people— different than L.A., Claire thought. In L.A., people had their projectors running 24/7—she called them the I’m ready for my close-up crowd— and that included everyone you saw, from the hoity-toity to the bum on the street—they were each a starring player in their own precious little movie. But here the people seemed less pretentious, a heady, intellectual crowd, the men in tweedy blazers, the women in linen dresses and Birkenstocks. They seemed eloquent and cultured, like her parents had been.
She was glad to be out of L.A. It was better here for Teddy. Her father had been right after all; she only wished she could thank him.
“Let’s have a toast,” Joe said. “To simple pleasures.” He looked at her.
“Hear, hear,” she said.
They brought their glasses together. Everyone drank and looked at their menus.
“What are we ordering?” Candace asked.
“I was thinking of getting the lamb,” Golding said.
“I’m getting the lamb too,” Claire said.
“It’s very greasy here,” Candace warned. “I wouldn’t get that, Joe.”