The Fundamentals of Play Page 22

  It had been windy on campus and it was still blowing hard now, even in the harbor of the Bay; it seemed to me that Kate and Nick were the only ones who were doing much of anything, tactically—everyone else was just trying not to flip. When the breeze picked up another notch or two and two boats turtled, the coach—Tompkins—decided to call off practice. He cruised around in the Whaler, blowing his whistle to summon people to the docks. But Kate and Nick seemed not to have heard. Instead of following the others in, they headed up closer to the wind to make the point that marked the harbor entrance. Frustrated, Mr. Tompkins decided to drop us off and go after them himself. I turned around on the seat to watch them as we drove in. You couldn’t see much of Kate. She was tucked in on the rail in front of Nick, hidden. Her ponytail would bob out on one side like a brush dipping paint, then bob out on the other as she flattened the boat for Nick. So I focused on Nick instead. He slouched his way through the tacks, but his was the finessed slouch of perfection. I imagined him learning to sail when he was very, very young and then, almost as quickly, learning the slouch. It was the combination of the two—the juxtaposition of skill and indifference—that I vowed I would appropriate.

  At the far end of the inlet, the white triangle dipped once more and bobbed around the corner out of sight. Behind me I heard Mr. Tompkins curse Nick for his talent and his disrespect, and I thought: I will always watch till I can’t see them anymore.

  Just over nine years had passed since that day. I wasn’t ready to draw conclusions, however. I had come to the address on Forty-fourth Street, and I went inside.

  CHAPTER 19

  Fifty or sixty of the Goodenows’ family and friends, as well as Mr. Franklin Lombardi, Jr., and his live-in girlfriend, Rhonda, had assembled in the biggest toy room in Manhattan—the Model Room of the New York Yacht Club, with the half-hulls in all colors crowding the walls.

  I had been nervous; at the threshold I wondered, about what? The crowd gave off the feeling of having just enjoyed a mildly funny joke. Nothing was going to happen, it seemed clear. In the middle of the room, Kate, in a square-cut black dress, was laughing up at a florid, gray-haired man whom I took to be her uncle. I felt a sense of relief that the party was in her hands; I have since reflected that she was the only hostess of whom I thoroughly approved.

  I spied Harry at the bar and was making my way over when a stout woman in a pink suit stood herself before me. “Have you seen the article?” she demanded. A section of yesterday’s Times was thrust into my hands. Under the caption NEW GENERATION SEES NO POINT IN WAITING, there was a picture of a young bride being fitted for a gown.

  “Not the picture—read it: look.”

  I scanned down the column. It was, according to the piece, an emerging trend of my generation to be married earlier, defying the precedent set by feminists of the sixties and seventies to delay settling down until thirty or after. Katharine Goodenow, of the American paintings department at Sotheby’s, was quoted. “It’s silly to sit around saying ‘Why?’ for years and years, when you can just as easily say ‘Why not?’ My parents were married when my mother was twenty-three. I’m twenty-five now—I feel like a late bloomer!” Harry was not mentioned.

  “Oh, Goodie! There you are!” panted the pink woman. “I’ve got to show Goodie, but make sure you finish reading it later. Don’t forget,” she ordered. “Come find me and read the rest.”

  Harry had vanished into the crowd, and after a couple of halfhearted steps in either direction, I spotted, across the room, the only person in the place I actually wanted to talk to. He saw me, too, and gave a bemused nod when I joined him.

  “Where’s your date, buddy?”

  “She ran away,” I said. “Yours?”

  “She heard you were coming.”

  “But you’ve got two drinks,” I pointed out.

  Chat held up his two fists to examine them. “ ’Deed I do, ’deed I do. You’ve got to protect yourself at these kinds of things. All the same,” he added suspiciously, “I guess you’d better take one.” I hesitated. To everyone else, perhaps, his courtship of Kate had seemed offhand at best. But I knew better, and if there was any night when a man was entitled to be double-fisting …

  “Go on! They’re brand new! Mixed ’em myself when the bartender wasn’t looking.”

  We stood in our corner and drank. I tried to detect a brittleness in Chat’s bemusement; he caught on immediately and ridiculed me for it. “You’re the melodramatic freak—maybe you’re bitter. That’s it, isn’t it? You’re bitter. If you were in my position you’d be very glad to see Lombardi so high on life, Lenhart. So ambitious. He’s a very ambitious guy, you know.”

  “Your position?” I inquired.

  “I’m invested up to here.” Chat held a hand to his jugular. “You ought to be, too, you know. He’s moving into office space—he’s got seed money for eighteen months. This thing gets big, baby—”

  Everyone was getting in. Only I stood by, conservative; with my Christmas bonus I could pay Chat back. “Chat, I want to give you your money,” I declared, without preface. “I’ll have it next month.”

  Chat’s answer sounded careless enough, and yet there was something surprising about it—its alacrity, I suppose. What I mean is that the reply was clearly something he had thought about: he knew what he would say if I mentioned it. He wasn’t surprised to hear me mention it, as he might have been.

  “Lenhart, p-p-please. This—this—this is an engagement party!”

  “All right, but after,” I insisted. “I want to make arrangements to pay you.”

  “Listen to me,” Chat said. He was so rarely serious that I did his bidding. “If you’re holding off on Lombardi’s thing be—be—because of me …”

  He let my silence serve as an answer.

  “I thought so. I thought so. Well, forget about it. We’re all going to cash in big on this thing.”

  “You really think so?”

  “Hasn’t poverty taught you anything, George?”

  “All right,” I said evenly.

  “All right, then.”

  The woman in pink came by again holding out the newspaper. “Have you both—”

  “We saw it,” we said.

  The crowd dithered, and shifted in a circular direction, like children playing musical chairs. “Oh, good,” said Chat, refocusing. “We’ll say hello.”

  I followed him to the side of an upright woman balanced on extraordinarily thin legs. The woman’s hair was ash-blond, coiffed immaculately in a style quoting the 1960s. Her face was tan—the whole party was filled with parents who had better tans than their children—and she wore pink lipstick that sat on her lips and beamed when they beamed. Chat introduced Mrs. Goodenow.

  “Isn’t this a very nice occasion. My husband’s brother’s giving the party. Make sure you say hello, Goodie’s right over there by Mrs. Pall. Lenhart, you said? There are Lenharts in Maine. Puce married a Lenhart. Chatland, have you managed to get yourself a drink? Oh, yes, I see that you have. You’ve probably had several.”

  “Oh, no, Mrs. Goodenow—”

  “Now, Chattie, I want you to do me a favor, dear, and it’s rather important.” They didn’t make voices like hers anymore, rich and clipped at the same time, drawling swallowed vowels to Boston and back, stowing R’s away for safekeeping. “This young man can help you—Mr. Lenhart, you give Chattie a hand, will you. Mr. Lombardi is standing over there. Yes, go and talk to him, will you.

  “Oh, have you met my other daughters. This is Vivi and Cecily.”

  I nodded at a Goodenow taller and more oblique than Kate, and then at a stocky brunette whom the milkman must have begotten. “Excuse me, darlings. I have so many people to see. Have a good time, won’t you? Please enjoy yourselves. It’s so nice to see you again. Vivi, have Chat remind you about Charles Pall, dear. He’s a very good-looking boy. Chat, reintroduce her to Charles Pall.”

  “Hey, Vivi.”

  “Hey, Chattie.”

  “How’s school?”
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br />   “Good.”

  “You transferred, huh?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You like Denison better?”

  “Yeah, way better.”

  “You playing tennis?”

  “Number three.”

  “Good girl. That’s what I like to hear.” To me he added, “Kate could have played in college, but she didn’t care enough.”

  The girl shrugged.

  “Are you … in college?” I tried with the younger, stockier one, who looked older.

  “Not yet.”

  “Are you at Chatham now, Celes?” Chat intervened.

  Vivi spoke up. “No! She wouldn’t go. She’s such a baby. She stayed home.”

  “No!” Chat said.

  The two girls nodded, showing teeth.

  “Bad deal, Cees—you’ve got to go away.”

  “I don’t want to.”

  “Nobody wants to at first—back me up here, George.”

  “It’s true.”

  “Sucks at the beginning. But you gotta go. You don’t want to be some homebody freak, do you, Cees? Huh? Huh?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Those girls never turn out right. Coddled in day schools—”

  “Neither do the girls who go away,” I interrupted.

  “You’ve got a point, Lenhart. For once in your life, you’ve got a point.”

  I left him grilling the Goodenow sisters and went to study the model ships in a case.

  Kate came by and clutched my arm, laughing and grimacing by way of greeting, and left a girl in her wake: the willowy Jessica Brindle, delivered out of Kate’s grossly untapped girlfriend world.

  “I wasn’t sure you’d be here,” she said spacily, and rather disconcertingly.

  “I wouldn’t have missed it,” I assured her. Presently the two of us drifted toward the bar, where a heavyset man was punching words into a crowd of boys. “Henri père,” whispered Miss Brindle in my ear.

  “So I says, ‘Kid knows which side his bread is buttered on!’ Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha!”

  “Remember,” Jessica murmured, “we’re not laughing at him, we’re laughing with him.”

  I didn’t laugh much at all.

  All evening, people took their turns with Mr. Lombardi. A group would edge up, make his acquaintance, and go off pressing their lips together, their eyes large with seeking other eyes. Everybody wanted a story to take home—not the stories Mr. Lombardi told, but that didn’t matter.

  He was a short, shy man who drank to cover up his shyness. He eyed Jess Brindle sideways over the top of his drink. “Who’s this you got, Chad?”

  “Oh, I’m not Chat,” I corrected him, and stuck out a hand. Mr. Lombardi pumped it with enthusiasm. “I’m George—George Lenhart.”

  “George is a good friend of your son’s from college,” said Jess Brindle, who seemed to be rather well informed.

  “Yeah?”

  “Oh, yes,” said Jessica.

  “Didn’t know the guy had any friends! Except girlfriends, that is! Ha ha! Hey, Henry! Henry! Aw, he’s busy talking—gotta get in good with the in-laws. I was gonna say, where’s he been hiding you?”

  “Why, thank you, Mr. Lombardi!”

  Harry’s father seemed to include me in a confidence. “You know, there’s girls in Millport still call for him. Hell, there’s girls in Norwalk still call! ‘I hate to dis-o-point you,’ I say, ‘but my son is engaged to be married.’ Disappoint them—what about disappoint me, ha ha? Kid had some pretty cute girlfriends. You two boyfriend and girlfriend? You make a cute couple. Speaking of girlfriends, where’s Rhonda? Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha!”

  By eight the waiters had stopped coming round with canapés, and Dick Scarum was saying wistfully that he wished he could come out late-night but ever since the splash on Park Avenue, Lori had been cracking down. Chat was suggesting venues, which the eligible Charlie Pall was dismissing, when an altercation at the room’s entrance arrested the discussion. A young man was attempting to join the party but had been stopped at the threshold by the bell captain because he was not wearing a coat. As we turned to look, a uniformed employee hurried up the stairs with one of the blazers the club kept on hand. But the boy protested. His face was so dark it looked black, and I cringed, thinking it was some kind of racial incident, when Chat’s voice rang out into the hush: “He doesn’t need a jacket, for Chrissake!” He strode forth under every eye. “Nicko, good buddy! It’s Chat!”

  Somewhere behind me a woman dropped a drink, dropped it flat on the floor, as if she’d let go of it for fun.

  Hush, murmur, hush, we went, like a roaring tide. Nick Beale had returned from the tropics.

  He stood as if the floor were hot tar, balancing on the far outside of his arches. The hoarse question, when it came, was natural enough: “Is Kate around?”

  Chat grinned lustily. “Sure, Nicko—she’s around!”

  Everyone turned to his left or right, fifty adults trying to pretend that if they could not see anyone, no one could see them. At last it emerged that Kate had gone down to the bathroom. Through the ensuing silence, one voice went on imperviously. “… to come up and see us. And don’t be stingy, Pris. We never seem to see you for more than a day or two and that’s not long enough. You promise me right now you’ll tell Boos that you’re expected at Hedgeway for the middle week, Sunday to Saturday …”

  Inexorably Kate returned with a giggling entourage.

  “Kate, look—”

  “Kate—”

  “Oh my God, Kate—”

  She took it all in with her eyes. They opened wide, marveling. She moved forward as if to embrace him but seemed to check herself, and in her hesitation a tall, gray-haired man cut through the group. The man walked as if he were trying to catch up with the pointed index finger of his right hand.

  “Look here, Beale, I don’t know who told you to show up, but you’ve no right—”

  “Dad, Dad!”

  “—to come crashing in here. That’s what you’re doing, I needn’t tell you.”

  Edging back a step, Nick did not meet the eyes of his former benefactor.

  Mr. Goodenow spewed on, eyes goggling. “This is a private party. If you’re trying to prove something—”

  The spectacle was ridiculous. It was like watching someone yell at a servant.

  “Stop it, Dad!”

  I don’t think Harry came forward out of strength of character or a moral propriety. It was just that he had been trained, growing up, to do the right thing. His behavior was automatic, like one of his computer functions. From the chair that he had claimed, Mr. Lombardi watched his son with slightly menacing eyes, ready to chastise if the boy should fail to carry out the instilled approbations of the middle class: “Say thank you to the lady, Henry!”

  “Elbows off the table, Henry!”

  “Don’t you be rude to a visitor!”

  And as he joined them at the entrance to the room, Harry’s face assumed an expression I had never seen on him before: a pure emotionless tranquillity. It was as if his religion, too, had prepared him for those moments when life flashes its awkward intensity before our eyes. He could, miraculously, handle this—it was the pretty palaver over cocktails that he couldn’t master. He acknowledged Mr. Goodenow with a nod.

  “Hello, Nick,” Harry said, holding out his hand. “Come in and have a drink.”

  “Come have a Mount Gay and tonic,” Chat supplied eagerly.

  In our little group conversation began again in earnest, like a bandage over a sore.

  The attendants closed ranks; Daddy tried to reason. “I’ll ask him to go, Kate. Right now.”

  “No, no, would you just stop it! Leave him alone!” In the background Uncle Goodie could be heard, proposing garrulous toasts.

  “Quiet, dear! Quiet, Kate, quiet down.” Mrs. Goodenow emerged from the wings to manage the scene.

  “I want to talk to Nick! Let me talk to Nick!”

  “Kate, darling, remember your guests.”

  �
�If you don’t let me talk to him, I’ll—I’ll break something! I swear I will!”

  “Art, she’s hysterical. I’ll take her downstairs.”

  “No, Mother! Nick and I are friends! We’re still friends!”

  “Don’t forget that you’re engaged, young lady!” Mr. Goodenow warned, with a hand around Kate’s upper arm.

  “Art, I will deal with this.”

  “You don’t understand! Nick’s my best friend! He’s my best friend!”

  But eventually Kate allowed herself to be led away. She cast an eye back. At first I thought she was gauging our reaction, and I raised my glass in a salute meant to imply good show in the face of adversity. But then I saw that her eyes sought out Harry—Nick had been urged on toward the bar by Chat—and, averting my eyes, I realized that she had just come as close as she could to loving him, for what he had done. She wanted him to turn around and console her with a glance.

  Walking heavily forward, Harry passed a hand over his skull.

  Slowly, one by one, the Cold Harbor mothers left their husbands’ sides and surrounded Nick at the bar.

  “Were you in the Caribbean, Nick?”

  “Did you go to the Bahamas, Nick?”

  “Did you go to St. Barth’s?”

  “What kind of a boat is it?”

  “Did you cross the Atlantic?”

  “Are you going back, Nick?”

  “How’d you get so tan, Nick?”

  Having settled his new guest with a drink, Harry withdrew a few paces and stood rocking forward onto his toes, sipping his drink through the plastic stirrer. No one noticed him, and he hardly seemed to notice himself. He looked a million miles away, utterly distracted, but with the air of someone who rather likes his distractions. Perhaps he was contemplating the fluctuations of the market, or the rate at which sand falls off a sandpile. It was November, and the wedding was set for June. He had less than a year to go before she was his.

  I had wondered, going into the party, at the Goodenows’ placid acceptance of their daughter’s choice, why nobody seemed to mind doing business with Lombardi and Son. But it seemed I had underestimated everyone, most particularly the Goodenows. Like all surviving clans, they had an instinct for self-preservation; it was often said of Kate that she was a “smart girl.” Nobody had doubted that she would pick a winner.