“Yes, in that way you do. Showing an interest in them.”
“Showing an interest is only one part,” she said. “You also take them under your wing, if that’s what they seem to want. But then there’s another part, which is that eventually you let them go. Fling! You fling them away. Because otherwise they think that they can’t manage on their own. Sometimes you fling them too hard. You have to be careful.” She stopped. “Anyway, you should try showing an interest too. In the ones upstairs.”
“I will,” he said, full of feeling; he suddenly thought of two kids, a boy and a girl, both just out of college, who had been hired at the same time at ShraderCapital. They were snappingly smart and eager, with different, distinctive talents. But both were promising.
“It really takes very little,” said Faith, “and they are very, very grateful. They try to show their gratitude. There’s the proof,” she added, nodding toward something in her sight line.
Emmett turned to look. On the floor, at the foot of the sofa, was a large, open box that contained various items, some still half-wrapped in festive paper, others unwrapped and opened. “What’s all this?” he asked.
“Thank-you gifts and sentimental objects and private jokes. Personal connections.”
“From who?”
“Oh, from everyone. People I’ve known over the years. Even people I’ve met only once. Sometimes they arrive in the mail, and sometimes they’re handed to me at summits and speeches. Always it’s someone who says I’ve helped them in some capacity, and if it comes in the mail there’s a note attached, and sometimes I have no idea who the person is—the name on the note doesn’t even sound familiar, or it vaguely rings a bell—though the note makes it seem as if we had some kind of important encounter. And I guess we did, because it was significant to them. These things have been sitting here for far too long, gathering dust. This is only one box of several. The tip of the iceberg. Deena is going to help me go through them this week. Objects have a different meaning to me now at seventy-one. I can’t collect more things. It has to be a time of winnowing.”
Emmett bent and slid the box closer and peered inside, fishing around, looking. Here on top was one of those lacy little pillows that women liked, a sachet. He held it to his nose but it gave off no scent anymore.
Here was a key chain with a little boot on it, probably meant to symbolize the sexy suede boots that Faith famously wore.
Here were three different jars: one empty; one with some ancient black jam in it, and perhaps some botulism spores; and one containing jelly beans. The one with jelly beans had a note attached that read:
Faith,
I know you must get a lot of jars, am I right, because of your famous jar line? I’m sure you can open THIS one! (In fact, I’m sure you can do anything.)
xxx Wendy Sadler
And here was a T-shirt with a picture of a lobster, and here was a copy of an old, stupid-looking children’s book called The Bradford Twins’ Summer Surprise. On the cover, a poorly drawn boy and girl flew a kite. He opened it and saw that it was inscribed:
Dear Faith,
This book was my favorite when I was a little girl, and I wanted you to have it.
Love,
Denise Manguso (from that dinner in Chicago!)
“So how was that dinner in Chicago?” he asked.
“What are you talking about?”
“The inscription. Who is Denise Manguso?”
“I have no idea.”
Emmett kept pawing through the box. Here was a bracelet made of hemp and bead. Here was a toy plastic spaceship with the name NASA on the side, and a note with it:
Dear Faith,
I work here at NASA now as deputy director for engineering, and if you ever come down to DC, I’d love to show you around. I wouldn’t be here, if not for you.
Fondly,
Olive (Mitchell)
Here was a box of homemade fudge. Emmett opened it and saw that it now had a teeth-cracking, long-ago-baked, igneous surface of sugar and nut, entirely calcified.
“What year is this from, Faith?”
“How would I know?”
“Then what decade?”
Here was a peacock feather tied with a ribbon, and here a beautiful pen engraved with the strange words THE PEN IS MIGHTIER THAN THE PENIS.
And here, equally strangely, was a frying pan, never used, a label still on it. What did it represent? Another private joke, he assumed, which Faith might or might not remember, even though the gift-giver had had the impulse to go out and purchase it and give it, for it was a sign of love. All of these women had needed a connection with Faith. She was plasma to them. Maybe it was a mommy thing, he thought, but maybe it was also: I want to be you. There were so many of these women, just so many. But there was only one Faith.
“It must be a burden to you to be the most important person to people who aren’t all that important to you,” he said.
“I’m not sure I agree with your interpretation. I get a lot from them too, remember.”
“What do you get?” he asked. “I’m curious.”
“Well, they keep me in the world,” she said, and that was all she wanted to say.
He wondered who Faith Frank opened up to. She had her friends, those old women from the old days, including Bonnie, the lesbian with the frizzy hair, and Evelyn, the society lady in her suits the colors of Pez. They were intimates of Faith’s, he knew; they’d all been photographed together back in a completely different time. Emmett had a sudden memory of a picture of Faith and the others sprawled around an office. The place looked hectic, messy, busy. But the thing he recalled most was how happy Faith looked among those women, how relaxed and content.
Suddenly Emmett wondered why Faith hadn’t found a man to be with her all these years, after having been widowed so young. Why did a strong woman need to be her own shield? Or maybe that was just the way Faith wanted it, because men were a distraction, or too high-maintenance. Or maybe having a man in her life was just one thing too many. He and Faith might have loved each other, he thought now when it was much, much too late.
“I’ve done everything wrong!” he said, not able to keep this to himself.
“What?” Faith looked alarmed at the outburst.
“I could have loved you,” he said. “I could have done that, Faith. We could have complemented each other. We both live these oversized, sort of ridiculous lives. The sex would’ve been a release, and a revelation. And all the conversations afterward. I would’ve made you scrambled eggs in the middle of the night. I make good middle-of-the-night scrambled eggs; I bet you didn’t know that. But I screwed everything up, and now you think I’m awful.”
She stood facing him, still clearly shocked but recovering, one hand lightly massaging her neck for a moment. All she said, finally, was, “I don’t think that.”
It was getting late, and he would need to go home soon. His car and driver were waiting, and later he and Faith would lie in their separate beds, in which there was plenty of room for another person if they so chose, which tonight they wouldn’t. They were older and they had to carefully mete out intimacy. Emmett slid the box back to where it had been; this box that had held the gifts that Faith had been given by the people in her life she’d known or met and had affected as she went through—the people she could sometimes barely keep track of—but it didn’t matter if she couldn’t keep track, because she felt tenderly toward them all, and they knew it.
Emmett tried to picture what kind of gift he might give Faith to show her how he felt. He couldn’t imagine what he could possibly give her—what would have meaning and resonance. But then he realized he did know, for he’d already done it. He’d given her a foundation.
THIRTEEN