All That Is

29


YEAR’S END



The town would have been dull without her and her longing to live a somehow different life. She was tired of the former one. The encounters in it had not been happy although she retained her high spirits for the most part. She had a brief affair with a visiting anthropologist who came to teach for a week and met her the first day. She said nothing about it to Bowman, to whom she was faithful in a deeper way, and also it had just been Monday to Friday. She already regretted it. When Bowman came to pick her up one evening he happened to notice a book the anthropologist had written and given to her. It had a vulgar inscription that he mused over while she was finishing dressing, but he had closed the book and he said nothing about it when she appeared.

She came to the city as often as she could and stayed with Nadine, her French friend, and listened to stories of Nadine’s misfortunes in love. Robert Motherwell had wanted her to be his mistress, but she insisted it had to be marriage and so nothing happened. She had a husband at the time but was getting divorced.

“That was the mistake of my life, de tout ma vie,” she said with her slight accent. “If I had done it, would I be any worse off than now? And I would at least have the memories of love, the souvenirs. This way I don’t have a husband or the memories.”

She was fifty-two but acted younger.

“I was so innocent as a young woman,” she said. “You would not believe it. I was nineteen when I got married. I knew nothing in those days, absolutely nothing.”

When her husband was not prepared to make love, she said, she couldn’t understand why.

“As a young girl I imagined it was hard all the time.” She laughed at her own naïveté. “But there was one thing I learned that’s the most important thing.”

“Yes!” Katherine said. “What is it?”

“Do you really want to know?”

“Yes. Tell me.”

“Never give men your best,” Nadine said. “They come to expect it.”

“Yes, that’s exactly my mistake.”

“You can never relax,” Nadine said. “Of course, sometimes you can’t help it, but it’s never a good thing.”

All of this, Katherine told to Bowman as they ate oysters and drank. She confided in him. She loved talking to him.

“Have you ever wanted to write?” she said.

“No. As an editor you have to do the opposite. You have to open yourself to the writing of others. It’s not the same thing. I can write. Originally I wanted to be a journalist. I can write flap copy but not anything with real luster. To do that you have to be able to shut out the writing of others.”

“Do you have favorite writers?”

“What do you mean?”

“That you’ve worked with.”

After a moment he said,

“Yes.”

“Who?”

“Well, the writer I value the most lives in France. She’s lived there for years. I see her only very occasionally, but it’s always such a pleasure. As they like to say, she’s the real thing.”

“She must be wonderful,” Katherine managed to say.

“Yes. Dedicated and wonderful.”

“Who is it?”

“Raymonde Garris.”

Katherine knew the name. She was crushed by it. It seemed the name of an indescribably fascinating woman. It would be marvelous to know her, to know any of them. Then one night at dinner there was Harold Brodkey, who had written the long story about orgasms. Harold Brodkey! She could hardly wait to tell Claire.

Or tell about going to the Frick.

She was wearing a pair of new red shoes that were too tight for her. She had to take them off in the ladies’ room to rest.

“Did you like it?” he asked as they were preparing to leave.

“Yes. It was absolutely beautiful,” she said. “And you can learn so many things.”

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t know. You can learn what to wear when you have your portrait painted. You can learn how to hold a dog.”

He looked at her disapprovingly.

“You know I don’t know anything about art,” she said. “I only know what you tell me.”

She was not being ironic. She liked male authority, especially his.

“Nadine is going to be very impressed that we went to the Frick. She imagines me as only going to bars and sitting with my skirt pulled up.”

Together they stepped out into the early evening. She was holding his arm. The sky was a deep, rain blue, almost no light remaining but the clouds were still lustrous. Windows were lit in every building on the avenue and across the end of the park.

Later in the fall she met him on a Friday evening in the bar of the Algonquin, where he liked to go. It was a small room, more like a club, behind the front desk and often crowded at that hour. It was as if there was a great party being held in the hotel, spilling from the elevators and rooms and the bar was a kind of refuge from it, calmer though filled. There were many men in suits and ties. She had just read Marguerite Duras, The Lover, for the first time and was going on about it.

“Oh, God, didn’t that image of the girl just kill you? On the ferry in a sepia-colored silk dress. It was her, Marguerite Dura.”

“Duras,” Bowman said.

“Duras? Is that how you say it?”

“Yes.”

“I thought you didn’t pronounce the final s in French,” she said plaintively.

He could not help being touched by her.

“Bowman?” he heard someone behind them call. “Is that you?”

It was followed by a cackle.

“For God’s sake,” Bowman exclaimed.

“Excuse me, sir, aren’t you Phil Bowman?”

Lanky, grinning, older, with a pot belly, it was Kimmel. Bowman felt an inexplicable warmth rise within him.

“See, I told you,” Kimmel said to the blond woman with him.

“What are you doing here?” Bowman said.

Cackling again, with his elbows loose, Kimmel doubled over laughing.

“Kimmel, what the hell are you doing here?” Bowman said again. “I can’t believe it.”

“Who is this?” Kimmel said, ignoring him. “Is this your daughter? Your father and I were shipmates.” He turned to the blond woman. “Donna, I want you to meet an old pal, Phil Bowman, and his daughter—I’m sorry, I didn’t get your name,” he said smiling with charm.

“Katherine. I’m not his daughter.”

“I didn’t think so,” Kimmel said.

“My name’s Donna,” the woman said, introducing herself.

She had an appealing face and seemed a bit too big for her legs.

“What are you doing in New York? Where are you living?” Bowman asked.

“We’re on a little business trip,” Kimmel said. “We’re living in Ft. Lauderdale. We were in Tampa, but we moved.”

“My ex-husband is in Tampa,” Donna said.

“Tell them who you were married to,” Kimmel said.

“Oh, they don’t want to hear about that.”

“Yes, they do. She was married to a count.”

“I was twenty-eight, you know?” she said to Katherine. “I’d never been married, and I met this tall guy in Boca Raton who had a Porsche. He was German and had tons of money. We sort of started up and I thought, why not? My father practically disowned me. I was over there trying to kill them, he said, and here you’re going to marry one. It turned out after we were married that he didn’t have any money—his mother did. She only spoke German to me. I tried to learn German, you know, but it was hopeless. He was a nice guy, but it lasted about two years.”

“And then you two met?” Bowman said.

“No, not right away.”

“Donna was very close to the governor for a while,” Kimmel said.

“Hey,” she said.

“Whatever happened to Vicky?” Bowman asked.

“Vicky?”

“In San Diego.”

“You know, I saw her after that,” Kimmel said. “I could see it wouldn’t work. She was too bourgeois for me.”

“Bourgeois?”

“And her father was a killer.”

He turned to Katherine,

“Your dad, I don’t know if he’s told you about his swashbuckling days in the Pacific during the war. We were getting ready to invade Okinawa. Everybody was writing farewell letters except the mail was cut off. Everybody was desperate. The exec said, Mr. Bowman! The ship is depending on you. Bring back the mail! That was it. Like the message to Garcia.”

“The message to who?” Donna said.

Kimmel cackled,

“Ask him.”

Then he became serious,

“Tell me, Phil, what are you doing these days?”

“I’m an editor.”

“I figured you’d end up commanding the fleet. You know, you haven’t changed a bit. Except for your appearance,” he said.

“Is it true,” Donna said, “that this one here was blown right off the ship?”

“Three of them,” Kimmel said. “It set a record.”

“You weren’t exactly blown off,” Bowman said.

“The whole damn ship was exploding.”

“Well, we managed to get it to port. Brownell and I.”

“Brownell!” Kimmel cried.

He looked at his watch.

“Hey, we’re going to have to get going. We have tickets to a show.”

“What are you seeing?” Katherine said.

“What are we seeing?” he asked Donna.

“Evita.”

“That’s it. It was great seeing you.”

They shook hands and near the door Kimmel waved one arm loosely in good-bye. Bye bye, waved Donna.

Like that, they were gone. All of it had come back so swiftly. The past seemed there at his feet, the neglected past. He felt oddly freshened.

“Who was that?” said Katherine.

“That was the Camel,” Bowman said.

He couldn’t help smiling.

“The camel?”

“That was Bruce Kimmel. He was my cabinmate on the ship. The crew all called him the Camel. He walked like one.”

“You were in the navy,” she said. “I didn’t know that. During the war.”

“Yes, both of us.”

“What was it like?”

“That’s hard to explain. I actually thought of staying in the navy.”

“I loved listening to you and the Camel. Did you know him a long time?”

“Quite a long time. Then he jumped overboard in the middle of the ocean during a big attack. That was the last time I saw him.”

“Until tonight? That’s so incredible.”


Nadine was looking forward to finally meeting Bowman. Katherine was coming into town to go to a party with him a few days before Christmas, she hoped it would be more than a party. The course of things seemed right for it. He was not seeing anyone else, she knew, and Christmas was like Mardi Gras, at parties anything might happen. The parties at Christmas were not like other parties, they were gayer and more warmhearted.

Snow was forecast for the day she was coming, which made it even more perfect. Perhaps she wouldn’t be able to get back to Nadine’s afterwards. She might be wearing his bathrobe in the morning and they would look out together on a city all covered with white.

With snow on the way everyone was let off work early. She hurried to her house. The snow had already begun falling. She never imagined that it would interfere. Deborah came in to report it was already two or three inches deep on the roads, the bus that was to leave at four was already delayed. An hour later Katherine had to call and say she was not going to be able to get to the city.

“Oh, God,” she cried, “this is so terrible.”

“It’s just a party,” Bowman said not knowing all that was intended. “It’s not that important.”

“Yes, it is,” she moaned.

She was heartbroken. Nothing could console her.

That evening in New York it was snowing heavily, the beginning of a huge storm. Guests were late to the party and some had decided not to come, but many were there. Coats and women’s boots were piled in the bedroom. A piano was playing. Bus service was suspended, someone was saying. The room was filled with people laughing and talking. Platters of food were being put out on a long counter that was open to the kitchen. A whole ham glazed a rich brown stood with slivers being cut off and eaten. On the television, two announcers, a man and a woman, were following the progress of the storm but could not be heard over the noise. There was a strange sense of unreality with the snow falling more and more heavily outside. It was almost impossible to see across the street. There were only the blurred lights of apartments in the shifting white shrouds.

Bowman stood by the window. He was under the spell of other Christmases. He was remembering the winter during the war, at sea, far from home and on the ship Armed Forces Radio playing carols, “Silent Night,” and everyone thinking back. With its deep nostalgia and hopeless longing it had been the most romantic Christmas of his life.

Someone was standing just behind him watching in silence, also. It was Ann Hennessy, who had been Baum’s assistant and was now working in publicity.

“Snow at Christmas,” Bowman remarked.

“That was a wonderful thing, wasn’t it?”

“When you were a child, you mean.”

“No, always.”

They were laughing in the kitchen. An English actor was just arriving in a fur-collared coat after his last performance. The host had come to greet him and to say good-bye to guests who were afraid of not being able to get home.

“I think I’m going to go myself, before it gets worse,” Bowman decided.

“Yes, I think so, too,” she said.

“How are you going? I’ll see if I can find a cab. I’ll drop you off.”

“No, that’s all right,” she said. “I’ll take the subway.”

“Oh, I don’t think you should take the subway tonight.”

“I always take it.”

“There could be delays.”

“I get off just a block away from my door,” she said as if to reassure him.

She went to say good night to the host and his wife. Bowman saw her get her coat. She drew a colored silk scarf from one of the sleeves and wound it expertly around her neck. She put on a knit hat and tucked her hair into it. He saw her turn up her collar as she went into the hall. He stood at the window to see her figure appear in the street, but she apparently stayed close to the building, making her way alone.

She was, in fact, not solitary. She had, for some years, been involved with a doctor who had given up his practice. He was brilliant—she would never have been attracted to an unintelligent man—but unstable, with wide changes of mood. He went into rages but then pleadingly begged her forgiveness. It had exhausted her emotionally. She was a Catholic girl from Queens, a bright student, shy in her youth but with the poise of someone who goes their own way indifferent to opinion. It was the strain of her relationship with the doctor that had made her give up her job as Baum’s assistant. She didn’t explain the reasons. She merely said it had turned out to be more than she felt capable of doing and Baum knew her well enough to accept it and the obvious fact that she had a somewhat troubling life of her own.

Bowman knew none of this. He merely felt some strange connection to her, probably because of the sentimentality of the occasion or a grace in her he had not seen before. It was better not to have seen her home or even to see her leaving the building. The snow was coming down, some people were calling to him.