The View From Penthouse B

16





Chaz with a Z


“HERE’S NOEL!” OLIVIA called from halfway across the room. “He came!”

This required a reload of the image in our heads. The actual Noel was not the lonely yet smoldering father—a Captain von Trapp or a Mr. Rochester—that I had fashioned in my mind’s eye. He was a bespectacled, pot-bellied man with a receding hairline, who was smiling so fondly at Olivia that I’d taken him for a party-crashing uncle. Until he kissed her on the lips, hungrily.

“Welcome!” Margot called. “We’re so glad, totally delighted”—I felt the nudge of her elbow—“that we finally get to meet the famous Noel.”

He shook Margot’s hand and then mine. “I’m so grateful that Olivia landed here during this difficult period,” he said.

“You should thank Anthony,” Margot said. “He has to be the most devoted big brother on God’s green earth. We just get credit for the couch and the afghan.”

“Anthony’s new boyfriend is coming,” Olivia told Noel. “We’re supposed to be very cool about it, though.”

Noel said with a wry smile, his eyes an unremarkable blue behind his rimless glasses, “Am I ever anything but cool?”

An answer in the form of another lingering kiss finally terminated when Olivia pulled back to say, “Stephanie was able to get a sitter so she’s not bringing Maude.”

“The baby’s how old?” Noel asked.

“Weeks! Almost seven.”

“My little girl will be a year in March,” Noel told us.

I said we knew that because Olivia talked about her all the time.

That made Olivia’s features gather into such a sweet, wistful pout that Noel touched her cheek and said, “It’ll be fine, babe.”

Olivia said, “Noel is asking for joint custody.”

The doorbell rang again and Margot said, “I can’t. It might be Charles. Gwen? Would you? I’ll be under a blanket somewhere.”

It was only the malignant Solange and Jacques, coatless, purseless, giftless, protesting that they were dropping in for only a minute. We didn’t think they would come at all because we had the unresolved issue of the copper umbrella stand of undetermined ownership halfway between our two front doors. A week earlier they had left a curt message on engraved, monogrammed notepaper stating that we were taking up more than our share of the “palier.”

Later Anthony would report that they seemed baffled as to the party’s raison d’être. An au pair’s finding employment? Why would that be of interest to anyone of their station?

New employer Stephanie was next, attractive in an intense, nubby-suited, CEO kind of way, hair expensively streaked and well coiffed, not one to smile easily as she studied new acquaintances a few seconds too long.

Olivia introduced her new employer to the old, who exclaimed, “She’s the best!”

“I reached that conclusion myself,” Stephanie said. “Obviously, I wasn’t troubled by your ex-wife’s condemnation. I’m much more interested in her caretaking than her private life.”

“Not officially my ex,” he said. “That takes time. None of it was Olivia’s fault. I know you’ll be very happy with your new hire.”

“Maude took to her immediately, blob that she is. And I had to get back to work, like, yesterday.”

Olivia volunteered that the feeling was mutual. Maude was adorable. And named after her great-grandmother.

“Great-great-grandmother,” Stephanie corrected.

“Who was a nanny!” said Olivia.

“A governess,” said Stephanie.

Though the doorbell didn’t ring, the front door opened and in came Charles with the very stranger whose arrival Margot had been dodging.

He was dark and slight. A teenager in a vintage tweed overcoat. His eyes were large and brown, and his face had the bones and planes of an ethnicity more interesting than Charles’s. Even within the wool and herringbone folds, he looked as if he might dance on Broadway or model in Milan. And hard to miss: a hat that his new father figure would soon describe as an insouciant bowler—dark forest green, studded with brass grommets.

Before approaching either, I watched them at the buffet table. It was Charles in his paternal role, working stubborn precut slices of ham away from the bone. With his chin and elbow, he seemed to be pointing out the two kinds of mustard and various kinds of bread. I waited until he’d constructed his own sandwich before I approached. The young man didn’t quite smile and seemed uncertain what the name Gwen-Laura Schmidt connoted.

“Margot’s sister,” I explained.

Charles said, “As you probably surmised, this is Chaz—”

“With a Z,” said the young man.

“Hats by Chaz,” said Charles. “Not a bad name for a line.”

“I’m working on a certificate in millinery techniques,” Chaz explained.

I then voiced the backup sentence I’d been saving should follow-up be required. “I understand hats have made a comeback.”

“It’s true. I like to think I saw the trend coming. They certainly did at FIT. Which is where I’m studying.”

Charles said, “He started off in shoe design, but he switched majors almost immediately.”

I was able to deliver only an unenthusiastic “oh” due to my greater fondness for footwear than headgear.

Chaz helped, conversationally, by saying, “Wow. Nice place. I mean, like, maybe the nicest apartment I ever saw.”

“He thought all the apartments in the building would be the same size. Like mine,” said Charles.

“Like a dorm,” said Chaz.

I thanked him and said that it was my sister’s. Margot, of course.

“Hope she’s not too freaked out about this,” said Chaz.

There it was, the acknowledgment of adultery, paternity, fraud, and home wrecking.

I said, “I know none of this is your fault—”

Chaz said, “I didn’t think it was such a cool thing to do, but Doc said you were all pretty good friends and sooner or later—”

“We came up with ‘Doc,’” Charles explained. “What do you think? It’s less formal than Dr. Pierrepont without being overly familiar.” He winked at Chaz. “For now.”

By “not his fault,” I hadn’t meant Chaz’s attendance at the party, but his very existence. I let his misapprehension—uninvited guest—stand. I asked Charles if he could hack off another piece of ham for me and pass the seven-grain rolls.

Charles said, “Sure. It’s a little salty. But that’s because it’s a genuine Smithfield.” Then, prone as always to introduce awkward topics at improper junctures, he said, “Chaz, tell Gwen how your legal father has dealt with all of this.”

Chaz took several long swallows of the beer he seemed to be sharing with Charles, then sputtered, “He freaked! And walked out. I mean, like, the minute he heard it. Like he was waiting for some excuse. Which sucks because even if Doc got my mother pregnant, it was for medical reasons, and Dad is my . . . dad.”

I hadn’t expected this: the other side of the story. I said, “I’m sorry. I hope he hasn’t abandoned you, too.”

“Do you believe that someone would be so pissed off at his wife that he’d walk out on his kid, too?” Charles demanded.

I murmured, “I’m sure he’ll be back. I’m sure it’ll take a little time.”

I saw that Charles’s expression didn’t quite match his indignant words. He looked smugly victorious. Finally, someone could view him as the honorable guy and better dad. He was gazing so fondly at Chaz that it made me forget how this boy had come about. He was, tonight, the Moses who’d been placed in the bullrushes, raised by strangers, and found his way back to his people.

I thought of issuing something like a warning to Charles, reminding him that he was vulnerable in his little hole of an apartment without friends except for his fellow released inmates and parolees. He saved me that awkwardness by reading my mind.

“Gwen is worried that this is too much too soon. That you and I, Chaz, should be taking it very slowly.”

“I thought it might be kind of weird to meet the wife and everything,” said Chaz.

I said, “It’s okay. Margot’s very . . . what’s the right word . . . ?”

“Resilient,” said Charles. “Famously so. Not very much throws her.”

“I figured that,” said Chaz. “Anthony told me that she lost all of her money to that guy who’s in jail for, like, life.”

I hesitated: confirm or ignore? Chaz must have sensed my reluctance to elaborate because he said, “Whoops. Sorry. I forced that out of Anthony. I was wondering why a bunch of you were living together, so that’s how I found out she was broke.”

I asked, “So you met Anthony before you met Dr. Pierrepont?”

After chewing and swallowing a large bite of his sandwich, Chaz said, “He friended me. After my mother outed us.”

“He means on the witness stand,” said Charles.

“Did she tell you in advance that she was going to do that?” I asked.

Chaz said, “No. I mean I know she got one of those things where the guy knocks on your door—”

“Subpoena,” said Charles.

“And she told me like a hundred times after my dad left why he was angry and bailing.”

Charles said, with another revoltingly proud smile, “Chaz’s theory, and Anthony’s, too, I might add, is that his mother, a single divorcée, may have wanted to identify herself”—and here he paused with faux humility, a bite of the lip—“so that I could find her.”

“And hook up with her,” Chaz stated. “And I know this for a fact. Way before the trial, she tried to friend him.”

Charles said, “I think he means befriend.”

I said, too stunned to comment on anything but the etymology, “While you were out of circulation, ‘friend’ became a verb.”

Chaz asked me, with what looked to be a hopeful smile, “Are you on Facebook?”

I said, “No, not yet . . .”

Charles said, “I can see the question that’s on the tip of your tongue, Gwen. And the answer is no, I have not yet reached out to Chaz’s mother. She lives in New Jersey and you know that my social life is limited to the borough of Manhattan for a while.”

Would I remember Charles’s statement so I could repeat it verbatim to my roommates? Luckily, the doorbell rang: more strangers arriving. I rushed through a farewell—we have Coke and Diet Coke and apple cider at the bar. And cupcakes later. We are a very cupcake-oriented household. Nice to meet you, Chaz.

He surprised me with one of those hugs, the new substitute handshake, his ear barely grazing mine. When it knocked his green hat askew, Charles righted it.