Anne knew many passive-aggressive men; both her father and brother, at home, in their easy chairs, were adept practitioners. Their specialty was a mix of chagrin and forgetfulness. Mr. Lehman would slap his forehead when one of his daughters told him that, once again, he’d forgotten his wife’s birthday. Her brother would look dazed, a rabbit in headlights, when he found out he had booked a golf game on Mother’s Day. Jim dispensed with chagrin. His art was forgetting. He forgot everything that made unwanted demands on him. Anne thought of him as aggressive-passive. She was almost admiring. She hadn’t realized she might, without remorse, without apologies, treat another person as though his feelings didn’t matter. When she occasionally remonstrated against his high-handedness, he would shrug. “Occupational hazard. Hanging around with surgeons. We’re an arrogant lot.”
Jim had half played with the idea of keeping the wedding small, just Anne’s parents and siblings, and not inviting his parents. Mrs. Lehman wouldn’t hear of it. “A small wedding is out of the question; with relatives alone, there are at least a hundred and fifty, and they all expect to be invited and fed.” She shook her head as if she were the victim of circumstances and not their master. “But that is beside the point,” she said. “Small or large, your parents have to be there. To exclude them would be to make a scene. You’d find yourself the object of criticism, the Ungrateful Son instead of the Happy Groom.” She paused, rifling her brain for a trouncing bon mot. Finding no quotation on point, she improvised: “I’ve always found that elaborate courtesy makes most people behave.” Anne laughed. “Well done, Mum,” she said. “You can retire Bartlett’s.” Her mother shook her head. “No. Someone somewhere at some time said something like that. I always credit my authors. ‘Honor among thieves.’ Anonymous. I’ll find it.”
The next day, Mrs. Lehman left a message with Jim’s answering service: “?‘There can be no defense like elaborate courtesy.’ Edward Verrall Lucas.”
All the years he lived in his monk’s studio, Jim saved money for the purpose of paying back his parents every cent they ever spent on his education, with interest. The thought of being indebted to them, of being reminded of their sacrifices for him, shriveled his soul. He estimated four years at Yale at fifteen thousand dollars; four years at Columbia P & S at twenty thousand; and seven years of internship and residency subsidized at thirty-five thousand. In 1975, on the eve of his wedding, he sent his parents a certified check for eighty thousand dollars. Taking his cue from his future mother-in-law, he included a note. “This is to thank you for your support through college, medical school, and advanced training. I recognize the sacrifices you made for me. I wouldn’t want you in old age to find yourselves in straitened circumstances because of them.” After depositing the money, his parents mildly protested. “Can you really afford this? Is your practice doing that well?” they asked. They used the money to buy a co-op in a doorman building on East Eighty-Seventh and a condo in Delray Beach. As their wedding present, they gave Anne and Jim leather-bound, autographed copies of Stephen Birmingham’s popular histories, The Grandees: America’s Sephardic Elite and Our Crowd: The Great Jewish Families of New York. “He’s writing about the two of you!” Mrs. Cardozo wrote in the note she sent with the books. Despite her disappointment in Anne’s plainness, she was deeply gratified by the match. The Temple Emanu-El membership had paid off; all her friends were envious. Writing to Jim separately, she said: “Now, aren’t you glad you didn’t marry that pretty gentile?”
Jim called his parents every Sunday morning. On their birthdays, he sent them presents—cashmere sweaters for his mother, golf clubs for his father—and every other month, he and Anne would take them to dinner at an expensive restaurant with hovering waiters, hoping to forestall complaints that he neglected them. “We really must do this more often,” his mother would say, like clockwork, as the main course was being served. “The hospital keeps us busy,” Jim would respond. “Don’t let your lobster get cold.”
—
Jim was surprised that Eleanor accepted his wedding invitation. He had thought of the invitation as a letter in a bottle, unlikely to reach shore. The Falkeses’ wedding gift was more surprising; she had chosen the fish server in her parents’ pattern. She remembered, he thought. He had admired it the one time he had had dinner at her parents’ apartment, days before the breakup. Against all reason, he began to spin fantasies again of stolen moments together at 106th Street; she would tell him she had never stopped loving him; she would know he had never stopped loving her. Catching sight of her at the reception, as she stood in the receiving line, he felt his hands getting sweaty, his breath shortening, his mind kaleidoscoping. He signaled to a waiter for a drink. “Hot in here, isn’t it,” he said to his mother-in-law, who stood to his right. “No,” she said. “It must be the excitement.” He waited impatiently for Eleanor to reach him, counting down with every handshake. When she was only four people away, he saw that Rupert was standing behind her. He hadn’t figured on Rupert.
“Congratulations, Jim,” she said. “I’d like you to meet my husband, Rupert Falkes.” Jim knew who Rupert was, from his St. Thomas hauntings. The men shook hands. Jim introduced Eleanor to Anne. “A friend from my college days,” he said, “Eleanor Phipps.” She would be Eleanor Phipps if she couldn’t be Eleanor Cardozo. Why had she come? he asked himself. What did she want? He couldn’t think straight. His eyes followed her as she joined the swarms buzzing the food tables. He saw his parents approach her; she said something, then turned away. She still hates them, he thought. His mind began to break up again. They would run off together, today, his wedding day, like Dustin Hoffman and Katharine Ross in The Graduate. They’d get divorced; they’d get married. To hell with everyone else. He reached into his trouser pocket to make sure he had his wallet. A scant second later, he felt his mother-in-law’s hand on his arm, pulling him down to earth. “Look,” she said. “Henry Kissinger’s next in line. Now, no antiwar confrontation. He’s your guest.”
The rest of the wedding passed in a blur for Jim. It reminded him of his bar mitzvah party: too many people he didn’t know or like. After Kissinger, his mind quieted, an unexpected response to the surprisingly bonhomous Secretary. He drank too much Champagne. He danced with Anne, then with his mother, then with his mother-in-law. The best man, an orthopedic surgeon, made a toast that some people thought funny, others vulgar. The waiters cut the cake. He and Anne slowly made the rounds of the tables. As they approached the table where Eleanor sat, Jim’s pulse began to race again. The Falkeses were surrounded by Strauses and Javitses. They had all pulled their chairs out so they could talk together. The other guests at the table sat silently, watching the A-listers with the grim stares of lifeboat survivors. As Anne leaned over to kiss her uncle’s cheek, her aunt Pauline beckoned to Jim.