—
Anne wanted Nathan to go to Dalton, the neighborhood school, one block north and one block east, an easy drop-off until he was old enough to dash across Park Avenue without getting run over. A friend whose children went there said it was wildly competitive, “starting second semester first grade,” but Anne didn’t worry about Nathan getting by. He had fierce concentration when he was building with LEGO, and what he might lack in sheer brainpower, he would make up in personality. The most charming baby had grown up to be the most charming child, his parents’ love and devotion having done him only good. He was hugely popular at his nursery school at the 92nd Street Y, everyone’s favorite playdate, and while he would shove and push if sufficiently provoked, most of the time he avoided scraps. “I run faster than everyone else,” he told his father. “They can’t catch me.” He wasn’t a beautiful boy, but his smile was sunshine and he gleamed with sweet self-confidence. He had the vividness and liveliness of a Disney woodland creature, a Bambi boy, soft-eyed and downy. Anne had arranged her work schedule so that she was home on schooldays at four. Nathan would sit at the kitchen counter, eating berries and graham crackers and reporting on his day. She had never known such happiness. He was a confiding little fellow, guileless in the way of only children. She didn’t worry that he wasn’t reading yet or that he still wore Pampers at night. She put no stock in precocity.
“He’s your child,” Jim would say to Anne at least once a month, marveling at Nate’s sunniness, grateful to her and her sturdy Lehman genes. “He escaped the Cardozo curse, the envy, the grudge-bearing, the egotism.”
“Oh, I don’t know about that last item,” Anne would answer, as if they were following a comedy script. “He can be egotistical.” Once, in a sly mood, she added, “But he’s not narcissistic.” Jim tousled her hair, deciding she was speaking generally, not about him.
Jim wanted Nathan to go to Trinity, across Central Park, on the way to Presbyterian Hospital. “One of us can easily drop him off on the way to work,” he said. Anne wondered if the Falkes connection was behind Jim’s thinking; he gave other reasons. Nate was already showing athletic talent. He had learned to ride a two-wheeler when he was three. He could run fast and jump high. On the soccer field, he always knew where the ball was. Jim thought Trinity’s athletics were better than Dalton’s. He also thought its music program was better; Nathan was agitating to play the upright bass. When Jim asked him, “Why a bass?” Nate said, “It sounds like God.” For his sixth birthday, his parents bought him a quarter-size bass.
Jim didn’t worry about Nathan getting into Trinity or any other Manhattan private school. There was always an alumnus in Anne’s family ready to write the right sort of letter. Lehmans and Lewisohns, as long as they weren’t sociopaths, were almost always admitted. As years went by, Jim got used to the benefits of being a Lehman—it opened doors everywhere—and he was almost indignant the few times his father-in-law’s secretary couldn’t get them a last-minute reservation at the Quilted Giraffe. “Just make sure you tip everyone and tip big,” Mr. Lehman said. “The celebrities who eat at these places are lousy tippers; they mostly expect to be comped. The rich, like us, are their bread and butter. We pay to get in, every time.”
Anne didn’t want Nate to go to Trinity. The memory of the months she had stalked the Falkes boys was mortifying to her. She wanted it buried, beyond recall. She checked the obituary notices regularly, hoping to read that Mr. Phipps had died. She didn’t want any surviving witnesses. She tried to talk Jim out of Trinity, without letting on that she knew the Falkes boys went there. She couldn’t, and she caved. Nate went to Trinity, where everyone loved him. By the time Nate started kindergarten, Eleanor’s two oldest boys had graduated and the younger ones were in the middle school. By the time Nate was in the middle school, she could watch a game at the soccer field without her heart pounding.
Nate decided in tenth grade he would be a doctor—not a surgeon with a grueling schedule, but a family practitioner. He wanted variety in his patients and their diseases, and he wanted to keep playing his bass. He was almost good enough to be a professional. “I can’t be in any kind of quartet,” he explained to his parents, “if I can’t practice with the others regularly.” Jim was pleased and proud his son wanted to go into the family business. He wanted Nate to go to Yale, and if not Yale, then Stanford or Harvard. Nate had other ideas. “I’m not the smartest guy in the room,” he said to his father, “but I’m the most determined. I’ll go to a small school for college. I’ll have a better chance that way getting into a good med school.” He went to Amherst, where two older Lewisohn cousins had gone, graduating in 2000. He took off a year to work with Paul Farmer in Haiti, then went to Yale for medical school. He admired the dean, David Kessler, who had been the scourge of the tobacco cartel at the FDA. “Maybe I’ll do public health,” he told his parents. “Yes,” Anne said. Jim nodded. His son was a Lehman; he wouldn’t have to make money. Jim had tried not to care that Rupert had been appointed to the Yale Corporation. He had money, I don’t; not my own at least, he told himself. He didn’t care about the money, only everything else, the prestige, the recognition, the honor, Eleanor. He wished she hadn’t married so well. He fantasized about Nathan one day joining the Corporation.
Anne’s parents adored Nathan. If they had a favorite grandchild, which they wouldn’t, he was it. The Cardozo grandparents were not fond. They had been counting on a beautiful grandchild, and Nathan disappointed, one more reason for Jim to keep the family visits brief and infrequent. The last years of Jim’s parents’ lives, he saw them only when they were in the hospital. He oversaw their medical care. He found he preferred his parents when they were ill. They were like all his other patients, helpless, needy, and afraid.