But my mother did like Buddy Bear. “You absolutely must meet him,’’ she insisted.
“Okay. Where is he?’’ I replied graciously.
“He’s usually here on Fridays.”
Edward said, “Maybe he’s at a powwow.”
My mother gave him a very cool look, then said to my father, “We must get his mushrooms.’’ She explained to Susan and me, “He picks his own mushrooms. He knows where to go for them, but he absolutely refuses to let anyone in on his secret.”
I was fairly certain that Buddy Bear went to the wholesale produce market like any sane restaurateur, but Mr. Bear was putting out a line of bullshit to the white turkeys who were gobbling it up. My God, I almost felt I would rather have been dining with Frank Bellarosa.
My mother seemed agitated that the owner had not put in an appearance, so she inquired of our waitress as to his whereabouts. The waitress replied, “Oh, like he’s
really
busy, you know? He’s like, cooking? You know? Do you want to talk to him or something?”
“When he has a moment,’’ my mother replied.
I mean, who gives a shit? You know?
At my mother’s suggestion, or insistence, I had ordered some angel-hair pasta concoction that combined three ingredients of Mr. Bear’s supposed foraging: the basil, the mushrooms, and some god-awful Indian sorrel that tasted like moldy grass clippings.
There wasn’t much said during dinner, but after the plates were cleared, my mother said to my father, “We’re going to have the Indian pudding.’’ She turned to us. “Buddy makes an authentic Indian pudding. You must try it.”
So we had six authentic Indian—or should I say Native American—puddings, which I swear to God came out of a can. But I had mine with a tumbler of brandy, so who cares?
The check came and my father paid it, as was his custom. I was anxious to leave, but as luck would have it, the great Indian was now making the rounds of his tables, and we sat until our turn came.
To fill the silence, I said to my father, “Edward tied into a mako last week. About two hundred pounds, I’d say.”
My father replied to me, not to Edward, “Someone caught a fifteen-foot white out of Montauk two weeks ago.”
My mother added, “I don’t mind when they’re eaten, but to hunt them just for sport is disgraceful.”
“I agree,’’ I said. “You must eat what you catch, unless it’s absolutely awful. A mako is very good. Edward fought him for an hour.”
“And,’’ my mother added, “I don’t like it when they’re injured and get away. That is inhumane. You must make every effort to capture him and put him out of his misery.”
“Then eat him,’’ I reminded her.
“Yes, eat him. Buddy serves shark here when he gets it.”
I glanced at Edward, then Susan and Carolyn. I took a deep breath and said to my father, “Do you remember that time, Dad, when I hooked that blue . . . ?”
“Yes?”
“Never mind.”
Mr. Bear finally got to us. He was rather fat and, in fact, didn’t look like an Indian at all except for his long black hair. If anything, he was a white man with some Indian and perhaps black blood and, more important, a keen sense of self-promotion. My mother took his left hand as he stood beside our table, leaving his right hand free to shake all around. “So,’’ said Buddy Bear, “you like everything?”
Mother gushed forth a stream of praise for one of the most horrible meals I’ve ever eaten.
We made stupid restaurant chatter for a minute or two, mother still holding Mr. Bear’s paw, but alas, the last of the Shinnecocks had to move on, but not before my mother said to him playfully, “I’m going to follow you one of these mornings and see where you pick your mushrooms.”
He smiled enigmatically.
I asked him, “Do you have sorrel every day, or only after you mow your lawn?”
He smiled again, but not so enigmatically. The smile, in fact, looked like “Fuck you.”
Edward tried to stifle a laugh, but failed miserably.
On that note, we left Buddy’s Hole for the cool evening breezes of Southampton.
On the sidewalk of Job’s Lane, my mother said, “We would invite you all back to the house, but we have a long day tomorrow.”
I addressed my parents. “We have almost nothing in common and never did, so I would like to end these meaningless dinners if it’s all the same to you.”
My mother snapped, “What a hateful thing to say,’’ but my father actually looked saddened and mumbled, “All right.”
In the Bronco on the way back to East Hampton, Susan asked me, “Will you regret that?”
“No.”
Carolyn spoke up from the backseat, “Did you mean it?”
“Yes.”
Edward said, “I kinda feel sorry for them.”
Edward does not love all of humanity, but he likes people, and he feels sorry for everyone. Carolyn feels sorry for no one, Susan doesn’t know what sorrow is, and I . . . well, sometimes I feel sorry for myself. But I’m working on that.
Actually, telling people what you think of them is not difficult, because they already know it and are probably surprised you haven’t said it sooner.
I knew, too, that breaking off my relationship with my parents was good training for ending other relationships. I think Susan, who is no fool, knew this, too, because she said to me, “Judy Remsen told me that you told Lester to go F himself. Is anyone else on your list?”
Quick wit that I am, I pulled a gasoline receipt from my pocket and pretended to study it as I drove. “Let’s see here . . . nine more. I’ll call your parents tomorrow, so that will leave only seven . . .”
She didn’t reply, because there were children present.
• • •
We drove back to Stanhope Hall on Monday, and for the next few days our house was lively as the children’s friends came and went. I actually like a house full of teenagers on school break, and in short doses. At Christmas, Easter, and Thanksgiving especially, the presence of kids in the house lends something extra to the holiday mood and reminds me, I suppose, of my own homecomings from school.
The children of the old rich and privileged are, if nothing else, polite. They are acculturated early and know how to make conversations with adults. They’d rather not, of course, but they’re learning early how to do things they don’t want to do. They will be successful and unhappy adults.
Carolyn and Edward had booked flights on separate days, naturally, so that meant two trips to Kennedy Airport at inconvenient hours. It’s times like those when I miss chauffeurs. We could have packed them off in hired limos, I suppose, but after telling my own parents to buzz off, I was feeling a wee bit . . . something.
After my children left, the house was quiet, and it rained for a few days straight. I went to the Locust Valley office to fill up the days, but didn’t accomplish much except to find the file I needed on the East Hampton house. I spent a day figuring out my expenses on the house, so that when it was sold, I could calculate my profit accurately, and thus figure out my capital gains. Of course, as before, I could reinvest the so-called profit in another house and defer the tax, but I knew that I would not be buying another house in the near future; perhaps never. This realization, which was forced on me by the mundane act of having to crunch numbers, sort of hit me hard. It wasn’t simply a matter of money that made me realize there would be no new house in my future; I might be doing very well in two years. It was more, I think, a decision on my part to stop making long-range plans. Modern life was geared toward a reasonably predictable future; thirty-year mortgages, seven-year certificates of deposit, hog belly futures, and retirement plans. But recent events convinced me that I can neither predict nor plan for the future, so screw the future. When I got there, I’d know what to do; I always know what to do in foreign countries. Why not the future?
The past was another story. You couldn’t change it, but you could break away from it and leave it and the people in it behind. My objective, I suppose, was to float in a never-ending present, like the captain of the
Paumanok
, dealing with the moment’s realities, aware but not concerned about where I’ve been and charting a general course forward, subject to quick changes depending on winds, tides, and whatever I could see on the immediate horizon.
As I was getting ready to leave the office, my phone rang and my secretary, Anne, came into my office instead of buzzing me. “Mr. Sutter, I know you said no calls, but it is your father.”
I sat there a moment, and for no particular reason, I saw us on that boat again, he and I, nearly forty years ago, in the harbor at night, and saw this sort of close-up of my hand in his, but then my hand slipped out of his hand, and I reached for him again, but he had moved away and was talking to someone, perhaps my mother.
“Mr. Sutter?”
I said to her, “Tell him I do not wish to speak to him.”
She seemed not at all surprised, but simply nodded and left. I watched the green light on my phone, and in a few seconds it was gone.
From the office, I went directly to my boat and sat in the cabin, listening to the rain. It was not a night you would choose to go out into, but if you had to go out, you could, and if you had been caught by surprise in the wind and rain, you could ride it through. There were other storms that presented more of a challenge, and some that were clear and imminent dangers. Some weather was just plain death.
There were obviously certain elemental lessons that you learned from the sea, most of them having to do with survival. But we tend to forget the most elemental lessons, or don’t know when they apply. This is how we, as sailors, get ourselves into trouble.
We can be captains of our fate, I thought, but not masters of it. Or as an old sailing instructor told me when I was a boy, “God sends you the weather, kid. What you do with it or what it does to you depends on how good a sailor you are.”
That about summed it up.